OUTTAKES: Liverpool

Showing posts with label Liverpool. Show all posts

I KNOW

I've written this in verse form - ok, doggerel - and it explains itself:

CILLA BLACK
OR THE STAR OF THE NORTH-WEST

When first I lived in Liverpool

Some pleasure for to find

I heard a local singer there

Most pleasing to my mind

The scene was getting groovy then

The year was ’62

And in among the beat-group boys

This girl was fresh and new

Her rosy cheeks, her gutsy voice

Like arrows pierced my breast

She was The Maid Of Merseyside

The Star Of The North-West

She knew her black soul music then

She knew her r’n’b

She made her reputation

Without panto or TV

You’d catch her at the Cavern then

Or the Tower in New Brighton

Singing with a rhythm group

The punters couldn’t frighten

But Cruel Fate did wreck her

Her career was soon a past ’un

Poor girl, she signed to Decca:

Fame was snatched from Beryl Marsden.

So when the music biz sent round

Some tone-deaf cockney hack

To sign a slice of Mersey Sound

There was only Cilla Black.

It was rash of Neil McCormick in The Telegraph to give Rebecca Ferguson's debut album Heaven a 5-star review and to compare her to Nina Simone - but his heart was in the right place and he was responding to what he sees in her, rather than, as so many have done, dismissing her without listening or viewing, simply because she emerged via The X Factor and is entangled with Simon Cowell's Syco machine.

The videos for her two singles are boringly formulaic and almost identical, and her album disappoints - only three strongish songs, too much high-end voice - but she doesn't. She's a thrilling singer, a beautifully nervous live performer whose integrity shines out through her inventive phrasing when she “does covers” (I tried to describe this once before, when, on The X Factor, she tackled one of my least favourite Dylan songs). Musical integrity shines out no less on this, the acoustic version of her first single, ‘Nothing's Real But Love’ (and if the video disappears again, you'll find it here on YouTube):

What a voice! And the woman has dignity. If I were in Britain (or Dublin) in the next few weeks I'd go and see her like a shot. More than once. Especially at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. (It's a good small venue, by rock concert standards; it's just across the street from the wonderful Philharmonic Pub; and it's in Rebecca Ferguson's home town.) Her tour dates are:

Bridgewater Hall Manchester

Mon 20/02/12