Sailing on the Seven Streets

Posted on 3 June 2010 by David Lloyd

Caution: does not contain ranting

It’s all gone horribly wrong.

I started this blog almost exactly a year ago today. A hundred entries later and I could see the way things were heading. And it wasn’t pretty. I started off, dewy of cheek and pert of ambition – a little review here, a wise askance architectural critique there (who am I kidding?). But soon, the furies set in. Every third day, like some particularly bloodthirsty character in an Icelandic saga, I’d have to spear a little (atomic) kitten or race across the lava flow, astride my trusty steed, to impale a Wag Troll.

Yes. I’d turned into one of those bloggers. And, frankly, I felt dirty. Continue reading →

A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Posted on 23 March 2010 by David Lloyd

Calm down dear, it's only a model

Just before he became the foursquare mayor of the Second World War (let’s face it, he’s revisited it that often), Stephen Spielberg admitted: ‘Jaws couldn’t be made now. The audience wouldn’t wait that long to see the shark.”

He’s right.

Within ten minutes, focus groups would be demanding a CGI Great White (probably in 3D) skullpunching the teeth out of a hapless cheerleader on waterskis.

Goodbye narrative arc and charater-driven ennui, and hello gratuitous shark porn. Continue reading →

Cloud? Nein

Posted on 24 February 2010 by David Lloyd

Broadband connection lost

Before you reach the oldest village in Europe – at Skara Brae, in Orkney – you have to travel back in time. From the visitor centre, out across the tussocky grass, there’s a waymarked route, punctuated with milestones, taking you on a history lesson back to the beginnings of society. I imagine it’s to help build suspense across what is, actually, quite a bleak, wind-scorched promontery.

“1969, Man Lands on the Moon” declares the first painted boulder. Further along, “1492, Columbus reaches America”. You get the idea. Continue reading →

Dreaming of The Dingle

Posted on 26 December 2009 by David Lloyd

Park Palace, (c) Keith Rose

We like to claim a lot of things around these parts. Some of them require a leap of faith and a dash of creative thinking, but there are things we really can shout about.

Take the tale of St Helens born George Groves. He was the man who got the big names talking: forget Alan ‘Chatty Man’ Carr, or Jonathan Ross, it was Groves who really made the stars of the silver screen open up and mouth off. And they’ve not really stopped since. Continue reading →

An Audience With The Coke

Posted on 5 November 2009 by David Lloyd

Spiritualized?

Two gigs, two churches, two cities, two days.

But last night’s Grizzly Bear gig at Manchester Cathedral ( I think it was a Grizzly Bear gig. It might have been an iPhone convention) made me uneasy – and not just because the 15th century building wasn’t designed to accommodate a touring Americana band and its audience (the space just didn’t work). It’s a shame, because Grizzly Bear fans, on the whole, do look a lot like Jesus.

It could have worked. The Cathedral’s an intimate, shadowy place, with enough reverb to make Cheryl Cole sound soothing. But it didn’t. Continue reading →

The Northern Way

Posted on 3 August 2009 by David Lloyd

Something wicked this way comes. The Yule Lads.

You think Icelandic popstars are strange? Maybe it’s got something to do with their twisted childhoods.

See, up there, they don’t bother too much with big fat Coca-Cola branded Santa Claus and his merry band of minimum-wage elves. No, up in the cruel north, kids are brought up in fear of the 13 Yule Lads. And they’re not a seasonal charity football team. They’re a bunch of mischievous, criminal, maladjusted pranksters – intent on making the 13 days before Christmas as tortuous as possible for little Bjorks and Jónsis. Continue reading →

Ready for your Close-up?

Posted on 29 July 2009 by David Lloyd

The way we see it. (c) Shoot Liverpool

Liverpool’s a city of photography. From the smoky street scenes of E Chambre Hardman, to Mike McCartney’s mop-top hysteria, we’ve always loved to freeze frame things in time. Which is why I’m looking forward to this year’s excellent Shoot Liverpool competition, on August 15.

One thing’s for sure. The winners will show far more inventiveness than some of the city’s commercial studios. What is it with modern portrait photography? There was a time when, having parted with the equivalent of a week in Centerparcs, a professional photographer would have the decency to supply you with chairs.

These days, if he’s really contemporary, your artistic modern portrait photographer will have family members draped awkwardly over each other on the floor, limbs entwining, heads lolling; like they’ve just been flung out of a light aircraft.
Continue reading →

Skrift

David Lloyd

Category Archives: Art