Lover, come back to me

My goodness, what a busy week, including a trip to Notting Hill and a wobbly cycle around the Manchester Velodrome. On Friday night, my friend Matt offered up his plus one to watch Julian Cope at the Carling Academy. There was apparently a loose theme to do with Eric's (a long-lost venue of Liverpool legend) to promote a new show at Liverpool Everyman. I was tired, but the lure of a plus one is too great, so I scraped on a layer of mascara and threw on my favourite dress.
The Academy is always dimly lit (they've standardised everything else in all of their venues, is the lighting policy the same?), so I could get away with hiding in a corner like a ghost. A ghost drinking Carling, obviously. Doors opened at 7.30pm and we arrived at 9pm, assuming we'd already missed Pete Burns in the support slot. But, as you can see from the crappy snap at left, we had not.
Pete Burns didn't make it onto the stage until 10pm. A lot of people in the room looked like they were paying babysitters by the hour, and they were getting restless. It was the first time I've been to a gig where the crowd are booing before the band has made it on stage. But this was no mere band. It was glamourpuss Pete Burns. Celebrity Big Brother AND Celebrity Wife Swap alumni Pete Burns. He's not a man who'd be happy with a Subway foot long and bowl of chips before going on stage at 8pm. Oh no. Pete Burns is an exquisite creature who requires fine dining and a chaise longue before performing. Some people might think that three songs is not enough for a set, but when you're Pete Burns and people have paid £20, it's plenty. They should count themselves lucky to be basking in your presence for a mere £20. He introduced 'You Spin Me Round' as 'the song that took me out of Liverpool... thank god'. Yes, that's the attitude Pete! You tell the people of Liverpool that their city is shite, as if it's still the Eighties. He also told the chosen few witnessing his performance that he was 'just going through the motions', and in a glisten of black sequins was gone.
The really frustrating thing? He can sing! He has a certain stage presence! If he weren't such a whinging diva he could have had a proper music career!
Julian Cope soon appeared, topless, wielding an acoustic guitar. The Copeheads in the room seemed very happy to see him, but to me he looked like a man at an open mic night about to launch into a rant against chip and pin or unfair bank charges. I decided to head homewards after a few songs. Sorry, Julian. (Not that he cares.)

And the beat goes on

This weekend feels like the first in ages that I've spent in Liverpool. So I decided to re-discover the city I live in, instead of rushing around the country. On Saturday I went to see The Beat Goes On, an exhibition about Liverpool's music scene, at the World Museum. It's the whole world... in a museum! Nearly. There's a planetarium, aquarium, bug house and bee hive.
The exhibition focused on Liverpool music since the 1950s, through Merseybeat and super-clubs, right up to Hot Club de Paris. It was a sensory overload of memorabilia, buttons to press, pictures and a pretend stage to play inflatable guitars on. Also, being one of those cool, new wave museums, a lot of the bits and bobs on display were personal artifacts... nightclub fliers from the Cream glory days, a spangly outfit worn by a drag queen to G-Bar, a tin robot used on the cover of 'Tin Planet' by Space.
Here are the photographs I took before security asked me to stop:


Half an hour well spent. Obviously, some of it felt a bit self-interested ('Liverpool is amazing! We made The Beatles! We invented music! Did we mention, we're also European Capital of Culture 2008?'). But it was interesting. Looking at the past made me feel more than ever that Liverpool doesn't have a particularly strong music or club scene at the moment. There are some good venues, good bands and good promoters doing good things, but definitely not on the same scale as cities like Leeds or Glasgow.