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Popping my Bido Lito! cherry

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We have been in Liverpool six months now. (Cue cheer!)

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In fact, it was six months as of last Thursday. And what better way to mark the occasion than finding my musical feet in the city and getting my first review in Bido Lito! published?

I’ve been writing music and theatre reviews for years now, and was overjoyed when I got my first few in Nightshift, Oxford’s longstanding music zine.

The question when we moved to Liverpool was, ‘where do my words go now?’

Finding my musical feet

Anyone who’s done it knows - moving cities is hard. It might be exactly the right move and incredibly exciting, but nonetheless its hard and its exhausting. It took us a while to get to our first gig, let alone start to get a grip of the whys and wherefores of the music scene here. But slowly, as these things do, it all began to fall in to place.

Fat White Family at the Invisible Wind Factory. She Drew the Gun at one of the many O2s. Mac DeMarco at one of the other O2s. Beak at yet another O2. Gradually the publications and blogs previewing and reviewing these highlights started to follow. Then I saw this:

‘Contact Liverpool music mag’ had been on my to-do list for weeks, always rolling on thanks to self-deprecating apprehension. That tweet though, was the permission my inner voice needed. My fear fell away and I did indeed ‘get in touch’.

Desert Island disc decisions

The people at Bido Lito! were lovely. They liked my previous work and were happy for me to write something for them. (HOORAY!) ‘One little question though…’ they said, and it’s ‘just a bit of fun’ to help us get to know your musical tastes.

‘What are your five desert island albums?’ 😱WHAT!

This was an all-consuming conundrum. I spent the subsequent 36 hours obsessed. My musical taste has never been terribly genre-centric. Too much of a good thing and I get bored. To put myself in a situation where I would only ever hear these five albums for the rest of my life, I needed some variety. What if I was sad? What if I wanted to dance? What if I needed to calm down? What if I needed to regain a sense of self in this isolated state?

So many demands for so few albums.

The first spot was easy. I wouldn’t go anywhere without Prince. Patti Smith came soon after, but then it became more problematic. Finally, after much nail biting and Spotify surfing, I settled on the following. I wouldn’t necessarily pick this list every day of the week, but I’m still pretty pleased with the line up:













Getting down to business

With that traumatic decision out of the way I could start trawling through upcoming gigs and pitching some ideas to Bio Lito!. I ended up reviewing HMLTD, who I saw a couple of years ago, at their peak, at Scala in London. That was quite a spectacle - even if we did have to pay £5.50 for a can of Red Stripe (unacceptable).

This gig was very different. Thankfully, despite the sparse crowd upstairs at the Arts Club Liverpool, the band still had some of their magic. Well, I won’t say too much more -

Go and read Issue 108 of Bido Lito!

(The photography by Brian Sayle is fantastic - totally captures lead singer, Henry’s crowd appeal.)

And so, on our sixth-month celebration Thursday I went down to publication-day drinks. I met the faces behind Bido Lito’s emails, learned a lot more about the Liverpool music and arts scene, and hopefully cemented the start of a beautiful Merseyside musical engagement.

P.S. A side note on my five

As much as my musical taste is eclectic, there are many genres that I have had little exposure to. One of these is hip-hop. I’ve loved some of the albums I’ve listened to, but haven’t as yet dug particularly deep. That said, I read today is the 30th anniversary of an album called ‘Criminal Minded’ by Boogie Down Productions. Having never heard it, I popped it on, and I’m absolutely loving it! So today I’m throwing it in as an alternate!