Liverpool, European Capital Of Pop? Non!

10:05 AM GMT 18/01/2008

Mersey pop needs to shape up, or Liverpool needs to find a new USP, reckons Danny Eccleston...

It’s Saturday evening and I’m gaping in incredulity. And not in a good way.

A crane swings a freight container onto a spotlight-spangled “dock”. Said container opens and spills… well who, or what exactly? Sonia, some actors from Brookside, the odd musician, including a terrified-looking Marc Almond. It’s an inauspicious start to a pointless exercise. The curtain is now officially raised on Liverpool’s tenure as European Capital Of Culture, a status it shares for the length of 2008 with Stavanger, before handing over to Linz and Vilnius in the early hours of 2009.

The tragic connotations are manifold. There is the desperate invocation of Liverpool’s history as a port (very much “history” after its devastation during the ’80s) and by extension the good old days of the slave trade. Then there’s the paucity of genuine celebrities in evidence. Almond is not even a proper scouser, being a woollyback from Southport.

Even Ringo, genuine royalty amongst the gathered plebs, has brought bloody Dave Stewart – a mackem – with him. And though the bill he headlines features decent stuff (The Wombats, Pete Wylie, Echo & The Bunnymen) the prevalence of has-beens (The Farm) and never-will-bes (No Fakin’ DJs) tells its own tale.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Liverpudlians did not pin their thin hopes so heavily on football and pop music. Surely they need no reminding that they haven’t had a championship-winning team since 1990 and The Beatles split two decades before that? Since the heyday of Merseybeat (who could forget the globe-shaking tunes of The Undertakers and The Big Three?) there’s been no imperious groundswell of musical muscle on Merseyside. Rather, at best, a reliably eccentric underground producing the occasional head-turning act – always pretty much guaranteed to self-destruct or shoot itself in the foot before any real success or significance can be conferred.

Moreover, as the city’s status as the frontline against Thatcherism faded in the mid-to-late-’80s, its perceived potency in terms of TV, film and drama similarly fell away. Even Phil Redmond, back on the team as creative director of Liverpool 08, beat his symbolic retreat, packing in Brookside and swopping knackered old Liverpool for the suburbs of Chester, the upwardly-mobile, New Britain backdrop to his frothy ’90s youth-soap, Hollyoaks.

Meanwhile, like cultural marsupials with no land-bridge to the mainstream, Liverpool bands became a more and more peculiar breed – destined to be peered at, prodded and patronised by onlookers.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not elevating any other British city at the expense of Merseyside. I’m from Redditch (home of The Very Things and a third of Dodgy) and therefore have no leg to stand on in the “my town’s more rock than your town” dust-up. Challenge any European town to “launch” a year under the magnifying-class (and while we’re here, why this modern imperative to “launch” things – why not just “start” them?) and you’d get a similarly tricked-up, marketeer’s version of Jeux Sans Frontières. And if Cultural Capital status draws more money to Merseyside then it will have been worth something – perhaps it will help the city finish that Maritime Museum, the Merseytram system or some of the other things they hoped would be ready for 2008.

Yet I’m still reeling from this exposure to the ever-widening chasm between the nostalgia-burnished image of Liverpool’s cultural contribution and the somewhat less inspiring reality. Eventually, as the nation’s underwhelming response to Saturday’s 08 launch only goes to underline, one or the other will be obliged to change.

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 10:05 AM GMT 18/01/2008

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Erm im from liverpool and, lthough i admit that not many of these bands are involved in any of the 2008 business, there is plenty of talent in and around the city.

Obviously The Wombats are just hitting the bigtime & are a great band, but also The Rascals from the Wirral are highly tipped for success in 2008; not least by the Arctic Monkeys. Eugene McGuinness is a brilliantly uncommercial folk singer songwriter (the anti-James Blunt if you will) who is adored by the critics.

The Zutons and The Coral have been successful for years, and add to that the Dead 60s & you have yourself a handful of great albums.

So we might not be the best city in the world for music but we're certainly one of the best in the UK! Shush with your ill-informed jibber jabber!

Posted by Chris at 9:05 AM GMT 20/01/2008 Report Abuse

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Some valid points in the Blog. The opening ceremony was underwhelming and Ringo was only there to plug his dire Liverpool 8 single but I think that Liverpool holds its own when it comes to it's musical output and 'culture' is not just popular music.

Posted by at 1:22 PM GMT 20/01/2008 Report Abuse

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Some valid points in the Blog. The opening ceremony was underwhelming and Ringo was only there to plug his dire Liverpool 8 single but I think that Liverpool holds its own when it comes to it's musical output and 'culture' is not just popular music.

Posted by at 1:22 PM GMT 20/01/2008 Report Abuse

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Why such a big bias against Liverpool? Being from the states and a big Beatles fan, no trip to England would be complete without stopping into Liverpool. When I told people in in the UK that we were planning to visit Liverpool, they all looked puzzled and wondered "why, what's there to see?" Liverpool was a fun day trip. We got to have a beer at the 'new' Cavern Club and got to take a ferry across the Mersey. I will always remember that. Most of the people that we talked to weren't as anti-american as the rest of England. While I know that things in your own backyard are someimes the easiest to overlook, I say Liverpool's OK.

Posted by JD From Texas at 8:49 PM GMT 20/01/2008 Report Abuse

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Since when has selling records meant anything? True, as you state, Liverpool is home to 'a reliably eccentric underground' - and long may it continue. Great, we could have Coldplay, Oasis, or some other such mass marketed trash. Or, we could have the genuinely good Hot Club de Paris, Edgar Jones & The Jones, The Maybes?, Shack and other movers and shakers. Historically, there have been the nearly-beens and could-have-beens like The Real People, Amsterdam, The Pale Fountains, great music with that certain Liverpool something. Why erode that for the sake of making a phoney statement? Musically Liverpool is fine the way it is, whether the press wishes to agree or not.

Posted by Little_Wing at 7:08 PM GMT 04/02/2008 Report Abuse

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