The Liverpool Scene - Amazing Adventures Of The Liverpool Scene (1968-70 uk, classic comical streetwise poetry anthology surrounded by explicitly rock-based ensemble, 2009 remaster)

The Liverpool Scene coalesced semi-accidentally around poet and painter Adrian Henri, one of the chief architects of the city’s multi-media “events” of the early-to-mid-60s. Today, being a poet is to risk being battered, de-kegged and set on fire. Back then, however, poetry was a noble, rather sexy and decidedly rock’n’roll calling, thanks in no small measure to the witty, perceptive and pretension-free work of Henri and his “Mersey Sound” contemporaries. Fronting a band was a logical and inevitable progression, and Henri did just that from 1967-70.

The Amazing Adventures Of… compiles the many highlights of The Liverpool Scene’s brief career, and is a five-course meal for the senses in a Pot Noodle world. Herein you will find giddy avant-garde experimentation (We’ll All Be Spacemen Before We Die), wry cultural commentary (Bomb Commercials), raucous pastiche (The Woo Woo, Baby, I’ve Got Those Fleetwood Mac Chicken Shack John Mayall Can’t Fail Blues), tender acoustic folk (The Raven, Burdock River Run), unabashed romanticism (The Only Thing It Needed Was You) and, throughout, a shining intelligence and genuinely poetic sensibility which gladdens the heart and replenishes the soul.

The contributions of guitarist/songwriter Andy Roberts, poet/ saxophonist Mike Evans and songwriter Mike Hart were as crucial to the band’s inimitable alchemy as Henri’s antic wit and benign presence. John Peel and Led Zeppelin adored them: hear the extraordinary key compositions Made in USA and The Entry Of Christ Into Liverpool to find out exactly why.

by Marco Rossi, 21st August 2009