News

Ian McCulloch To Close Liverpool Sound City

• 23rd Mar 2010

Hot off the heels of the announcement of hip hop godfather Gil Scott Heron Liverpool Sound City are proud to announce a special solo show by Liverpool music legend, Ian McCulloch on the final night of the festival on Saturday 22nd May.

Performing in the opulent surroundings of the Concert Room in the city's St George's Hall, the concert will be billed as 'An Evening with Mac', with Ian performing songs from both his solo career and the Echo and the Bunnymen era, as well as an odd anecdote or two thrown in, as 'Mac the Mouth' takes questions from the audience. This one-off closing night show sees McCulloch return to the scene of 1984's legendary 'A Crystal Day' concert when Echo and the Bunnymen played a rapturous hometown gig in front of their adoring Liverpool audience in one of the City's most stunning landmark buildings.

Singer Ian McCulloch said “It's great to be playing St. Georges Hall again as part of Liverpool Sound City. The last time I played there was 'Crystal Day' with The Bunnymen.“

As part of the Liverpool Sound City 4-day festival there will also be a series of special events and movie screenings, as well as the list of top live acts, the first to be announced to take place on Thursday 20th May is Julian Temple’s portrayal of Dr Feelgood in the movie Oil City Confidential. Director Julian Temple and Wilko Johnson from Dr Feelgood will be present and participating in a Q & A session immediately following the screening. The venue for the screening will be announced shortly.

Julien Temple's Oil City Confidential is the last film in his trilogy on British music of the 1970s. It is a prequel to his landmark films about punk figureheads the Sex Pistols in The Filth & The Fury and Joe Strummer in The Future Is Unwritten. Rather than being standard 'rockumentaries', Julien uses the music as a prism through which he examines the social and cultural conditions of the times. The films share his characteristic cinematic language – an irreverent and anarchic style of montage of archive and fictive footage, which he pioneered in The Great Rock & Roll Swindle. The Sex Pistols' and Joe Strummer's roles are well known, but Dr Feelgood, who are the subject of Oil City Confidential, played a vital role in creating those conditions for that cultural explosion and is a story that is as yet untold.

But the night doesn’t end there; it’s straight over to the O2 Academy to see the Wilko Johnson Band play live immediately following the screening and Q & A.

More than 35,000 revellers are expected to attend Liverpool Sound City this year, creating the energy and spirit of this electric music festival on the streets and venues of the city, making it one of the hottest tickets on the music festival circuit.

Also added to the impressive Sound City line-up are Holy Fuck playing Kazimier on 19th May, Blood Red Shoes/ Titus Andronicus play Zanzibar on 21st May and Max Tundra play Static Gallery on 19th May. Max Tundra and Canada's Holy Fuck are infamous for their use of film tape, toy guns and ancient keyboards and have been acclaimed by the NME as one of the top five acts to see live at Glastonbury. Brighton duo, Blood Red Shoes have been likened to the White Stripes and PJ Harvey and have supported Rage Against The Machine.

Liverpool Sound City impressive line-up is really shaping up with Gil Scott-Heron, Paloma Faith, Delphic, The Maccabees, The Fall, Speech Debelle, Wild Beasts, Field Music, Los Campesinos, The Blackout, Wave Machines, The Sunshine Underground, Hot Club de Paris, Ian McNabb and Chilly Gonzalez to name but a few confirmed as play the festival.