Liverpool came over all cultural tonight as the blessed Ringo 'St.Cecilia' Starr led a beatified collection of musos in launching our year as EUroPEEEan CAPital of CUL-TURE (as the stentorian presenter would have it). Somewhere between the BBC's estimate of 25,000, and the Liverpool Echo's bullish claim of 50,000, squished ourselves into and on to Lime Street and all balconies, steps, pavements, bollards, van roofs and trees for a view of the shenanigans. It was an evening of mercifully clement weather, with not a hint of drizzle and not even the lightest of zephyrs blowing. Miraculous, given the previous week's stormy weather, and that Gloucestershire and the South West were this very evening being hammered with gales, rain AND snow. Phil Redmond clearly has more talents even than his greatest fans had suspected. Either that or a piece of evidence damning enough to blackmail the God of Weather into compliance. Ah no - maybe it's because we had a former Hurricane on the roof already.
The sainted Mop Top (well, shaven mop in woolly hat) and his freezing chums ranged themselves along the edge of St George's Hall's classically proportioned roof, with an isolationist and anonymous guitar-plucker atop the Wellington Memorial (that's a lot of narrow spiral stairs to climb). There was a lot of noise with little discernible melody, but the ground shook with the decibel level of woofers big eough to give nightmares to the Hound of the Baskervilles. Whatever was going on got occasional applause from the sardines in front of the action and the big screens, but in Commutation Row there was little in the way of words, pictures or harmonies that arrived intact at our eyes and ears.
But we were there. We could tell lots of stuff was happening, and it was kindly kept to 45 mins to save us all freezing solid in the dry, still but gelid January night air. Liverpool is good at producing large, good-tempered, happy crowds when the occasion demands, and it was great to be a part of it.
The city isn't short of beautiful buildings, and the patch around SGH is stuffed with them. It was fantastic to see the County Sessions House lit to fabulous advantage at the end of the show - a stunning building given a starring role for once.
