THE EARLY DAYS OF ROCK 'N' ROLL FANGIRLING -- THE EARLY LIVERPOOL YEARS.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on a lunchtime audience of teenage girls at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, UK, c. December 1963, watching their favorite rock 'n' roll band, THE BEATLES.

"At The Cavern we were with the fans. They'd be at the door as we went in at lunchtime and they'd say, "Hey, John will you sing "Sweet Little Sixteen" for Margie and Pam?" on that level. That's the kind of thing I miss."

-- JOHN LENNON on the band's early days at the Cavern Club

"Girls kept their rollers in and jeans for the first groups. Then when it got near the time for the Beatles to come on, if there was a gang of four, say, they would go off in turns to the ladies with their little cases to get changed and made up. When THE BEATLES came on the look as if they’d just arrived."

-- MAUREEN COX (later Maureen Starkey) on THE BEATLES Cavern Club days

Sources: www.pinterest.com/pin/10696117839357174 & X (formerly Twitter).

Liverpool rooftops

I found these images on a Facebook group and I thought I would share with my university followers living or thinking about renting in Liverpool UK

“Famous more as a cultural feature than as a natural one, the pace at which the River Mersey is recovering to a fishy wonderland has ecologists stunned.

Splitting The Beatles’ home city of Liverpool in two, a recent survey found 37 different species of fish, more than two-and-a-half-times as many as were found in the previous survey 20 years ago.

Five different species of sharks were also found, along with huge eels and sea scorpions. ‘Holiday species’ as one local fishermen called them, like turbot, smelt, and cod, have also been caught.

Scientists at the Mersey Rivers Trust, a public/private charity-driven partnership for nature in the area believe that these species are breeding in the 3 mile-wide estuary.

The Liverpool Docks—the largest enclosed dock system in the world, were described by Herman Melville as comparable to the Pyramids in size and construction. As a result, industrialization heavily polluted the river. In 2009 however it was announced that the river was “cleaner than at any time since the industrial revolution” and is “now considered one of the cleanest [rivers] in the UK.”

“Over the last 30 years, there’s been this tremendous regeneration, this renewal of the River Mersey that started slowly but is now picking up pace. I still think we’re right at the beginning of something special,” said Mike Duddy at the Mersey Rivers Trust, who spoke to the Wirral Globe about the restoration...

Humpback whales were recently seen in Liverpool Bay for the first time since 1938, while the Mersey itself has also welcomed back otters, salmon, octopus, porpoises, and seals.

The Trust is currently compiling a species list, and is holding a competition with local fishermen to see how many can be recorded. Duddy expects to raise the count of 37 fish species to 50 next year.”

-via Good News Network, 1/23/23

For those of you who are migrating or moving to Liverpool UK, it can be tough to do it on your own. With our help, we’ve come up with some useful tips on how to prepare for your move, so that you don’t slip up when you get there- https://www.fuzia.com/article_detail/464057/top-10-tips-for-international-students-moving-to-liverpool

What do you love about trans?

Iraqi Jewish confectionery are a window into a bygone era

Five days a week, 78-year-old Tzvi (Sabah) David rises at 4:35 a.m. and dons an all-white baker’s outfit before heading out to open up Konditorei David, the last-of-its-kind Iraqi pastry shop in Petah Tikva that was opened by his father David Tsalah.

Three days before the Purim holiday, David is getting ready for one of the busiest times of the year as multiple generations of Iraqi customers will soon stop by to purchase sweets that have been synonymous with Purim for Iraqi Jews for centuries, if not millennia.

“I love the work. It is a very tiring and difficult job and I am not 18 anymore, but I feel young in the morning when I get up,” David tells Eliyahu Freedman of The Times of Israel on a recent visit to the small shop, which doubles as a window into the pre-modern world of Middle-Eastern pastries.

His first item of business today is making a fresh batch of baba qadrasi, also known in Arabic as “mann el-sama” or “manna from heaven,” named after the legendary food that God miraculously delivered from the sky to feed the Israelites in the Exodus story.

If not truly the biblical food itself, an early recipe for baba qadrasi was found in a 10th-century Abbasid cookbook.

LIVERPOOL, UNITED KINGDOM.

Christmas in Liverpool (1986)

ON THIS DAY 47-YEARS-AGO -- THE UPTIGHT LIVERPOOL AUTHORITIES PULLED THE PLUG ON THIS GIG.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a concert poster for the SEX PISTOLS, THE DAMNED, (and from the USA), JOHNNY THUNDERS & THE HEARTBREAKERS, with special guests THE CLASH, performing live at Liverpool Stadium on Decmeber 11, 1976, one of their numerous cancelled Anarchy in the UK Tour appearances.

CANCELED LIVERPOOL GIG OVERVIEW: "This Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK Tour Poster provides the dates for the originally planned nineteen date tour. It was a generic printed poster that would be overprinted with specific date, venue and ticket retailer details in the panel at the bottom of the poster. This specific version is of the show that was meant to be performed at Liverpool Stadium on Saturday 11 December 1976.

An article appeared in the Liverpool Echo on December 3rd, just a week before the show which read: City date for rock band in TV row. It continued, SEX PISTOLS, the Punk Rock group whose four-letter performance on television caused uproar with viewers and television authorities, will appear at the Liverpool Stadium a week tomorrow. The performance is part of their Anarchy in the UK tour.

However, four days later another article, written by Nick Skidmore, appeared in the Echo with a change of story. It read: "CALL FOR BOYCOTT ON SEX PISTOLS": An outraged Liverpool councillor today called for a boycott on punk rock group SEX PISTOLS – who vow to sidestep a ban on their city concert. Councillor Doreen Jones plans to demonstrate outside the club where they hope to play in a bid to dissuade youngsters from seeing the group. “Let’s show the rest of the country Liverpool is too good for this sort of rubbish. We don’t want them here,” she said. The group – who incensed audiences by swearing on the Thames TV programme "Today" – heard last night their planned show at Liverpool Stadium had been cancelled. A Stadium spokesman said “The publicity they generate does not persuade me to allow them here… These SEX PISTOLS advocate Anarchy and we don’t want to take the risk.”

Instead the group hope to stage the concert at The Cavern club for the following night. Their manager, Malcolm McLaren said: “We aren’t going to tone down our act one little bit. There won’t be any compromises in Liverpool – that’s a promise.” Asked if this meant the concert would include obscenities, he replied: “Life includes obscenities. Our act reflects life.” The planned gig at The Cavern never materialised."

-- HERITAGE AUCTIONS (music/rock posters)

Source: www.heritage-posters.co.uk/product/the-sex-pistols-anarchy-in-the-uk-poster-liverpool.

October 8, Liverpool - Oppose Posie Parker

The first ten chapters of my new book, "Superworld", are out now on @Wattpad ! New chapters will be released daily starting tomorrow, Sunday, the 17th of March! Cover art by Kenderkoc on artstation .com (@ArtStation)! Book description: A Texas high school football star trying to clear his name. A Japanese detective hunts a serial killer while still grieving his missing daughter. An Indian diplomat's son is lost in a foreign land after his father's murder. A French painter seeks to foil the plot of a cyborg terrorist. All these disparate individuals share two things in common: they all possess superhuman abilities and they're all hunted by the same, sinister Shadow Government. It's just like your world, only...Super.

"Fingers clinging to a crimp hold, eyes fixed determinedly on his goal, young Waleed (pictured above) scales the bouldering wall at The Climbing Hangar in Liverpool.  

Waleed was newly arrived in the UK from Sudan three years ago, when he became among the first to take part in Refugees Rock, then a fledgling project offering free climbing sessions to refugees and asylum seekers.  

It’s easy to imagine what might be going through his head. ‘Will I make it?’, perhaps, or ‘What happens if I fail?’ As a sporting metaphor for the challenges faced by refugees like him, climbing could not be more apt. 

“That feeling when people make it to the top for the first time and they look back down at you: they’re beaming and smiling because they’ve got there, and everyone’s cheering. It has a much deeper meaning than just climbing,” said Emma Leaper. Leaper is national coordinator with the Action Asylum initiative, which runs Refugees Rock alongside The British Red Cross and the Climbing Hangar.  

“It reflects the resilience of some of the people we’re working with, the journeys they’ve undergone and the fact that they’ve come all this way in the face of adversity.” 

Next month marks Refugees Rock’s third year in operation. Starting with just a handful of anxious newbies at The Climbing Hangar’s Liverpool branch, it now hosts hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers at 14 centres across the UK.  

Camaraderie is a huge draw. In a show of solidarity, local climbers have been recruited as volunteer ‘boulder buddies’ to show asylum-seeking newcomers the ropes, and extend a warm hand of friendship. 

“It’s just wonderful,” said Leaper. “You leave your problems behind. You’re not thinking about your asylum case, or the fact that you’re separated from your family and the trauma you’ve gone through – you’re thinking about the problem on the wall in front of you. 

“But the biggest difference I notice in people is in their confidence – up on that wall, they’re basically finding themselves again.”"

-via Positive.News, March 27, 2024

Beautiful Barn Owl 🦉 at full stretch, Liverpool UK 🇬🇧

📸 by Jeff Sykes Photography (Jeff's Wildlife)