Friday, February 28, 2003
Twenty-Third Turnoff and other wondrous things
posted by John Davies at 11:32 PM
 Twenty-Third Turnoff. What a fantastic name for a band. Led by a lost genius, Jimmy Campbell, their 1967Êsong Michaelangelo is apparrently a real psychedelic gem. And their name conjures so much in the minds eye - angst, rejection, classic counter-cultural stuff. Where does it come from? The truth is brilliant: Twenty-Third Turnoff were a Liverpool band and they were named after the 23rd turnoff from the M6, which goes direct to our home city.
Just one gem from a whole evening of wonderful insights at The Bluecoat tonight, where Liverpool-born music writer Paul Du Noyer was in conversation, around his recent book Liverpool: Wondrous Place: Music from Cavern to Cream. It's a very informed history of a quite exceptional aspect of British popular culture - this one city's astonishing creative output over the past fifty years. It emerges from inside Erics to do some fascinating cultural geography; it hangs around the car park which is a 1970s city council's "tribute" to the Cavern, to reveal some details about the Beatles' Liverpool life unrecorded elsewhere.
All this I got from tonight's talk. And a copy of the book, which I've yet to read. My last impulse buy before Lent (probably). There are more blogs on this coming, I feel.
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john davies
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