Liverpool International Music Festival – A City Wide Celebration | Scouse Bird Problems

There’s nothing better than Liverpool coming together to celebrate anything… especially something which makes you proud to be Scouse. Already this year we’ve had The Three Queens, The Very Big Catwalk and we’ve been a featured city on Snapchat.

This weekend was the LIMF (Liverpool International Music Festival) and it was bigger and better than ever. Didn’t go? Here’s what you missed out on (Those with FOMO, look away now…)

Bank Holiday Sunday was the main day of the festival; partly because the line up promised performances from Katy B and Labyrinth and partly because there’s nothing we all love more than being able to get on it on a Sunday without the impending horror of work the next day. So we lashed on our gladrags and headed to the main stage at Sefton Park.

Full disclosure; I wasn’t expecting much. Having gone to LIMF at the Pier Head last year I fully expected to just be surrounded by keen tweens and disgruntled dads. I was wrong. This year LIMF seemed to have manifested into a full blown fezzy; complete with girls decorated with flower garlands, a sound system to rival Glasto and, quite frankly, and abundance of fit lads! I suppose that’s just what happens when a vodka company get involved!

The lovely team at Red Square invited us into their VIP area at the side of the stage; which meant free vodka, (seriously, girls, do yourselves a favour and try the Toffee flavour Red Square with a splash of soda and a squeeze of lemon. It’s like drinking pancakes. If pancakes got you giddy.) beanbags and, most importantly, good toilets.

After and hour of feeling fab, drinking vodka, sneaking backstage to get a load of Naughty Boy’s arse and trying to take sly snapchats of some fitty we thought *might* have once been in Made In Chelsea, we decided that we weren’t really doing this whole fezzy thing properly, so we took ourselves off into the crowds to hunt down Red Square’s main bar.

Complete with it’s own popcorn machine, unlimited vodka sorbet (cos the only thing better than ice cream is something that tastes the same, with half the calories, that get’s you drunk!) and more giant bean bags, we were based for the day.

So in conclusion; Liverpool has managed to pull a really decent local festival out of the bag this year, Red Square toffee vodka is bae, Labyrinth is much smaller in real life but an absolute sweetheart and beanbags shit all over regular seats every day.

The Epstein theatre is a great venue for The Record Producers Live, reminiscent of a more intimate Philharmonic, which suits its purposes brilliantly – On top of which the bar doesn’t completely rinse you.

The show consists of Record Producer Steve Levine and Broadcaster Richard Allinson discussing the work of the instantly likable Motown Songwriter & Producer Lamont Dozier.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Dozier is the mastermind behind a range of classic hits you’ll hear DJs force between 1D and the birdie song at your Nan’s 60th – Except they’re actually satisfying tunes. Most noteworthy is despite all his accolades, he remains charmingly humble. What’s more is you can tell he truly loves his craft – you’ll see him air-playing every instrument in his songs, the way you’ll see a football manager trying to head in every cross.

While the majority of the audience are arguably aficionados of the genre, the evening is still perfectly entertaining for the more casual – Esoteric references are few and far between, and anyone whose mum has ever had Smooth FM on in the car will easily recognise some of the legendary tracks (Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Freda Payne) which are thoughtfully and interestingly dissected, interspersed with genuinely amusing anecdotes from Dozier.

That said, the fanatics are likely to take more away from the show, as there’s a small amount of audience participation (nothing cringey), as well as a vetted Q&A session to wrap things up.  All in all a casual, relaxed evening you’ll enjoy.

There were only 400 tickets for this event hosted by Red Square Vodka & Circus in the gorgeous Sefton Park palmhouse and we were lucky enough to nab some. Circus has embodied clubbing in the city for over a decade and no one can deny the beauty of the palmhouse. Mix over ice with a bit of Red Square and you had yourself one hell of a party…

 

XOXO

Sassy Bird HQ

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