WELL I can now tick a visit to the Pacific Road ‘arts centre’ off my to-do list.
I went to the Birkenhead venue one night last week to see the excellent Wallasey band, Reckless Elbow.
‘Reckless’ do Celtic rock and a bit of country, and I would heartily recommend them, though perhaps their appeal is to a slightly older crowd, say the over-30s.
Catching their gigs is not likely to be top priority for the Hip Young Gunslingers of the music scene, if you get my drift.
So what did I think of Pacific Road?

Well, given that it was set up with public money (mainly from the hated European Union - i.e. British taxpayers’ money recycled with a slice subtracted to pay for fancy lunches for the Fat Cat pen-pushers of Brussels) I thought the place was not too bad.
I noted with some irritation, however, that an ‘official partner’ of the arts centre is Wirral Council.
Nothing seems to escape the deadening creative hand of this bloated public authority these days.
I certainly enjoyed the ‘Reckless’ gig – though like many in the audience I found it appalling that the venue was totally non-smoking.
Me and the other smokers had to stand outside in the cold and the rain just to get our nicotine fix.
The venue itself is not really like any art centre I’ve seen before. It was much more like the concert rooms of the big Labour, Catholic and Working Men’s clubs I used to go to when I was growing up in Wigan in the 1970s.
Yes, when set out with tables, as it was for the 'Reckless' gig, Pacific Road seems quite working class in ambience, my dears – apart from the po-faced, council-approved, Health Nazis-imposed bifter ban, that is.
But one thing that wasn’t so good was the food on the night I attended. Chips, baked potatoes, that sort of thing – very bland and boring. The old Labour and Catholic Clubs used to do much better food on concert nights.
While outside for a fag break, a punter told me that the usual programme for the New Brighton Floral Pavilion will be performed at Pacific Road in coming months while the old seaside theatre is refurbished.
So it will be showing a lot of sad, faded 70s and 80s singers and tribute acts, then, will it?
Incidentally, I’ve heard a story that the Pavilion management tried to book the band from The League of Gentlemen TV show, Crème Brulee, not realising they are a p***-take!
And anyway, rather than shift the Pavilion’s shows to Birkenhead for the duration of the long refurbishment, why hasn’t Wirral Council simply transferred the acts to another large venue in New Brighton?
Well, the answer is obvious … there aren’t any large venues left in New Brighton!
Over the long, dreary years of political control of New Brighton by the Wirral Council, all the resort’s big venues have been closed down or demolished, to be replaced by meanly-proportioned blocks of bug hutch-style flats.
While I’m on a roll, let me tell you how my heart sank when I read that Wirral Council is commissioning residents’ views on creating a ‘landmark sculpture’ to mark Wirral’s supposed ‘gateway’.
The council wants to know what residents think is special about the borough so that it can create a sculpture at the southern end of the A41, adjacent to Junction 5 of the M53.
The artwork will forms part of 'a £1m Environmental Improvement Strategy currently being implemented for the A41 corridor, with funding from the Wirral Waterfront SRB 6 initiative' , says the council’s website. Zzzzz…
Renn and Thacker, an arts partnership, has been commissioned to create the sculpture and it will be undertaking a series of consultations with ‘established steering groups, business groups, communities and Wirral residents, to identify themes to be incorporated in the preferred design for the gateway feature’, says the council.
Honestly, don’t they know anything about art? You cannot create art by consulting with interest groups and silly ‘steering groups’. Art has to be created by artists – otherwise it is not art.
I think what we will end up with here is a repeat of the farce that saw a ‘sculpture’ of a pierrot clown being plonked down on the coast road into New Brighton.
And everyone knows how much the long-suffering residents of New Brighton detest that thing.

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit