Liverpool Sound City 2010… 4 days… 35 venues… 400 artists… 1000 Delegates… 35,000 revellers: Shake Online spent all day and every night in the Mersey Paradise, Listening, Looking & Learning. Find out here what we found out!

The Maccabees played 2 shows at the festival. This was certainly one of the many highlights of Sound City 2010. Also fresh in the line up are The Sunshine Underground whose album “Nobody’s Coming To Save You” was released to all round acclaim. Other highlights included local rock ‘n’ roll legend Ian McNabb (really lifted spirits), Lights from Canada, rockers My Passion and Young Guns, Liverpool’s The Delta Fiasco, Italy’s The Second Grace and Welsh rising stars ‘Roseville‘ (who didn’t play but gave me an impressive debut album). ‘The Pool’ radio show had a showcase where ALL five acts were great (more on that later). Showcasing the best in local and international talent, Liverpool Sound City also saw local lads Wave Machines, hailed by NME as this year’s ‘ones to watch’ - they deliver art pop rhythms, soaring synths and infectious gigs.

Sound City Festival Director Dave Pichilingi states; “The Maccabees fit perfectly with the Sound City ethos. This was always going to be a must see show for Sound City 2010. Liverpool Sound City is about being the coolest and most exciting city centre music festival in the world. With Sound City we bring together the greatest new music and art from all over the world.  Together with this we welcome the key execs, mavericks, new entrepreneurs and industry players from the international arena of music, media and technology businesses…”  

Sound City delighted a packed room with their major keynote speaker of 2010 in the form of musical royalty Seymour Stein. He was joined by the man known simply as ‘Mac’, lead singer with Liverpool Legends Echo and the Bunnymen. They both told great stories about life in the late 70s, CBGB’s. Seymour is the co-founder and chairman of Sire Records, the label that put Punk and New Wave on the map, and famous for signing artists such as Madonna, The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Liverpool’s own Echo and the Bunnymen.

“Seymour’s taste in music is always a couple years ahead of everybody else’s,” observed Gary Kurfirst, who managed Talking Heads - another of Stein’s signings, Stein saw an essential piece of rock and roll’s future. “I was riveted the whole time,” he recalled of his first glimpse of Talking Heads at New York’s CBGB’s. “It was amazing. And, of course, I signed them.”

One of the last old-school “record men” still working in the music business, Stein succeeded by anticipating the next musical wave and signing its brightest lights, but most impressive is his desire for fire; he still get’s out to gigs and is still looking at new bands to sign and work with. His latest is a band called ‘Black Angels’ and you count on them being amazing…