Daily Archives: February 9, 2017

Salman Rushdie, the writer marked for death by the Ayatollah of Iran for writing The Satanic Verses, is working on a new novel set in contemporary America.

His new book, The Golden House, is a thriller set against the backdrop of modern-day American culture. It covers the eight-year Obama presidency and incorporates the cultural zeitgeist. It includes the rise of the conservative Tea Party movement, 2014s GamerGate hashtag campaign, social media, identity politics, and the ongoing culture war against political correctness.

In other words, its the modern world through the lens of Salman Rushdie, an author who received numerous death threats and even attempts on his life after he penned a novel critical of Islam.

Many stores refused to carry the book following its publication in 1988, and those that did were targeted by terrorists with firebombs and explosives.

The Iranian government put out a hit on Rushdie, which lasted until 1998, calling on jihadists and their allies to take the authors life.

In more recent years, Rushdie has called for the defense of freedom of speech. As the target of assassination attempts over his ideas and writing, the Booker Prize-winning author is uniquely intimate with the subject.

During the election last year, Rushdie spoke out against the furor over the pro-Trump chalk slogans in Emory University in what became known as #TheChalkening. Campuses that saw the rising incidences of chalk messages banned the calcium carbonate writing tool.

Rushdie called the dust-up silly and said there was no reason for art to be politically correct.

When people say, I believe in free speech but , then they dont believe in free speech, he said. The whole point about free speech is that it upsets people.

Its very easy to defend the right of people whom you agree with or that you are indifferent to, Rushdie said. The defense [of free speech] begins when someone says something that you dont like.

There are no safe spaces against offensive ideas, said Rushdie.

Rushdie has come to lose his confidence in the progressive leftincluding those who once defended his controversial book. Speaking in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Rushdie expressed dismay at the leftist protests that followed the PEN writers association to honor the fallen artists and writers.

Speaking to French magazine LExpress, Rushdie said that people learned the wrong lessons from the threats he faced in the 80s and 90s.

Instead of realizing that we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we thought that we need to placate them with compromise and renunciation.

Ive since had the feeling that, if the attacks against The Satanic Verses had taken place today, these people would not have defended me, and would have used the same arguments against me, accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority, said Rushdie. We are living in the darkest time I have ever known.

In Rushdies new book, the main villain is described as a ruthlessly ambitious, narcissistic, media-savvy villain sporting makeup and colored hair. Make what you will of that.

The books publishing director at Jonathan Cape, Michal Shavit, describes The Golden House as being about identity, truth, terror, and lies for a new world order of alternate truths. Its out this September.

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken mediacritic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.

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Salman Rushdie's New Novel is About Political Correctness and the ... - Heat Street

In Kenneth Woodwards fantastic new book,Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama, we are treated to an accessible, insightful, and critical examination of Christianity in the 1960s, which Woodward knows can be extended five years either way, in which his thesis is ever-so-telling and right: the secular becomes the sacred.

That is, social activism became the fundamental core of Christian faith and discipleship during this period for a large segment of American Christianity. This is a really good chapter in Woodwards book and is worth the price of the book.

He opens with the theme of hope in the secular arising in the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Hope in the secular isnt just a play on semantics. Rather, it allows roomfor those aspirations that arise from within religious communities and that seek to be realized in a secular fashion. In the midSixties, that hope was embodied in the civil rights movement under the leadership of King (96).

Woodward, at the center ofNewsweeks news sources, watched up close the civil rights movement with an eye on how religion was at work. As a Catholic, Woodward had a sense of history, of liturgy, of institutional strength, of tradition and of theology. His approach to the Protestant liberals then was an outsider. Here is what he observed: a shift toward making the secular, the world, the center of what God was doing. Thus,

It was largely because of the civil rights movement, and the political response to it, that the nations liberal Protestant leadership came to embrace the secular as sacred: that is, to assume that if God is to be found anywhere, it is in the secular world, not the church (96).

Consistent with the time in which these things occurred, Woodward uses Negro throughout the book. It made me comfortable, and it reminded me of the reality of those days. His thoughts on ML King Jr?

A major question, much debated at the time, was whether the Negroes quest for civil rights was a secular or religious movement (96) That said, King always insisted that whatever else he was to othersthe list included agitator, troublemaker, and, to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, communistin his heart he remained fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher (97). In sum, Martin Luther King Jr. succeeded where other civil rights leaders fell short because he appealed to black religion more precisely, to what generations of American Negroes had made of the Christianity that was originally taught to them by white slave owners (98).

A summary that may be a bit blunt or un-nuanced, but generally helpful:

Black religion, in short, was the religion of the civil rights movement for as long as King was its prime spokesman (8).

This is where he gives some overall insights from King and what happened to the religion of Protestant liberals who had a hope in the secular:

After Selma King would call it a coalition of conscience, one that crossed old religious boundaries and created new forms of religious belief, behavior, and belonging. Thereafter, where one stood on the issue of public agitation on behalf of civil rights became for activist clergy the measure of authentic faith and commitment (102).

This last observation pierces to the heart of this approach to the Christian faith. I have friends for whom their participation in Selma, or at least their claim to have been there, became the core of their faith and was often the nostalgic touching point.

A one off that is more or less probably right on:

It seemed to me that one difference between Evangelical and mainline Protestants was this: when Evangelicals saw the churches going to hell they preached another revival, while mainliners in the same mood called for a reformation of church structures (105).

All of this emerges into nothing less than a secular theology. What happens? Clearly, the church is diminished and the world becomes central. I have been observing this, and at least fearing this, in the rise of social justice activism among so many of our young evangelical Christians. I dont see it as a slippery slope, I see it as a fundamental distortion of what the Christian faith is. Yes, what it was then is what is may well be now: hope in the secular. Heroes of the day? Harvey Cox and Bishop Pike.

In the middle Sixties, a small but influential group of Protestant thinkers sought to ratify the move from church to world by formulating various secular theologies. Matching the mood of the times, the were wildly optimistic about the world, considerably less so about the church (109).

Parsing Bonhoeffer, Cox defined secularization as the liberation of man from religious and metaphysical tutelage, the turning of his attention away from other worlds and towards this one (111).

Liberal mainline Protestants had nothing to fear from the secular city: as its prophetic avant-garde, they would still be custodians of its conscience (112).

What happens to theology? Woodward, a Catholic observer from a good perch, puts it this way:

But it wasnt just optimism about the secular world that distinguished the secular theologians from their more distinguished predecessors like Niebuhr, Barth, and Tillich. Even more pronounced was their dismissive approach to classic Christian doctrines and their blithe disregard of the historic Christian church (115).

Bishop James Albert Pike: Following his career was like watching a weathervane register every new breeze blowing from the Zeitgeist (115) In life, as in his religious views, Pike was tumbling tumbleweed, always moving on, always reinventing himself according to whats happening (116) In short, he was a church careerist without religious convictions or commitments (123). Pikes very public non-trial was the strongest signal yet that civil rights had emerged within the mainline churches as the index by which fidelity to Christs teachings was to be judged. There would be others, notably the war in Vietnam and womens liberation, and woe to those who did not properly discern what God was doing in His secular manifestations (120).

In one quick sentence Woodwards words summarize hope in the secular:

For the Presbyterians, as for the rest of the mainline churches, the problem was that the boundaries between themselves and the world in which they moved had effectively vanished (126).

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When the Secular is the Sacred - Patheos (blog)

Designers in their Spring Resort 2017 outings fell for the unapologetic, outr glamour hook, line and sinker. Juxtaposing Rococo with Glam Rock and re-scaling it to gutsy effect they didnt shy away from the zeitgeist of daring-do. One saw the emergence of a strong feminine force. Be it Falguni and Shane Peacocks feminist stand against the attacks on women or fusionista Payal Singhals flirtation with dark romanticism or Resort Rani Monisha Jaisings Baroque bombshells the collections were an ornate orgy of sequins, sheer, fringes and beads. Peacocks Rebel line was high on incendiarily sexy beaded body suits, wrapped nonchalantly with organza trench coats like they were post-coitus sheets. Payal Singhals carnal guignol of goth lips and gold tassels added drama to her take-charge fusion looks. Why is maximalism such a turn-on for designers? Is the anti-bride the new bride? Lets speak to designers and stylists...

Designer Payal Singhal re-imagined glam rock in Indian space with line titled, Lady M. She observes that girls and young brides today wear sneakers and aviators with their lehengas and she was paying a tribute to that devil-may-care attitude. We were referencing the 30s, which was the Pre-War era of fringing and tasseling, she says. She didnt want to do fringing very literally so she toyed with long bugle beads which added a movement to the structured garments. She adds, Trends are an extension of whats going on in the world and going back to maximalism is a way to escape the current mood of depression.

Designer Falguni Peacock says that putting trenchcoats over bodysuits and minis made the line-up subtle and easy breezy. Goth trend is here to stay. Lips just popped because clothes were in lighter shades. Gold fringe has been our forte and this season weve reinvented it, says she.

Stylist Isha Bhansali sees the trend going well with the core Indian aesthetic, which has always been about shine and shimmer. The goth lips work very well on the Indian skin tone, says she.

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Badass Baroque - Daily News & Analysis

Has L.A. managed to flip the script and become a fashion show city at long last?

Independently of one other, a handful of designers who normally show at New York Fashion Week elected to mount events here instead, shining an even brighter spotlight on the City of Angels during an already buzzy time, with the Grammy Awards this weekend and the Oscars around the corner.

Certainly, five events over five days Rebecca Minkoff on Saturday, Raquel Allegra and Rachel Zoe on Monday, Rachel Comey on Tuesday and the grand finale of Tommy Hilfiger tonight are a mere drop in the New York bucket of more than 150 official shows. But the micro trend ensures that theyre each getting maximum attention before the New York Fashion Week onslaught.

I think the cluster of designers showing in L.A. is a nice coincidence that puts another spotlight on L.A. and the interest fashion has in whats happening in the city in terms of art and culture. That has been something weve seen for a while now, said Steven Kolb, chief executive officer of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

Fashion, it seems, is following the art scene and the cultural zeitgeist in the age of gender fluidity, we now have fashion week fluidity.

Fashion week is at a point where we are in a moment of experimentation; you see it evolving and not as defined. Designers are crossing in and out of the paths of Paris, London, Milan and New York; its more fluid, Kolb said.

The five events in Los Angeles this week didnt fit the uniform show mold either. There were see-now-buy-now shows and collections presented via short film and art installations. European labels are also getting in on the action this week: Kenzo will premiere its latest fashion film in L.A. for the second time on Thursday, and Vetements will unveil a capsule collection with Maxfield at a shopping event the same night.

We are in a time where in fashion week, the structure is less important in new cities. Its about taking shows to cities that make sense for the brand. But stamping a date and time to it that is old-fashioned, Kolb said.

That the city has never been able to keep its homegrown runway shows to a week sometimes stretching them out for over a month has continually frustrated editors, so to be sure, some boundaries make sense.

Following his New York see-now-buy-now show in September, Hilfiger comes to Los Angeles with a more fine-tuned approach, secure in the knowledge that hell be receiving the lions share of attention before New York shows even start.

We listened to our consumers, analyzed last seasons results, and built on the learnings to evolve the TommyNow platform even further as the ultimate expression of my brand philosophy, he said. In addition to the runway show, we will once again have the Tommy x Gigi pop-up shop, rides and unique experiences throughout the event. Weve also added a lot of newness that celebrates local California culture and puts music and entertainment at the heart of the event, he said.

Hilfiger will show a spring 2017 collection inspired by the casual, cool, chic vibe thats so signature to California in a created, Venice Beach carnival setting, that, while not open to the public, will draw its share of local onlookers and virtual voyeurs and hopefully, live and online shoppers.

Were constantly pushing boundaries to further democratize the runway and get closer to our consumers, he said. Our shoppable live-stream is back, along with TMY.GRL, our personalized virtual stylist-bot for Facebook Messenger. An exciting new addition this season is the Tommyland Snap:Shop app, which allows our users to shop the Tommy x Gigi collection from photos of the runway show, ad campaign, editorial shots and product in store.

On Monday night, after her presentation that was followed by a sit-down dinner, Zoe said, Im thrilled Tommy is showing here. Hes one of my greatest mentors and hes going to take over L.A. in a big way. Why shouldnt we just embrace L.A. for its own culture and stop trying to make it New York and Paris and London?

Minkoff, who pulled off a takeover at The Grove with style and energy (and virtually no logistical snags or user friction, itself a notable achievement in the age of hours-long show delays), said, I think L.A.s status as a city was already shifting. You could feel when Hedi Slimane came here. Theres plenty of companies that have huge success, so now more than ever more companies are getting wise to that. I think you might even see a rebalancing where a bunch of them are like, Screw this New York weather, lets move to L.A.

Los Angeles retailers are only too happy to embrace more events here. The Groves owner Rick Caruso said he was already angling to get more fashion shows. Absolutely, wed love to do this more often and Rebecca has really opened the door for us to do that. Our team is excited about working with more designers.

From an operational standpoint, its a no brainer because these shows are in our backyard. From a vibe standpoint, we get that validation, said Revolves Raissa Gerona, who attended Zoes show with the e-tailers cofounder and co-ceo Michael Mente. As a retailer, having to sell what customers see is a win-win situation. You join in on the fun and capture your audience. As a designer, youre not competing with a hundred other shows, so you have their attention a little longer.

Looking forward, the movement toward Los Angeles opens the door to other cities as well. As fashions search for new will inevitably continue, what will the next city du jour be, and which designer will catapult it into the spotlight? Chances are it will be a brand with the financial might to stage a remote show and the production infrastructure to support a see-now-buy-now collection. After all, the likes of Chanel, Dior, Gucci and Louis Vuitton already take their resort and pre-fall shows on the road, including, in the past, to L.A.

Said Hilfiger, I can imagine our show to be like a touring rock band, reaching consumers globally and staging shows in a different city each season, including going back to New York.

Echoed Kolb, Its a great idea to take that show on the road and be in front of another group of consumer. Will it be Miami next year? Will it come back to New York?

Kolb thinks New York, Paris, Milan and London will continue to be the core base of fashion weeks, just as L.A. will continue to attract designers to really touch city in terms of consumers and culture.

As more brands open stores here, events to drum up sales will follow. For Rachel Comey, who opened a store last June, Tuesday nights dinner/performance/presentation at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel Gallery for a mix of West Coast retailers, editors and celebrity clients was also designed to support business.

After New York, L.A. is definitely our biggest market. I dont have grand plans to open up 100 other stores around the U.S. so keeping these two strong are a priority, she said.

Comey said shes looking to do more types of events in L.A. while aiming to use her store as a base for personal one-on-one shopping and styling, noting, Fashion week can mean whatever you want it to mean for your brand.

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If Los Angeles Becomes a Bona Fide Fashion Show Destination, What's Next? - WWD

John Steinbeck wrote in Once There Was a War: The theatre is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough and devoted people to keep it alive.

The UK has long been celebrated for its rich heritage of creative talent and a vibrant, enduring theatre scene. But where budget cuts are running deep across government spending, the arts are proving an easy target. The cost of living crisis touching many people, not just creatives, is a huge challenge for playwriting, often a lengthy and time-consuming process. And whether or not we consider the theatre a dying artform, at the very least, competition for audiences leisure time, hard-earned cash and imaginations is as intense as ever. As new playwright Liam Borrett, 25, who saw successwith'This Is Living' last year, puts it: People can watch The Crown on Netflix from bed for 8.99 a month - you have to create something interesting enough to drag them out mid-winter for three hours at a cost of 30 or 40.

Many theatres and foundations run schemes and initiatives - such as the biennial Bruntwood Prize, now open for 2017 submissions - to support as many new playwrights, in and out of London, to write and experiment as possible. Yet it remains risky for a building to put on a new play rather than a tried and tested classic, and increasingly artistic directors will shape their seasons through commissions for specific writers, rather than see what lands on their doorstep. So who are the next generation of tough and devoted, working to keep theatre alive amidst our age of austerity and ever-accessible digital entertainment? And how are they faring? I spoke to some emerging British playwrights to find out.

Katherine Soper, 25, whose play 'Wish List' is currently a hit at the Royal Court (Joel C Fildes)

One such playwright is Alex MacKeith, 25,whose debut School Play has just opened at Southwark Playhouse. For MacKeith, there ought to be a platform for young playwrights as a means of engagement with current issues or dramatically presenting characters who have not been represented on stage before, a deeply important exercise for citizens who operate in society: Increasingly we need to cultivate our sympathies for other people. Having been part of a dynamic theatrical scene at university, it was his idea for School Play - about the realities of the school system in the UK, borne of his own personal experience as a tutor in a primary school - that he kept coming back to. Describing the naturalistic piece as inventive reportage rather than pure invention, the shape-shifting beast needed many iterations to keep up-to-date with frequent changes in policy: Its not a polemic on the education system. Neither am I presenting an alternative - it simply asks questions. Which is what plays should do.

2015 Bruntwood Prize winner, Katherine Soper, 25, lauds such programmes for providing the feedback many aspiring writers, sending out work to theatres like unanswered messages in a bottle, crave. She feels a fetishisation of the young in theatre can be reductive and damaging at times, particularly if a writer gets fated for greatness on the basis of an early work when they might not have had a chance to hone their craft away from critical eyes. Yet in the current political climate, the voice of the upcoming generation - overwhelming for Bremain and opposed to Trump - does need to be heard. With Wish List, which is currently on at the Royal Court, she did not set out to create a politically charged play, only when she started developing her story about the moralisation of work did she realise it was something she felt strongly about. For Soper, entertainment should not be pejorative: less about trite comparisons or a blunt tool for political statement its about plugging into visceral things, the kinds of fears and emotions people are experiencing at a certain moment in time. When a new or canonical play engages with that, it will resonate.

Playwright Chloe Todd Fordham, 30, equally praises initiatives and schemes for championing her writing but also admits facing a reality check in how difficult it is to write once making it onto the Royal Courts writing programme. Through studying an MA and writing with Theatre 503, she developed Sound of Silence which received a Bruntwood Judges Award in 2015. A bold and ambitious play, she is still working to see it staged, highlighting the often unseen slow burn of taking a play from its first writing to production: Its a combination of being patient and staying confident in the value of what you have to say. Not giving up.

The playwright Ella Hickson, 31, scored at hit with 'Oil' which was staged at the Almeida in 2016 (Peter Hickson )

Scottish writer Stef Smith, 29, who had her London debut with Human Animals at the Royal Court last year and is developing Girl in the Machine for Scotlands new writing theatre Traverse, is loathe to use the term the regions but notes the different ecosystems surrounding making work not always visible through a pervasive London-centric lens. While the UK capital may hold more opportunities, the concentration of the theatre community in cities like Edinburgh can afford closer connections and a nurturing environment for new writers.

Liam Borrett'sThis Is Living, his drama school graduating piece about loss, appeared at Trafalgar Studios in the West End last year, after proving a hit at Edinburgh Fringe: Getting people to come and see a two hander about death at 11pm was likely not going to work. But by word of mouth, there was a buzz. Even so, he explained facing difficulties in getting it transferred, being turned down by eight theatres, often waiting a frustrating and demoralising nine to ten months for the no: You cant just programme the same stuff. You need voices that reflect and deconstruct the society were living in. For Borrett, 25,theatre should rarely be a passive experience: There are days I go and watch a cosy musical. But the majority of the time I want to feel profoundly different and changed and most of the time upset by the end of it. Thats the cathartic experience you go to the theatre for.

Ella Hickson, 31, writer of Oil, which was staged at the Almeida last year, started out self-producing but now works on commission for the likes of the RSC, the National Theatre and Almeida. She recognises both the agency and relative immediacy afforded by the former and the greater stability by the latter: The production process between having an idea and getting it staged is not insignificant. In terms of a Zeitgeist, you are looking at a reflection of a cultural moment two years previous. But Hickson, like many artists, is far more interested in ploughing energy into the ever-challenging task of writing a good play: Writing is a bit like love, when it turns up, take it, and try not to worry about it too much when it's not there.

Scottish writer Stef Smith, 29,who had her London debut with 'Human Animals' at the Royal Court last year

Lucy J Skilbeck,28, emphasises the importance of finding the right place to incubate and develop your ideas, hers being through a BBC Fellowship at Derby Theatre and later setting up her own production company Milk Presents. Concerned with fracturing ideas of masculinity and femininity, she had ambitions to make a drag king play about Joan of Arc. With Joan playing in pubs, schools and in a Hull UK City of Culture 2017 shopping centre for 2.50, Skilbeck has found a really easy light touch way you can dialogue with some mega ideas. Now preparing Bullish and directing a company of gender queer artists in Chekhovs The Bear/The Proposal, for Skilbeck, theatre is the place and now is the time to be political: Theatres should be places we grapple with things we dont understand which will then leak out into the wider world.

Other playwrights such as Andrew Maddock, 30,are exploiting new routes to stage for their writing. Starting out with his own one-man show, Junkie, he self-produces his work, drumming up a following through social media, such as for He(Art): The way I like to write is quitereactive - I want to write and get it on stage. He sees this as a growing and exciting trend, comparing it to the grassroots movement of punk rock, they reacted to something and created something, and Ithink that's what's happening in theatre right now. People are tired of waiting. He believes the fringe can raise the bar for everyone: a potential game changer.

Erin Doherty as Tamsin Carmody and Joseph Quinn as Dean Carmody in Katherine Soper's 'Wish List' at the Royal Court (Jonathan Keenan)

Alexander Zeldin, 31,who saw success with Beyond Caring last year and whose play Love is currently transferring from London to Birmingham, is pushing a new, more process-driven approach to theatre. He sees a shift toward more forms of writing and collaborative writing, involving actors heavily in developing his characters. His theatre is firmly rooted in concrete communities: Its important a play makes sense to people and is not removed in some literary bubble - that can happen in our theatre culture. He is now preparing to take Beyond Caring to Chicagos Lookingglass theatre with David Schwimmer, exploring the plays theme of zero-hour contracts with African-American and Latino workers in the US.

The threat to theatres longevity is not a new one. And perhaps the challenge is, as ever, to keep seeking new edges in old tales, bringing fresh stories to the stage and cultivating new audiences by engaging with contemporary issues and a new generation of theatre goers through schools, young people and presenting theatre as something that is not exclusive. Netflix has its attractions, as does the cinema. But there is something idiosyncratic about the collective live experience of theatre, particularly in the close quarters of fringe venues. As MacKeith says: Once made accessible and non intimidating, the form does a lot of the work in keeping people engaged as it is so unique. In fact, it's addictive.

'School Play' will be showing at Southwark Playhouse from until 25 February. The Bruntwood Prize is open for submissions until 5 June 2017.

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We spoke to the new generation of British playwrights who will dominate 2017 - The Independent

Internationally renowned music industry conference Sound City+ is celebrating its ten year anniversary on Friday 26th May 2017 with a host of high profile speakers from across the industry and as ever promises an intensive packed programme of speakers, debate panels, workshops and the acclaimed Sound City+ 1-2-1 meetings.

This years Revolutions theme will enable speakers to explore the wider context of British rock and roll revolutions and take a look at some of the largest cultural explosions from the past 50 years including The 60s British Invasion, Punk Rock, Brit Pop and Acid House.

The most influential bass player of his generation, Jah Wobble founder member of Public Image Limited alongside former Sex Pistol John Lydon talks us through his career, from his close friendship with Lydon and Sid Vicious, being a boots on the ground eyewitness to punk, and how PIL helped define the revolutionary sonics of the post punk era, to his current work with a host of collaborators.

Veteran DJ, filmmaker and founding member of Big Audio Dynamite, Don Letts has over four decades of inspiring work. From turning a generation of punks onto reggae while DJing at the Roxy club in 1977 to managing the Slits to making music videos for the likes Bob Marley and Elvis Costello, Dons 40 incredible years in the business will reveal both funny anecdotes and sharp insights.

Legend Andrew Weatherall will discuss the continuing story of acid house as a DJ, remixer, producer, label boss, and one of the most outspoken commentators on the club scene.

Controversial avant garde electro punk musician and performance artist Peaches will discuss art at the edge and a mandate to be a one-woman cultural revolution.

Dudley.Jeczalik.Langan three of the founding members of Art of Noise will also be in conversation. Formed at a time when the reverberations of punk, post-punk and new wave could still be keenly felt, Art of Noise were determined to set themselves outside the then currents of fashion and style the missing link between The Monkees and Talking Heads, Abba and Kraftwerk, Frank Zappa and The Archies.

Peaches (Merrill Beth Nisker) Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images

Leading figures in their field, iconic rock photographers and image makers Kevin Cummins and Tom Oxley will be talking about the enduring power of the photograph and how just one image can change scenes, regimes and societies overnight.

Said Kevin: Im really looking forward to coming back to Liverpool Sound City+. Having worked in the industry for many years as a professional photographer during many eras of political upheavals I do feel that today is a transitional time in the world and this will be reflected on culture this year.

Finally celebrated journalist and author Hattie Collins will deliver a fascinating talk on the New Subverse and underground Grime culture a modern revolution in the UK scene.

The day will be hosted by author & DJ Dave Haslam and rock n roll historian Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, guest speakers at Sound City+ 2017 will dissect in turn each Music Revolution from the past five decades.

Sound City+ has also revealed a move to The Baltic triangle, the rapidly evolving hub for creative enterprises and a jewel in the crown for the music and digital industries in the North West.

The Baltic Triangle is also home to arguably Liverpools finest bar and event space, former warehouse Camp and Furnace, where this years edition of Sound City+ will take place.

Said Dave Pichilingi, CEO Sound City/Modern Sky UK: It is a huge year for us and for our 10th Anniversary we wanted to do something very special. We are bringing Sound City+ to the very heart of the creative quarter of Liverpool. The Baltic Triangle is synonymous with everything that is innovative and cutting edge that is coming out of Liverpool right now, it is part of the fabric of the city. The zeitgeist is here! We want to show the thousands who come to the conference what the fuss is all about and send them home with an amazing impression of Liverpool.

As part of Sound City+ this year we are celebrating those mavericks who have played a pivotal part in some of the milestones in the development of the rock n roll business. These will include key players from the both the punk movement and Acid House.

As part of the highly anticipated birthday celebrations for Sound City, Sound City+ will be taking a selection of the In Conversations to the live festival site, giving Sound Citizens the opportunity to see avant-garde titan John Cale as special guest speaker. With a wealth of stories accrued over a career of more than 50 years his talk with explore his early years, this move to the US and foundation of the Velvet Underground, its legacy and beyond. For aficionados of the birth of psyche and anyone with an interest in the history of rock this will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear it from the great man himself.

The conference will be announcing further speakers, panels and activities over the coming weeks.

Conference Tickets 40.00 (Ex booking fee) http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/liverpool-sound-city-conference-2017-tickets/267613

Full Weekend Delegate Passes

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/liverpool-sound-city-conference-pass-weekend-ticket-tickets/265681

http://www.liverpoolsoundcity.co.uk/soundcityplus

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Sound City+ Launches 10th Anniversary Edition & Announces Guest Speakers - The Guide Liverpool (press release) (blog)