Live Music in Liverpool

No city in Britain has put more records at number one, a fact the Guinness Book of Records made official in 2001 when it named Liverpool the "City of Pop." That density of output has a traceable cause: Liverpool's port gave local musicians early access to imported American records carried by merchant seamen months before those records reached the rest of Britain, and that direct pipeline shaped Merseybeat, the genre that blended rock and roll, rhythm and blues, skiffle, and music hall into something distinctly local. By 1963 Merseybeat had broken into the UK mainstream; by 1964 the Beatles had carried it into North America and triggered the British Invasion. The infrastructure that built that scene still operates. The Cavern Club, open since 1957, and the Jacaranda, open since 1958, remain active venues. The current scene runs from the O2 Academy and M&S Bank Arena down to smaller rooms like 24 Kitchen Street, Zanzibar, the Shipping Forecast, and Hangar 34 in the Baltic Triangle, with the GIT Award annually documenting what Merseyside produces next.