As my good mate Mr Saward just observed, ‘life always seems so much better with a new Rew CD on the player’.
He’s bang on the button there! I’m sure there isn’t a Terrascope reader who isn’t familiar with at least some of Kimberley’s back catalogue and if you haven’t heard the wonderful early 00s triptych of albums, Tunnel into Summer, Grand Central Revisited and Essex Hideaway, what are you waiting for? Go online and buy ‘em immediately – three of the most gloriously English as tuppence recordings of the new century!
Hot on the heels of last year’s best of compilation, Sunshine Walkers comes Purple Kittens. In cahoots with his long-time musical partner and wife, bassist/singer Lee Cave Berry, this is Kim’s 16th album release over the past two decades. Blimey!
The new waxing kicks off with a vintage Rew ditty, ‘Penny the Ragman’ – an eloquent ode that draws on that rich Village Green Preservation Society tradition, Ray Davies & co left behind them years ago. As the great man comments: ‘My late cousin Penny, was a ragman – the person who looks after the uniforms for a side of Morris dancers. After Penny’s funeral, everyone went back to the pub in her village. We asked permission to sit at the only remaining spaces at a big table; the chat soon revealed we had landed among the Women’s Institute – Penny was a mainstay, and she’d also written and staged a play in the village. This was the engine room of English social life. The lyrics wrote themselves’.
Continues…
By Nigel Cross
