English Rebel Songs

A few nights ago, I found myself sitting around a wheelbarrow full of burning twigs and cardboard with a few friends, including Miriam, who lives in the same house as Dom (the singer/guitarist who I met in the most remarkable circumstance) in Tyler Hill - another drama person. She sings, jazz standards mostly. She and Dom were in "Eric and the Acoustic Alliance" which had a residency at the Orange Street Music Club in Canterbury for a while, but then crumbled.


I had my saz and asked if she knew any folksongs. It turns out that some of the Kent University drama people put together a play about the Luddites (Ludd, I think) a little while back - Dom's not only been Puck, he's been Ned Ludd, too. The director chose to involve a lot of the songs from Chumbawamba's English Rebel Songs 1381-1984. She knew it as a CD, whereas I remember it as a 10" vinyl album with a rough card sleeve - quite an amazing cultural artefact altogether, and very much part of the scene I knew around Canterbury in the years following it's (1988) release - Poll Tax riots and all that... So she sang, and I played, "The Cutty Wren" (1381) and "The Bad Squire" (mid 1800's). A bit rough, as I hadn't heard them for years, but we got into it - excellent stuff.