Mother’s Day
Announced in time for Mothering Sunday is a new walking tour of Coventry City centre by local social historian Adam Wood.
The tour celebrates some of the visionary and extraordinary women who have shaped the city’s history, from Godiva and Margaret of Anjou to Delia Derbyshire and Alice Arnold. The tour is just one and a half miles long, but covers a millennium of history as it visits locations connected to 20 of the city’s most celebrated women.
The first two dates scheduled are on Mothers’ Day (Sunday March 30), when tours will start at 10.30am and 2pm. Further dates will be announced soon. The cost is £12.50, with mum receiving £5 off the ticket price when booking on the Mothers’ Day tours. See adamwood.eventbrite.com for information and booking.
The Kinks – Vox Populi
To celebrate 60 years of The Kinks, Vox Populi – the new community choir for Leamington Spa, Coventry and surrounding areas – sings Arthur (the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) and The Village Green Preservation Society in new arrangements by Harvey Brough for choir, soloists (Rick Leigh and Faith Waddell), Cubbington C of E Primary School Choir (directed by Lesley Mills) and chamber orchestra (Orchestra of the Swan). At the invitation of Ray Davies, Harvey Brough arranged these iconic LPs.
Vox Populi will celebrate The Kinks at their Leamington show on April 5.
The Village Green Preservation Society is a unique musical fusion of vaudeville, oompah, music hall, palm court and the blues (an outrageous remodelling of Smokestack Lightnin’) – all bound together by the inimitable Kinksian rock with a tongue in its cheek.
Harvey Brough has taken material from the album and session outtakes to create a modern Oratorio of Englishness, a collection of portraits of eccentricity, sometimes nostalgic or regretful, yet always leavened with wryness and humour.
We meet characters such as schoolfriend Walter (Do you remember Walter smoking cigarettes behind your garden gate?), Uncle Charlie (a-boozing with his friends in sunny Southend), Wicked Annabella, a temptress twisting minds, a Phenomenal Cat who eats his way around the world and Monica, who’ll do something wrong and prove to you she is right.
Songs from Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) is from 1969, another highly original album, concerned with the Ten Pound Pom emigration to Australia with anti war songs (Yes Sir, No Sir and Mr Churchill Says) juxtaposed with the superb Shangri-La, an epic tale of domestic bliss.
Both albums touch on themes that are more relevant than ever today. Along with friendship, growing up, old age and the passing of time, they deal with conservation, property development, deity, and the importance of connecting with nature.
It’s on Saturday April 5 at Holy Trinity Church, Leamington at 7pm. Visit https://tinyurl.com/3sea2nu5 for tickets.
Written by Pete Chambers BEM
