The Oldham Tinkers have a new album out!
It's their first for 42 years!
Andy Kershaw wrote the sleeve notes for the album.
I bought it because I like their version of a song about Peterloo (which does not appear on this album), and I'd heard a snippet of the first song on the album, Alphin, a gentle song about a hill near Manchester.
I was pleased to find that the album also includes Remember Annie Kenney. She was a working class Suffragette leader from Saddleworth, close to Oldham, and there is a statue of her in Oldham centre.
Another song, Ten Oldham Men (No Pasaran) commemorates the ten men from Oldham who volunteered for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and Peace Be Upon You (As-salamu Alaykum) celebrates the multi-ethnic background of the Oldham community. Other songs are settings of dialect poems by Cliff Gerard, Harvey Kershaw and Edwin Waugh, and the album finishes with It's a Long Way to Tipperary.
The artwork on the album, sort of Cubist? in light blue, is by Peter Stanaway.
It's a lovely album, and I hope they don't wait another 42 years to do another one.
