Mutchie

image + words: peter thomson

I cycle to the studio through a gauntlet of barbecues in this, our Indian summer, to find Mutchie there bearing homemade bramble jam and music I should listen to.

I open the show with Hershel Almond's Looking For A Woman, blistering rockabilly from Mark Lamarr's Ace Is Wild, one seriously hot cd only yesterday liberated from the legendary Groucho's record store.

A selection from some 250 tunes released on Ace Records - late of Jackson, Mississippi - between 1955-65, it's a celebration of not just Ace but countless small record labels that have been and gone, shoestring enterprises surviving on little more than entrepreneurial verve and enthusiasm. Most of them will never reach my ears.

But that's life.

And there's still a twinkle in the eye as Mutchie puts the kettle on...