The Strange Brew - artist stories behind the greatest music ever recorded

Few works of musical theatre receive the recognition they deserve, and The Kibbo Kift is a prime example. Written by Judge Smith, co-founder of Van der Graaf Generator, and composer Maxwell Hutchinson, this ambitious rock musical told the stranger-than-fiction story of a breakaway anti-war scouting movement in 1920 that transformed, over two turbulent decades, from idealistic woodland campers into uniformed street-fighters for an alternative economic theory.

It played Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre and reached Sheffield’s Crucible in 1977 under director Mel Smith, then slipped into the margins of rock history. The recordings had a precarious existence. Union rules blocked a proper studio cast album, leaving only a patchwork of demo tapes and studio cuts. For decades these circulated in rough form, hardly doing justice to the material. Now, thanks to Think Like a Key, who tracked down, restored and remastered all surviving recordings,The Kibbo Kift can finally be heard as it deserves. In this interview, Judge Smith talks about the history of this remarkable lost musical, and why its strange subject matter resonates today.

Further information

The Kibbo Kift: The 1976 Rock Musical

Judge Smith website

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The Kibbo Kift podcast tracks

Podcasts also available: Peter Hammill, The Genesis That Time Forgot, Tony Banks, Hawkwind’s Days of the Underground

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post The Kibbo Kift: The Lost Rock Musical appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Duncan Mackay spent the 1970s at the keyboard of British popular and progressive music, often invisibly, yet seldom far from its most defining moments. MacKay first built a reputation in South Africa which brought him back to England where he joined Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, just as ‘Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)’ reached number one, and it was at Abbey Road during those sessions that he first encountered producer Alan Parsons. That relationship drew him into the Alan Parsons Project and, through the same circle, into the studio with Kate Bush, on whose first three albums he played. He later joined 10cc after an impromptu jam with Rick Fenn led to an invitation to Strawberry Studios South, arriving in time for ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ and another number one. He also recorded with Camel and served as musical director for Elkie Brooks while maintaining a solo career. Now based in South Africa and working in his home studio he is free to undertake the most enjoyable recording project of his career, his new album with Mauritz Lotz, A Beautiful Madness.

Further information

Duncan Mackay & Mauritz Lotz – A Beautiful Madness

Duncan Mackay podcast tracks

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Podcasts also available: Alan Parsons, Steve Harley, Jim Cregan – Cockney Rebel, David Paton – Part 1, Eric Stewart – 10cc – Part 2, Graham Gouldman

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

If you like what I do please support me on Ko-fi

The post Duncan Mackay – Cockney Rebel, Alan Parsons Project, Kate Bush, 10cc appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Rat Scabies needs little introduction as the thunderous drummer of The Damned. His collaborator in One Thousand Motels, Chris Constantinou, has had a career that has taken him from the studio with Chas Chandler, to the Live Aid stage at Wembley with Adam Ant, and into the recording booth with Sinéad O’Connor. Rat and Chris describe how they first met through The Mutants, a collaborative project that assembled an unlikely roll-call of rock veterans including Wilco Johnson, Wayne Kramer and Norman Watt-Roy. That project proved too unwieldy to tour so they stripped it back, formed a two-man core, and called it One Thousand Motels. The result was 2% Out of Sync, an album that has taken almost six years to find its way onto vinyl, and into listeners’ hands.

Further information

One Thousand Motels – 2% Out of Sync – vinyl

Rat Scabies and Chris Constantinou podcast tracks

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Podcasts also available: Rat Scabies, Paul Cook – Sex Pistols, Don Powell – Slade, Jim Lea – Slade Part 1, Jim Lea – Slade Part 2

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

If you like what I do please support me on Ko-fi

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Jason Barnard is joined by music writer and artist Chris Wade to talk about The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. They discuss how the US tour ban pushed Ray Davies inward, the extraordinary run of Kinks singles, and what it means to preserve an England that probably never existed in the first place. Davies kept returning to the village green and its characters into the early 70s with the Preservation albums. The record’s influence spread slowly, and today it is treasured as one of the greatest British albums ever made.

Further information

Recorded at The CAT Club in July 2025

Chris Wade website

Podcasts also available: The Kinks 1940-71, Shel Talmy, Bob Henrit – The Kinks, Argent, The Roulettes, The Kinks – Strange Brew tribute, Philip Norman on the Beatles, Bee Gees’ Main Course with Bob Stanley

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Andrew Sandoval talks about THE KINKS – ALL DAY AND ALL OF THE NIGHT, The Day-By-Day Story Pt 1: 1940-1971, the new book he co-authored with the Doug Hinman. This is the most comprehensive record of the Kinks’ early career ever assembled. Andrew and Jason Barnard cover what it actually took to document The Kinks, from chasing down Shel Talmy’s original studio invoices (Pye Records kept almost no paperwork). They dig into Ray Davies’ songwriting arc, the commercial failure of Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur, the on-stage fight in Cardiff that nearly ended the band in 1965, and the years of visa problems that kept the Kinks out of America. There’s also a discussion of Ray’s unreleased material that were better than most bands’ released work, why Ray refused to release ‘Pictures in the Sand’ for decades, and how the Granada Television deal that funded Arthur eventually fell apart.

Further information

beatlandbooks.com

Podcasts also available: Shel Talmy, Bob Henrit – The Kinks, Argent, The Roulettes, The Kinks – Strange Brew tribute, Philip Norman on the Beatles, Bee Gees’ Main Course with Bob Stanley

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post The Kinks 1940 to 1971 appeared first on The Strange Brew .