Margaret Thatcher, holding a sword in one hand and a sceptre in the other, her dress covered in fat cats, rises ominously above a barren landscape with policemen fighting striking miners in the foreground
Old Blue Witch cover art by Molly Crabapple

Tuesday week ago was the seventh anniversary of the release of Old Blue Witch.

I meant to post about it then, but eight weeks ago I had surgery (more details over in the other blog) and while I am recovering well, I am also Really Tired All The Time somehow.

That’s also why a couple of other posts I had planned for April went missing in action.

It was Record Store Day on the 20th April, and - better late than never - I should remind you that there are at least two excellent independent record shops where Old Blue Witch is available. These are Fish Records in Stone, Staffordshire, and Tough Love just round the corner from us here in St Leonard’s-on-Sea. Both lovely places, well worth the visit - and importantly - in addition to buying Old Blue Witch there, you can also buy a wide range of other records at either establishment.

If you can’t visit those, why not visit your own local independent record shop instead, and ask them to stock Old Blue Witch, or failing that just buy something else from them. Something good, obviously. They are bound to have something of that sort - it’s the kind of thing independent record shops specialise in.

The 8th April was the eleventh anniversary of the death of Margaret Thatcher in 2013. That was the day I wrote the title track of the Old Blue Witch album. I am of the generation that grew up and came of political age in Thatcher’s Britain: we witnessed the (ongoing) destruction to lives and communities wrought by her politics, and I know a lot of people who had long sworn to throw a party the day she died. Some of them did. I did not, in the end, go to a party on the night of 8th April, 2013, but I did write that song.

Old Blue Witch came in for some criticism on release. The Morning Star pointed out that the title contains a gendered slur, while a random music blogger whose name I forget refused to so much as review it on the grounds that it was ‘too political’ and ‘disrespectful of a great historical figure’. I’m still pretty pleased with it though.

Have a listen: