Y
Mike
ou can hand Mike Peters the
sourest, acrid batch of lemons
ever harvested and the scrappy
Alarm bandleader will make a refreshing,
ice-cold pitcher of tasty lemonade
major obstacle in his path via the deadly
coronavirus, which shut down his
planned spring tour promoting
Hurricane of Change, the new twodisc,
narration-linked reimagining of
three lesser-known Alarm albums —
’87’s Eye of the Hurricane, ’88’s Electric
Folklore, and Change in ’89 — he practically
shrugged it off as a minor annoyance.
“All of these things are sent so
you can master a life lesson,” he reckons
of what led to his weekly “Big
Night In” broadcasts that he and his
wife Jules started putting together
from vintage Alarm footage and
recordings they’d compiled over the
Photo: Stuart Ling
07•2020
with it every single time. This
Welshman has often endured more
hardships in a single month than most
so-called rock survivors endure in a
lifetime, so many that even he was
moved to comment — upon viewing
Russ Kendall’s recent biopic Man in the
Camo Jacket, covering his three successful
battles with cancer and resulting
Love Hope Strength Foundation cancer
charity — “It feels like I’ve literally
come back from the dead quite a few
times to be here, I’m lucky to be alive!”
Indeed. So when fate threw another
years. “And now we’ve had all sorts of
people dropping in — it’s been incredible,
and we’ve really learned a lot
from it. We’ve been getting 70,000
views and 5,000 messages posted, and
when you read those messages it’s just
incredible what people are going
through in their lives during this lockdown.
And it’s turned into a remarkable
resource, in a way.” Peters discussed
his recipe for metaphorical
lemonade from his homestead in
Wales.
IE: You’ve been in quite a reflective
mood lately. Especially in revisiting
your old material.
MIKE PETERS: Well, a lot it was
because it was coming up to the 30th
Mike Peters
anniversary of those recordings, and
they all rolled into each other from the
creative point of view. So when it came
to the anniversary of playing those
songs, I thought, “Well, I’ve done all
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illinoisentertainer.com july 2020