The Kinks are reissuing a series of their albums from their RCA days in the early 1970s, with Muswell Hillbillies (1971) and Everybody’s In Show-Biz (1972) currently getting the deluxe and expanded treatment.
Principal songwriter Ray Davies is a keen-eyed chronicler of England and Englishness, a topic he explored in depth across not just their exhilarating blast of singles from the mid-to-late-1960s but also in greater depth in their albums, notably from 1968’s The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society onwards.
To market both Muswell Hillbillies and Everybody’s In Show-Biz, they have delved into what is (apart from bleakly repressed feelings) the most quintessentially English thing imaginable: tea.
The dedicated Tea Timer website goes through a tea typology defined by brew time, using a slider for fans to pick their preferred strength. The “swift cuppa” takes 1-2 minutes, the “rosie lee” takes 2-3 minutes, the “English breakfast” takes 3-4 minutes, the “strong and malty” takes 4-5 minutes and, for the hardcore tannin fan only, the “builder’s brew” takes 5-6 minutes.
The site connects to Spotify and instructs you to put a tea bag in a cup, add hot water and press play to get a Kinks song from one of the two reissued albums that will run for as long as you need the tea to brew.
Picking the “swift cuppa” gets you ‘The Banana Boat Song’ (live), the “rosie lee” gets you ‘Look A Little On The Sunny Side’, the “English breakfast” gets you ‘Muswell Hillbilly’ (live), the “strong and malty” gets you ‘Top Of The Pops’ (live) and the “builder’s brew” gets you ‘Alcohol’ (live). There is a countdown on the screen and a quaint little timer bell when it ends.
It was all inspired by ‘Have A Cuppa Tea’ from the Muswell Hillbillies album (“Whatever the situation, whatever the race or creed / Tea knows no segregation, no class nor pedigree / It knows no motivations, no sect or organisation / It knows no one religion / Nor political belief”).
It is a fitting and fun way to get listeners to dig into the furthest corners of the reissued albums. When the timer ends, there is functionality built in to automatically share your selection to social media. Tea, after all, is a highly social activity.
