London Road In Bloom

Album: London Road (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • Between October 30 and December 10, 2006, the bodies of five young prostitutes were found around the Suffolk town of Ipswich. In an area of relatively low crime and with a population of well under two hundred thousand, this was an extremely unusual kind of crime wave.

    About a week after the last murder, Suffolk police arrested a man named Steve Wright - who is not to be confused with the DJ of the same name. The trial of the man now known as the Suffolk Strangler opened at Ipswich Crown Court on January 16, 2008. The evidence against Wright, including forensics, was overwhelming, and on February 21 he was convicted on all five counts of murder. The following day he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

    The musical London Road is based on these crimes, or rather on the reactions of the residents of London Road and the immediate vicinity to them and the investigation - Wright lived at number 79.

    "London Road In Bloom" is the second song in the show, and like all the others has music by Adam Cork with lyrics by Cork and Alecky Blythe. The somewhat stilted style of this and all the others is due to the incorporation of verbatim interviews with the residents that were conducted by Blythe. With the events being so close in time, this was also not intended to be a show in the fashion of Chicago with clearly lighthearted numbers like "We Both Reached For The Gun."
  • This song, as far as it can be so called, contains some fairly trivial discussion of flowers by individual members of the Company and their discordant voices.

    "London Road In Bloom" is reprised at the end of the musical. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2

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