He may have written and sung the theme tune, but Alabama 3’s Larry Love has never watched an entire episode of The Sopranos.

“I couldn’t get past having to listen to my bloody voice every week,” The Singer Also Known As Rob Spragg explains. “Thanks to the wonders of modern technology we now have a ‘Skip Intro’ option, so I might give it another go because everyone says it’s the greatest TV show ever made.

“I did see the Many Saints Of Newark prequel, though, in a cinema in Brixton that was rammed. I’d just had a row with the girlfriend so I wasn’t really in the mood for light entertainment, but it was brilliant. When the film cut to black at the end and ‘Woke Up…’ started, the place fucking erupted. I was sat there bawling crying from the emotion of it.”

The Sopranos connection doesn’t end there with the Brixton acid country house posse’s new single, ‘If I’d Never Seen The Sunshine’, featuring a spoken word intro from Dominic Chianese who played Uncle Junior in the series.

“We met and ended up partying with him in 2019 at a Sopranos convention in the US,” Larry recalls. “After we did ‘Woke Up This Morning’, he took the mic and started singing all these Neapolitan fucking Mafia anthems – he’s got an incredible baritone. We got chatting and I said, ‘Any time you’re in London give us a ding’ and four years later he did.

“He’s ninety-two but ran up the studio stairs like a fucking twenty-year old. I said, ‘How are you keeping so well?’ and he goes, ‘I’ve been working with Alzheimer’s patients and other people needing end of life care. I go in and play guitar with them.’ Such are the therapeutic powers of music. Nick Reynolds, our harp player and sort of musical director, is doing a gig with him soon in London.”

Talking of Naples, Larry recently found himself among kindred spirits there.

“We were staying in a hotel near the railway station and the concierge says, ‘Don’t go up that street’, so of course we do and find this bar where they’re all smoking coke and dancing on the tables,” he beams. “We got free shots of grappa and a ride round on a moped at four o’clock in the morning. It’s the Mediterranean fucking Brixton!”

If the Naples Tourist Board doesn’t use that as a slogan, they’re missing a trick!

As anyone who was at their recent run of Irish shows will know, the ‘bammies have acquired a seriously cool dude new bass-player.

“That’s funky Al Ashton from Toronto, man, he’s fucking great!” Larry enthuses. “He was busking on the streets of Brixton with a star-shaped Bootsy Collins bass, platforms, a Marshall boogie box and a wah peddle turned up to infinity. Add in the fact that he’s a fucking lunatic, and we had to have him in the band!”

Funky Al stars on Cold War Classics Vol. 2 standout ‘The Influencer Blues’, which is a London SW9 take on Melle Mel’s ‘White Lines (Don’t Do It)’.

“There’s some serious bass-slapping on that,” Larry notes. “Along with Melle Mel, a lot of the inspiration on this record comes from Rick James, Grandmaster Flash, Bobby Bland, Parliament, The Last Poets, Marvin’s What’s Going On? and The Blackbyrds – all that angry, dirty, sexy post-Watergate funk. It was radical fucking music, which is what the world needs again now with all this shit going on in Ukraine and the Middle East. Who, going all the way back to 1948, is responsible for the Israel/Palestine situation? The British of course. The legacy of empire goes on and on and fucking on.”

Let us end, though, with some good news.

“You know that row I mentioned earlier? Well, we got over it and I’m getting married next year in Dublin to a Dublin girl who’s far too good for me but, hey, the Devil looks after his own!”

• Alabama 3’s Cold War Classics Vol. 2 is out now on SubCat.