Issa's Untidy Hut: Nickel Street: Issa's Sunday Service, #188

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Nickel Street: Issa's Sunday Service, #188

This week's selection is by one of those groups I've spent time avoiding on the Sunday Service - another is Van Wassisname - due to a less than open approach to social media (I hesitate to even use the c word). In any case, here you are, complete with lyrics.

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he's had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mack
In the pouring rain, very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's a clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
A four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway

In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain, very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
Penny Lane

Beautiful as it is, the "four of fish and finger pies" line has all the fame, or should I say infamy, of Hamlet's Act 3 Scene 2 lines to Ophelia "Do you think I meant country matters?"

On the other side of the aisle, the reason the song ends up on the Sunday Service is the little postmodern touch of "And though she feels as if she's in a play / She is anyway."

What follows here is as fine and moving a rendition of a song I would have thought totally uncoverable as I've ever heard:

Finally, Macca Himself ... certainly not nearly my favorite of the fabs, yet one of the most talented songsmith's of the last 50 years. That either says a lot about my lack of taste or even more about how talented and self-aware his mates really were/are.

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