Songs about roads and streets are an important part of the musical landscape. The punk and post punk lot wrote about them frequently, as if to set out where they had come from and maybe to measure how far they could go. This isn't the road as a journey, like Highway 66 or 61, but the road as home. They romanticised their local streets and roads. To most Londoners the Westway was just a concrete flyover; to The Clash it was the mythical centre of their world. Weller romanticised the woods and fields around the home streets of Surrey from his childhood and the streets of London. John Cooper Clarke found dark stuff down Beasley Street. Psychogeography I think it's called.
This is a cracking late period Big Audio Dynamite song, a tribute to Harrow Road where anything can happen, including finding Elvis in the launderette with washing powder on his nose.
4 comments:
There's a series in this you know SA, oh yes.
mm, I know
It's been a little while since I've had the chance to dip into this blog,so playing a bit of catch up at present.
This is definitely one of the finest 'never heard this before,although really I should have' moments I've had for some time.Great tune.
Welcome back Stevoid.
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