I bought the best of Joe Jackson on the strength of having heard Is She Really Going Out with Him? and Stepping Out. But this song stuck with me. I suspect it was my time of life (!) - about 20. The album contained 19 Forever which resonated with my awareness that actually that wasn't going to happen. And then Home Town: about how as we grow older and get caught up in so much stuff we just forget what lies at the foundation, what used to be...
Of all the stupid things I could have thought
This was the worst
I started to believe
That I was born at seventeen
And all the stupid things
The letters and the broken verse
Stayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer
They'd always been.
And now I plough through piles
Of bills, receipts and credit cards
And tickets and the Daily News
And sometimes I just . . .
Wanna go back to my home town
And how we just don't bother, the past seems so small - but we have lost something.
We're never married
Never faithful,
not to any town
But we never leave the past behind
We just accumulate
So sometimes when the music stops
I seem to hear a distant sound
Of waves and seagulls
Football crowds and church bells
And I . . .
Wanna go back to my home town
Strangely, I now once again hear church bells, seagulls, and waves!
This really is an all-time favourite and it deserves to be well known (but isn't!) - here it is.
1 comment:
The music turned-out to be not what I imagined on reading the lyrics - quite jaunty and upbeat. Very JJ, both musically and the singing (I guess most people sound like themselves when they sing!). First impressionss: a pleasant song (I know: damning with faint praise!). I'll give it some more listens....
Post a Comment