I Think I’m GoGo….    Squeeze ……

yesterday, being father’s day and all, i was absentmindedly choosing songs about dads to listen to. eventually i came across up the junction, the squeeze song, a sad dad song, but a dad song still. it was perfect today and perfect the first time i heard it. it fills all my requirements for a perfect pop song: full of interesting twists and turns in the melody, lyrics i don’t understand, indecipherable british slang, heavy english accents…. if this song was a film, critics would call it a sprawling epic. and it is.

suffice to say, i was huge fan of squeeze. a most wonderful band with consistently great pop songs, they were high on the list of my favorite bands from the second, or was it the third? british invasion. no matter. when i listened to up the junction today i had this flashback of an old memory; one that hadn’t crossed my mind in years.

it gives me great pleasure to present people i like with interesting gifts. on two occasions, i have given friends hohner miniature harmonicas. they are very nice and both recipients were very pleased with them. i’ve also bought them for myself, but i don’t play them. i just like to have them around. i consider myself to be an expert on them because i know that one of them costs just $1.99 and another, the hohner little lady, costs $11.99. that’s the extent of my expertise. the little lady obviously wins and i could never present someone with the lo-fi version unless the little lady was unavailable.  see for yourself:

the little lady is the one on the bottom and it really is a work of art. anyway, i’m sure it seems like i lost my train of thought long ago but i haven’t. so… way back whenever it was, squeeze, the band, rolled into lovely new york as most successful english bands will do. they played numerous venues in new york and were in the area for a short time, as i remember.

at some point, i gave a friend of mine the hohner little lady. quite proud and delighted she was with it and flashed it about everywhere. coincidentally, she became very friendly with john bentley, the bass player for squeeze. he too saw the little lady and fell in love.

can you get one of these tiny harmonicas for john, my friend asked me. well, yeah of course i can get one, it’s not like i have to smuggle them over the berlin wall…. why don’t you give him yours and i’ll get you another one.

(continued below for extra suspense)…