Prickly Playground

Song 672: This week on the playlist you’ll find Itchycoo Park by Small Faces, written by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, and you can find an entertaining YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. About three and a half years after the Fab Four rocked my world, when they disguised themselves as a Lonely Hearts Club Band, I didn't know what to make of their move in the psychedelic direction, which didn't interest me at the time. I did like an L.A. rocking quartet that got everyone's attention by asking for a match to Light My Fire (Song 490), and some other movers got notice in those warm months before my junior HS year, including this ramble into a tingling recreation space. Of course, living with parents and grandparents who did not approve of the devil's music, the drug implications of a few of the tune's lines did spark an occasional creepy echo when I soaked in the words, but during that stretch I wasn't that hip to many of such expressions anyway, so I didn't give much thought to phrases I didn't understand. I could not have guessed then that in the summer two years later I, and a bunch of my singing classmates, would actually get to visit The Bridge of Sighs in Venice, Italy. To get there, we did have to get high and touch the sky, riding on a plane from NYC, and being there was really cool!