Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Huffing puffing musical dragon with black and white teeth, polka, gypsy, Rue de Sein, French berets, romance,. Eifel Tower. France in the war. Edith Piaf singing like a canary.. Klesma, Cajun, Louisiana,  all sorts of French connections, the Benny Hill theme, English sit coms, The two Ronnies, “it’s good night from me and it’s goodnight from him”, Dad’s army swings us right back round to Piaf and the war? 

Fingertips doing Fred Astaire dance taps all over the keys, the sleeping body sways back and forth yodelling sound through fine pigmented holes, through wafery reeds, a sort of a sigh. The lumpy bass buttons, warts on the outside of a warthog. The keys are plastic and now a dull off white bordering on nicotine stain yellow, the compartments of the concertina are a spangle of silver speckled threads. It sits heavy on the knee or strapped over the back like a 3 year old child. It cries, it laughs, it sighs, it sways a lilting phrase or whip of melody into the room. 

The coffee drinkers and passers by and the disinterested waiter absorb it all without the blink of an eye. The panelling and the keys have absorbed hundreds of hours of chateau sauvignon blanc and french cigarettes, Gitanes perhaps, so the instrument has its own rich aroma whenever the case springs open on well worn hinges, a case that snaps shut with a belt buckle clasp. Oom pah pah Oom pah pah it goes in three four time singing out another rhyme to the invading forces hurling out subversive songs of freedom and resistance without the knowledge of the occupying forces, subterfuge a subtle song underlying the submission of the Vichy, viva la France, viva la Freedom., they begin to imagine sweeter taster as the D-Day invasions begin.