Some of us older folk, especially in the UK, will remember the band The Scaffold and their iconic 1968 song ‘In My Liverpool Home,’ or perhaps the earlier version by the Spinners.
For those of you who don’t, you can listen here. Which you may have to listen to carefully, because, the band admits, ‘we speak in an accent exceedingly rare.’
Among the features of their Liverpool home, they sing, is “a statue exceedingly bare”—the 18-foot-tall 1956 Jacob Epstein work titled Liverpool Resurgent that stands above the entrance to the former John Lewis department store building. Nicknamed ‘Dickie Lewis,’ it marked a meeting spot: “Meet me under the statue.”
The song continues, asking if the listener wants a cathedral, because “we’ve got one to spare,” a reference to Liverpool’s two 20th-century cathedrals, one in neo-Gothic style for Anglicans and a hyper-modern one for Catholics.
