Hometown!
I claim three home towns, three places that I identify with.
My family’s roots are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Both my parents came from there, I have a lot family still there, I visit there more often than any other place I have to do serious travel to get to. My wife, who also grew up in and near Milwaukee, mocks me for not having been toughened up by living through nearly as many Wisconsin winters as she did.
There actually aren’t all that many songs I can find about Milwaukee. This is surprising to me: Milwaukee is host to the nation’s largest music festival and there is something iconic about it. The most enjoyable “Milwaukee song” that I’ve found is by Fatboy Slim, demonstrating his early oeuvre into a very danceable number, if not necessarily the sort of emotion that I associate with my visits to good ol’ Miltown:
I’ve not a lot of choice about a song to represent the city where I actually live right now. Joseph Edward Foreman gave what is easily the most famous musical shout-out to the area fifteen years ago. One might enjoy the high-quality official music video, but the slideshow-by-a-fan video has the full, uncensored lyrics.
The municipal shout-out happens at the easy-to-remember 4:20 mark. The official video omits this as there was simply too much giggling going on by the end of the song for official release.
And, sadly, the protagonist’s experiences are indeed of a theme to those that I’ve seen and heard described by a rather large segment of local population — but fortunately not by me!
But really, if you ask me where I’m from, I’m going to say “Los Angeles.”
Los Angeles is where I finished my education. It’s where I made my own way in the world, formed my own adult identity. It’s the place where both the bitter and the sweet have happened. It’s the symbolic, geographic representation of aspiration: people come to Los Angeles to “make it.” Although I’m now in the exurbs, and the traffic drives me absolutely bonkers, I still identify as an Angeleno and barring some sort of a major life change, I expect that at least a part of me will always do so, for the rest of my days.
The easy choice for blending the energy, fun, bitterness, and iconic sonic imagery of a city that easily could have been named Rio Porciúncula would be the eponymous song which is the magnum opus of the lovely and talented Exene Cervenka:
But I’m going to say that as much fun as X’s song is, a New York band hit the exact right note, more perfectly capturing the rootlessness, the feeling that the Big Break is just around the corner, and the bizarre dissonance of experiencing a sparseness of landscape smack in the middle of one of America’s biggest cities. Friends, this is my favorite hometown song:
![Screenwriter's Blues - Soul Coughing [HIGH QUALITY]](https://i0.wp.com/i.ytimg.com/vi/mUqBoUB8ox0/0.jpg?resize=720%2C388&ssl=1)
So what’s your favorite song about your home town?
(Damn, the Boss looks young in that video! Music starts about two minutes in.)
Image source: wikimedia commons, wikimedia commons, wikimedia commons, and wikimedia commons.
Burt Likko is the pseudonym of an attorney in Southern California. His interests include Constitutional law with a special interest in law relating to the concept of separation of church and state, cooking, good wine, and bad science fiction movies. Follow his sporadic Tweets at @burtlikko, and his Flipboard at Burt Likko.
You left out this, though I guess he IS explicit it’s not the one in south CA:
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You cheesehead…Report
We are all going to Reseda someday, to die.Report
Growing up in a little township in Michigan, I remember getting really excited when Huey Lewis and the News yelled “Detroit” when he was rattling off cities in The Heart of Rock & Roll. (I was also thrilled in Karate Kid when Mr. Miyagi told Daniel where the cars came from.)
For some reason, I’m less thrilled with Detroit Rock City, despite the entire song being about it.
New York State doesn’t have a whole lot of songs about it. The City sucks all of the oxygen out of the room.
Now, Colorado? Ah, Colorado.
Sadly, we also have the Joe Walsh song which I will not be linking to here.Report
I cannot know why you would find the Joe Walsh song so objectionable. It’s of its era, but IIRC Walsh’s guitar work is pretty good and it’s a better use of the voice box’s capabilities than, say, Peter Frampton’s.Report
Eff Joe Walsh.Report
Because I will never get tired of this ‘shoop.
http://liartownusa.tumblr.com/post/54479788897/frampton-comes-apart-conceivedReport
I was born in Salt Lake, and the only music I can think of that defines it is the Tabernacle Choir — of which I have a sum total of zero recordings.
I grew up in LA, though, and I agree with you Burt that X might be the obvious choice. I might add Cheap Trick and The Doors, which more than any other have always felt to me like bands that couldn’t possibly have come from anywhere else.
My hometown now is Portland, though, and its hard to pick just one artist. The Shins? Everclear? Sweater-Kinney? She & Him? All of those would be fine choices, but I feel like the best answer is Pink Martini.
Of course that just artists. I will have to ponder the actual individual songs….Report
Cheap Trick is Chicago (well, Rockford).Report
Also, if you want to go dark, Portland’s legendary Wipers, with “Doom Town”:
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I don’t know if there any songs about my inner-ring suburb of New York. F.Scott Fitzgerald did memoralize it as West Egg in the Great Gatsby.
The number of songs and music styles that came out of New York and my current town of San Francisco are too many to count.Report
Every song is about Nashville, but “Tennessee” by Arrested Development will do.Report
Surprisingly, there’s not many songs about small towns in Indiana.
But even though it’s not actually my town he’s singing about, this one works, especially as I also married an L.A. doll.
And like Buck, I have walked the streets of Bakersfield.
(FWIW, I also identify with X’s Los Angeles. Those who know SoCal geography and can connect the dots will understand why I always sing “she gets confused driving over the Grapevine.”)Report
The most famous song about Indiana is from The Music Man. Iowa too, come to think of it.Report
Let’s see, from birth I’ve lived in California, Washington, California, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, New Jersey and Colorado. JB’s already put up John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High which was never a favorite of mine, but it’s iconic. The other I’d pick isn’t a song, but a genre: polka music at the German and Bohunk social clubs in South Omaha. Occasionally played as a fill-in on clarinet when my high school band director’s polka band needed someone; had to wear a sticker on my shirt that said “Don’t serve me” since the bartenders saw nothing wrong with serving beer to a 17-year-old, especially if he was in the band. In honor of those stickers, perhaps this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZObXQe1lqIReport
I’m not much for polka, but that might be the best song ever written in the history of the universe.Report
I still strongly identify with my hometown. If people ask where I’m from — meaning “Where do you currently live?” — I’m still likely to say The Neck. Which is odd because, save for a month when I was 22 and waiting for my apartment to be ready, I haven’t “lived” there in any meaningful sense of that word since I was 17.
I claim Boston (5 years, 4 in college) before NYC (2 years) or even NY (6+ and counting, split between three locales and two separate stints). Which is weird because I’m much more NYC than Boston from a personality standpoint (which stems largely from Teaneck’s proximity). But, as a New Jersey native, you can’t count those years towards time served in NY. Rules are rules. Oh… And those two years in DMV? F that noise! Though, I’d love MoCo at 31 in a way I couldn’t at 24 but could never accept DC as “my city”.
As for music, DMX and K-C and JoJo lived in Teaneck but weren’t natives. Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes’ NYC-centric anthem remains the crown jewel of such songs, even prompting at least one other city (DC) to cop a remix. The Dropkick Murphy’s do Boston proud when it comes pregame/entrance music, but it ain’t right for daily listening.Report
I can never find it, because I don’t remember the name of the book, but there was an obituary reprinted in a book about southern culture that I read about 15 years ago that went something like:
Norma Rae Madison, 92, died yesterday. She is survived by… She lived in Oxford for 90 years, but she was from Natchez.Report
I read that as an obituary for southern culture. I won’t pretend I didn’t get excited for a moment.Report
So she wasn’t eligible to be president of Oxford.Report
Umm, Phoebe Snow was a Teaneck native.Report
@scarletnumbers
Who?Report
I’m in love with Massachusetts.
I’m in love with the radio on…
….And I said Roadrunner once, roadrunner twice,
I’m in love with rock’n’roll and I’ll be out all night!
Soooo many great songs about Boston, but that’s possibly my favorite. (Or a tie with ‘Dirty Water’ which admittedly is about the city, not the surrounding highways when it’s late at night.)Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX_gohex-ZMReport
No songs for my hometown — too tiny, too suburb.
An even tinier town got a mention in Sluggy Freelance though…Report
I’m from Winston-Salem, so I guess it has to be something by Ben Folds. This works out, because I like Ben Folds, but I’m not sure which song is ideal. Hospital Song probably has the most explicit geographical reference (“Silas Creek Parkway is my only view”), but isn’t really about being from Winston per se, at least no more than everything else on the album is.Report
Growing up was less a city & more a region. Open a map of Wisconsin, draw a triangle between Sheboygan, Fond du Lac, and West Bend, and that was the territory I roamed as a boy & teen (if we need a zip code, Plymouth & Cascade would fit the bill).
Madison, WI was where I got edumacated, and in many ways that was very much a hometown.
As for songs about Wisconsin, or that mention it, there is this.
However, the Puget Sound has now become my home, and although I often reminisce fondly about growing up & college, I have little desire to go back to WI except to see friends & family.
And this is still my favorite Seattle anthem.Report
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5J54RVZjYs&w=1280&h=750%5D
Lived in Ventura for 20 years, and never experienced an alligator lizard infestation. Not sure what America was smoking. Now living somewhere colder and wetter, Ventura Highway’s sounding pretty good right now, I don’t care who sings it.Report
I see these fellas in the canyons to the south when I get out into the mountains. They like being near water, from what I can gather; maybe that’s just because they get lots of bugs to eat there. Out on the desert floor where most of my time is spent, we seem to get the ring-necked lizards instead.Report
An alligator lizard infestation is one thing, but if they are “in the air”, you should definitely speak to your doctor about reducing your dose.
Most remixes don’t do much for me (at least, they rarely improve upon the original) but I have a soft spot for this one:
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I am unusually lucky in that I was raised in Nova Scotia which was blessed with an exquisite cultural heritage of local folk music formed from a blending of French, Irish, Scottish, German and English immigrants. An excellent example of Nova Scotian/Maritime music is the Rankin Family.
We played this song at his funeral- very apropos since he was literally the son of a fisherman. This is probably my favorite of theirs, so somber, proud, down to earth yet majestically beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEcphPwL10c
Gillis Mountain is in Cape Breton (the song leaves out that it’s lousy with mosquitos when the wind isn’t blowing) a cute song, happy yet with the tinge of backwards looking that a lot of Nova Scotian folk music has:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCGaTCG0n0I
The beautiful Orangedale Whistle addresses a very common theme in Nova Scotia, the awareness that the world is changing and that things are lost. Orangedale Whistle is so beautiful but melancholy, I wonder if the writers knew just how badly the changing world would hammer poor Nova Scotia and her traditional industries. Considering this was written after the fisheries collapse I suspect so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdwnRYrhwZ4
Nova Scotia was also the muse of, In my unhumble opinion, Canada’s most magnificent folk song writer the immortal Stan Rogers (though Stan technically hailed from Ontario- Nova Scotians had no inclination to turn away outside newcomers and so embraced him completely)
Of Stan’s glorious library there’s Northwest Passage, Canada’s unofficial national anthem (especially piquant considering they actually have found the wreck of one of Franklin’s ships).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVY8LoM47xI
Fisherman’s Wharf is one of Stan’s testaments to a Nova Scotia that was rapidly (during his era) slipping away. There’s so very little of it left now, the oldtimers are dead or near all dead, even their wharfs and their buildings are crumbling away. A wistful song for a vanished time yet with a hard-bitten realism that is very Nova Scotian pragmatism that informs my thought to this very day. Romanticism is grand but it’s true, there was no romance on a cold winter ocean and the gale sang an awful song. Still I’ve seen this song bring a lot of tears to old weathered eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y5hZ5XPG3c
And of course his iconic Bluenose, a proud sad song about how Nova Scotians used to beat the pants of New Englanders routinely (sorry Zic). It’s actually just about how being Nova Scotian used to be and again sweetly turning the knife about how it’s just memories and preserved icons now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1IvV6qAWY
Tiny Fish for Japan is one of several songs Stan wrote about the collapse of the north Atlantic fisheries. A slight bit of humor that sweetens what is otherwise a painfully beautiful but bitter song about the tragedy of the commons which along with Make and Break Harbour helps keep me anchored on the left and not drifting into the wild waters of libertarianism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRUSqO8fObU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjDr1UFp44Y
But, to balance it out he sings songs like Free in the Harbour and The Idiot- playful energetic songs about how Nova Scotians labor to deal with the changing world and travel to other places if necessary to earn a living. This speaks to my own experience and keeps me from wandering too far to left into the stagnant stills of arch liberalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ZiixkruCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLs8S6kdbNo
And finally there’s giant, which is typically Nova Scotian looking backwards with gleaming eye at the origins of the provinces celtic people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skbnjd6_tBU
Or the good ol cheerful Athen’s Queen that points out the upside of shipwrecks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8XKS61BPtk
Or one of his last songs, The House of Orange, in which Stan was down on terrorism long before it was cool to be down on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwld86XndSY
I could go on in this vein for too long. I think I’ll stop.Report
I’m in moderation because I gave ya too much of what you asked for.Report
Well, as far as I know, there are no song for Pullman WA, well except the “Fight, Fight, for the Crimson and Grey…”
But I am ashamed to admit there is a complete horror show for the town that we moved to when my father got offered a tenure track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4v_iHrqRSoReport
No one sang about my hometown. The closest big city was Portland and frankly, I don’t think anyone thought much of Portland in the 80s 🙂 But it was the closes place we could get radio signals….Report
Kishidan has a single about my hometown, but the video is as entertaining as this concert vid, where they give a big shoutout to Kisarazu, Chiba, the Oakland of Japan.
youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl0-4X50Duw&w=560&h=315
I don’t know if that will imbed, but if someone could help a brother out, I’d be obliged.Report
Well Los Angeles is definitely the obvious song for me too. There are so many songs and bands that come to mind instantly that I love and make me think of home, I have to organize them in order make the list manageable in my head and to keep myself from writing a ridiculously long list of favorites.
I’ll go with the fact that I get happy nostalgic feelings about songs that incorporate recognizable geography and street names. Two that come to mind immediately are Come a Long Way – Michelle Shocked and Free Fallin – Tom Petty.Report
1) The songs that make me think of Milwaukee the most are “Beer Barrel Polka” by Jaromír Vejvoda and Eduard Ingriš and “Making our Dreams Come True” by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox. I don’t think they are about Milwaukee per se, though.
2) As for my hometown, there are no songs, but for my home state, see the Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi catalogs.Report
I honestly can’t think of one for the town in which I grew up. There is a Steely Dan song called “My Old School” that explicitly references my alma mater, which meant everyone in the university had heard it at a party at least once.Report
Bard College, Annandale? I remember they went to school there, and were in a band with Chevy Chase.Report
Nope- William & Mary. I think the reason was they had some session musician in the studio and asked him where he went because they knew it was going to be about “my old school” and needed something to fit.Report
Ah. I forgot the W&M mention. The song seems to be pretty resolutely about Bard, though.Report
Yeah, they probably needed something to fit. That or William & Mary was the name of a sex toy in a William S. Burroughs novel.Report
My hometown invented the term 420. True story.Report