Songs about your hometown

Redux of page found: "TIM BOOTH, JAMES vocals, birthday : February 4, 1960, band Nickname : Monty Moneybags - dates back to early years in the band and Tim's middle-class background, first Gig : Cockney Rebel, Leeds Town Hall, Manchester University drama student and ex-pupil at Shrewsbury School where he gained 11 O Levels, during James early career, Tim was plagued by a liver disease which dated back to his childhood and it was this that contributed to his pursuit of alternative forms of healing and stimulation [ed note: too much info,], including membership of the Lifewave group in the 1980s and his interest in shamanic dancing which he still pursues actively today. The liver condition has lead Tim to abstain from the traditional rock n roll lifestyle of drink and drugs and his abstinence and beliefs have led James to be labelled as Buddhists, vegans and all sorts of other implied insults. Tim's interest in certain themes - religion (Tim went to the religious Shrewsbury School [ed note: not true]and was expelled for being a bad influence), suicide, victimhood, betrayal - run through James's whole career. The embittered lyrics of Seven and Laid reflect the fallout from his relationship with the band's ex-manager Martine, mother of Tim's son Ben - the inspiration for Gold Mother whilst the lovestruck Just Like Fred Astaire and Shooting My Mouth Off reflect Tim's contentment with fiancee Kate. Tim spoke openly to ITV's Faith And Music documentary about his beliefs in June 1999. In addition to his vocal duties [!great phrase!] with James, Tim maintains his interest in acting, taking the lead in Edward Bond's production of Saved at Bolton Octagon in May 1998. He also has taught Five Rhythms dance on a regular basis in Manchester, New York and California during quiet periods for James. He also recorded a solo album Booth and the Bad Angel with Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti in 1996. More recently, Tim narrated the ITV programme commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Strangeways riots."

Do I remember him, my EXACT contemporary? Not at all: "expelled for being a bad influence" — right, so I would forget THIS!?

OLD SALOPIANS OF NOTE!! Can we please put an amendment in the Declaration of Human Rights: does not apply to...!?

I have so many hometowns that I can't figure out which one I should homage in song. I'm pretty sure that the crap Essex new town where I was actually *born* is name-dropped in a Billy Brag song. Ditto southeast Herts and The Zombies, but I don't have the records here at Paul's, so I can't name you specifics. (I remember that Cheshunt, where we actually lived, was mentioned in Ray Davies' unauthorised autobio, though I note that he left OUT the fact that their equipment mouldered in our garage for several months while they rowed furiously with the label that wanted to repossess it).

New York and London both have too many songs to count. (though I think Tooting Bec only gets two mentions, in Hanoi Rocks and Huon)

But! Oh yes! The longest period of my life spent in one place concurrently (9 years of high school and college) was actually spent in Upstate NY, in the Hudson Valley. Although "The Hudson Line" namechecks more of the scenery, the song that more accurately captures the spooky, creepy, sleepy hollow *feeling* of the area is "Opus 40", named after a former quarry turned landscape art in the Catskills.

Her next conquest was Finlayson, Tory whip from Woking/His eyes were icy blue, he was impeccably well-spoken/He caught her with his daughter and he got her under torture/To confess she'd taught her poker/And spanked them both until his pants were soaking

Also, I suppose plenty of Paul Weller lyrics must be about Woking. I used to work on Stanley Road, y'know. What an honour.

"King's pawn has opened/Rookery rings to his ragged cry/Ask me the time by Shrewsbury clock in the morning/Knight takes pawn Bishop looks on/Front rank kneels in the rising corn/Enter rumour racked and torn/No time to rehearse his lines for the first performance" (All lyrics Gary Hatcher except five lines from poem by Darren Tansley [ed note: plus the Shrewsbury clock line nicked from Henry IV pt one, ahem: "fought for an hour by Shrewsbury clock".

"A medieval hunt sab song: St George killed the dragon, now we kill St George...)" A Pedant Notes: it is impossible to see any of Shrewsbury, inc clocktowers — anyway not yet invented in 14-whenever— from the actual site of the Battle of Shrewsbury

"Oh oh Grimsby, a thousand delights/ Couldn't match the sweet sights/ Of my Grimsby... Through nights of mad youth/ I have loved every sluice in your harbour/ And in your wild sands from boyhood to man/ Strangers have found themselves fathers... Take me back you rustic town/ I miss your magic charm... No Cordon Bleu can match the beauty/ Of your pies and peas"

i) Bernie Taupin was actually from Market Rasen;

ii) He then buggered off to California as soon as he got enough money;

iii) Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting was also inspired by Grimsby, and is frankly a much more accurate picture of said rustic town.

Famous foax from Shrewsbury the town: Ian Hunter! Ronnie Laine! T'Pau!

Relatives of famous foax retired to super-posh Shrewsbury satellite suburb Bayston Hill: Ma and Pa Orridge, parents to wee Genesis P. I was once in car with MY mom (in Mardol, as a matter of fact, driving towards clocktower mentioned above, design based on Oslo's Rathaus) and she said, "Look at that funny little man!!" It was GPO! Dressed as a polish border guard!!

So much for Art Terror.

I grew up in Lansing, Michigan. Verve Pipe and Crucifux are from there. I guess everyone here but me already knew that Magnetic Fields mentions the town in "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing" (I just looked it up!) It's no Paris, he got that right.

Famous folks living in my "for the last 15 years" hometown, Twickenham are a fairly impressive bunch. Pete Townshend (walks dog in Marble Hill park), Robin Guthrie (has studio here), Ross Macmanus (Declan's jazz-singing dad seen last Tuesday buying frozen food at Tesco).

And The Strawbs.

So... the most famous son... CLIFF RICHARD!!! Hah! Also, the earliest incarnations of the band that would become The Creation, and from nearby St.Albans, the aforementioned Zombies. Hooray for Herts!

Van Halen, "Jump" ("you got to roll with the punches and get to Montreal")

K.Rogers/D.Parton, "Islands In The Stream" ("islands in the stream/ that is what we are/ no one in between/ 'cept for Montreal")

"Is there life on Mars?
Is there life on Mars?
Is there life in Peckham?
Is there life in Peckham?"

And no, I'm not from Mars.

I, too, would like to know what OMD are singing about in the Greensboro song!

Yes! The Rolling Stones' "Play With Fire":

Your mother she's an heiress, owns a block in Saint John's Wood
And your father'd be there with her
If he only could
But don't play with me, 'cause you're playing with fire

As for Lansing: there must be at least twenty Wally Pleasant songs mentioning Lansing, which is convenient, as hardly anyone outside of Lansing has any idea who Wally Pleasant is.

And as for my hometown (Pueblo, Colorado), the best I can do is the Dead Milkmen's "Stuart," which makes fun of our government printing office.

I fondly imagine that the entire output of the Fields of the Nephilim is full of coded references to Stevenage Town Centre as a post- apocalyptic wasteland. Nod the drummer was in the year above me at school.

Even more coincidentally, having been born in Huyton and now residing in SE16, Elvis Costello foretold my migrations in 'New Amsterdam': "Somehow I found myself down at the dockside / Thinking 'bout the old days of Liverpool and Rotherhithe". Crumbs.

I believe the Monochrome Set released an album called "Trinity Road" (which is both a local street name and the former name of Tooting Bec Underground station - renamed in 1950).

However, Bob Dylan had an album titled _Highway 61 Revisited_ and both Janet Jackson and Prince have name-checked Minneapolis. Shoot, Prince even wrote an entire song about Calhoun Square!

Can find a song mentioning Swanscombe, Kent, where I lived for 13 years: "The Kentishmen With Long Tayles" (sic): http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/~praetzel/thomas/CANT1.HTML, and a song set at Portland, Dorset, where I've lived for the last 7 years, "The Preacher" by Show of Hands: http://www.showofhands.co.uk/track lyrics.pdf (leave a space between "track" and "lyrics" if you want to type it in, if you care).

This may be a mean and outrageous slur on TB's fine name: and it was a long time ago and besides the whatever is dead, but i'm just astonished that i wouldn't remember THIS!! It's not like ppl were being expelled every month (not like the 60s ha ha).

Oh well. Who cares, I guess: this is JAMES we're talking about.

Who is on crack here? The "worse conditions than Borstal" line is just a total and a ridiculous lie (how wd he know anyway?)

Enuff: I used to dislike James for their extremely bogus music (and half-baked bandname); now I find their singer is a class-anxious self-pitying mendacious drama-queen, who has caused me YET AGAIN to go off on one on a nice, well-meaning thread that was just minding its own business, not looking for any trouble...

I did spend a few months in New Hope, though, so I guess Ween's "Pumping 4 the Man" would be the closest I can come to a song about a town where I lived.

Brandon's most famous namedrop is likely the opening line of Douglas Coupland's book Generation X. Oh well.

The It's Imm album was one English pound in a Virgin sale around 1992 - the sleeve also mistakenly contained a Bruce Hornsby album. What a marvellous bonus.

Anyway, I move on to my current home. Since Stevie T has already had the Costello mention of Rotherhithe, I'll take the Squeeze option. Their "It's Not Cricket" begins with the line "She used to do a strip- show / Down at the Surrey Docks".

Only thing is that Cal City *is* mentioned on a record - Jake and Elwood Blues of the Blues Brothers are introduced as "from Calumet City, Illinois". There was also "Cal City Sucks" by my sister's high school boyfriend's punk band, Solid Waste. Surely there must be a rap song about it, but I can't find it. Another thing is that "city" sounds too much like "shitty", so that might be a problem.

Since we're a coal's throw from Gary, Indiana, (home of the Jacksons!) we usually adopted that song from the Music Man as our own.

I did go and see the Beach Boys in '92 or '93 at the big ugly barn which is the Sheffield Arena. Mostly, it was horrible (stage made up like some poxy beach, favourite moments slapped carelessly into nasty medley versions, Al Jardine's son being in the band). But Wilson- count: one (Carl) and he sang "God Only Knows" and it was lovely. So that's what I mean: sometimes even a grossly diminished act can chuck out fab moments.

Some of the Vic Godard obsessives I know curse him for keeping on playing shows and making records. I'll grant that the records aren't always the best but the shows are generally fantastic and I'll never tire of hearing "Stool Pigeon" and the like.

There's Stay Free by the Clash - "and weekends we'd go dancing/down Streatham on the bus."

The Chemistry Between Us by Suede - "and maybe we're just Streatham trash."

While googling I found one called "Craig 'N' Bentley" by what looks suspiciously like an NF/Oi group called the Warriors, which ends: "As you took your last steps in jail/Sadly your mates walk the streets of Streatham Vale."

Also obscure '60s psyche act the Cuppa T (whose first single Miss Pinkerton is a bit of a classic) followed it up with a song called Streatham Hippodrome. They do not appear ever to have put out a third.

(fact found incidentally - Cupid's Inspiration "Yesterday Has Gone" - bass player: Gordon Haskell)

Also discover that Tori Amos briefly lived in Streatham but felt she wasn't cut out for the place.

Oh yes, and there's one further one:

"Streatham princesses in sherbert stilettoes".

This comes from a song called "Shaftesbury Avenue" from an album entitled "Don't Stop The Night" released in 1989 by somebody called - oh, I've forgotten the guy's name, it'll come to me in a moment - that's it, Moment? Mammoth? Mensa? Menus? Bloody hell that one's stumped me.

Anyone like Gilbert & Sullivan?

Not my home town for many years, but the first place I thought of when reading the question was Crawley, hometown also of Robert Smith - not that he would ever have dreamt of mentioning the place in a Cure song. So to google, and I'm past the 100th ranked hit and have almost given up, when there it is: "Sea Side Shuffle" by Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs. (woo-hoo)

I like Gilbert & Sullivan.

My favorite song about the town in which I now live is the Tiger Lillies' "Russians," which is about the Saturday flea market in Sachsenhausen.

also, on the east side of the lake, about three miles away is the town of Johnsburg, IL, which was namechecked in TWO songs: Tom Waits' "Johnsburg, IL" and the Handsome Family song "In the Air", from the album of the same name. It's a tiny town, maybe a thousand people. Same as mine.

The Tannahill Weavers, "Gloomy Winter's Noo Awa'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiwXsaPR14w

The Fegs, "Mill Street Law and Order"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Gm9OXQFog

... (translation) All coppers are bastards.

Beside the ones already mentioned (love ´em both : Cale and Taxi Girl), to me the best is « Paris S’Eveille » by Dutronc.

Oh you'll have hundreds of them, I don't have many to choose from, that Tannahill Weavers one is lovely though.

We love to get down in Ypsilanti.
https://youtu.be/e_vyGFvPaMs

This never fails to crack me up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUY6dBdgWR

Attn: jaymc

Accurate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGAqZakJoMg

I'm going to post this one again because the link I posted before no longer works and this song is so lovely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU0HLLfSVEI

Also the story of Robert Tannahill, whose statue I must have passed hundreds of times, is so sad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tannahill

A ton of The Hold Steady's songs are about places I grew up around, so I figured one would mention where I grew up (Burnsville), and indeed one does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwQWnv-PyGc

I took the train to Richmond that fell
It was a time I remember, oh so well