Yesterday at McDonald’s, the Muzak in the lobby for customers played “City of New Orleans” in the lobby. Great Arlo Guthrie song. However, given that New Orleans at the moment basically is no more, and devasted with lots of dead bodies around, the song today conjures up bad images. Probably just the Muzak folks haven’t yanked that song. Just at the moment it seems inappropriate.
I don’t think that song is in bad taste. It’s about a train, called the City of New Orleans.
Now if they were playing ‘New Orleans is Sinking’ by the Tragically Hip…
[sub]That one I know is off the radio rotation for awhile[/sub]
It kind of reminds of a few years back. I worked in a high-end toy store, and we frequently played mix tapes of children’s music in the store. This was around the time the Montserrat Volcano erupted, killing many and disrupting the lives of thousands. I used to cringe each time the Jimmy Buffet song “I don’t know where I’m gonna go when the volcano blows” would come up on the rotation. I found out later that the song was actually written about Montserrat itself, there was a recording studio there that Jimmy Buffet used.
I guess I find it to be in questionable taste. But then again as Flutterby said, “City of New Orleans” isn’t even about New Orleans. Its about the train of that name.
I don’t think simply mentioning a place where a tragedy took place is in bad taste. If the lyrics said something like “I hope they all drown” or something like, then yeah.
Not to mention that it was an instrumental version, right? I would have recogized it because it’s one of my favorite songs but most people wouldn’t have even know the lyrics in the first place.
Fred LeBlanc of NOLA-based Cowboy Mouth wrote in his blog that they opened a show recently with their song ‘Take Me Back to New Orleans’ and the band almost broke down.
[nitpick]Great Steve Goodman song, which was performed by Arlo Guthrie.[/nitpick]