Not answering your question, but my mother (from near Chicago) always complained that there was noEast side of Chicago. It would be in Lake Michigan.
In the movie “The Untouchables”, Capone got sent away for tax evation, not after some gun battle. Who you gonna believe, some 3 minute Top 40 song, or a Major Hollywood Motion Picture? With Sean Connery, no less!
“Oh, We got a great big convoy- truckin’ thru the night”
“We got a great big convoy, ain’t she a beautiful sight? Come on, join our convoy, ain’t nothin’ gonna stand in our way! We’re gonna roll this truckin’ convoy- 'cross the USA…
Convoooooooooooy”
Your welcome
Zette
Love is like popsicles…you get too much you get too high.
Not enough and you’re gonna die… Zettecity
Zette, expanding on your Chicago theme, you are now dead meat, canned meat based by-products and assorted insect parts.
I had completely forgotten that song, and now I’m idiotically humming the refrain (“nyuahnna-nadda-dadda!”) I don’t know what the song referred to because I can’t get beyond that &@$%^@# refrain.
I can, however, sing you all the endless stanzas of “The wreck of the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald’” and discuss the most likely ways the ship was lost.
Of course my singing sounds like a scalded cat, but at least the song relates to one of the Great Lakes.
As others have noted, “The Night Chicago Died” is completely fictional, written by a couple of British lads who had watched one too many gangster movies. In 1974, at the time the song was making its way to #1 on the U.S. charts, the group (Paper Lace) contacted mayor Daley, and in all innocence asked if he was interested in promoting some sort of tie-in. His Honor’s scathing reply included the phrase “Are you nuts?”
Mayor Daley’s reply also invited the group to “jump in the Chicago River, placing your head under water three times and surfacing twice.” Admittedly, Hizzoner was a harsh music critic but we are talking about the band that wrote both The Night Chicago Died and Billy, Don’t Be a Hero, so you have to see his point.
Ah, good ol’ crusty Hizzoner Daley! Well at least Paper Lace (don’t hear much from 'em anymore, do we?) were lucky they didn’t choose a fictional “The Day Cleveland Died”. The poor Brits could have been invited to hold their heads under a burning river.
Bad case of brain velcro you commited here, Zette. Now we’re all reduced to zombies humming inane pop tunes and visualizing Bluepony as a renegade Chihuahua.
But hey, wonder if any desperate grad student ever considered a thesis about “Pop history as reflected in pop music”. Snoopy and the Red Baron, the donkey/miner Timothy suffering paradigm shift into food source…
Zette, you’re onto something here. Dissertation topic and expert ::splort:: advice for sale.
Credit where credit is due: Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods did a cover version of Billy, Don’t Be a Hero which was, shall we say, slightly more successful than Paper Lace’s try. Paper Lace barely charted with theirs, while Bo’s went all the way to #1 in the spring of 1974, when I was ten years old.
You may remember Bo’s band as being regulars on Dick Clark’s TV show Action 73.