Name a song that has an obscure reference to a real place. Here’s the catch, you have to have physically been there yourself. The more obscure the better.
I was thinking about this today while I was in Belmar NJ driving down 10th Avenue of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” fame. In fact I drove through the intersection of 10th Avenue and E Street.
When Carole King and Gerry Goffin were married and writing together they lived in a house in West Orange New Jersey. They wrote a song commenting on suburban life and used their neighborhood as inspiration. The main road next to their house in Pleasant Valley Way. The song was “Pleasant Valley Sunday” which was a big hit for the Monkees. I’ve been on that street many times.
It’s a deep track on the album Prolonging the Magic, but I have been in the Alpha Beta parking lot that Cake is singing about in the aptly titled song, “Alpha Beta Parking Lot”.
I have been “all along that lonesome highway, east of Omaha”.
I have also “found myself surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends” but I’m not sure that fits here.
I’ve been to the Dew Drop Inn in Jackson Mississippi, on a Saturday night. But the place was chill, I didn’t have to tuck my hair up under my hat, and I had no car problems.:D:D
In 1981, Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn wrote a song called “Coldest Night of the Year,” about a winter in Toronto. It included the line, “Now the sun is lurking just behind the Scarborough horizon.”
Scarborough is the eastern part of Toronto, and Cockburn is referring to the dawn. As a former Torontonian, I haven’t just been to Scarborough; I went to school there. I saw a few sunrises there too.
There were other references to Toronto in the song (for example, Yonge Street, which I’ve been on many times, on foot, on my bike, in a car, etc.), but Scarborough would be a little more obscure to any non-Torontonian.
I’ve been to Winslow, Arizona. I don’t recall if I ever stood on a corner there, and if I did I probably didn’t have seven women on my mind, like The Eagles in Take It Easy.
Bored to death on a family road trip, I was looking at the map and said “Hey! We’re on the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston!” The driver (my dad) was not interested in why that was worth remarking on (Sweet Baby James).
And, long before we’d heard the Eagles version, a friend and I did Jackson Browne covers including Take It Easy (it was Mr. Browne who had broken down in Winslow, Arizona and written most of the song). So I had to jump out so I could stand on a corner.
And then, shortly after hearing my first Bruce Cockburn album, I detoured through Toronto right at dawn (NO one on the streets, eerie…)
Did you go through Scarborough? Or as we used to call it, especially in winter, “Scarberia”?
Thinking further, I’ve been to Watertown, New York (Harry Chapin’s “Better Place to Be”), and down the hill into Scranton, Pennsylvania (Harry Chapin’s “30,000 Pounds of Bananas”).
I also once counted the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike on my way from Princeton, NJ; to New York City. Hey, they all came to look for America, right?
Slipknot, who are from Des Moines, have an album called “Iowa.”
They also have a song called “People = Shit.” I grew up in Des Moines, and am not the slightest bit surprised that something like this came out of there.
