I know it’s a somewhat unwieldy thread title, but that’s as good as I can do now.
Some bands, such as Boston, make it pretty obvious that they’re from, well, Boston, such as in “Rock and Roll Band”. Other bands, such as Queensryche, have songs such as “Jet City Woman” and “One More Rainy Night” that don’t outright mention Seattle, but anyone who knows anything about Seattle knows that Boeing has a strong presence there, and it rains a lot there, too. In Everclear’s “I Will Buy You a New Life”, they make reference to buying a new house “way up in the West Hills”, which is part of the Portland, Oregon metroplex.
What I am looking for are other examples of subtle and semi-subtle references to a band’s locale such as the last two that I mentioned. I imagine this sort of thing probably occurs in country music more than rock music, but I don’t listen to country and I wouldn’t be familiar with any such songs people might list here in the country genre, so I am more interested in rock music examples.
Lenny Kravitz’s “Mr. Cab Driver” says that a taxi driver won’t pick up black people because, “He thinks we’re all 165ers.”
People outside New York City won’t know what that means. New Yorkers will grasp that Lenny is referring to 165th Street in the South Bronx, an area that used to be famous for its crime rate.
In reality, Kravitz was a rich kid who grew up on the posh East Side of Manhattan. But a white cab driver would only see black skin, and assume he wanted to ride to a dangerous part of town.
**Wilco **references their adopted hometown, Chicago, in a few songs. In “Far Far Away” they mention riding on the CTA and then there is the song “Via Chicago” which is more blatant.
**Barenaked Ladies **mention locations in Canada near where they’re from fairly often, at least in their earlier stuff.
The Hold Steady talk about Minneapolis a lot - the lead singer/songwriter grew up in the suburbs. Of course, now that I’m posting about this, I can’t recall specific song references. Time to switch to their songs on my iPod and see if I can come up with anything concrete.
Liz Phair sang in her song “Stratford-On-Guy” the lyric, “I was flying into Chicago at night…” She’s from Chicago, so someone who knew this would interpret the song as her returning home from somewhere.
I was going to mention Wilco myself, but a reference to their origins in the St Louis area before they were based in Chicago. The song “Heavy Metal Drummer” begins with the lines:
I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands
We used to go see on the Landing in the summer
Most folks outside of St Louis would probably not catch the reference to Laclede’s Landing, an area on the riverfront north of the Arch with a number of nightclubs.
Maybe the reference is too obvious, but Journey references their hometown, San Francisco, as the “city by the bay” in “When The Lights Go Down in the City.”
The Counting Crows song “Mr. Jones” references “The New Amsterdam,” a bar in San Francisco (I’m not sure if the bar still exists). Counting Crows are from Berkeley.
REM’s album title “Automatic for the People” is a reference to a restaurant in their hometown of Athens, Georgia (the phrase is a well-known slogan of the restaurant Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods)
The Hold Steady - On reflection, I can’t do it justice (especially considering I only lived there a few years), so I’ll just quote an article about them, from a Twin Cities weekly paper:
The comparison a bit later to Springsteen is apt especially considering his hometown references, and has been made by many others - not just on the themes (though The Hold Steady’s songs seem to feature much more boozing and drugging), but it’s definitely not a ripoff act.
The Smiths mention a host of Manchester-area locales in their songs, both in titles (“Rusholme Ruffians”) and in lyrics (“a rented room in Whalley Range”). Their last album, Strangeways, Here We Come, references a local prison.
Perhaps a better Billy Joel origin line (from ‘The Ballad of Billy the Kid’):
"From a town known as Oyster Bay Long Island, rode a boy with a six pack in his hand "
(OK, I see Billy Joel claims that refers to somebody else…Rrrright…
So, I give you instead the ‘Miracle Mile’ reference from 'It’s still Rock and Roll to me)
I missed the edit Window, but looking at various sites, I realize there are too many Billy Joel references to Long Island (and NYC/Manhattan too - e.g. Uptown Girl, NY State of Mind, and that ungrateful ‘Lights Went Out on Broadway’) to list here - perhaps it’d be easier to list songs he doesn’t mention a locale )
That reminds me of UTFO’s “Black Man Can’t Catch a Cab”
They feel cuz I’m young and black I got a rap sheet
a mile long. The Educated Rapper takes a back seat
I send my woman up front, she’ll deliver
She’ll hail down a cab, and maybe they might give her
respect I’m entitled to, but I don’t get that
They look at me as if they wanna say, "Yo, yo, get back!
“Let the puppies and the yuppies get the ride, not you!”
He don’t obey the state law, he says, “F*ck you!”
To the OP:
Rush’s 1975 song, “The Necromancer”, is a Lord of the Rings-style fantasy story that mentions “three travelers, men of Willowdale”. Willowdale is a community that is now part of Toronto, and is the birthplace of Rush bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee. From the same album, “Lakeside Park”:
Also, the title track from Geddy Lee’s solo album, “My Favorite Headache” opens with the line, “One man standing on the Plains of Abraham…”; the Plains of Abraham is the site of a famous battle in Canada.
ETA: This is more a reference to Geddy being Canadian, rather than a reference to his own locality, since the PoA is in Quebec but I believe Geddy still lives in Ontario.
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