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Geographical annoyances in pop and rock

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    Geographical annoyances in pop and rock

    Kim Wilde – Kids in America

    New York to east California, there's a new wave coming, I warn ya

    “East California”? What, like San Bernadino? Why does this new wave end there? Why is the rest of California immune from it? “West California” or “South California” would have scanned equally well, albeit without making any less sense. Go and look at a map, and pull those sleeves down on that jacket while you’re at it.

    Leo Sayer - Moonlighting

    Meanwhile the Carlisle turn-off of the M6 Motorway, drinking cold black coffee eating hot cup-cakes….she laughs "My mother will have lost her mind, we're only ten miles to Gretna, they're three hundred behind"

    Cheeky little f***er, Carlisle has got three junctions on the M6, which is three more than Shoreham-by-Sea, so don’t come it. Anyway why are you turning off? You just carry on from the end of the M6 to Gretna - even back then it just became the A74, going down to two lanes and without motorway classification, but you didn't need to turn off. Do that trip now and it doesn’t even do that, it stays as a motorway right through. Why stop off when you’re nearly at Gretna anyway? And if you turned off at the last Carlisle junction, which was the most likely place for cold coffee (at either the Trusthouse Forte Crest Motel as it would have been then, or the truck stop) it’s only six miles from there to Gretna – there’s a 10K that does that very route, and it’s been certified as accurate by a qualified course measurer.

    The Smiths - Panic

    Hopes may rise on the Grasmere, but honey pie, you're not safe here, so you run down, to the safety of the town, but there's Panic on the streets of Carlisle

    Credit where it’s due, it’s “down” overall – Grasmere is 62m above sea level and Carlisle is 29m. However that’s some run – 35.5 miles on foot according to Google maps, though you may be able to shave off a mile or two by going on footpaths and bridleways (public and permissive) that Google doesn’t recognise. Why run to Carlisle though, there are plenty of other, nice towns that are closer – for example Penrith, Keswick and Windermere, all with branches of Booths. But you didn’t have a gig to promote in any of those places did you? Though the additional promotion was unnecessary, it sold out fairly quickly anyway.

    Joe Strummer - From Willesden to Cricklewood

    From Willesden to Cricklewood, I tell you the town looked good

    What town’s this Joe? London? Walking from Willesden to Cricklewood doesn’t really provide a representative sample does it? It’s only 1.4 miles on foot, or 1.1 miles if you’d set off from Willesden Green tube station.

    #2
    Gene Pitney (Bacharach & David) - 24 Hours From Tulsa

    He was only 24 hours away. Was he driving? In which case he could have been in Canada or Mexico and made it at a push. And if he was flying, half way round the world, even given the limitations of air travel in 1963. “At least” 24 hours from Tulsa might have been more suitable. Or “24 bloody hours” from Tulsa.

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      #3
      Waterloo sunset. Where's he stood gazing at the sunset at Waterloo, from the roof of the station? Unless he's on about the actual Waterloo in Belgium I suppose.

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        #4
        But there were millions of people milling around.

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          #5
          Hearing Moonlighting as a kid (in England) was one of those dawning, depressing moments when you realize that there was never going to be any glamour. Where were you going to lose the cops, in the impenetrable Badlands of the Lake District? When did you take the top down and cruise, the A303? Shitty provincial existence, made worse by imported illusions. Leo tried but it just didn't work, couldn't work.

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            #6
            Which is why when America sing about Ventura Highway it sounds really cool, while Hangar Lane Gyratory just wouldn’t quite work.

            Actually I had a good laugh, when in north Devon last year and I found myself driving on something called the “Atlantic Highway”. Or to you and me, the A39.

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              #7
              Jennifer Lopez - On The Floor

              Brazil, Morocco
              London to Ibiza
              Straight to L.A., New York
              Vegas to Africa


              The casual throwing together of countries, cities, islands and a whole continent is very annoying. Whereabouts in Africa? Back to Morocco again? Cape Town? Timbuktu? Speaking of which...

              Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life

              Yellow man in Timbuktu
              Colour for both me and you


              Unless this is some kind of Simpsons reference I suspect it's taking a cue from the white supremacist Lothrop Stoddard and his term for South East Asians. Except the Spice Girls didn't even get the right continent.

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                #8
                "Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike, they've all come to look for America"

                Aren't they already in it?

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                  #9
                  We have (obviously) done this before, but I can't remember if anybody came up with an explanation for the Beach Baby who couldn't wait for graduation day, so drove to San Jose. Other than the rhyme.

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                    #10
                    Leo could have stopped earlier at Tebay Services but nicer coffee and cakes, plus the opportunity to buy high quality local beef and lamb, wouldn't entirely solve the glamour deficit.

                    There's a Razorlight song, that I first came across on OTF a long time ago, on which Johnny Borrell tries to bring a Springsteen like air of widescreen romantic fatalism to an account of taking the night bus from Tottenham Court Road to Wood Green. It doesn't really come off, putting it mildly.

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                      #11
                      BELFAST'S ONLY HALF AN HOUR AWAY sang the Fun Boy Three. Yeah, if you bring a parachute and fancy jumping out over western Scotland maybe, but you won't get to any airport in that time.

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                        #12
                        He (Leo at Tebay) could have bought Stinking Bishop, which might well have sent his young lady fleeing back south.

                        Band Of Holy Joy did widescreen romantic fatalism in grimy England quite well, especially on 'Route To Love'. Opposite of the thread premise really:-

                        'So then I was round by Chinatown,
                        been riding the tube,
                        I was skating around.
                        I chased this ghost down the emergency stairs,
                        found it lurking round by Leicester Square.
                        Heaven, Hell or, Hartlepool
                        A windy city I passed through Hull.
                        Had a clear and concise destination
                        Until John Bull had me thrown out of the station.

                        When stars shine above
                        I thought about life and I thought about love.'

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by elguapo4 View Post
                          BELFAST'S ONLY HALF AN HOUR AWAY sang the Fun Boy Three. Yeah, if you bring a parachute and fancy jumping out over western Scotland maybe, but you won't get to any airport in that time.

                          What about Knock?

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                            #14
                            Maybe, but they Knock wasn't there at the time and they were singing to a mainland UK audience.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Benjm View Post
                              Leo could have stopped earlier at Tebay Services but nicer coffee and cakes, plus the opportunity to buy high quality local beef and lamb, wouldn't entirely solve the glamour deficit.
                              There's also the inherent glamour deficit in going to Gretna to get married. I used to work for the local authority that covered that area and the registration office was a right earner - particularly on Valentine's Day when it would be fully booked over a year in advance. However Gretna registry office is just a normal municipal office opposite a row of local shops which last time I looked included a Spar, a Chinese takeaway and two hair salons.

                              Gretna Green (the actual source of the tradition of getting married just over the border, free of the requirement for parental consent) was a separate settlement, though the two have become conjoined by a designer outlet village. It isn't any more glamorous than Gretna.

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by delicatemoth View Post
                                Band Of Holy Joy did widescreen romantic fatalism in grimy England quite well, especially on 'Route To Love'.
                                I listened to the recentish Land Of Holy Joy album on a coach from London to Cardiff a couple of years ago and it completely clicked and sounded like the best thing ever, an experience I've not really been able to recapture since.

                                When they played at the Rockaway Beach festival a former work colleague, who happened to be there, said that she'd have enjoyed it more without 'Geordie Bono', which seemed very harsh on Johny Brown. I think his refusal to scale down his performances to the size of venue to hand is one of their strengths, as with, say, Earl Brutus or The Pre New.

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                                  #17
                                  Cold Chisel - Khe Sanh:

                                  Well the last plane out of Sydney's almost gone
                                  And only seven flying hours, and I'll be landing in Hong Kong


                                  Hold up Jimmy, seven hours? And you haven’t even taken off yet! To use QF127 as an example that takes 9 hours 35 minutes. And that song’s forty years old. Come on Barnesy.

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                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by Sits View Post
                                    Which is why when America sing about Ventura Highway it sounds really cool, while Hangar Lane Gyratory just wouldn’t quite work.
                                    There is, of course, no Ventura Highway. Which is a geographical annoyance to me. There's a Ventura Freeway these days, which is the 101 through Thousand Oaks. And there's a Ventura Boulevard. But no Ventura Highway.

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                                      #19
                                      Ventura Boulevard, very coolly namechecked by Tom Petty.

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                                        #20
                                        Originally posted by elguapo4 View Post
                                        Maybe, but they Knock wasn't there at the time and they were singing to a mainland UK audience.

                                        Perhaps they had permission to land at RAF Valley.

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                                          #21
                                          Very much not Ventura Boulevard, which is an suburban "main drag" that really doesn't fit the lyrics.

                                          Here's what the guy who wrote it (Dewey Bunnell) had to say.

                                          "I remember vividly having this mental picture of the stretch of the coastline traveling with my family when I was younger. Ventura Highway itself, there is no such beast, what I was really trying to depict was the Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 1, which goes up to the town of Ventura."

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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by Benjm View Post
                                            Leo could have stopped earlier at Tebay Services but nicer coffee and cakes, plus the opportunity to buy high quality local beef and lamb, wouldn't entirely solve the glamour deficit.
                                            Completely off topic, but I stopped last week at Tebay's sister station , Gloucester South. We spent over 60 quid on biltong.

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                                              #23
                                              Toto - Africa

                                              Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti

                                              Kilimanjaro - 5,895m
                                              Olympus - 2,353m

                                              So you're saying a mountain rises like a smaller mountain? OK.

                                              Also, you may be able to see Kilimanjaro from the Serengeti on a clear day but it's at least 200km away. Hardly "above".

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                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by Benjm View Post
                                                When they played at the Rockaway Beach festival a former work colleague, who happened to be there, said that she'd have enjoyed it more without 'Geordie Bono', which seemed very harsh on Johny Brown. I think his refusal to scale down his performances to the size of venue to hand is one of their strengths, as with, say, Earl Brutus or The Pre New.
                                                Ha, I remember seeing them at the New Cross Venue and beseeching him to play 'Leaves That Fall In Spring' - "When I saw you at the Mean Fiddler you PROMISED you'd play it next time!" I half-sobbed. I love his performances, the live album 'When Stars Came Out To Play' captures the intensity very well. Haven't heard any of their records since 'Tracksuit Vendetta', mind. He's someone who'll follow you back if you follow him on Twitter, which always takes me aback.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Trans-Canada Highway — Gene Pitney

                                                  Met a woman in Vancouver
                                                  Nearly drove me outta my mind
                                                  She told me she was looking
                                                  For a man that could satisfy

                                                  Trans-Canada highway take me home
                                                  Trans-Canada highway take me home
                                                  Take me home

                                                  I see a sign for Toronto
                                                  Almost making me smile
                                                  The border's in sight
                                                  I think I'm gonna be free

                                                  Wait up... which border? It's all Canada man, you don't need a passport. Mind you "almost smiling" when you get to Toronto is a legitimate response.



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