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pseydtonne  ·  3849 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What is a song that is explicitly about where you're from?

I am famous for opening my replies with a request for clarification. In this case, I want to know whether "where I'm from" refers to my home town, my previous cities of residence, or my present city. I'll go in reverse chronological order:

West Hollywood/Los Angeles: "Still in Hollywood" by Concrete Blonde. I live two blocks from Hollywood. Walking down La Brea or along Hollywood Blvd always gets me to think of this tune.

Boston: "The Ice of Boston" by the Dismemberment Plan. A man from DC realizes he doesn't belong where he wound up, and realizes many other things. I shriek along every time.

Binghamton, NY: "Leave a Light On" by Five Eight. The Triple Cities along the Susquehanna River are a shell of what they used to be. The locals resent that IBM and other big business got replaced by a university full of downstaters. Forlorn...

Utica, NY (my home town): There is no one song explicitly about Utica. One day I'll have to write that album, much the way James Joyce had to spend a decade in Croatia before he could write about Dublin. The only thing that's close is "The Erie Canal Song (Fifteen Years/Fifteen Miles)," which we all learned in grade school. Rome, Albany, and Buffalo all get name-dropped. Rome is a smaller city about 15 miles away.

    We've hauled some barges in our day,

    Filled with lumber, coal, and hay...