When I was a kid, I used to get song lyrics confused. Radio stations were always playing “Who are You?” by The Who. (Whoooo are you? Who? Who? Who? Who?). And for the longest time I thought they were singing, New Orleans… ooh… ooh… ooh… ooh…
It figures, though. Who wouldn't sing about New Orleans? Sometimes, while cruising along in a house on wheels, I’m so inspired by what I see that I want to write a song about it. Well, there are two problems with that: I have no musical talent… and apparently a whole bunch of people beat me to it. This I discovered when I began to wonder if it’s possible to put together a really good album of songs with geographical names.
The rules are these: I can’t include entire albums (i.e. “Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen) or bands (Kansas, Boston, Chicago). I don’t think I’ll include songs that simply evoke a region. So that rules out hits like “Rocky Mountain Way” (Joe Walsh), “Rocky Mountain High” (John Denver), “Cripple Creek” (The Band) and “Ventura Highway” (America). No, let’s leave it at songs that have states or cities in their title. Well, it turns out there are tons of them.
I mean, Doris Day sang a song called “Black Hills of Dakota.” Perry Como had one called “Delaware.” Ella Fitzgerald sang “Moonlight in Vermont.” And Glenn Miller did everything from “Chattanooga Choo Choo” to “Pennsylvania 6-5000” to “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo.” But it isn’t only an old-school thing. I also found songs by Neil Young (“Philadelphia” and “Albuquerque”), REM (“All the Way to Reno”), Will Smith (“Miami”) and the Beastie Boys (“No Sleep Til Brooklyn”).
So I’m going to have to compile three separate albums (in the form of top ten lists), separated into categories:
Category #1: Best State Songs
- “Sweet Home Alabama” (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
- “Hotel California” (The Eagles)
- “Goin’ to California” (Led Zeppelin)
- “California Girls” (The Beach Boys)
- “California Dreamin’” (Mamas & Papas)
- “Georgia on My Mind” (Ray Charles)
- “Midnight Train to Georgia” (Gladys Night & The Pips)
- “Devil Went Down to Georgia” (Charlie Daniels Band)
- “Carolina in My Mind” (James Taylor)
- “Hawaii 5-0” (TV series theme)
What’s with California and Georgia? Still… “Hawaii 5-0”… that might actually be the best one.
Category #2: Best City Songs
- “Sweet Home Chicago” (Blues Brothers)
- “Leaving Las Vegas” (Sheryl Crow)
- “Tupelo Honey” (Van Morrison)
- “Omaha” (Counting Crows)
- “New York State of Mind” (Billy Joel)
- “Hollywood Nights” (Bob Seger)
- “Walking in Memphis” (Marc Cohn)
- “Philadelphia Freedom” (Elton John)
- “Streets of Philadelphia” (Bruce Springsteen)
- “I Love L.A.” (Randy Newman)
Honorable mention here to The Beatles (“Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey”), The Doors (“L.A. Woman”) and the immortal Paper Lace (“The Night Chicago Died”).
Category #3: Classics
- “New York, New York” (Frank Sinatra)
- “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” (Tony Bennett)
- “Viva Las Vegas” (Elvis Presley)
- “City of New Orleans” (Steve Goodman)
- “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena” (Jan & Dean)
- “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” (Dionne Warwick)
- “Oklahoma” (Howard Keel)
- “Tennessee Waltz” (Patti Page)
- “Deep in the Heart of Texas” (Duane Eddy)
- “My Old Kentucky Home” (Paul Robeson version)
Am I missing anything? Speaking of “New York, New York,” here’s a photo of the New York City skyline… Okay, it’s actually the Legoland version (pretty realistic, huh?):
Posted: November 14, 2008 2:25 AM | Posted By:
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I just got back from a quick two-night trip to Las Vegas, a belated 40th birthday weekend with an old friend. I didn’t get much sleep (I swear I think they pump caffeinated oxygen into the casinos), and I didn’t have much luck at the tables. So I came home tired and lighter in the wallet, but I also returned with an even greater appreciation for traveling in a house on wheels.
You see, on this short excursion to Sin City, I traveled by airplane from my home on California’s Monterey Peninsula. Back in early August, I had stopped in Las Vegas during the annual Herzog summer RV journey. Yes, one was an adult trip, and the other was a family visit. So in that sense, we’re talking apples and oranges. But in terms of travel and lodging, I was able to compare the two experiences only a few months apart.
And there really is no comparison.
Consider my flight to Vegas: This meant a 15-minute drive to a bus stop, a 90-minute shuttle bus to San Jose’s airport, a 90-minute wait at the gate (because you can’t dictate shuttle bus times), then a 90-minute flight to Vegas, during which I was offered a small drink and a pack of peanuts the size of a credit card. It took another 45 minutes to get my luggage and take a cab to my hotel-casino. So all in all, it took about five-and-a-half hours for me to go door to door.
None of it was comfortable. All of it was on someone else’s schedule. And the travel alone cost me about $300. But for about the same price (in gas) and only a few hours more travel time, I could have driven an RV to Las Vegas.
I could have embarked without having to check my luggage or show my boarding pass or remove my shoes or pass through a metal detector. I could have listened to whatever music I wanted along the way, rather than the conversation of the loud-talker who sat in the seat behind me. I could have packed my favorite meals and snacks, rather than overpaying for an airport sandwich and subsisting on half a can of soda and a smidgen of peanuts. I could have savored the scenery along the way through a massive windshield, instead of leaning from my aisle seat to catch a glimpse of the tops of clouds through a tiny window with its shade half-pulled.
And that’s not even the most significant difference. The big distinction happens once you get there.
This time around, I stayed in a hotel-casino along The Strip – not one of the highest end ones, but certainly a nice one that any Vegas visitor would know. In August, on the other hand, we stayed at an RV park right off The Strip – enjoying the comforts of home (on wheels) at a much more reasonable price. We had a refrigerator stocked with food – our own version of an all-you-can-eat buffet. We slept in our own beds with our own pillows and our own blankets and comforters, rather than trying to get used to what the hotel offered. We were able to gauge the air-conditioning easily, rather than trying to estimate what combination of fan speed and temperature would translate into an acceptable in-room climate (I never did figure it out). We enjoyed the usual quiet serenity of a campground, as opposed to the late-night door slams and drunken revelries that constitute the typical Vegas hotel experience.
Oh, and we didn’t have to repress the understanding that some stranger had just been in that space only a few hours earlier. Put it this way, the first time I stepped into the hotel shower, I noticed a pile of ashes in the soap dish. Apparently, somebody likes a cigar with his Selsun Blue.
Don’t get me wrong. I always enjoy Las Vegas. But next time around, the odds are pretty good that I’ll be doing it RV-style.
Here’s a pic of me pondering the meaning of life above The Strip. Or maybe I’m wondering why my pockets feel so empty.
Posted: November 10, 2008 2:03 AM | Posted By:
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It’s Election Day. Don’t forget to vote. And whomever you’re voting for, I hope you’re doing so with informed enthusiasm.
I always find this day thrilling. I’ll be watching the TV coverage well into the night. But what always bothers me about Election Day is the way America is conveniently categorized into red states and blue states. Yes, it’s the way the electoral college works, but wow does it oversimplify a much more complex and diverse political scene than we’re led to believe. I mean, I have friends in California who are ardently conservative. And I have friends in Georgia who are proudly progressive. But you wouldn’t really get a sense of that when Wolf Blitzer paints California blue and Georgia red.
That’s another huge benefit I’ve received from my RV journeys – an understanding of the origins of people’s political preferences, a greater sense of the mixed bag of attitudes in each state and certainly a realization that the old maxim is true: All politics is local.
Ironically, I learned this last lesson in Rome and Athens. That’s Rome, Oregon. And Athens, New York.
In Rome, a tiny settlement (population 29) in southeastern Oregon, I sat down with a couple who had spent their lives struggling to maintain their cattle ranch along the Owyhee River. They explained to me, stridently but soberly, how environmentalists in far off cities were bringing lawsuits to close the river corridor to cattle grazing, essentially telling them how to protect a river that they let their kids swim in and that their families have ranched alongside since 1913.
“We’ve been using it a hundred years, and it’s still pristine,” they said. “So who are they saving it from?”
On the other hand, on that same RV expedition a few years ago, I spent some time in Athens, a charming town along a section of the Hudson River so breathtaking in its natural beauty that it spawned the Hudson River School of landscape painters. There I met a woman who had taken a year off from work to fight a corporate giant. She was trying to stop the construction of a massive power plant that would occupy twenty acres near the river, including three 180-foot smokestacks and a four-million-gallon oil storage tank.
“We’re two hours and fifteen minutes from one of the biggest cities in the world, and here we are on the Hudson River, looking at essentially the same view that painters in the nineteenth century saw,” she told me. “If you have something like that, why not hold on to it while you can?”
So there you have it: Two divergent views on the best way to protect our waterways. And you know what? In many respects, they’re both right. But you only really learn those lessons if you go there and see it and hear it for yourself.
I take lessons like that home with me from the road, and I’m confident that in the long run my sons will, too. Someday, it will serve them well. In fact, here’s a photo of Jesse at Presidents Park in the Black Hills region of South Dakota:
Posted: November 4, 2008 4:28 PM | Posted By:
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