Location, location, location.
I’ve always been a fan of location listening. Standing on a bridge over the railway at Macclesfield station, the sound of Joy Division just seemed right, it matched the rise and fall of the hills, the left-over Victorian industrial buildings and repeated rows of suburban houses. Driving up the motorway to Birmingham with Black Sabbath in the tape deck fitted in the same way, the music seeming to grow from the concrete tangle of Spaghetti Junction, the factories and the spitting grey rain. The Libertines got a free pass from me for this reason; I’m not the biggest Libs fan, to put it mildly, but I first heard ‘Up The Bracket’ on a London bus going down the Caledonian Road. It was easy to spot several likely candidates for the shadowy “two men on the Cally Road.” It captured the seedy, run-down atmosphere of that stretch of north London and made me feel warmer towards the song.
London has been my home for nearly eight years now and songs are woven throughout the city. It’s impossible to walk down Brixton’s Electric Avenue – there’s always Eddy Grant in your head reminding you that the correct way to move along that particular street is to “rock on through.” Changing tube trains at Baker Street is always accompanied by a mental blast of Gerry Rafferty. You can be lost on the Westway with Blur, have an entry level job in The City with The Rakes or hang out with “the hippies and the punks and the goths” with Carter USM in New Cross. I used to live on the Holloway Road, you couldn’t go out for a pint of milk without running into the band who took their name from the area. I’ve drunk in the pub on the front of The Kinks’ ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ and, looking at the view from a friend’s Archway flat, quoted Saint Etienne’s ‘Archway People:’ “there’s some nice parts of London. You can see them from here.”
Saint Etienne are devoted to the city, cataloguing its psychogeography like musical Iain Sinclairs. From songs about out-of-the-way cafes to ‘Tales From Turnpike House’ a concept album about an entire Islington tower block, the band revel in their sense of place. ‘Finisterre’ was the soundtrack to a film, a day in the life of London. They shaped my mental images of London before I moved here and in many ways their view of the city is still one I share.
By contrast Bloc Party, who grew up in South London and sound very London, seem to be in revolt against their roots, seeing bars awash with cocaine and railing against hipster areas saying “east London is a vampire. It sucks the life right out of me.” But the pull of the city, even the areas they disparage, is too great. ‘Hunting For Witches’ deals with the fallout of the 2005 London bombings, even name-checking specific bus routes.
Music adds an extra layer to a place, tracing over the landmarks like an aural and emotional version of the extensions on Google Maps. This is my city, what about yours?
Reading.
Gets rhymed with ‘dreading’ by Robyn Hitchcock.
http://www.emusic.com/samples/m3u/song/11093320/15863244.m3u
Thanks for another good post too. You never seem to get many comments but I always enjoy your stuff here.
Thanks Xtrev - that’s always good to hear.
Funny you should mention this. I have kind of the same thing going on in my own head, having nothing to do with the location nor the music itself.
There’s a particular curve in the road on the route to my mother’s house that reminds me of Metallica’s “(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”. For no other reason than I heard that song while rounding that turn once, and now it’s stuck there. No matter what else I may be listening to when I drive that road, Cliff Burton’s bass is there to welcome me.
A lovely idea for a post, Anna! I used to have a mix dedicated to my home state of Iowa, but it was nowhere near as interesting or thought out.
Radiohead’s “Kid A” always comes first to mind when I think of album “locations.” I got it the day it was released, but didn’t listen to it until the next night due to other plans I had the night I bought it. The next night, I drove around the outskirts (deep, dark country roads) of college smalltown Mississippi. I popped the disc in once I had escaped any realm of town light — on some rickety old two lane (but with no painted lines) back road that was littered with bridges with no guard rails. The sounds just creeped into my brain as I drove alone down those roads, and I can’t put my finger on the feeling it created, but it’s eerie and fantastic at the same time. But now, every time the opening chords to “Everything In Its Right Place” starts, I am instantly transported to that ride in the country.
It just seemed so juxtaposed: an album that people find so significant culturally, historically and musically… Listening to it driving down nothing roads in a small town that seems so insignificant. I liked that. It elevated the album to new levels, and at the same time grounded it to a reality that, hey, in the grand scheme of things, the music really meant nothing at all.
I wonder what it would be like to hear such songs in my mind every time I walk around in the city. some places are like that I suppose and it is part of their charm.
Thanks for the post it is a nice one.