coolrun
April 6th, 2004, 08:22 AM
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Concrete jungle
By DAVID HINCKLEY
Tuesday, April 6th, 2004
It ain't nothing but a concrete jungle
With people packed like sardines
Where everybody's tryin' to live
Beyond their means
Where all the natives hurry and scurry
To and fro
And like fleas on a puppy dog
They got no place to go
I wouldn't live in New York City
If they gave me the whole dang town
Buck Owens, "I Wouldn't Live In New York City," 1970
Yessirreebob, it sure sounds like when Ol' Buck wrote that little ditty, he couldn't get back to Bakersfield fast enough to suit his lonesome country heart.
But then, Buck wasn't the first songwriter to get annoyed with New York. Or the first out-of-towner who couldn't wait to get back out of town.
A lot of people just don't like New York. Even some folks who do have their moments when they find it hard to take.
So it's no surprise that some of those sentiments have worked themselves into songs.
A half dozen or more rock bands have recorded different songs titled "I Hate New York," including Mikey Wilde and the Mess, Blue Mercedes and Flowers in the Attic. Ann Jillian sang an "I Hate New York" song on Broadway, and Hank Williams Jr. sang one for all his rowdy friends. The difference between Ann and Hank is that only one meant it.
Randy Newman addressed New York in "I Love L.A.," doubtless showing the same sincerity with which he addressed short people.
Hate New York City
It's cold and it's damp
And all the people dressed like monkeys ...
He's got a companion piece in Billy Joel's "Miami 2017," which jokes about the day New York becomes obsolete:
They said that Queens could stay
And blew the Bronx away
And sank Manhattan out to sea ...
Friends of New York who have preserved petulant moments in song include a young Stephen Sondheim ("That Kind of Neighborhood"), cabaret singer Portia Nelson ("Love Hate New York") and Irving Berlin, a New York lifer who still found time to write "Manhattan Madness" for the 1932 show "Face the Music":
Whistles and bells and siren horns blowing
Pistols that crack and roar
Traffic that stops and goes without knowing
What's all the shooting for
And Rodgers and Hart, also big New York fans, wrote "Manhattan Melodrama" in 1934:
You gulp your coffee and run
Into the subway you crowd
Don't breathe - It isn't allowed
While that song was a flop, it wasn't a total loss. The melody was later recycled into a number called "Blue Moon."
But the good-natured joshing of friends is different from the songs that suggest New York is just too big, too overwhelming, too scary. Charles Harris, who got rich from late 19th century musical melodramas, scored again in 1910 with "In the City Where Nobody Cares," the tale of, naturally, a poor abandoned damsel:
But one walked alone
In the bright streets so gay
With all of its pitfalls and snares
Just a little white girl
On the Great White Way
In the city where nobody cares
She may still have been better off than the subject of "New York Tears," a catchy, little ditty published anonymously in 1910:
A man leaves home healthy
He runs to look for work to seek his fortune
A car comes and cuts him up quickly
They bring him home dead
Country music, not surprisingly, has been dismissing the big city ever since Jimmie Rodgers, the first big country star, sang, "I'm growing tired of the big city lights /Tired of the glamour, tired of the sights ..."
In more modern times, Bill Anderson's "City Lights" became a country classic:
A bright array of city lights
As far as I can see
The Great White Way shines through the night
For lonely guys like me ...
But I just can't say 'I love you'
To a street of city lights
For the record, Buck Owens would later say he doesn't really hate New York – just the cab driver who was supposed to take Buck and his Buckaroos from the airport to midtown, then carted them clear across the island into Jersey.
"It was the cab ride from hell," said Owens. "The song was my payback. Other than that, I kinda like New York."
One of the funniest musical swipes at the city came from a Minnesota kid who blew in around 1961 and wrote a Woody Guthrie-style tune called "Hard Times In New York Town."
Old New York City is a friendly old town
From Washington Heights to Harlem on down
There's a mighty many people
All millin' all around
They'll kick you when you're up
They'll knock you when you're down
Bob Dylan eventually warmed up to New York. For a November 2001 concert at Madison Square Garden, he dusted off "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," a metaphoric travelogue of troubles and betrayal whose closing line is
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough.
After a long standing ovation, Dylan said, "Nobody has to tell me how I feel about this city."
Concrete jungle
By DAVID HINCKLEY
Tuesday, April 6th, 2004
It ain't nothing but a concrete jungle
With people packed like sardines
Where everybody's tryin' to live
Beyond their means
Where all the natives hurry and scurry
To and fro
And like fleas on a puppy dog
They got no place to go
I wouldn't live in New York City
If they gave me the whole dang town
Buck Owens, "I Wouldn't Live In New York City," 1970
Yessirreebob, it sure sounds like when Ol' Buck wrote that little ditty, he couldn't get back to Bakersfield fast enough to suit his lonesome country heart.
But then, Buck wasn't the first songwriter to get annoyed with New York. Or the first out-of-towner who couldn't wait to get back out of town.
A lot of people just don't like New York. Even some folks who do have their moments when they find it hard to take.
So it's no surprise that some of those sentiments have worked themselves into songs.
A half dozen or more rock bands have recorded different songs titled "I Hate New York," including Mikey Wilde and the Mess, Blue Mercedes and Flowers in the Attic. Ann Jillian sang an "I Hate New York" song on Broadway, and Hank Williams Jr. sang one for all his rowdy friends. The difference between Ann and Hank is that only one meant it.
Randy Newman addressed New York in "I Love L.A.," doubtless showing the same sincerity with which he addressed short people.
Hate New York City
It's cold and it's damp
And all the people dressed like monkeys ...
He's got a companion piece in Billy Joel's "Miami 2017," which jokes about the day New York becomes obsolete:
They said that Queens could stay
And blew the Bronx away
And sank Manhattan out to sea ...
Friends of New York who have preserved petulant moments in song include a young Stephen Sondheim ("That Kind of Neighborhood"), cabaret singer Portia Nelson ("Love Hate New York") and Irving Berlin, a New York lifer who still found time to write "Manhattan Madness" for the 1932 show "Face the Music":
Whistles and bells and siren horns blowing
Pistols that crack and roar
Traffic that stops and goes without knowing
What's all the shooting for
And Rodgers and Hart, also big New York fans, wrote "Manhattan Melodrama" in 1934:
You gulp your coffee and run
Into the subway you crowd
Don't breathe - It isn't allowed
While that song was a flop, it wasn't a total loss. The melody was later recycled into a number called "Blue Moon."
But the good-natured joshing of friends is different from the songs that suggest New York is just too big, too overwhelming, too scary. Charles Harris, who got rich from late 19th century musical melodramas, scored again in 1910 with "In the City Where Nobody Cares," the tale of, naturally, a poor abandoned damsel:
But one walked alone
In the bright streets so gay
With all of its pitfalls and snares
Just a little white girl
On the Great White Way
In the city where nobody cares
She may still have been better off than the subject of "New York Tears," a catchy, little ditty published anonymously in 1910:
A man leaves home healthy
He runs to look for work to seek his fortune
A car comes and cuts him up quickly
They bring him home dead
Country music, not surprisingly, has been dismissing the big city ever since Jimmie Rodgers, the first big country star, sang, "I'm growing tired of the big city lights /Tired of the glamour, tired of the sights ..."
In more modern times, Bill Anderson's "City Lights" became a country classic:
A bright array of city lights
As far as I can see
The Great White Way shines through the night
For lonely guys like me ...
But I just can't say 'I love you'
To a street of city lights
For the record, Buck Owens would later say he doesn't really hate New York – just the cab driver who was supposed to take Buck and his Buckaroos from the airport to midtown, then carted them clear across the island into Jersey.
"It was the cab ride from hell," said Owens. "The song was my payback. Other than that, I kinda like New York."
One of the funniest musical swipes at the city came from a Minnesota kid who blew in around 1961 and wrote a Woody Guthrie-style tune called "Hard Times In New York Town."
Old New York City is a friendly old town
From Washington Heights to Harlem on down
There's a mighty many people
All millin' all around
They'll kick you when you're up
They'll knock you when you're down
Bob Dylan eventually warmed up to New York. For a November 2001 concert at Madison Square Garden, he dusted off "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," a metaphoric travelogue of troubles and betrayal whose closing line is
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough.
After a long standing ovation, Dylan said, "Nobody has to tell me how I feel about this city."