Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Place Names in Rock Lyrics: Rock'n Me

In this feature, we've previously done Sweet Little SixteenDancing in the Streets, and Night Train. Tonight, as promised, we'll balance out the East Coast-centric Night Train with a song with lots of West Coast cities. The song is Rock'n Me, released in 1976 by the Steve Miller Band.

The second verse contains the sort of city list we're looking for:

I went from Phoenix, Arizona
All the way to Tacoma
Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.
Northern California where the girls are warm
So I could be with my sweet baby, yeah

Are the girls especially warm in northern California? We'll take Steve's word on it. That verse is followed by the chorus:

Keep on a rock'n me baby
Keep on a rock'n me baby
Keep on a rock'n me baby
Keep on a rock'n me baby
Baby, baby, baby
Keep on rock'n
Rock'n me baby
Keep on a rock'n
Rock'n me baby

Okay, not a real intellectual song, but it's fun to listen to and sing along with. The second verse is repeated again later, with no change in the city list. So here are the cities we have in this song:

Atlanta
Los Angeles
northern California
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Tacoma

_________________________________________________________________________
And after four songs, here's our master list.

Notes: Philadelphia is the only city mentioned in every song so far. Is Philly as especially musical city? Rock musicians seem to think so. I think the biggest cities we haven't heard from yet are Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Houston, and Seattle (but we do have Tacoma!).

Atlanta x2
Baltimore x2
(northern) California
Chicago
Detroit
Los Angeles x2
Miami
New Orleans x3
New York City x2
Philadelphia x4
Phoenix
Pittsburgh
Raleigh
Richmond
San Francisco
St. Louis
Tacoma
(heart of) Texas
Washington, DC x2

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