Place Names in Rock Lyrics: Back in the USSR

For this feature we've previously done Sweet Little Sixteen, Dancing in the Streets, Night Train, Rock'n Me, Pop Muzik, Girls, Girls, Girls, Fire Down Below, Truckin', Everywhere That I'm Not, Mess Around, and Back in the USA.

Our song today is Back in the USSR by the Beatles. It was released as a song on their White Album, obviously as a parody of the last song we did, Back in the USA, although there are also lyrical allusions to the Beach Boys' California Girls. It was not released as a single at the time except in Scandinavia, but it's always gotten plenty of airplay on AOR/classic rock stations.

One interesting thing is Ringo had quit the Beatles temporarily during the recording of the White Album, so Paul actually plays drums on this song.

Here's the first verse:

Oh, flew in from Miami Beach B.O.A.C.
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boy
Back in the U.S.S.R. (Yeah)
And here's the bridge a little later in the song:

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind

Note the allusion to Ray Charles's Georgia on My Mind in that last line.

Here's the final verse. No cities in this one, I just think it's funny:

Oh, show me around your snow-peaked mountains way down south
Take me to your daddy's farm
Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out
Come and keep your comrade warm
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
Hey you don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.

So the cities and places in this song are:
Georgia (country, then part of the USSR, not the US state)
Miami Beach (a suburb of Miami)
Moscow
Ukraine

_______________________________________________________________________

And here's the master list:

Notes: The cities that has been mentioned most often is New York, with Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Philadelphia tied for second. The biggest cities we haven't heard from yet, at least in the United States, are Cleveland, Kansas City, and Seattle. Also surprising to me is that Memphis hasn't yet appeared on the list.

Atlanta x3

Baltimore x3
Baton Rouge
Boston
Buffalo
California

--(northern) California
--(coast of) California
Chattanooga

Chicago x3
Dallas
Delaware (Bay)

Detroit x3

Ft. Lauderdale
Georgia (country)
Houston
Las Vegas

London

Los Angeles x4

Miami
--Miami Beach
Moline
Moscow

Munich

New Orleans x4

New York City x6
--Queens
Nova Scotia

Paris x2

Philadelphia x4

Phoenix

Pittsburgh

Raleigh

Richmond

San Francisco
--Berkeley

St. Louis x3

Tacoma

(heart of) Texas
Tokyo
Ukraine

Vancouver

Washington, DC x2

Place Names in Rock Lyrics: Back in the USA

For this feature we've previously done Sweet Little Sixteen, Dancing in the Streets, Night Train, Rock'n Me, Pop Muzik, Girls, Girls, Girls, Fire Down Below, Truckin', and Everywhere That I'm Not, and Mess Around.

Tonight's song is Back in the U.S.A., by Chuck Berry, the second song by Chuck Berry we've done. (The first was Sweet Little Sixteen.) I guess Chuck was big on places, maybe a result of his extensive touring. The song hit #37 for him in 1959 and Linda Ronstadt did a cover version that hit #16 in 1978. It's also the first of several America-themed songs we'll do.

Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today,
We touched ground on an international runway
Jet propelled back home, from over the seas to the U. S. A.

New York, Los Angeles, oh, how I yearned for you
Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge
Let alone just to be at my home back in ol' St. Lou.

Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway?
From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay
You can bet your life I did, till I got back to the U. S. A.

Looking hard for a drive-in, searching for a corner café
Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day
Yeah, and a juke-box jumping with records like in the U.S.A.

I really like these lyrics. Very picturesque!

So the cities and places in this song are
Baton Rouge
(coast of) California
Chattanooga
Chicago
Delaware (Bay)
Detroit
Los Angeles
New York
St. Louis

Baton Rouge and Chattanooga appear here for the first time.

_______________________________________________________________________

And here's the master list:

Notes: The cities that has been mentioned most often is New York, with Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Philadelphia tied for second. The biggest cities we haven't heard from yet, at least in the United States, are Cleveland, Kansas City, and Seattle. Also surprising to me is that Memphis hasn't yet appeared on the list.

Atlanta x3

Baltimore x3
Baton Rouge
Boston
Buffalo
California

--(northern) California
--(coast of) California
Chattanooga

Chicago x3
Dallas
Delaware (Bay)

Detroit x3

Ft. Lauderdale
Houston
Las Vegas

London

Los Angeles x4

Miami
Moline

Munich

New Orleans x4

New York City x6
--Queens
Nova Scotia

Paris x2

Philadelphia x4

Phoenix

Pittsburgh

Raleigh

Richmond

San Francisco
--Berkeley

St. Louis x3

Tacoma

(heart of) Texas
Tokyo

Vancouver

Washington, DC x2

Ranking the Man With the Golden Gun

I previously ranked some of the James Bond movies here and here. Last week my son and I saw The Man With the Golden Gun, from 1974 and starring Roger Moore as Bond and Christopher Lee as the villain Scaramanga, an assassin who uses a golden gun. Even though the gun is only capable of firing one (golden) bullet at a time, Scaramanga is such a skillful marksman that he always kills his target. We've been seeing a lot of the classic Bonds, so this is the first I have seen with my son that was really bad.

Since the Bond movies are formulaic and their quality is based on how well they fulfill the formula, I created a little rubric to rank the Bond movies, with several categories a movie can get points in. I'm going to adjust the scoring system slightly here, awarding 2 points if the movie is one of the top 3 Bond movies for a category, and 1 point if it's in the top 7 (changed from the top 6). Here are the criteria, with a maximum of 14 points available:

Story/Plot--2 points--Is the plot coherent and logical? Are the stakes high?  (2 points, top 3; 1 point, top 7)

Action--2 points--Are the stunts exciting? The car chases thrilling?  (2 points, top 3; 1 point, top 7)

Villain--2 points--What's a Bond movie without dastardly villains and their henchmen? (2 points, top 3; 1 point, top 7)

Setting--2 points--The Bond movies are all about exotic locations. (2 points, top 3; 1 point, top 7)

Gadgets, Vehicles, Lairs--2 points--What's the cool stuff?  (2 points, top 3; 1 point, top 7)

Bond girls--2 points--The ladies, oh yes, the ladies. (2 points, top 3; 1 point, top 7)

Sean Connery or Daniel Craig?--1 point--These are the best Bonds (no need to debate) and get an automatic extra point if appearing in the film.

Musical theme--1 point if in the top 5

The Man With the Golden Gun
Story/Plot--The dialogue in this is terrible, and the stakes are almost comically low. Scaramanga has stolen some sort of device that allows solar power panels to become much more efficient. Why the British Secret Service would care about this is not really clear.  (0 points)
Action--The action scenes are highly implausible without being interesting. (0 points)
Villain--Christopher Lee brings an enthusiasm and energy to his role that I like, and his henchman Nick Nack, a little person played by Herve Villechaize (i.e. Tattoo on Fantasy Island), is sufficiently weird to earn a top 7. (1 point)
Setting--Some decent scenes in Hong Kong and Bangkok and a stunning location on a remote island in the South China Sea. Top 7. (1 point)
Gadgets, Vehicles, Lairs--Scaramanga's cool island mansion/hideout gets points for being, along with the underwater lair in The Spy Who Loved Me and the beach house in Thunderball, one of the villain lairs most people would actually like to have as a real vacation house. Top 7 (1 point)
Bond Girls--Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight is pretty useless, but astoundingly beautiful. Barely makes the top 7. (1 point)
SC or DC? No
Music--This is the worst music of any Bond I have seen so far. It's like they saw that rock music could work as a theme song in Live and Let Die, but decided all rock music sounds the same, so why pay for anything good? (0 points)
Total: 4 points

Rejiggered points for other movies, taking into account current movie and slight change in scoring system:
Thunderball (+1) moves into top 7 for story/plot
Goldfinger (+1) moves into top 7 for action


And, here are the updated results:
1) The Spy Who Loved Me, 12 points
2) Goldfinger (10 points)
3, 4) Casino Royale, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (tied with 9 points)
5, 6) Skyfall, Thunderball (tied with 6 points)
7, 8) Live and Let Die, Spectre tied with 5 points
9) The Man With the Golden Gun (4 points)