Calling London

[f4f3]

So far the playlist looks like this - I'm sure I'm missing some Del Amitri and Deacon Blue though... More suggestions welcome...

London Calling The Clash
Werewolves of London Warren Zevon
Going Underground The Jam
Town Called Malice The Jam
Carnaby Street The Jam
Chelsea Girl Simple Minds
(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea Elvis Costello
19th Nervous Breakdown The Rolling Stones
Cool For Cats Squeeze
Money (That's What I Want) The Beatles
Dirty Old Town The Pogues
A Rainy Night In Soho The Pogues
Mornington Crescent Belle & Sebastian
Oxford Street Everything But The Girl
This City Never Sleeps Eurythmics
Baker Street Gerry Rafferty
Last Train To London Electric Light Orchestra
London's Burning The Clash
Caledonia Frankie Miller

Comments

[morgaine-x.livejournal.com]

Dire Straits - Portobello Belle
Squeeze - Up the Junction?

(not very similar there...)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Dire Straits "Thinking about the lions" would be good if I've got it, and some Ian Dury must go on. UTJ was elbowed out for the same reason as "Down in the tube station at midnight" - it depresses the hell out of me.

[morgaine-x.livejournal.com]

Valid reason.

Ian Dury, indeed. Whatever you choose, it's a sound of London, I guess!

Dusty Springfield "Don't Sleep in the Subway"?

Some punk? All those London postcards...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Punk - good idea, but I don't want Sham 69 for ideological reasons... hmm, the Pistols probably.

And if I went for Dusty it would have to be "Downtown"

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Ian Dury is Essex, not London, surely...

There must be loads of Costello - I can't think how I missed him.

And happy Squeeze? Though I can't actually think of any!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Cool for Cats was the closest I could come up with - "The Sweeney's doin' 90 'cos they've got the word to go"

Isn't London in Essex? It's all the South East as far as I'm concerned.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Noooo! London is actually in Middlesex - hence the Middlesex Cricket Club is based at Lords.

Middlesex doesn't really exist now.

Essex is out east, stuck between London and Suffolk.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

And yet somehow, I can't bring myself to care...

[deililly.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_about_London

This amused me today...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Oh! That must be cheating (but I'm going to look anyway)

[deililly.livejournal.com]

It is too important a question not to :P

[pshtaku.livejournal.com]

Hmm - and Get Outta London by Aztec Camera! Excellent!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

The best of AC has disapeared from my library! Boo!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Bad writers plagiarise, great writers steal.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I looked and I stole. I still can't figure out why "Sweet Thing" by Van the Man makes it in, but I love the song, so in it goes.

[pshtaku.livejournal.com]

Deacon Blue - Circus Lights (about Oxford Circus)
Deacon Blue - Everytime you Sleep (about commuting in London)

Can't think of any Dels tracks...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

So Circus Lights isn't the one about the Glasgow Circus? Of course not, that's "Christmas in Glasgow". I like Everytime you Sleep, too.
What about "Nothing Ever Happens?"

[deililly.livejournal.com]

That can't be London! :P I wonder if it is based on Arse End? (claim to fame: My old art teacher was the father of the Del's keyboardist)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Justin closed the Blazing Fiddles concert last month with it, and I've always thought of it as a young man stuck in London, miles from home. I could be imagining that, of course.

[deililly.livejournal.com]

Funny that. It was always the other way round in my head. To me they were trying to leave home.

[pshtaku.livejournal.com]

That could be anywhere and everywhere...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Why aren't you playing golf?

[pshtaku.livejournal.com]

I'm too cold. I know that's wierd, but I couldn't get warmed up when I got home, so I'm wrapped up on the sofa with a blanket...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

A fair decision: I'm watching the biggest raindrops ever hit the canal.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Bet the canal's still winning.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Only up to a point.

[pshtaku.livejournal.com]

Also - Orphans was written about the experience on the train home from London, after the annual Eng v Sco football game at Wembley...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Can't listen to it now because I'm readding all the stuff I lost...

[pshtaku.livejournal.com]

Ricky Ross London Comes Alive
"Originally I wanted to write an album of songs for my friends. I also wanted to put things down which wouldn't get left until after people died. I'd spent so much time talking about my late father I thought it wrong I hadn't written something for my mother. So here it is. Inspired by a rail journey into London one July morning in 1999 as I came into London and realised how beautiful and exciting it is as you get close and closer to the centre."

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Aw...

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I might be being very stupid, but I don't quite understand why Caledonia is on the London play list.

Although obviously I approve of it, because the artist is called Frankie.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

You missed the earlier comment: it was used for an advert with a homesick scot quitting London for the High Road back home - it can still make me well up just thinking about it.

And get K to phone me: does he EVER check his messages?

[pshtaku.livejournal.com]

And - what's the result for tomorrow?

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

You are king of the world and K and I will have steak baguettes.

[(Anonymous)]

I'll trade you a suggestion ('Ghosts Of cable Street' -- The men They Couldn't hang) for a pedantry ('Dirty Old Town' is about Salford, Ewan MacColl's hometown.)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

See, I thought that too - but I bowed to the populists.

[eidechsenengel.livejournal.com]

Loooove the Eurythmics!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

It's a very spooky track, lots of clanking trains (or chains?). Might not be specifically London, but it always makes me think of lying awake in airport hotels...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

For Ian Dury, how about Kilburn and the High Roads?

And Lloyd Cole: "Charlotte Street" is in Fitzrovia, the area west of Tottentham Court Road. (Although there may be one in Glasgow, Manchester, wherever, too!)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I always think of Charlotte Street as being in Glasgow - since we have a Charlotte Street (Girls) School.