Today for the first time in a while I listened to the song Wanted Man from the Johnny Cash live at San Quentin album. The song basically lists a load of places in America down to Mexico.
In American music but especially in country music there’s a lot of name checking of places and it got me thinking that if the narrative of Wanted Man was set in England it just wouldn’t.
Wanted man in Peterborough
Wanted man in Birmingham
Wanted man in Northampton
Wanted man in Chelmsford.
Or if The Rolling Stones in the song Jumping Jack Flash sang, “Sold it in a market down in Southampton.” It doesn’t really work for me. Maybe it’s because these provincial English towns don’t have the same romanticism as the American places. Maybe an American would feel more for a song that did name check Northampton? Maybe but I can’t see it.
Maybe it’s because of the vast size of America. So maybe if the song was wrote from an English prospective to work it would have to branch out to Europe and go something like:
Wanted man in Scandinavia
Wanted man in Portugal
Wanted man in the Low Lands
Wanted man in Germany.
Even highways in America get romanticised. The wide open roads through the desert, up through the mountains, along the river. I doubt the song Route 66 would sound as good as it does if it went. “Get your kicks out on the A12.”
But then later I heard another song that I hadn’t heard for some time from the Leeds band The Mekons where there’s a line that goes, “I'm going up to Sheffield I don't know when I'm coming home.” And that works fine.
And of course songs mentioning London work. But if The Clash wrote a song called Middlesbrough Calling then I very much doubt it would be as iconic.
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