Listening to Los Angeles: Great Rock Songs about LA

This blog's supposed to be about "Los Angeles," whatever that means. I kind of wrote that little "About this Blog" thing very early one morning, before noon, and I was not yet thinking clearly.

So I wanted to post a list of favorite rock songs about Los Angeles, 'cause that covers two bases at once (music and Los Angeles...come on, guys, try to keep up). And I discovered it was a lot harder than I thought...

I could think of a lot of songs about Los Angeles, but most of them are really stupid.

Allow me to clarify. I'm down on Los Angeles. I've lived here for nearly a decade now, but that's mainly because I'm too lazy to move all my shit to a different city where I don't know any pot dealers. So, I'm receptive to songs that are similarly down on my hometown. However, I understand that it's easy to take cheap shots at LA, and I generally resent East Coast or Midwest singer-songwriters bashing the City of Angels in trite or cliched ways.

Consider, if you will, The Decemberists' "Los Angeles, I'm Yours." It's a funny song and Colin Meloy's a great singer and I really like the band...but it's such a lame critique of LA, once you get past the fancy SAT words. Like, I get why you'd write a line like "oceans garbled vomit on the shores," and it rhymes with "I'm yours..." But it's not really a devastating insult.

Ooooohhhh, the Pacific is a dirty, unswimmable ocean! I knew that. And it really doesn't affect day to day life in the city. To be honest, you could run the entire Pacific Ocean through a Brita, and I'd still probably prefer sitting in my bedroom bitching about rock albums.

Or what about Death Cab For Cutie's truly obnoxious LA takedown, "Why You'd Want to Live Here." Take this excerpt:

I'm in Los Angles today: asked a gas station employee
if he ever had trouble breathing, he said
It varies from season to season, kid.

Hey, screw you, Ben Gibbard, you condescending jagoff!

Do you suppose that story is true? Did he actually drive into a gas station in LA and ask the attendant if he had trouble breathing? I mean, Ben, come on, babe, it's a little pollution. Let's buck up. You'll be back in the woods in a few days. Relax.

Then there's this nugget:

It's a lovely summer's day and I can almost see the skyline through a thickening shroud of egos.
(is this the city of angels or demons?)

You hear that, LA? Your city's not just so smoggy that it compels him to berate innocent gas station employees. It's friggin' full of DEMONS! Ben, please feel free to remain in lively Bellington, WA (now featuring a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf!) for the rest of your natural life. I realize you'll have to pass through LA whenever you want to appear on "The OC," but just keep the windows up in your Prius and you'll probably be alright.

And watch out for demons.

Is any other American city insulted this way so regularly in popular music? Even Detriot has a few songs about how great everything is there. But, no, LA is just a sewer filled with phonies, is that it?

So, anyway, here are some songs that, for me, evoke the rhythms of life in Los Angeles. Or, you know, they have Los Angeles in the title.

Calistan - Frank Black
Well, this song could be about any place in California, really, but it's always felt like LA to me (particularly the line about "Cigarette Butt beach." I'm convinced that the sand at Venice Beach must be, at this point, at least 70% tar. Plus, it's half in Spanish, which automatically makes it more of an "LA" song than anything Ben "Demon Shroud" Gibbard could ever write.

Quotable line about LA: "I took three days to drive down one street..."

L.A. Woman - The Doors
Okay, this one is a total gimme, an obvious choice. Arguably the greatest LA song of all time.

Quotable line about LA: The whole song, but in particular, "Are you a lucky Little Lady in the City of Light, or just another lost angel?"

Cracked Actor - David Bowie
This song's actually about being a drugged-out (and probably gay) Hollywood actor, but, hey, close enough.

Quotable line about LA: "You caught yourself a trick down on Sunset and Vine"

West LA Fadeaway - Grateful Dead
It's about the Chateau Marmont on Sunset, near where I used to work in West Hollywood. The dorky Grateful Dead website I just visited informs me that it's actually about how John Belushi died at the Chateau one night, but it's a bit hard to get that from the actual song itself.

Quotable line about LA: "I met a West LA girl/Already know what I need to know"

Screenwriter's Blues - Soul Coughing
Soul Coughing lead singer M. Doughty lived in LA for a while in a failed attempt to get work as a screenwriter, and he wrote this surreal song about it that's, for me, the most Los Angeles-y song of all time. Check it out on the band's overall excellent first CD Ruby Vroom. Or just download it for free. What do I care?

Quotable line about LA: "We are all, in some way or another going to Reseda someday, to die"



By the way, just to remind everyone of what a trailblazer I am, you should know that there really isn't another list like this on all of the Internets. I know, because I checked, hoping to rip someone else off. But, instead, I actually had to write my own list.

I did find one site, hosted by USC, called "Pop Songs on Los Angeles," but it's not what I consider accurate. It thinks Lou Reed's "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" is about Los Angeles, despite the fact that it namechecks several non-LA cities, and yet doesn't mention LA once. Maybe the "Miami, F-L-A" line threw them off.