…For It Was Brooklyn Bound

Years ago, when I was programming music for my college radio station, I came up with an idea for a radio music show. The show would be a block of songs that all have an obscure theme or bizarre cliche. I never made this show, but I still put together themed playlists whenever I get a good idea. Some of my favorites are:

• Songs that start with countoffs
• Songs that start with countoffs that aren’t in 4/4 time
• Rock songs in 3/4 time
• Songs with drum tracks in reverse
• Songs released before 9/11 with singers calling themselves terrorists
• Songs about writing songs
• Songs with references to bands playing other songs
• Songs with false starts: the band starts playing, stops, acknowledges a mistake, and starts over.
• Songs that mention sodas that aren’t name-brand (Orange Crush alone gets 4 or 5 shout-outs)
• Songs about train accidents

This last list, combined with a recent revisit of the Robert Moses biography got me working on songs about public transportation in cities. There are so many New York singers who mention the subway that I decided to exclude passing references (Dylan’s “Girls” who “Whisper of escapades out on the D train”) to subways or buses. I kept songs with public transportation references that are crucial to the plot or overall tune. (For example, Cloud Room’s Hey Now Now made the list. It isn’t about riding the bus, but a bus figures into the title reference in the chorus. “Hey now now/we’re going downtown/we’ll take the bus there/pay the bus fare.” I kept it on the list.)

Two of the standouts, though, take a stand against some part of public transit. They’re also both parodies.

The first is Charlie on the MTA. While the folk tradition allows borrowed melodies, this song reworks The Ship That Never Returned to take a jab at Boston’s complicated MTA schedule and payment rules. The last verse is a direct political appeal, too.

Here’s Brian Dewan singing it:

The second song is a more outright parody. It’s Dave Van Ronk’s Georgie on the IRT. This is a parody of Engine 143 — a violent train death song popularized by The Carter Family.

This exploration into song themes led to a fascination with pre-rock songs that address municipal concerns. Brian Dewan (who performed Charlie on the MTA in the video above) started an archiving project of sorts for these songs a few years ago. His album Words of Wisdom is a collection of largely-forgotton parlor ditties from before 1950. One of the tracks, Civil War, is about a fight over sewer lines in a small town.

So the purpose of this post is…

1. To point out an interested trend in popular music.
2. To ask: Does anyone know of any other sources for songs like this?
3. To also ask: Are there any other sources for music sorted by theme online? (Yes, I’m aware of Bob Dylan’s satellite radio show)