Pennsylvania

Ah Pennsylvania, home of Quakers, Rocky, and a baseball team that is currently surgically removing my heart, throwing batteries at it, booing it, turning on it because it's an african american, and leaving it for the vultures (Eagles). Needless to say, it took lots of restraint and artistic integrity to keep me from just filling this list with a bunch of weak ass Carly Simon songs. I DID manage to overcome my rage to put together 16 songs meant to progress from Philly westward.

1) The Roots - Essaywhuman??!!!???!
Has any band ever been more quintessentially Philly than the Roots? This early track from their 1996 album "Do You Want More?" has everything you want from the most creative force in hip hop and one of those bands that just about everyone loves. Instrumental noodling (check out Scott Storch on the keys long before he started crafting WACK beats), Black Thought spitting FIRE (the most underrated flow in hip hop), and ?estLove doing what he does. I can't imagine being in Phila... err... Illadelphia and NOT listening to the Roots

2)The Delfonics - Didn't I Blow Your Mind
Motown and Staxx get about 99.9% of the critical love for great soul music but Philly's soul tradition is easily on par with those locales if not in terms of quantity than certainly in terms of quality. Philly soul has its own distinct sound that separates it from its counterparts. Raw, rough around the edges, and sultry, the Delfonics embody this uniqueness.

3) Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares for Me
Nina Simone is from Philly... she might have the greatest voice of any female vocalist in history. Is any other explanation required? You could listen to this song in a cell in Kandahar and enjoy yourself.

4) Boyz II Men - Motown Philly
So if I ever HAPPEN to find myself on a stoop and/or basketball court in Philadelphia and don't sing this song while doing the Stephanie Tanner dance from the dance recital episode of Full House then my body has been taken over by some sort of pernicious and sinister force. On a personal note, this is one of the first songs I remember TRULY loving. After its feature on Nickelodeon's Top 10 Music countdown and a Charles Barkley montage on NBA Inside Stuff, my Cooleyhighharmony cassette got serious wear and tear as it became the soundtrack to driveway basketball games via my dad's tiny portable radio/cassette player for months.

5) Kanye West ft. Mos Def and Freeway - Two Words
Philadelphia, in my limited experience, is a really quirky city. From the unique Philly accent and the dueling cheesesteak restaurants located literally feet from one another to the type of sports fanbase that creates the need for an in-stadium magistrate to certify arrests, it's one of those cities with an ever so slight leftward tilt. No current Philadelphia artist better encapsulates this than Rocafella Records artist Freeway. His nasally, stacatto, flow toes that line between grating and unique and in "Two Words" it steals the show from two of hip hop music's best M.C.'s.

6) Ween - Freedom of '76
Speaking of weird... try this on for size. Orginial freak folkies Dean and Gene Ween, writers of a song called "Pork Roll, Egg, and Cheese" create a falsetto, blue-eyed soul song about the bicentennial? Sure why not.

7) Standard Fare - Philadelphia
Because I'm saving Springsteen for later and I wanted a song with Philadelphia in the title.

8) Billy Bragg and Wilco - Walt Whitman's Neice
In spite of the fact that I have a deep seated and burning hatred for their athletic teams I really really like the city of Philadelphia... a lot. Any time you enjoy a city, I feel like it's the small things about the city that really push it into rarefied air. For Philly, the fact that there is a bridge named after one of my top 10 all time favorite poets is one of those small things. Also, read this.

9) Drive-by Truckers - Rebels
10) Neil Young - Are You Ready for the Country
My favorite quote about Pennsylvania (yes I have a favorite) is from political strategist James Carville who said of the Keystone State, "It's Philadelphia and Pittsburg with Alabama in between." Whether it's upstate New York, Bakersfield CA, or Harrisburg, PA, rural is rural. Country is country. Do you have to be - as the song suggests - born in Dixie to be a rebel? Not as I understand the word.

11) Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man
First of all, after only a cursory search, I realized that I have a staggering number of songs with "lion" in the title. Why does this one fit so well here? Because I didn't go to college in an actual college town (ahhhh... Williamsburg) the idea of a town that is literally ALL college is very appealing to me. Big ups to Penn State, their awesome nickname, and their awesome football jerseys.

12) Billy Bragg - To Have and to Have Not
13) The Clash - Career Opportunities
My first inclination to represent the unemployment and general reaming central and western PA's economy took during the Reagan years was of course Allentown by Billy Joel. Something has always sort of bothered me about that song though (aside from... well... this guy) and that's the bouncy and jangly pop instrumentals of the bleak portrait of a dying post-industrial town. Billy Bragg's nasally folk snark and The Clash's work much better for me.

14) Bruce Springsteen - Highway Patrolman
So two of the things I love more than anything in the world are music and history. Occasionally, a song will speak so reverently/hauntingly of a historic event that I'll immediately try to educate myself as to said event. I know... I know... Springsteen's reference to the "night of the Johnstown flood" made me seek out all I could find on the historic Johnstown flood. An absolutely staggering event that makes this wikipedia entry WELL worth the read (2,000 people DIED!!!!). What else can you say about Springsteen's work on Nebraska? You'll see when I use what is perhaps the MOST predictable song of this whole project during next week's New Jersey post.

15) Rage Against the Machine - Fistful of Steel
I really... really... really hate the Steelers but I had to give love to such a great sports town. Especially after giving me the gift of my favorite sports memory ever that still makes me get a little teary.


New Jersey's up next... special TWO DISC edition... because I've been informed on... ummmm... several occasions that North Jersey is way different than South Jersey