Wild In The Streets — 12 Classic New York City Songs.
I grew up in New York City. In the late 70’s Manhattan was a dream come true for an obsessive music fan, and an urban adventurer. Rents were dirt cheap, and you got what you paid for. Filth and decay ruled the day. You stepped out your door, and the cacophony of horn honking, jackhammers, and screeching subway cars greeted your ears as soon as you hit the pavement. It was the kind of place perfectly suited to dusty record stores, dingy rehearsal studios, and disreputable music clubs.
In this city, you had to be loud, or wildly creative, to cut through the clutter. No wonder dark, dank, subterranean clubhouses like CBGB’S, Club 57 and the Mudd Club all thrived in New York. In what other city could you attend a D-Day celebration (“Nuke Em Til They Glow”) one day, then regroup to join the hipsters building models and sniffng glue (“Model World Of Glue”) mid-week, and finish up your club crawl watching Elvis and Jim Morrison resurrected at “Dead Rock Stars Night”.
For the next 20 years, I watched New York’s music reflect the reality of living here. CBGB’s may have stood for Country BlueGrass and Blues, but New York City birthed Punk, Hiphop, Disco, and New Wave. Our city’s best music was restless, loud, and striving. Just like New York itself.
Today, the New York City I sell real estate in is safer, grander, wealthier, and prettier. It’s an easier place to live, filled with easier music.
These 12 Songs, on the other hand, reflect the New York City of the past. They are classics, not “content”. Hearing them all these years later is to immediately travel through time back to a New York where urgent music was everywhere, and possibility ran wild in the streets:
THE NEW YORK CITY SONGS:
#12: I’m Waiting For The Man/The Velvet Underground feat. Lou Reed: There’s a good reason why a portrait of Lou Reed was commissioned for the new Second Avenue Subway. Lou Reed was a quintessential New Yorker — outspoken, direct, smart, sarcastic…simultaneously tough and tender.
I’m waiting for my man
Twenty-six dollars in my hand
Up to Lexington, 125
Feeling sick and dirty, more dead than alive
I’m… I’m waiting for my man
Lou Reed tells the autobiographical story of heading uptown, a “white boy” venturing into unfamiliar territory, looking for drugs, and finding more than he bargained for.
#11: Wild In The Streets/Garland Jeffreys: Imagine if the Beach Boys grew up in The Bronx. It’s summer all right…hot, sticky and gang-infested. The surf becomes an open fire hydrant, the T-bird morphs into a 64 Valiant, and the girls are most definitely not from California. Wild In The Streets is a New York summer anthem that merges Bronx-style doo-wop with a streetwise New York rock sensibility.
#10: New York State Of Mind/Nas: Nas grew up in the Queensbridge housing projects in Long Island City, Queens. Existence was rough, and Nas depicted life in these buildings with a flow so intense that it made you flinch. From the first seconds of New York State Of Mind the listener is put on high alert as a pinging heartbeat amps up the tension. From there, Nas tells a story every bit as vivid as an episode of The Wire:
So now I’m jetting to the building lobby, and it was full of children probably, couldn’t see as high as I be
(So what you sayin’?) It’s like the game ain’t the same
Got younger niggas pulling the triggers
Bringing fame to their name
And claim some corners, crews without guns are goners
In broad daylight, stickup kids, they run up on us
45’s and gauges, MAC’s, in fact
Same niggas will catch you back-to-back
Snatching your cracks in black…
I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death
Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined
I think of crime when I’m in a New York state of mind
There’s gritty, and then there’s Nas and New York State Of Mind.
#9: Life During Wartime/Talking Heads: Four art-school preppies move downtown, form a punk band, and write an ode to real estate, extreme hard work, day sleeping and constantly changing your hairstyle. How New York!
Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto
I’ve lived all over this town
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco
this ain’t no fooling around
This ain’t no Mudd Club, or C. B. G. B.
I ain’t got time for that now
#8: Across 110th St./Bobby Womack: There are literally hundreds of soulful “struggle” songs from the 70’s, but Across 110th St. is one of the crown jewels of the sub-genre. Originally released in 1973, the song anchored the soundtrack and film of the same name that featured Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto.
I was the third brother of five
Doing whatever I had to do to survive
I’m not saying what I did was alright
Trying to break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight
With a soaring vocal performance from Bobby Womack, and dominant rhythmic strings driving the music, it’s no wonder this song subsequently became one of the most sampled songs in Hip-Hop history. This classic even had a second film life when Quentin Tarantino featured it in its entirety the title sequence of the 1997 film Jackie Brown.
#7: Rockaway Beach/The Ramones: The Ramones took high concept and made it dead simple. The uniform was seen on many New York borough street corners — ripped jeans, black t-shirt, converse all-stars, and a leather jacket. Their music was like their fashion sense. No fuss, no solos, no waste, direct, authentic, and to the point. And lyrically the Ramones absolutely embodied “write what you know”:
Chewing out a rhythm on my bubble gum the sun is out and I want some
It’s not hard, not far to reach we can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach
Up on the roof, out on the street down in the playground the hot concrete
Bus ride is too slow they blast out the disco on the radio
[Chorus]
Rock rock rockaway beach
Rock rock rockaway beach
Rock rock rockaway beach
We can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach
#6: Heart Of Glass/Blondie: Blondie’s breakthrough single was a definitive New York party song, from its CR-78 disco beat box opening to the very last disaffected sing-song fade of la la la de da’s. Lyrically, Debbie Harry was nearly millennial in her romantic nonchalance:
Once I had a love and it was a gas
Soon turned out to be a pain in the ass
Seemed like the real thing only to find
Mucho mistrust, love’s gone behind
With killer hooks throughout, and a MTV video shot at Studio 54, Heart Of Glass was a #1 single in the UK as well as America, and propelled Blondie from New York cult status to worldwide fame.
#5: Living For The City/Stevie Wonder: New York City, sky scrapers and everything. Combining racial protest, slice-of-life realism, and some of the funkiest and most melodic soul music ever produced, Living For The City is not just one of Stevie Wonder’s best known songs, it is also one of his angriest. Legend has it that although Stevie played almost every instrument on the track (guitars, keys, drums!), his producers forced him to sing take after take of the song just to piss him off for the vocal effect. Listen for The New York City interlude (4:15 mark), where our naive southern protagonist is hoodwinked into a drug bust and ten hard years in jail.
#4: Staying Alive/The Bee Gees: Admit it, if you’re a New Yorker of a certain age and grab a slice of pizza to go, this is your anthem. Turn onto a crowded New York sidewalk during rush hour, fold that slice in half, and strut your thin young John Travolta stuff.
#3: The Message/Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five
“Rap is Black America’s CNN” — Chuck D, Public Enemy.
[Intro]
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under
[Verse 1]
Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care
I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far
’Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car
[Hook]
Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under
The Message plays like a report from the front lines of an urban America under siege. It’s hard to overstate how shocking Grandmaster Flash’s depiction of ghetto life sounded in 1982. Here life in the South Bronx is depicted with a fierce beat, a tremendous melodic hook, and hyper-real storytelling specifics. The Message changed New York culture, and the music world forever.
#2: Shattered/The Rolling Stones: Some say that Mick Jagger penned this poisoned love letter to New York in the back of a yellow cab. Not likely mate, but when this song was released in 1978 as part of the Some Girls album blitz, The Stones were seen to be punching back to reclaim their title as the world’s greatest rock and roll band. Driven by a killer Keith Richards riff, and clearly informed by the challenge of Punk and New Wave, Shattered bristled with Jagger’s adopted New York attitude.
Pride and joy and greed and sex
That’s what makes our town the best
Pride and joy and dirty dreams and still surviving on the street
And look at me, I’m in tatters, yeah
I’ve been battered, what does it matter
Does it matter, uh-huh
Does it matter, uh-huh, I’m a shattered
Don’t you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bed bugs uptown
What a mess this town’s in tatters I’ve been shattered
My brain’s been battered, splattered all over Manhattan
#1: Walk On The Wild Side/Lou Reed: The ultimate New York song, from the ultimate New York rocker, Lou Reed.
Sugar Plum Fairy came and hit the streets
Looking for soul food and a place to eat
Went to the Apollo
You should have seen him go go go
They said “Hey sugar, take a walk on the wild side”
I said “Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side” alright, huh
Driven by a late-night jazz mix of double-tracked bass, sax, gorgeous strings and soulful background vocals, Walk On The Wild Side was a perfectly constructed musical work. But what makes this tale of hustlers, pimps, prostitutes and druggies so compelling is the enormous empathy Reed communicated for his New York characters. There was really only one city that could contain Jackie, Holly, Little Joe, Candy and Sugar Plum Fairy, and Lou Reed himself … New York City.
