Songs of the City: I *heart* Los Angeles

As a little intro, we thought it’d be cool for the three of us to talk about what song we feel best fits our little towns. Read Brian’s here and Araceli’s here.

Because I have lived mostly in Southern California, and just recently in Los Angeles, most of my songs of ‘home’ are about California. Joni Mitchell’s “California” has always been my favorite, and Phantom Planet’s “California” reminds me of the period in my life when I was new to Orange County, and “The OC” was new to Fox.

But this is a blog entry about Los Angeles. Sometimes all you see is a sprawling gray wasteland of freeways, traffic crawling at 5 miles an hour. Sometimes your vision is blocked by a hot black vinyl miniskirts topped by a hot pink wigs biking around Hollywood. Other times there are gigantic houses in the hills of Pasadena, and others there’s nothing but the sound of the surf crashing onto Santa Monica, or Venice. There’s Little Tokyo, Olvera St., Chinatown and the Hollywood Bowl. The Getty, the LACMA, the hidden art galleries of Silverlake, the studios and theaters in Culver City. There’s so much to LA that it’s a constant stimulant; you either love it or hate it, but there is no indifference; it’s undeniable.

Maybe that’s why the three songs I love most about LA are about despair, disgust and destruction. It’s a paradox, just like the city. Oh, and ironically, two out of three of these songwriters are from Seattle — they write about Los Angeles because they’re jealous of the constant, sunny blue skies!!! Bad Religion is from Orange County though, and Greg teaches at UCLA, so that’s cool.

p.s. Whenever Death Cab plays “Why’d You Want to Live Here” in LA, the crowd always goes wild, like it’s a love song Ben Gibbard is singing to them (I saw this happen at the Greek and at the Wiltern). See? Everyone else here gets it too.