Book - Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County
Authors: Leonard Pitt, Dale Pitt
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 9780520205307
Date: 2000
Excerpt:
LOS ANGELES SONGS. A song about the city was first composed especially for La Fiesta de Los Angeles in April 1894. While a band played, a chorus
sang, “People from every zone / Merged here in softest tones / Of God’s great world. / Welcome to small and great / Into this golden state, / Into
this city gay, welcome today.” More contemporary tunes, including “Pico and Sepulveda” and “Make the San Fernando Valley My Home,” acquired
some popularity during the postwar population boom but were soon forgotten.
Chicago, New York, and San Francisco have acquired official anthems, or at least popular favorites used on ceremonial occasions, but Los Angeles, the capital of the record industry, remains unsung. Local disk jockeys and city hall officials have scoured the local talent in search of a worthy melody. “Angeltown,” a city council favorite in 1959, never took hold. In a 1974 contest the Municipal Arts Council screened 729 entries (with lyrics covering such topics as tar pits, smog, and freeways) but failed to find a winner.
During the 1981 celebration oft he city’s bicentennial the Cultural Affairs Department received more than 1,000 song entries and invited 21 finalists to perform their creations at a special concert at John Anson Ford Theater. These were then winnowed down to 10 top entries, but again no winner was declared. One oft he rejected tunes had alternative titles: “L.A.’s the Place,” or, “Number One for the Human Race.” Randy Newman’s popular “I Love L.A.” was used in the torch relay at the 1984 Olympics, but the lyrics were hardly appropriate for an official song: “And the people are so friendly when you meet them on the street. / Whether they'll rob, kill, or befriend you is hard to tell, / Ain’t that swell.” The Los Angeles Times called the song a “wicked ode to municipal cynicism and hedonism.” The search goes on.
The pop music depiction of Los Angeles is still personified by the Beach Boys, who sang sweetly of fun, hot-rodding, and surfing at Malibu. More recently, pop bands have been less optimistic. The Go-Go’s, for example, sing, “We’re all dreamers— we're all whores. / Discarded stars / Like wornout cars / Litter the streets of this town.”
The Midniters recorded a number called “Whittier Boulevard,” and Jan and Dean sang a tune of their own composition that celebrated the “Little Old Lady from Pasadena” (“She’s the terror of Colorado Boulevard...”). “Stand and Be Proud,” written by former teen idol David Cassidy and his wife, Sue Shifrin, became the anthem of Rebuild L.A., an organization whose mission was to find resources to upgrade the areas hardest hit by the riot of 1992.
In the end, fame and fortune still await the songsmith who does for Los Angeles what “Chicago,” “T Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and “New York, New York” did for those cities.
