He talks of San Francisco
He's from Hunter's Bar
I don't quite know the distance
But I'm sure that's far
The Arctic Monkeys are an indie group from Sheffield, a city in northern England that was known for its steel factories until foreign competition resulted in most of those factories closing many years ago.
This song doesn't really have anything to do with San Francisco. It's about a band that claims to have performed in San Francisco and New York City, but which in reality hasn't strayed very far from Hunter's Bar or Rotherham, which are Sheffield neighborhoods.
Hunter's Bar, named for an old toll-road barrier, is a long way from San Francisco (as is noted in the lines quoted above). In fact, it's over 5200 miles as the crow flies.
An English friend of mine told me about the Arctic Monkeys when they burst on the scene in 2006. The group's first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, became the fastest-selling debut album in UK history when it was released in 2006.
The album's title is a quote from Alan Sillitoe's 1958 "angry young man" novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which was made into a celebrated movie starring Albert Finney in 1960. Here's the trailer for the movie:
The album's title is a quote from Alan Sillitoe's 1958 "angry young man" novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which was made into a celebrated movie starring Albert Finney in 1960. Here's the trailer for the movie:
I have the album, but this is the only song on it that I really warmed to. The song shifts into high gear at the 1:40 mark, and then goes into overdrive about 30 seconds later. (A very heavy bass line kicks in at that point, and that -- to paraphrase Robert Frost -- makes all the difference.)
I love this verse, which makes it clear that the band that is the subject of the song are not only a bunch of phonies, but crappy musicians as well:
And as the microphone squeaks
A young girl's telephone beeps
Yeah, she's dashing for the exit
She's running to the streets outside
"Oh, you've saved me," she screams down the line
"The band were f*cking wank
And I'm not having a nice time!"
Saved by the bell -- or by a ringtone . . .
Here's "Fake Tales of San Francisco":
Click here to buy the song from Amazon:
Posts
