Saturday, January 19, 2013

Which NFL Playoff City Has the Best Musical History: Boston, SF, Baltimore or Atlanta?



I was watching the 49ers game last weekend, and, as a city does when they've got a nationally televised party to throw and they know they're having fancy company over, they broke out the good musical china to perform the National Anthem. In this case it was back-pocket blow-dryer rockers Huey Lewis and the News. Being from Boston, I was a little surprised to realize that there's an entire alternative universe out there called "San Francisco" where, it turns out, Huey Lewis and the News is actually their version of Aerosmith. Woh. I wonder what it would have been like to grow up in that utopia?

Naturally, it got me thinking about the respective musical histories of either city, as well as the other two cities left in the NFL playoff picture going into this weekend, Atlanta and Baltimore. I wondered, for example, who Atlantans trot out as their musical grandpas coming out of retirement to carve the metaphoric turkey once a year before shuffling them back off to the recliner. Sadly, in Boston, ours actually still play an active role; Aerosmith and Pepsi collaborated, or conspired, rather, to release the official anthem of the Patriots this season. This was in the year 2012, mind you. 

And because this is about the NFL, where there can only be one winner, I figured we should take a look at which of the four cities has the proudest tradition of music, enlisting the aid of music writers from each, because that seems like the type of a thing a website would conceivably do now. And, for the record, most of these dudes admitted to not really caring about football, which, come on guys, perpetuating music nerd stereotypes like that isn't healthy for anyone. 

brought to you by

1 comment:

said...

Great article but no mention of Future being from Atlanta? Seems like he's one of the biggest names in hiphop at the moment. Toni Braxton is from Baltimore, surprised she didn't get a mention. Tha Baltimore writer kind of skipped over those great vocal groups I thought. There's some great house producers from San Francisco too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIcJzmdNQfw

Everything I know about Boston music I know about from PTSOTL so I've got nothing to add on that score!

Post a Comment