Across the Pond

by Mark Bastable

A riddle for you- what do the following have in common? Memphis, Phoenix, San Francisco, Milwaukee

C'mon, c'mon. Any ideas? Let me make it easier for you. Also - Tulsa, Barrytown, Chattanooga and Savannah

No? Okay, I'll tell you. It's not really a fair question. They are all featured in the titles of songs that I knew by heart even before I knew where the towns themselves were. (I shan't list the song titles - you can talk that out over lunch.)

You see, for a Brit - especially one who is interested in popular music, from Glenn Miller to Mott the Hoople - the names of American towns have an almost mystical resonance. I mean, it's not as if we don't have terrific place names ourselves - but we *know* what those places are like. And they're dull, mainly. But Philadelphia just sounds so *exciting*. It's where the freedom comes from, after all.

I get very wrapped up in this. For instance, Cher's itinerant family apparently picked up a drifter just outta Mobile. Mobile! Until I heard the song, I thought it was pronouced MOH-byal. Anyway, they feed the guy, and give him clothes, and she's sixteen and he's twenty-one and by the time he's rode with them to Memphis (...oh, God. Memphis. How many songs are there about Memphis?..), he's had his wicked way with her. So I looked it up. I traced the journey. If you were to take the scenic route, I'd like to think that he must have done it somewhere in the region of Pulltight, Alabama.

It's a little short of Brilliant. Kinda brings it home to me.

And, while I'm at it, where are you if you're driving and you're twenty-four hours from Tulsa? And how on earth do you forget the way to San Jose if you were born and raised there? And - I'm sorry - I just don't believe that the people of LA realise that Randy Newman is being ironic when he says he loves it. Unless he isn't, in which case, 'Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing

Bear' is merely the nursery rhyme it pretends to be.

I started a game with some friends over a couple of bottles of wine. We had to find a town in every state, which features in the title of a song.

Alaska's easy - 'Anchorage'. Tennessee is embarrassingly well stocked. But

Rhode Island's tough. Mail me if you got one. There's a hundred pounds riding on this. I'll buy you dinner next time you're in town.

This fascination with American place-names, you must understand, is not peculiar to me. It's a British trait - even to the extent that it can be made the well-spring of tired jokes You can always tell if an English TV comedy-show is on its last legs, because they start doing musical numbers like "I Left My Heart In Market Harborough." We're supposed to laugh at the incongruity of English place-names being elevated in romantic songs. "Port Talbot, Port Talbot, it's a toddlin' town..." It's not as funny as it might appear, believe me.

However, my beloved local BBC radio station recently noticed that the capital lacked a sign on the motorway coming into the city. Stratford's got one - "The Birthplace of Shakespeare" - and Liverpool has proposed one - "The Home of the Beatles". So they ran a phone-in competition, looking for suggestions for my hometown. The best suggestion by far was this. "London - So Good They Named It Once."