Exporting a New York Soundtrack
By Simon Akam
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Steven Van Zandt, a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and a cast member of “The Sopranos,” chose his ultimate New York playlist.
In Sunday’s Metropolitan section, I wrote about sending the ultimate New York City care package to my best friend, an officer with the British Army in Afghanistan.
Alongside salami from Katz’s Delicatessen and boxer shorts from Saks, I included an iPod loaded with a playlist of classic New York tracks.
To build the soundtrack, I enlisted the help of Steven Van Zandt — longtime Springsteen collaborator and sometime “Sopranos” actor. He picked 20 songs — yes, it includes Sinatra — and added some whimsical liner notes (below).
But such a list can never be definitive, so we would like to turn the matter over to our City Room readers. What’s on your list for the ultimate New York play list? What do you think of the Van Zandt 20? Were there any scandalous omissions?
via cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com
---
Apparently Steve Van Zandt has a different taste of music from me (he certainly likes Bruce Springsteen much more than I do), but it's still an inspiration to come up with my at least top five New York songs.
- Cat Power - New York, New York: I like Frank Sinatra's version very much as well, but Chan Marshall's interpretation is simply ultra-cool.
- Market - M6: Well before we moved to NYC, this song was always quintessential New York for me. Only after we moved here, I learned that M6 is a bus line (along 6th Ave. from Central Park to the south tip of Manhattan). Market disappeared long ago and surfaced again as Masolit this year, when I had a chance to meet them.
- U2 - New York: First, it came out around the same time we moved to NYC. Second, the lines "In New York summers get hot, well into the hundreds/You can't walk around the block without a change of clothing/Hot as a hairdryer in your face/Hot as a handbag and a can of mace" just resonate well when sitting in a small room without A/C on a very hot summer night.
- Richard Ashcroft - New York: Just a very good song, which also came out around the time we arrived in this city.
- Fun Lovin' Criminals - Southside: It's about our 'hood, Delancey Street in times much wilder than we've ever experienced.
Now if only Fever Ray would do a New York song...
