I know a place...

Route 1 leads readers on a musical geography lesson this week, as the FRIDAY QUESTION wonders: What is your favorite song about a place?
Inger H. -- Elvis Costello's "London's Brilliant Parade" is so effortlessly evocative. It somehow manages to capture all the city's hustle and glitter and squalor and ends up really reminding me of what it's like there. "I wouldn't want you to walk across Hungerford Bridge, especially at twilight."
Brian C. -- I'm partial to "Sweet Home Chicago" because I'm a product of the Chicago area. I like Foghat's rocking cover best. However, for a sense of music history, I enjoy listening to Delta bluesman Robert Johnson's original version, recorded in 1936.
Scout S. -- "Maps and Legends" by R.E.M. "The map that she's made him doesn't seem real/He just sees whatever he sees/Point to the legend point to the east/Point to the yellow red and green."
Ann M. -- One of my favorite songs is the Iowa Hawkeyes Fight Song because it reminds me of a lot of football games and tailgating.
Rick T. -- "Cincinnati Ohio" by Connie Smith. I have been to Cincinnati and it does "shine like a jewel in the valley below." Great song!
Mike D. -- Although there's "a lot of nice girls" out there at La Grange (ZZ Top), I might have to bypass the homage to the Texas bordello in favor of Supertramp's melancholic "Take the Long Way Home." The music and lyrics perfectly express the song's wistful yet woeful theme.
Diane H. -- "Luchenback, Texas." It makes me want to actually go to Luchenback, Texas, wear a cowboy hat and have a drink at the bar. Whiskey, of course.
Dave B. -- "Midnight in Montgomery" by Alan Jackson. The song is very eerie and dark.
Kerstin H. -- "Portland Oregon" by Loretta Lynn with Jack White. Because it is about Oregon and I am from Oregon.
Erik H. -- When I was a kid, nothing said "California" to me quite like the First Class gem, "Beach Baby." As a kid growing up in the suburbs of San Francisco, I could really relate to this song reflecting on the glories of the sun and surf. Well, I almost could relate. We didn't have much money for traveling when I was a kid, so we ended up spending more time in the agricultural Central Valley than the golden sands of the coast. Still, "Beach Baby" referenced L.A. and San Jose and I had been to both those places. For me, First Class had perfectly evoked a place I knew I would always love.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I learned many years later that First Class' 1974 hit was entirely rendered by veteran British session musicians in rainy old London -- about as far away (geographically and metaphysically) from the "Beach Baby" ideal as possible. It's a funny old world.