I Love Livin' in the City
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| "I Love Livin' in the City" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Fear | ||||
| B-side | "Now You're Dead" | |||
| Released | 1978 | |||
| Recorded | 1977 | |||
| Genre | Punk rock | |||
| Length | 2:05 | |||
| Label | Criminal | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Lee Ving | |||
| Producer(s) | Fear | |||
| Fear singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"I Love Livin' in the City" is the first single by the punk rock band Fear. It was originally released in 1978 on the Los Angeles-based Criminal Records.
Background
[edit]"I Love Livin' in the City" was re-recorded twice: once during the group's unreleased 1979 sessions, and again for its debut album, The Record. The song exaggeratedly describes a stereotypical, turbulent life one may face in Los Angeles, where blood and corpses litter the street. The B-side, "Now You're Dead", details John F. Kennedy's assassination and the resulting conspiracy theories.
In popular culture
[edit]"I Love Livin' in the City" was featured in the 1998 movie SLC Punk! as well as two video game soundtracks, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (2004) and The Warriors (2005).
Legacy
[edit]University of Southern California film professor David E. James has cited this song as a paradigm of punk's "style that would always be in the process of pushing itself over into self-parody", and he compared its imagery to the work of Charles Bukowski.[1] Oregon State University film studies professor Jon Lewis said the lyrics exemplified punk's perception of "the aesthetics of ugliness that characterize downtown LA".[2] A 2001 Spin magazine retrospective about the L.A. punk scene found it to be "a virtual prototype for the reality-of-my-surroundings gangsta rap of the late '80s."[3]
Track listing
[edit]A) "I Love Livin' in the City" (1:54)
B) "Now You're Dead" (2:00)
2021 CD Reissue
[edit]- "I Love Livin' in the City" (2:11)
- "Now You're Dead" (2:05)
- "Do Me Some Damage" (2:46)
- "No More Nothing" (2:29)
Personnel
[edit]- Lee Ving – vocals
- Burt Good – guitar
- Derf Scratch – bass, vocals
- Johnny Backbeat – drums
References
[edit]- ^ David E. James, "Poetry/Punk/Production: Some Postmodern Writing in L.A.", in David E. James (1996). Power Misses: Essays Across (un)popular Culture. Verso. p. 201. ISBN 978-1-85984-101-3.
- ^ Jon Lewis, "City/Cinema/Dream", in Caws, Mary Ann (26 November 2013). City Images: Perspectives from Literature, Philosophy and Film. Taylor & Francis. pp. 245–. ISBN 978-1-134-29605-7.
- ^ Brendan Mullen and Marc Spitz, "Sit on My Face, Stevie Nicks: The Germs, Darby Crash, and the Biorth of SoCal Punk", Spin, May 2001, p. 101, 106.
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