Today’s theme is local flavor — this doesn’t have to be an underground band playing at the pizza joint on a Friday night. This can be music from your City (San Francisco: Grateful Dead) or State (California: Incubus). Those were the easy ones, so let’s see what we have in store today.

Something Old: Songs that are at least 5 years old. (I know that isn’t too long to be considered old, but music turnover happens quickly.)
Something Current: Songs that have been released within the past year.
Something to Consider: This is the wild card category. Feel free to list any song: old, current, guilty pleasure, underground, whatever.

Something Old

Artist: Papa Roach (Vacaville, Ca — North-East of San Francisco, Ca)
Title: Last Resort
Side Note: I know you know this song, and I know you forgot about it. They were what you might call “one-hit wonders,” but they are Bay Area famous and I even worked with a guy who used to open for them. Small world. Now go and add this song and run the fastest mile of your life.
Quotable: “Cut my life into pieces. This is my last resort.”

 

 

Something Current

Artist: Train (San Francisco, Ca)
Title: Drive By
Side Note: There are tons of bands from the Bay Area, but Train always shows love to where they got started. I really liked their lats 90s, early 2000 songs (Meet Virginia, Drops of Jupiter). But some of their recent stuff (if it isn’t overplayed on the radio) is pretty good.
Quotable: “‘Cause you moved to west LA. Or New York or Santa Fe. Or wherever to get away from me.”

 

 

Something to Consider

Artist: 2Pac feat. Dr. Dre (Tupac was born in NY, but moved to the Bay Area in ’88 where he eventually got his beginning with Digital Underground)
Title: California Love
Side Note: There are plenty of other 2pac songs that you can run to, but with the theme, this seemed like an obvious choice.
Fun fact: 2pac’s “All Eyez on Me” album was one of the first hip-hop CDs I ever purchased.
Quotable: “From Oakland to Sac-town. The Bay Area and back down.”

 

 

We are definitely going to have to do this theme again, there are so many musicians that got their start in the Bay Area: Santana, E-40, Metallica, Journey… just to name a few.

What did you think of my choices?

 

And don’t forget to enter my NatureBox giveaway. It even has a cool video where me and Mika train for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

 

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