The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man"

Three days ago I listened to the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and to-day I'm listening to the Rolling Stones' Forty Licks.  Both contain the song "Street Fighting Man."  I noticed something about it while listening to the Fantastic Mr. Fox soundtrack, but I didn't think it important enough to write a post about.

But hearing it again on Forty Licks, I felt I should.  And besides, this project is for documenting what I discover about my music collection, whether or not it's obvious.

In "Street Fighting Man," there's the line "Summer's here, and the time is right for fighting in the street."  I would be very surprised if this was not intended as a reference to Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street," which has the line "Summer's here, and the time is right for dancing in the street."  There's only one word different.

It's interesting how efficacious that one word substitution is.  Looking at just that line, changing "dancing" to "fighting" indicates the speaker/singer's tone for the whole of the song.

Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen"

I listened to the 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection:  The Best of Chuck Berry to-day.  It includes “Sweet Little Sixteen,” the chorus of which is:

They’re really rocking in Boston
And Pittsburgh, PA
Deep in the heart of Texas
And round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis
And down in New Orleans
All the cats wanna dance with
Sweet little sixteen

Or some variation of that.  Some repetitions substitute “Bandstand” for “Boston” and “Philadelphia” for “Pittsburgh.”

In any case, this reminded me of “Dancing in the Street.”  I don’t have the version by Martha and the Vandellas, but I do have versions by the Mamas and the Papas and by the Who (from The BBC Sessions).  ”Dancing in the Street” does this same sort of thing - a catalogue of various places:

They’re dancing in Chicago
Down in New Orleans
Up in New York City
All we need is music, sweet music
There’ll be music everywhere

And later:

Philadelphia, PA
Baltimore and D.C. now
Can’t forget the Motor City
All we need is music, sweet music
There’ll be music everywhere

As a poetic technique, cataloguing isn’t too uncommon.  But I think there’s some connection between the cataloguing in these two songs.  (For historical context, “Sweet Little Sixteen” is from 1958, and “Dancing in the Street” is from 1964.)  ”Dancing in the Street“‘s list of places includes some of the same places listed in “Sweet Little Sixteen” - New Orleans and Philadelphia, PA.  And while it could just be a coincidence because those places are certainly famous for other things, the whole spirit of both catalogues is the same - both illustrate that the dancing is all-encompassing.