Countdown: Random Places Immortalized in Music, #8

As a refresher, this is a bit of a geography lesson, looking at oddball places that musicians have chosen to sing about, or at least include in their lyrics. And next on the list, number eight is...

Reseda, Los Angeles, California

"It's a long day living in Reseda, there's a freeway runnin' through the yard"

I will admit that by population numbers, the Reseda district of the San Fernando Valley is a bit disproportionate for the countdown, with almost 60,000 people crowded into this LA neighborhood. Compare that to Winslow, with not even 10,000, and it is quite a disparity.

The difference is, however, that being a neighborhood, the name often is overshadowed by the city itself. Maybe at one time, when the community was one of the areas first suburbs, the name was significant, but today, and likely even by 1989 when Tom Petty mentioned it in "Free Fallin'," the suburbanization of the LA metro area had drowned out what had once been separate communities with separate identities and melded them into one (LA residents feel free to disagree with me). The same thing can be seen here in Seattle of such "lost" neighborhoods as Renton Hill or Atlantic.

It's that loss of identity is what makes its mention in lyrics so important. the contrast of the freeways, connecting everything as a blur seen from the windows of passing cars, with the fading identitiyof one of the communities it connects. It is ironic then that since, for the majority of listeners the name draws no sense of recognition (in fact, it is what originally inspired this countdown), it only proves how lost it is.

However, even if in identity Reseda has faded, it is still very visible in popular culture, not by name, but at least by presence. For example, the opening of Boogie Nights features a mastershot of downtown Reseda. Also set in the neighborhood in whole or part were the original The Karate Kid, Terminator 2, Erin Brockovich, and Escape from LA, among others. Numerous scenes of My name is Earl were even filmed in the community center, ironically due to its rural, small-town look.

So, like numerous other neighborhoods across the county, Reseda will likely continue to fade in recognition, but at least its name will live on in lyrics.