Musical Questions And Answers, #2 (Mylot Exclusive #1925)

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Playboy: Do you know the way to San Jose? Burt Bacharach: Are you talking about logistics? We just used San Jose as the synthesis of a small town you left to make it in L.A. It could have been Bakersfield or Fresno, but they don't rhyme. St. Tropez rhymes, but you probably wouldn't want to leave there. ------Burt Bacharach, In Playboy, October 1979 (Page 24) Before I started this series, I hadn't realized how pessimistic and depressing Burt Bacharach and Hal David were. I have no excuse for it. I've heard all the songs dozens of times and I know all the words. But I had never put them together before and listened to them as if they were one piece or even as separate movements in a symphony. Now that I have, seeing love only as a chart-topping disease vector and dreams as a one-way ticket back to San Jose, strikes me as being a little downbeat. But that's all Hal David's fault. And now we get to the other side of the story, the one composed by Burt Bacharach. Just as in Part One, Burt's answer is a bit different from Hal's. And it's a bit dated, too. San Jose is no longer a small town. It's bigger than San Francisco now. Sacramento and Long Beach, too, for that matter. But it still rhymes. Most disappointing to me is that Burt left out my favorite verse: ************** LA is a great big freeway Put a hundred down and buy a car In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass And all the stars that never were Are parking cars and pumping gas ************** With that in mind, let's go to 1968, to see what the Cosmic Universal Anthem Song Of The Month Club Anthem Song is for today Is. ************* Dionne Warwick -- Do You Know the Way to San Jose (1968)