“The Oakland Song” At The Alley Cat Bar Oakland 3325 Grand Avenue
ONN – The Alley Cat Bar In Oakland At 3325 Grand Avenue Has “The Oakland Song”
The Alley is the place where the late Rod Dibble taught me and a generation of patrons (The Alley Cat Bar and Restaurant at 3325 Grand Avenue in Oakland) to sing “The Oakland Song.”
The Oakland Song lyrics are these:
I am are sure that you’re aware
of famous cities everywhere
the ones they write about in song and verse
There are songs about Chicago, Paris, London, and St. Paul,
Buffalo, Miami, and for goodness sake Beaver FallsBut Tin Pan Alley did us wrong
because they never wrote a song
about the greatest city of them all
Now don’t go away, I hope you’ll stay
and hear this song I wrote today…Oakland’s got the Tribune Tower
Oakland’s got Lake Merritt, too
She’s got Jack London Square
The Alley Cat is there!
The Kaiser Center sticks up everywhere.
Where did all the people go when ‘Frisco burned?
They all went to Oakland and never returnedRight outside the city limits
Scoots a freeway called the Nimitz
Of all the pretty cities, she’s the leader
And don’t forget the tube to Alameda…She has pride,
Hope!
Oh what a view
Oakland, we’re for you
Don’t mean Milpitas!
Oakland, we’re for you!
Now, the one version that Ben Fong-Torres features on his video of the original song was altered by Rod Dibble, who started singing it at The Alley back in 1962. I recall Rob saying the song was first created in the 1940s, and way before the Goodtime Washboard 3 got a hold of it and made their version of the song.
Stay tuned.
Note from Zennie62Media and Oakland News Now: this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.