Crocodile's Breath: "In 1978, the Jam released a single called ‘Down in the Tube Station at Midnight’. It opens with the sound of a Tube train pulling into a station. A child’s voice cries against the heavy roar and rattle and a guard shouts something and the music begins, chopped chords, an urgent, darting bass line and an ominous hissing of cymbals. In the song, Woking boy Paul Weller, lyricist and vocalist, captures something Wolmar doesn’t mention in either of his books on the subject. He brings to life how frightening Tube stations could be late at night in the 1970s, particularly for non-Londoners. The long, dirty, CCTV-less tunnels, smelling of urine, so much less busy than now, the sense of being in a beige-tiled maze, alone except for the dodgy-sounding geezers whose voices echoed not so distantly, but in which direction? You weren’t sure."
If I had to rate them, perhaps my favorite public transportation system. Sorry, NYC, those strange express trains knock you down in scores.
