Skip to content
Entertainment
Link copied to clipboard

In The Pocket's Songs Of Philadelphia: "You Can't Sit Down"

From the Songs In The Key Of Philly 8 hour playlist at WXPN's The Key local music blog to the recent Philly Sings Philly songwriter nights at The Fire, there's a preoccupation in these days of shared Internet culture about what makes a song a Philadelphia song, and along with that, how where we're from makes us who we are.

Hooters drummer David Uosikkinen is doggedly pursuing the answer to these questions with his In The Pocket: Essential Songs Of Philadelphia project, which brings together local musicians such as himself,  fellow Hooters Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian, and Jeffrey Gaines to cover songs that aim to get to the crux of what it means to be a spend your life listening to music in the 215.

Uosikkenen and friends have released two previous in The Pocket tunes - "All My Mondays" by obscure 1980s band Youth Camp, and "Open My Eyes," by Todd Rundgren's the Nazz. The new one is "You Can't Sit Down," the 1963 follow-up hit to the "Bristol Stomp" by Overbrook High hitmakers The Dovells.  Tommy Conwell tears it up on vocals, and Jerry "The Geator" Blavat makes an appropriate appearance.

The whole In The Pocket enterprise will be celebrated on Tuesday night at the World Cafe Live, with Conwell, Gaines and other guests in the house. The original Dovells' "You Can't Sit Down," is below, and a Bruce Springsteen version here.

More info about In The Pocket here. All the songs are available on iTunes, with proceeds going to Settlement Music School. (The Hooters, by the way, open for classic rock gray beards Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band at Boardwalk Hall in Atlnatic City on Saturday.)

Previously: Jill Scott's "Shame"