I think Philadelphia ought to adopt as its civic motto Pedicabo Circa et Invenire, which is online-translator-Latin for “Fuck Around and Find Out.” That’s what happened when a bunch of Texas-based white supremacists/fascists tried to stage a flash-mob march in Philadelphia on July 4.
“They started engaging with citizens of Philadelphia, who were none too happy about what they were saying. These males felt threatened, and, at one point, somebody in their crowd threw a type of smoke bomb to cover their retreat, and they literally ran away from the people of Philadelphia,” Philadelphia Police Officer Michael Crum told WPVI-TV.
It was even more humiliating than that makes it sound, as it took only a handful of pissed-off Philadelphians to scare off 200 of these wankers.
As a concept, “Philadelphia freedom” is pretty close to anarchy, which is why Gritty has been almost universally embraced among area natives. As a song, it’s an homage to Philly soul, and the 1975 stand-alone single became Elton John’s fourth No. 1 in the U.S. It still gets plenty of airplay, at least in Philadelphia, showing a lot more staying power than its inspiration, Billie Jean King’s Philadelphia Freedoms tennis team. It left town for Boston after a single season.
Almost all the songs John composed with lyricist Bernie Taupin started with a Taupin poem. For this song, John told Taupin he wanted a song to honor his then-new friend King — they met shortly before King’s famous triumph over Bobby Riggs in the heavily hyped “Battle of the Sexes” — with the title “Philadelphia Freedom.”
Taupin, who knew nothing about tennis and cared less, came up with a clutch of vaguely inspiration phrases that he claims “don’t mean anything,” but that’s something Taupin says about most of his lyrics. The arrangement uses many signifiers of the Philly soul sound, especially the string-heavy orchestration, and its rise to No. 1 in advance of the Bicentennial foreshadowed the impending rise of disco, a direct descendant of Philly soul.
King loved the result. For his part, John told King that he imagined the part where he strings out the syllables of “Phil-a-del-phia” as her stamping her foot while arguing with a line judge. Being a huge fan of the soul sound, he was also thrilled that the song got him a guest shot on “Soul Train.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1oNWdrlWGo