Entertainment For Lively Minds
Music to journey to - moments when where you are and what you're listening to synchronise perfectly
You are driving along and a song comes on the radio - not your ipod or mix tape - that is THE perfect tune for your geographical whereabouts/state of being in that instance.
My thoughts on this subject were piqued when a friend described being in a taxi going from JFK to Manhattan, and as he went over the Brooklyn Bridge Grand Master Flash - The Message came on.
Here are my 3 examples:
Queens of the Stone Age - No-one Knows - driving through the Joshua Tree Park on the way to Las Vegas.
Later in the same trip, driving along Santa Monica Boulevard toward the Pacific at sunset - California Sun - The Ramones. I think the station was even K-ROQ.
Finally, driving from Munich to Austria on the autobahn - the rain lashing down from a dark brooding sky. Heroes - The Dame, and better still, it was his German language version - Herschen. Perfection!
Over to you...
- More from cathtrish.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Strange you should ask
Only yesterday I was doing my regular run down the very picturesque A49 between Ludlow & Leominster, the sun peeking out from ochre rain clouds behind me & Love On A Farmboy's Wages by XTC on the CD player. Just a perfect moment that made my heart sing.
EDIT : Post in haste, repent at leisure. I missed the 'radio only' rule. In my defence, I didn't know the song was coming & things did all mesh rather nicely. OK, coat got.
Being picked up at my hotel in Burbank...
to drive back to LAX in the Shuttle Bus to catch my plane back to a wintry London-"California Dreamin'" on the radio.
Ein Pedant schreibt
"Helden', nicht wahr?
Ja, das ist korrekt
Du habst Recht, Mein Kapitan Unterhosenpedant
Have ze arrows of up
you haf bose tickled my bones of funny.
Now must I ausfahrt mit coat
Oh god you're right! Ha ha!
Oh god you're right! Ha ha! I knew I should have googled it to check pre-posting! Thanks Cap'n...
two from the 70s
1. pulling out of a motorway service centre on a long drive up country, sun setting, road pretty empty and Love's Theme by Barry White - perfect.
2. Sitting in the car on a summer Sunday afternoon watching hang gliders over the Purbecks - Samba Pa Ti - equally perfect
This is cheating because I was listening to a CD...
... but not long after arriving in California, I was driving home from a party in San Diego one Saturday night listening to Tom Waits' 'The Heart of Saturday Night' when 'Diamonds On My Windshield' came on. As I was approaching the freeway exit for home in San Clemente, Tom growled "Oceanside, it ends the ride, with San Clemente coming up..." Magic.
Had my own JFK- Manhattan moment too!
On the train pulling through the outskirts of Manhattan late one summer afternoon, past alleyways (the type always favoured by Starsky and Hutch), derelict factories, old warehouses and glittering Manhattan skyline looking in the distance. I can imagine just how great 'The Message' would have sounded there - I had the JB's, doing 'The JB monorail' - perfect!
edit: Just re read and saw the no iPod rule... sorry... just deleted the rest of a rather rambling post!
Just have to say
that Slotbadger has to be my favourite handle on here. It always makes me smile and I have no idea why.
Hey Slotbadger!
that's a handle and a half - go on - what did you delete??
Aww
Thanks for that! Well - they are not particularly exciting, but a train ride through the Midlands, one wet Sunday afternoon, Julian Cope's 'Peggy Suicide' on my headphones, seemed to soundtrack the grey rolling landscape perfectly. I think I was going past Tamworth at some point, perhaps summoning some deep psychic link!
And then there was another time, again, a wet afternoon, sitting alone, forlorn and dejected in a shared student house in Falmouth, Cornwall, around 1992, wondering what the hell I was doing with my life and watching the rain beat down in the small garden outside, onto a discarded plastic crate with 'Newlyn Fisheries' etched onto it. I stared at that crate all day. Someone down the hallway started playing 'Five Leaves Left' at some point and it was perfect.
A friend once told me about a safari trip through Kenya with some mates, they had taken acid and were all in an open topped jeep, pounding through the great, empty wilderness at night, the sky lit up crazy colours (it may have been the acid) and someone begins blasting 'Gimme Shelter' from a ghettoblaster...he claimed it was one of the most 'monumental moments of my life'.
'
Weather
I think the weather is part of the synchronicity, without doubt. My Heroes/Helden moment wouldn't have been anywhere near as atmospheric if the sun had been shining. Equally, the Ramones wouldn't have worked in the rain.
As an aside, did you go to the art college in Falmouth? I knew a couple of people who were there in the early 90's - maybe our paths crossed!
I was
there! Well, from '92 to around '95. I still have fond memories of the Pirates Inn (remember seeing Daevid Allen and Gorky's there, amongst others) and of course, the football-sized confections sold at the Oggy Oggy Pasty shop...
Not Geographical
but Meteorological
Richard Hawleys After The Rain comes on the radio after the mother of all storms
.
.
Driving over The Golden Gate Bridge
Coming back into San Francisco after a week long road trip to Death Valley/Hoover Dam/Lake Taho/Grand Canyon in 1993.
My mate is driving. I have my feet on the dash and Boston "More Than A Feeling" comes on the radio. Air Guitar heaven ensues for the next 4 minutes.
Oh happy days...
You've reminded me
of a wonderful drive from Turnip Rock at the finger tip of Lake Huron to Detroit airport, via Bad Axe last summer.
A series of my old favourites from FM radio in the late 70s came on the radio during the drive, including this cracker from the Boston album
Driving back from Clifden
over the Connemara late at night and the setting sun catches the purples, oranges and pinks of the hills. We look back along the hills, down the bay and towards Omey Island and there are no other cars on the highway. We stop and get out and then Ian McCulloch's Candleland comes on the radio. Magical.
it was on the ipod, but set to shuffle
A few years ago I was living in Tokyo and there for Halloween, which is a very big deal, much like it is in the US with loads of kids dressing up and out in the early evening. I was on my way home, walking up the hill from the train station, surrounded by hordes of ghosts, devils, witches etc, and out of 12,000 songs my random play came up with "Bela Lugosi's Dead".
2nd July 1990
My housemate's boyfriend has, for the first time, lent her his precious white Golf GTI convertible while he goes away for the weekend. Instead of our daily commute to London Bridge before disappearing onto the tube, she offers to drive us all to work.
The night before, England survive a torrid World-cup quarter-final against Cameroon by the skin of their teeth, thanks to two somewhat generous penalties.
The weather is as flawless as the prospect of our first Football international semi-final since 1966, and, bang on cue, Simon Mayo plays "World In Motion" just as we cruise over London Bridge.
Perfect.
Driving through Georgia
hearing on the radio REM's Fall On Me for the first time. Still etched on my mind.
Autumn 1986.
A couple of weeks into university life, living away for the first time, I'd met lots of great people, most of whom remain friends of mine to this day, I was learning exciting things, meeting exciting girls, living in a big, exciting city.. I was in my room in halls, about to head out one Friday and Dave Lee Roth's Just Like Paradise came on the radio.. "This must be just like living in paradise / and I don't want to go home"
And it was.
The Dame again
Lets Dance album, whilst driving around the French Riviera and Switzerland. The moneyed excess of the region, the early 80's - all seemed to sync.
1987: NY for the first time
Me, a wet-behind-the-ears 17 year Dubliner, en route to NYC on a bus from La Guardia with the new U2 album in my bright yellow Walkman. Press play, and cue the intro to 'Where the Streets have No Name' through the Soprano streets of New Jersey, and then, just as the skyline of Manhattan appears, the song changes up into 4/4 time and I'm rocking out. So emotional Wasn't rehearsed, wasn't set up. Shivers like I can't tell you. Maybe it's New York that does that to you.
Why limit the reveries?
OK - ipod shuffle and walkman moments allowed too...seems a shame not to.
Primal Scream - Inner Flight...
...THE best song EVER for relaxing in a quiet cove on a Greek Island with the waves splashing at one's hoofs - unless of course you count the whole of "Hissing Of Summer Lawns" but I think we've been there before on another thread.
1am, late from work, near farmhouse in middle of M62...
...this always cheers me up
I was 15
Transplanted from a boy's private school in the English countryside to a co-ed High School in California. Wow, girls! Genuine - genu-wine -California Girls. Confident, sparky, kind of forward. Me bashful, awkward, easily spotted. Half Indian. Half British. Wholly Alien. A stranger in a very strange land. One of these girls was called Connie. She had a car! They all had cars. She said "hey, I'll come by your house around 7 - we'll get ice-cream". Parked up in the hills - looking down on the lights of the city below. My first kiss. That kiss tasted of Rocky Road. On the radio "You're No Good" by Linda Ronstadt. A pathetic fallacy and a half that.