Turnpike Travel, Music of Yore

[dlgood]

I've had a thought bouncing about my head, pretty much since the return drive from the AtPO meet in NYC.

Pretty much as soon as I crossed the Verrazano into Staten Island, I put "The Cars/Candy-O" into my CD player for the drive down. There's something about that band that really strikes me as fitting while driving down the Jersey Turnpike. I'm not really sure why.

Perhaps, it's association. In my youth, the bulk of our rather close extended family lived in NYC, on Long Island, or in Connecticut - and so with family events, weddings, Bar-Mitzvahs, and just general travel, we made many trips along the I-95 corridor. And among the many tapes we took (and oh did I hate my mother's love for Manilow and Neil Diamond when trapped in a car) were a few Cars. Perhaps it's that.

And these are albums I've listened to for years. "Candy-O" in particular, is just a really quirky album where the songs flow but sound so different, and just odd. But the beats are just right for Turnpike Travel. And it helps that Benjamin Orr is just about the only singer I can actually sing along to with any degree of competence, so there's extra fun when an Orr song turns up.

So on my four hour trip back, I listened to just four albums ("Cars",
"Candy-O", "Panorama" and "Heartbeat City") all by the same band, and all over twenty years old. And it felt really appropriate, and neat.

Anybody else out there have any particular album/highway associations like that, or is it just me being wacky?

Comments

[ladystarlightsj.livejournal.com]

I don't get album/highway associations, but I do like the Cars for driving music.

And an aside, Eldest Spawn loved the poster! Thank you so much!

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Glad the poster was well received. I shall have to collect more schwag next year.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

If I'm on my way to the outdoors, there HAS to be some Greatful Dead, or "Ventura Highway."

If I'm racing to get somewhere, I need The Roots or quite possibly AC/DC. I'm just well-rounded. Ha!

[chrisleeoctaves.livejournal.com]

I don't have whole albums, but certain songs are "road songs" to me:

Paradise by the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf and Bohemian Rhapsody are two songs that cause me to sing at the top of my lungs in the car. Also, Everybody Wants to Rule The World by Tears for Fears brings back very specific car memories (of the non-sexual variety. The summer I was 17 I went on a road trip with my best friend, her mother and grandmother to Ottawa. We played the Grease soundtrack (on 8-track) the whole way there and back.

Oh, and, I *loved* The Cars and once, many years ago, owned the album Candy-O...and once, many years ago, saw Ric Ocasek in the East Village.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Cool. Did Ocasek look as weird in person as he did in pictures and on TV?

"Gonna drive it to the ground...."

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

Driving in general? My car is always "Highway Star".

Specific road-song associations? 120 east of Yosemite toward Tonopah, Nevada reminds me of the White Album, because that's what I listened to through there. Rural two-lane Minnesota roads in winter are Hollywood Town Hall by the Jayhawks. Beyond that, I don't look back. It interferes with the now, darling.... B)

Not wacky

[ann1962]

I never "got" Bruce Springsteen until I had a car. Zipping down the road, with that blasting does work. Otherwise, not a fan particularly.

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

Not a particular road but for me there are a lot of albums, songs, groups that are made for playing loud with the car windows open on a summer day...

Early Springsteen. Rolling Stones. Creedence. Joan Jett. Led Zep. Sly and the Family Stone's greatest hits. Early to mid Beach Boys.

[vandalisimo.livejournal.com]

Definitely Springsteen.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

pretty much I don't have those kinds of associations with roads. Other things yes...though Country Road goes through my brain when I enter WV

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I always associate Primal Scream's "Swastika Eyes" with late nights on the M25. Not a good idea to play it in the day time, because it's one of those songs that tempts you to put your foot down.

And Wire's "Dot Dash" perfectly captures the oddly monotonous fear of driving on a busy British motorway when you're caught up in a block of vehicles at high speed that are all far too close together.

[graffitiandsara.livejournal.com]

Radio songs from the Late 1977 to 1981 do it for me. I can't remember specific ones because it wasn't what I had in albums or tapes, it's just what played on the radio when I'd be driving to and from SUNY Albany. Every now and then I'll hear one of the songs that would been playing back then and it'll put me right back into that time.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Ahh. We never used the radio in the car, except to listen to play-by-play. I didn't start until I had my own car, and really not until I was commuting to work.

Fangurl Squee!!

[mshepnj.livejournal.com]

I icarously enjoy reading about your pleasant roadtrip.

Pretty much as soon as I crossed the Verrazano into Staten Island, I put "The Cars/Candy-O" into my CD player for the drive down. There's something about that band that really strikes me as fitting while driving down the Jersey Turnpike. I'm not really sure why.

Oh, hee! I had Candy-O on 8 Track (or is that Eight Track?) and played it over and over and over and over and...well, it was a fangurl favorite back in the day. It was also a car favorite going Down The Shore.

There is something so - so... evocative about the New Jersey Turnpike, innithere? Usually it evokes, uh, rage. But if you go into it already knowing that traffic happens and can make the most of it, there's plenty of good NJTurnpike-listening music to be had.

At one time I tried to put together a songlist of "NJ Places" but I only got a few before I gave up. There's "State Trooper" by Springsteen (sung by him or the Cowboy Junkies), and James McMurtry's "Down Across the Delaware" which also mentions the NJT, and "Bury my Heart in Atlantic City" by Shannon McNally.

Sometimes I just put on Bruce. "Thunder Road" still give me goosebumps every time I warble along with it.

p.s.

[mshepnj.livejournal.com]

That "v"icariously. Duh.

And I love your Paddington Bear icon.

Re: Fangurl Squee!!

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

But if you go into it already knowing that traffic happens and can make the most of it, there's plenty of good NJTurnpike-listening music to be had.

Very true. Although, this time, I got off at Exit 8A and went down 130 until I got to 195. But that also meant I got to go past the AEGIS Combat building near Moorestown just off 295, which is cool because it looks like the bridge of a Ticonderoga.

[ladyhelix.livejournal.com]

Every time we took a car trip, the boys and I would pick a CD to be our "THEME" song (it also kept us from fighting over what to listen to)! Once we got past Joe Scruggs, Beginners Bible, & Lambchops Sing-along play-along songs.. we were on to:

* Songs you know by heart.. (what's his name - Cheeseburger in Paradise guy). (Fruitcakes also sponsored several trips)!

* Kenny Loggins Live from the Redwoods

* Canadian Brass - CB Plays Bernstein - purchased at the Canadian Brass concert we attended on the trip. (The boys had just watched WEST SIDE STORY (about 10 times straight) before we left, and how lucky were we that they played the entire soundtrack at the concert! - the tuba rendition of "I feel Pretty" was priceless!)

* Billy Joel Stranger

* Brian Adams So far so good

* Collin Hay Going Somewhere

* Savage Garden - Affirmation

* Bob Segar: Greatest Hits

* Wood Songs From Stamford Hill

* Nik Kershaw - 15 Minutes

* The Eagles (various)

* David Gray - White Ladder

* Mary Beth Maziarz - A More Perfect World (-surprising, but they had performed two of these pieces in choir!)


Now when I hear any of these - I think of those crazy trips! Not necessarily my #1 choices - but they kept the peace for hours and hours in the car, and kind of "stitched" our trips together!! Also because by the time we got home - none of us could STAND to listen to them EVER AGAIN!

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

CHeeseburger = Jimmy Buffet

We definitely listened to a lot of Billy Joel, Bob Seeger and Eagles as well.

[ladyhelix.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU! How could I forget Jimmy Buffet!

If you ever get your hands on FRUITCAKES - the first two songs are priceless!
(1) Everybody's got a cousin in Miami
(2) Fruitcakes

(Those may not be their real names - but if I was naming them - that's what they'd be!!)

OH! also reading your Bakery fiction!! I loved the first 2 chapters, so I printed the rest of it off, and will read them as a "TREAT" to myself!

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I was trying to do a neat and hopeful little coda for the series. Just note that I pretty much wrote it after S7/4 so pretty much anything from AtS-5 has to be ignored. Hopefully you'll enjoy the rest. It's reasonably fluffy.

[nwhepcat.livejournal.com]

Since my drive to the Corn Palace in May (yay! A reason to use my icon!) I am sure I'll associate Neil Young's Tonight's the Night with prairie and I-90.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Whee! Corn Palace. Whee! Neil Young.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

A mix that my brother made me - that we played over and over and over again while driving around England one summer. I was with four classmates on an overseas class, and we'd taken a break to see the countryside. Rented a car, put in our gear, and unfortunately only brought two tapes with us (this was before most cars had CD players). Not sure if you've ever driven around England, but the radio is not the best. At any rate - we popped in this mix my brother made me - it was a compilation of Pink Floyd albums and Peter Gaberiel. When I look at photographs from that time period or think of England, I hear Pink Floyd's song The Albatross in my head, followed closely by Wish You Were Here, then Biko.

Other songs I associate with long car trips...my father currently has a thing for opera, so we get opera, mozart, then finally some jazz and Simon and Garfunkle. Personally, I prefer something with a bit more of a beat in it while driving, or I'll go to sleep, but that's just me.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Never driven around England, but I've driven some stretches of highway where radio reception is not good - the PA stretch on the drive from DC to Detroit being one example.

Personally, I prefer something with a bit more of a beat in it while driving, or I'll go to sleep, but that's just me.

I do too. Though - not too much beat - as there are some albums I'll start speeding to.