Is there anything more intertwined with driving than music on the radio? Whether it’s Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55” or the Beach Boys’ “Little Deuce Coupe”, there is something for almost everyone. Since I learned to drive, there are several songs, albums, and/or artists that are forever inexorably connected in my mind to various distinct periods in my life and the drives during which I listened to them; when I hear them now my mind always goes back to those times…
I received my driver’s license in October of 1985, and was a big fan of the early “alternative” and New Wave scenes. My first concert experience was a month later – Thompson Twins with OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) and the Moderns as the opening acts. At the time, OMD had just released their album “Crush” and I was listening to the tape anytime I was in my ’79 Mazda 626 after finally getting it as my own. The video is a bit “cringey” as I view it now but at least they’re driving around and hey, I was sixteen, cut me some slack…I went on to own their whole back catalog and nowadays they are known and very respected as one of the pioneers of early electronica.
High School wasn’t a necessarily fond memory for me but whenever I hear anything from that album it takes me right back there and to all the John Hughes and similar “Brat Pack” movies of the time, which generally let me identify with at least one of the characters in a positive way (which, in hindsight, may have been the point of the often large ensemble casts…).
Over the next couple of years there was obviously much driving about to nowhere in particular with friends as happens with newly minted drivers. For some reason, whenever it rained (not that often in the Los Angeles area) we usually ended up piling into my friend Ken’s 1980 Datsun 200SX. He was a big fan of The Cars at the time, and often would have something of theirs playing.
Somehow I have identified driving in the rain with The Cars’ music, to the point that I often enjoy listening to their music on a rainy day but generally don’t choose to do so on other days. Specifically, “You Might Think” and “Since You’re Gone” seem to be the two songs that I associate most closely with these memories.
College started soon enough, in the summer of 1987 for me (yes, I started five days after graduating from High School), and U2 had released their “The Joshua Tree” album earlier that year. I had been a casual fan of theirs prior to this, but “The Joshua Tree” was truly something seminal, I had that tape on auto-reverse constantly in that first summer of college.
From the lengthy opening goose-bump inducing chords of “Where The Streets Have No Name” to “With Or Without You” all the way through to “One Tree Hill” and “Mothers Of The Disappeared” this is one album that I enjoy listening to over and over all the way through more than any other U2 album before or after and always brings back memories of long flowing drives up and down the California coast.
Vying for my attention in the first year of college were two other great acts – first was New Order with their “Substance 1987” compilation. Released in August of 1987, this is a compilation of their singles since their previous singer Ian Curtis committed suicide while they were named Joy Division, thus ending that band but the remaining members carried on as New Order and successfully changed their sound over time while still being true to their early days.
At the time my favorite song on the album was “Perfect Kiss” which I would rewind and play over and over, but “Ceremony” and of course their signature song “Temptation” have since pushed their way to the forefront to still be a couple of my absolute favorites of all time that I can and do listen to at any time along with a couple of others not on this collection such as “Age of Consent”. At the time, I was also a big fan of the more dance oriented numbers such as “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “True Faith” and while I still appreciate them, I prefer and still constantly play the others. But just like U2 above, New Order’s “Substance” and the songs on it take me back to my favorite memories and drives in college.
The second act to play in the background of much of my driving time during this era was The Cure’s “Standing on a Beach”. Yet another collection, this very interesting band released this compilation back in 1986 after being a band for a decade.
Changing dramatically throughout, songs vary from the moody “The Forest” and “A Hanging Garden” to the melodic and poppy “The Love Cats” and a long-time favorite “Close To Me”. I’d often put this disc on when I wasn’t sure how I was feeling and on a long drive back down to L.A. from San Luis Obispo or back would allow me to feel an entire range of emotions in just over an hour’s time while it played.
Of course the rest of college and the beginning of my career encompassed much more music and many various acts that I was a fan of at different times, but the next act that I strongly identify with driving came more than a decade later when I first traveled to Colorado in my 1993 Audi S4. The Strokes had recently released their “Is This It” album and the song “Last Nite” was receiving heavy airplay on the radio.
I had purchased the CD recently before leaving and played it constantly on this drive to Colorado and back. I don’t listen to it much anymore but when it or any other Strokes song comes on the radio, I always turn it up and enjoy the memories of that drive in very early 2002.
In mid-2004 The Killers released their first album “Hot Fuss” and it quickly became a favorite of my wife’s and mine. We tend to not really listen to music at home for some reason but always do in the car. Our daughter was born a bit over a year earlier and we traveled a lot via car in those days and listened to this album all the time, both because we really enjoyed it and also since it was invariably loaded into the CD player or changer and we were usually too lazy to swap it out.
Today, whenever my daughter (now just turned 15) and I are driving somewhere and an early Killers song comes on the radio or I have the CD in the player, she always says she likes the music and that it reminds her of “her childhood”… I think the song “All These Things That I’ve Done” is my favorite with its very abrupt tonal and tempo change in the middle, but really all the songs are fantastic. That particular song is being used in a commercial for something or other currently so clearly I’m not the only fan…
The next seminal period in my life came when we moved to Colorado for good in 2010. I had become a big fan of The Toxic Airborne Event prior to this and while driving four truckloads of stuff as well as both our cars out from California had their self-titled debut with me every time. “Sometime Around Midnight” and “Wishing Well” especially still immediately take me back to those long, usually lonely, drives through the American West. Their guitarist has a lot of U2’s sometimes haunting sound in him, maybe that’s something I identify with.
I did take my older son (He was three years old at the time) with me on one drive and my daughter twice (she was seven) and they can identify this CD as from the “Big Move” as well. I actually have three copies of the CD as I twice forgot to take it with me on the flight back to CA and couldn’t bear to be without it for the next drive out and the time in-between trips. Yes, I have/had iPods but even today prefer to actually own and handle the music myself for some reason. My wife and I have since seen the band about a half-dozen times and while still a big fan, I feel a significantly stronger connection to their early work.
I’m a huge fan of all kinds of music ranging from Tom Petty to Cracker to David Bowie to The Clash to Yaz(oo) as special favorites, but the above were the ones that really make me “go back” to specific periods in time associated with driving. The latest one is probably Lorde’s “Melodrama” album of last summer that I am listening to a lot while driving back and forth to Laramie to work on a house up there. “Green Light” is my standout favorite, it somehow sends a shiver down my back when I hear it and reminds me of Laramie which is a strange connection but just due to the drive.
I surprised my daughter with tickets to Lorde’s Denver show last month and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, I knew she was a fan too but didn’t realize she knew every word to every song as we played it on the way down and back. Good times.
I assume I’m not the only one for which this is true, so is there any particular music or album that you prefer to listed to in the car or that you associate with a certain event or time in your life?
On a road trip around Lake Michigan to visit relatives with our toddlers we endlessly played the Wiggles’ Cold Spaghetti Western album:
“We’re the cowboys (we’re the coooow-booooys)
we eat fresh fruit when we can,
We wear cowboy hats, we like to boot scoot all day…”
As torturous as this was it did come in handy one morning. We were camping in Michigan and having been kept up till 2am by other campers, when our kids woke up at 6am I opened the rear door of the minivan and put the Wiggles on for everyone.
I’ll admit to having seen The Wiggles in concert in Kansas City in about 2005. It may have been the last concern I’ve attended…
Anyway, at one point the guitarist (he seen in red above) starting playing “Stairway to Heaven”. When the parents started laughing and clapping he joked something along the lines of having now entertained the entire family.
Oh you poor guy. The things we do 🙂
Im going to sound like a cranky old man for this, but…
Having graduated from HS in ’83, I grew up listening to music of all sorts, but mostly the usual hits and now so called “classic” era. Having said that, I certainly appreciated a lot of sounds back into the ’30’s or the early Elvis gospels. However, rock and roll to me has been dead for at least 15 years as the heavy rotation of EDM and HipCrap and autotune has left me cold. There is no lack of good music out there, but if you live where we do, you have “top hits”, country ( which is using a LOT of “top hits” sound effects and beats) or the CBC. Now, the CBC may have some occasional programming thats of interest, but lets put it this way: Our chickens would produce eggs happily if we played them country music, but none if we played the CBC. But I digress…
As a kid who happily looked forward to the local radio station top hits of the year or all time hits posters, it was a big deal knowing the songs from each year, and man, in the ’70’s, there were a lot of great songs flowing. Each year and each decade was unique back then, but it seems that the ’00’s up to now is a single decade even though its almost 20 years. I honestly try to listen to current music, but it just fails me. But then again, the Beatles never did much for me either! First album bought, I think I was 7, was Elton John Tumbleweed Connection. Favourite of his was ’75’s Captain Fantastic.
Great music / notes, Jim!
May I humbly suggest Sirius if you don’t do Pandora or some other streaming service? Yes, Sirius is a pay site, but I really do enjoy their lineups on the different channels. I tend to dwell on First Wave, as it has a lot of the alternative hits mentioned in the opening of the post, and I am often surprised to hear one that I have not heard for 30 or so years. Plus, you can always change the channel to another genre whenever the mood strikes, and no commercials. The fact that they curate the playlists for me makes it much easier to deal with listening, and I did enjoy a 7 hour road trip where I never heard the same song played twice, as opposed to terrestrial radio or a CD.
I’ll second that SiriusXM suggestion. No commercials and just the music you like. Like JFrank I do a lot of FirstWave (33), then Lithium (34) and whatever the new alternative one is called on 36. Just toggle back and forth, definite sanity keeper for long trips nowadays. And there is much more than just one thing for every possible genre and taste.
Great ideas. Have done so many times. I just need a filter that will sift out any song where the band says it’s own or it’s “featured” co-artist names in the song, and or the use of the word “ yo “ ( Spanish speaking artists excepted of course!). To listen to Drake as example is a teeth grinding eternity to wait for its end. Oh well, I still think the Napster era was peak Internet music wise.
Some good driving music, there. I am the same way, I have had streaks that I heavily identify with specific times. In college I was on a big Count Basie kick. Yes, I know it was in the late 70s and early 80s, but at least he was still alive then. 🙂 That was the era when I would buy the vinyl album and record it on cassette.
In law school some friends got me onto 80s new wave (Elvis Costello, the Stray Cats and others) and I was probably more in tune with normal pop music than I had been in a long time. I also made some mix tapes of 60s Motown and some other 60s groups.
As I mentioned the other day, I have mostly reverted to classic jazz. I am another CD buyer who then loads it into a music player and listens to it over and over until I can pretty much play it mentally. So it was Stan Kenton when my eldest was starting college, and an early bebop collection when my second went.
When my daughter was learning to drive she (hilariously, I thought) prepared a lengthy “driving playlist” so I got a thorough exposure to her eclectic tastes which ranged from Michael Jackson and the Beatles to the Ting Tings (which fit surprisingly well with my tastes in early 80s music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1c2OfAzDTI).
Much older than you guys but still like music in cars – especially on the long trips we drive in the west.
Sirius 21 Underground Garage. Rock music from ’60s & ’70s.
The Who; Yardbirds; J. Geils Band; MC5; Kinks; Animals; Small Faces; Faces; ZZ Top; Cheap Trick; AC/DC.
Not your era but there may be others closer to my age who go to Sirius 21.
My first two albums (vinyl) were The GoGo’s – We Got the Beat and J. Geils’ Freeze Frame so there! and Zz was in heavy MTV rotation at the time and AC/DC is always good no matter the occasion…and I saw Cheap Trick at a corporate event concert in the early 2000’s. All good stuff!
I think J Geils’ live album “Full House” is probably the best live rock album of all time, though “Live at Budokan” and “Frampton Comes Alive” are right up there too.
When we have summer here (5 days a year), I love to listen stuff like little deuce coupe, I get around, drag city.. you name it. Then I imagine myself cruisin down a strip in california. My little mopar (AA body) support this, because it has the spirit of a typical US rental car. You see what consuming US TV shows do on poor little boys 😉
On my way to work, which is very early in the morning, I prefer hard rock or heavy metal, from Kiss to Iron Maiden etc.
But sometimes even I like it smooth. Then Katie Melua is the first choice, especially the album secret symphony.
I remember when me and my best friend both were eighteen and had just made the driving license (around 2000/2001) our favourite tune was Black Sabbaths “Paranoid”, while driving in his mothers Renault Clio. It was a black one.
About ten years ago I had a company car, and a colleague who must be in Jims age. He was really a music nerd and we were talking a lot about music. And listening of course, too. Notably punk, like the Ramones or the here very famous band “Die Ärzte” (german for the doctors).
At the end something strange. One of my earliest memorys of music while driving is a song called “Life is life” by austrian band Opus. It eas a heavy airplay in radio back then.
Music is a necessity – like breathing and food. ESPECIALLY in cars. Especially on road trips!
I graduated from HS in the 70’s, and by the 80’s was on a jazz marathon/kick, because it was all new and wondrous to me. But with exceptions, jazz doesn’t make good road trip music.
So I’m just going to randomly list bands or artists that I always take along…Tom Petty (with or without the Heartbreakers), ZZ Top, Bob Seger, Dave Edmunds, and a compilation of 70’s rockers that includes such gems as ‘Radar Love’ and ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’.
Golden Earring’s Radar Love is a fantastic song, I remember it well “…when the bullet hits the bone….” I’m getting flashbacks here now. 🙂 Blue Oyster Cult always reminds me of Fast Times’ Damone scalping the tickets and Dave Edmunds was seemingly on MTV for a very long stretch in the early 80’s…Petty will be missed, fantastic music with an album for every occasion – there’s a really good 4hour long documentary on Petty from the early Mudcrutch days up to the late 2000’s. I saw him a couple of times when they were the “house band” at the SF Fillmore and again a few years ago at Red Rocks.
There is a late ’80s song by Bad English (Jon Waite’s second(?) group), “Rockin’ Horse,” that actually mentions driving to Golden Earring’s “Radar Love.”
Now wait a minute here, Jim… “when the bullet hits the bone” comes from their 1982 song Twilight Zone. Radar Love is from 1973.
Some of my own favorites: The Gun Club (Jeffrey Lee Pierce), Canned Heat, Johnny Winter, RL Burnside, Son House, Robert Johnson, Fred McDowell, Rory Gallagher, Peter Pan Speedrock. That kind of stuff, you know what I’m talking about…
I don’t like any of the world-famous “big” bands. Too smooth, too polished, too commercial.
Agh, you are absolutely correct, I’m getting my songs confused. Either way, they’re both great!
My first two cars, the 84 Sedan de Ville and 96 Sedan Deville, had XM Satellite Radio (aftermarket – hey, when you’re a teen and have no bills aside from gas and insurance..you splurge a bit) so the soundtrack to my teenage motoring years was XM 50’s on 50, 60’s on 6, as well as Soul Street.
Elvis, The Beach Boys, Motown, Doo wops, and of course The Beatles all make for fine motoring pleasure. But nothing fits driving the land yachts like 50’s rock & roll (or the Stray Cats) – fuzzy dice on the mirror please.
These days with the bluetooth cassette adapter it’s my own personal radio stations providing the tunes, but still nothing puts a grin on my face like driving with Dion & The Belmonts or Elvis flowing out of the speakers.
My car systems have been modified to accept my ipod which has nearly 800 songs from 1958 on up. Being 16 in 1969 means the great majority would be with in that year plus and minus 10. Yet any good rock and roll would be able to make the list. When I started the car this morning the ipod starts up immediately and the first random song was BTO Let it Ride which is a great driving song.
Speaking of driving songs I was driving across the newer span of the Bay Bridge with my wife and son. My wife is on the phone to her family in the Philippines and see is using the phone to show the bridge. As she was doing that the song playing was I Get Around by the Beach Boys. I do love that song.
I was well in to Depp Purple and Led Zeppelin when I was in college. Ted Nugent made several appearances on my player, as did Rush, Foghat, Nazareth, and Iron Butterfly. Nowadays, Rush gets the majority of my attention when I’m driving. My USB drive has about 1500 songs, ranging from the Mills Brothers and Kim Mitchell to Dixie Chicks (sorry it’s my wife’s CD), Roxy Music, R.E.M., U2, and Tragically Hip.
About the song by the Killers – go on YouTube and search for “Let’s Dance”. That song is used as the theme for a number of great and historic dance numbers. Elvis, Michael Jackson, and if I recall correctly, Fred Astaire and many others.
A lot of people lampooned Julian Casablancas for basically ripping off Lou Reed’s style when “Is This It?” came out in 2001, but the fact that The Strokes are still well regarded almost twenty years after their debut proves they aren’t the one trick pony critics thought they were. If you haven’t already listened to it, I get a feeling you’d enjoy “Phrazes for the Young,” which was a solo project from Julian that has some great songs on it. And I’m in full agreement with you regarding Lorde. She’s one of the best singer songwriters in years and she displays a maturity well beyond her age.
I went to college about an 8 hour drive from home, and two albums were the constant for all of the (very hung over) drives home: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and (especially!) Whos Next, which is probably the all time best album, let alone best driving album. (I knew I succeeded as a parent when #1Son was about 6 and started singing “Behind Blue Eyes” at the top of his lungs in the back seat.) I can’t hear either of those albums without thinking of I81 through the lake effect snow belt above Syracuse.
Earlier, I associated the Elton John song “Blues for Baby and Me” with my 48 hour bus trip across the country to Philmont Scout Ranch.
When I was a bit older, the Pat Metheny Group album ” American Garage” (especially “Cross the Heartland”) became the soundtrack for road trips up US 395 to Mammoth Mountain CA ( before “smooth jazz” ruined it forever). Also, the Dead’s “American Beauty” (my wife was a Deadhead and it rubbed of a bit.). (I have a vivid memory of a CHP cruiser telling us to slow down using his PA system – we were somewhere on the 15, in the Miata, top down, with Friend of Devil playing at 11… She was driving of course; had I been driving it would’ve been a ticket for certain.)
Currently my driving music is the Trampled by Turtles album Stars and Satellites, which opens with “Midnight on the Interstate”.
ETA Oddly, though I do like a lot of prog rock -classic and more recent- I just don’t associate it with driving. I have no idea why….
https://youtu.be/6_6M_6KStEw
Great article Jim. I don’t know if you remember ‘Electronic’, the band that New Order singer Bernard Sumner formed with the Smith’s guitarist Johnny Marr in 1988? Their big hit was ‘Getting Away with It’ in 1989, as they collaborated with Neil Tennant and Ann Dudley of Art of Noise.
‘Electronic’ was one of my favourite road trip groups through the entirety of the 90s.
Even many of their lesser known songs were outstanding. They collaborated with Scottish singer Astrid Williamson in 1999. This is a great song!
‘Get the Message’ was another favourite…
YES! Definitely a fan, bought the CD when it was first released. Lately I’ve been really getting into the old videos that are starting to pop up from New Order’s early days – The original version of Temptation before it was even called that is amazing (was called Taboo No. 7), the live ten minute version at Taras Shevchenko in NY from 1981 pits a whole new spin on it from what was really the first tour after Ian’s death.
https://youtu.be/SwWp-27P0gA
Wow. I too look for the earliest material of all the UK bands of that era. I was a huge fan of The Fixx, Heaven 17, The Human League. Spandau Ballet was a cutting new wave band long before ‘True’.
Of course, we owe a great deal to Gary Numan…
Only driving song I ever liked, and the only song that still makes the hair on the back of my head stand up: “Dead Man’s Curve” by Jan and Dean. Note that the cars pictured are not completely right, but ….. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukunx21UHCA
That U2 album was a revelation; the first three tracks on side one…
I would make mixtapes as none of my cars ever had a CD player. Mostly soul and country with a scattering of yacht. I used to christen each of my cars (if it had a tape-deck) with Back in Black by AC/DC. I’ve stopped playing it now as it would get me so into the vibe my foot would reflexively keep on pressing down on the throttle without me knowing.
Yeah those first three songs are amazing in that sequence.
I’d make mixtapes too with all kinds of stuff and then after about a year of college got so tired of the top-40 and classic rock stuff at the time that was all that was available up there, I took to recording hours of KROQ whenever back at home with commercials and everything (just hit record and keep taping until it ran out) – then I’d have several tapes of the latest stuff to listen to when I’d go back up the coast for the next few weeks. Those tapes became quite popular and I remember passing them around to others for a long time afterward.
My best friend Eddie installed an eight track player in his dad’s 1974 6 cylinder three on the tree LeMans when he got his license. The only tape he had for the longest time was the Canadian band April Wine.
I can remember hours riding shotgun in that car, listening to that tape and discussing what life was all about at sixteen.
Very rarely do I hear their music anymore but when I do it instantly shoots me back to that time and taking the first tenuous steps to both surviving and ultimately getting away from a very bad home life. If it had not been for Eddie, that car and that music I probably would literally not have made it out of high school alive.
God bless them all.
I’m definitely one for good driving music. There’s nothing more exhilarating and relaxing at the same time then cruising through some twisty roads. Personally, I prefer up-tempo stuff.
Oh man, I wore out 3 Cheap Trick Live at Budakon tapes. The Kinks album “Give the people what they want” got tons of play, ELO “Out of the Blue” was a daily necessity, a couple of 50’s instrumental compilations, one Spike Jones compilation and lots of George Carlin. Stan Freberg made an appearance sometimes too. Yeah, I was/am a nerd.
My buddy and l found a ZZ Top Eliminator cassette from 1983 in a junkyard. It was in the glovebox of an 85 Chrysler New Yorker. I bought it on a whim and forgot about it, giving it to a friend, as he had a car with a broken tape player. He kept it for something like three years, just sitting inside his 280ZX. When l bought my current car, a 1987 Plymouth Fury I call Helen, he gave it back to me. I love to blast Sharp Dressed Man as l cruise down the highway, as she is the first car I truly fell in love with.
It sounds like I’m a bit older than most here, and I started listening to music seriously in Elementary School. … I grew up with the Beach Boys “When Daddy Takes the T-Bird Away.” Jan & Dean. Never was into Elvis, but throw some Everly Bros. my way. Motown… just about all of it. Then came the late sixties. Not a Beatles Fan, but the Rolling Stones worked just fine. The Who. And that genre my kids affectionately call “Hippy Music.” Great stuff.
I’ve got about 15 gigs set up on a memory stick that travels from car to car with me. Little of everything on it. Had to make a copy of it for both kids- music is something we agree on, and all of our tastes are so varied, we’re bound to hit something we like. I probably listen to more Country than anything these days, with the caveat that Tom Petty would be recording in Nashville if he was breaking into the business today. Brantley Gilbert, Jason Aldean, and Eric Church straddler that gray line somewhere between Country and Southern Rock. I like that line.
At the moment, I’m listening to Booker T doing “Green Onions.” Nothing beats the sound of a Hammond B3.
+10 for Green Onions, and come to think of it for instrumental guitar rock in general, from Green Onions and a lot of surf in the 60s, to Jeff Beck and Dixie Dregs in the 70s, to Joe Satriani in the 80s, to the Hellecasters and Steve Vai in the 90s, to Los Straitjackets in the 00s… All great for covering long miles.
A lot of instrumental rock walks that country/rock line you mention very successfully, as IMHO it’s often the vocals that drag songs too far onto the country side, with exagerated accents and “my dog left me and I drank too much last night” lyrics. (I won’t watch Duck Dynasty on TV; why would I want to listen to it in my music?!)
(or IOW YMMV)
Love the Edward Hopper artwork in the 1St picture above! One of the reasons that cars are so special is because someone long ago thought to include two of our favorite things in them. Upholstered seats and a radio. Honestly when I see an old radio delete car, my first thought is that the original owner must have been miserable. Who doesn’t like music? My musical tastes cover at least 200 years from classical to ragtime to jazz to blues to folk to bluegrass to REAL country to rock and some heavy metal. I can appreciate opera though I don’t care for it. I can’t appreciate rap or hip hop and consider both to be as desireable as used toilet paper.
It actually wasn’t Hopper but an imitation (but I always wondered about it):
“OMD originally wanted to use a painting by American artist Edward Hopper for the sleeve after a suggestion by Gordian Troeller. But after discovering the fees would be too high they drafted in artist Paul Slater to copy Hopper’s distinctive style.
Slater based his painting on a Hopper painting called Early Sunday Morning (1930). ”
I love Hopper as well and really like this artwork. It continues on the back side and there is also a foldout album version which I have somewhere. You can Google it to see, but the buildings to the left continue and have renderings of the band members in the windows. If you look up the inspiration painting by Hopper they did a very good job of imitating the style.
Thanks for the info. I was fooled. The imitation is darn good and captures the magic that Hopper put into his own works.
I don’t have the time for a detailed post but it is hard to beat classic jazz as music for the road; I find Miles Davis from the late fifties through the sixties especially rewarding but there are plenty of other artists out there. Someone upthread mentioned Count Basie; hard to go wrong with the Count.
Now that my wife’s car (which is the one that we always take on road trips) has Sirius it has simplified music for the road. I used to bring a collection of varied CD’s for the drive but now mostly listen to Sirius. The channels do get a little repetitious after a while but one can always go to another channel.
I suffer from insomnia and have found it helpful to listen to music for 30-45 minutes when I go to bed. My musical tastes are fairly broad so my MP3 player has music from numerous genres; from fifties jazz to a few contemporary artists. The vast majority of the songs, however, are rock (or at least “rockish”) songs from the sixties and early seventies. I suppose the same thing is true for music as it is for cars, we tend to like best what captured our fancy when we were young.
Cars and music go together like white and rice. I don’t necessarily identify a song or artist with a certain period in my life, as much as I identify it with a particular person, especially girls. Practically every girl/woman I’ve had a relationship with has, in my mind, a song attached to her. The same can’t be said so much about men, except for the most influential ones on my life, such as my dad. My song that belongs to him is Seger’s “Beautiful Loser”. He wasn’t a biker, far from it, but his life seemed to be a tragic tale of wanting it all, only to fall after finding he couldn’t have it. “It’s easier, faster when you fall, ahh, you just [can’t have/don’t need] it all.” Man, I miss him…
A few comments mentioned XM/Sirius. Holy cow. That’s practically all I listen to, now. I do have wide tastes in music, but like many, I prefer rock. I have a trunk full of vinyl, and a few hundred CDs. The problem with CDs is I listened to only my favorite 10%; the rest collected dust with the vinyl. When I bought my ‘08 Impala in 2014, it came with a complimentary 3 month XM/Sirius trial. I never thought I’d pay for a music service; heck, I had to dragged kicking and screaming into cable TV, and I still only cough up for, not “basic”, but “basic-basic”. As cheap as it gets without rabbit ears. But back to the satellite radio. I. Love. It. Underground Garage 21. Classic Rewind 25. Spectrum 28. Comedy. Older country. Blues. Classical. I took a trip up the east coast before the complimentary XM/Sirius (and OnStar) subscription ran out. I was 30 to 40 miles from home when the terrestrial radio started to fade and I realized I forgot the CDs. “Well, I’m not turning around, guess I’ll have to listen to satellite.” I was sold on it within a couple of hours. Like I said earlier, I have a habit of listening to what I know, or whatever the local terrestrial radio stations plays on their rotation. To be fair, XM/Sirius channels have a rotation, too; you’ll find that out after 10 solid hours of driving; however there is the variety, and the added benefit of not having to hunt for a new station every 100 miles. But the best thing? The stuff I’ve never heard before. I’m amazed at some of the great songs and great artists I’d never heard of before, and that I’d probably never would have had I not had satellite radio. I’m not talking about just “new” music, but some older bands and obscure songs that never received much terrestrial airplay or were never really all that popular. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: #ilovemysatelliteradio
As an aside – if you want to stop with cable TV, we cut the cord about four years ago now (which wasn’t easy getting three kids to go along with it so we started with just one TV and then expanded it over a few months) but getting a HiDef flat antenna (Like the Mohu Wave or plenty of others) that looks about the size and shape of a piece of paper will get you ALL the local channels including local sports, all in HiDefintion for zero cost. The antenna itself is between $30-$60 depending on if you need it amplified – As long as you are within 60 miles or so of a decent size market that’s all you need. We are 50 miles north of Denver so we get some of their networks, a couple of channels from Cheyenne and one from Nebraska. The Broncos games often come through the Casper, WY feed (which is weird, seeing those local ads!) So that was a one-time expense and we have it on three TV’s now. Then we added Netflix ($14/month), Hulu ($11 for the ad-free version) and already had Amazon Prime. Between those we are shelling out about $25-$33/month if you add the Amazon cost and get pretty much everything we want to see, all without any commercials. Way ahead of where we were five years ago. I’m considering adding SlingTV just for the motorsports but waffling on it. It gets trickier if you have to have a Hockey package or something but the whole sports world seems to (slowly) be moving to their own standalone services as an option.
But really, I do not miss cable or satellite TV at all, this is working perfectly and the family seems to be happy with it. The shows on Netflix and Amazon are better than the regular stuff anyway, but Hulu has all those with a slight publication delay and all the reruns cycle through the others as well, so nothing lost.
We have never had cable or satellite (and I’m over 60). Switched to an HD antenna and tuner (with our old CRT TV!) as soon as HD became available, and never looked back. Of course now we have a modern TV with HD built in, and we do have an Apple TV with Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions … but our broadband comes in on twisted-pair DSL, still no coax (except from the antenna to the TV). I’m amazed how many people don’t know about over-the-air HD. It’s a regular topic of discussion on our neighborhood Nextdoor forums, always accompanied by incredulous “Wait, you mean it’s free???!!?” comments. By the way, we have AT&T DSL Internet Service, and it was very hard to convince them we wanted Uverse internet only, no content. BTW, we find a lot of regular broadcast network shows (ABC, PBS etc) available on their streaming channels through the Apple TV, often with some delay from the original broadcast time (2-24 hours) and maybe just for a few weeks.
Yes the HD antenna is a great option, I forgot to mention we have several Roku boxes (no ongoing charge, just one time for the hardware) to “host” Netflix, Hulu, etc as well as a couple of Roku streaming sticks, inexpensive, well made and very well designed interfaces. And the headphone jack in the REMOTE itself is a lifesaver in a smallish house when someone is watching something that others don’t want to hear.
We just recently got our first “Smart” TV, so my son now has the full Roku functionality built in to his TV, so far it’s working out great.
I was a rabbit ears man until broadcast went digital. All three of my TVs are over 20 years old, thus requiring a digital conversion box, approximately $60 each. When the broadcasters switched from analog to digital, Comcast had a $10 a month offer for basic-basic service, which after they cut a few channels over the years, is now only the traditional local broadcasters and their digital siblings. It is now $38 plus tax. I can replace the kitchen 13” TV for under $100, and the bedroom 19” for a little more. The great room would need about a 42’’ to be acceptable, whatever that’d be. Listen to me. The great room gets by now very well on a 90s vintage Sony 25”, probably best to get a converter for that TV.. I know I sound cheap, but these TVs have served me well, and they and their remotes still work perfectly. I need to cut the cord. And to be honest, I’ve never tried any subscription service, not even Netflix. I’ve never even used my DVD player but maybe a dozen times. I forgot how it works.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to head down to the river and beat my clothes on a rock….
Surprised no-one mentioned “Music to Drive By”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkpoxxZQ-To
40s Big Band is one of my go-to genres while driving. It’s such Happy music compared to most recent (last couple decades) stuff.
If you’re a fan of ’80s synth pop, you should investigate the French band M83. Not all of their tracks have lyrics, but they have an ambience. Before the Dawn Heals Us is like the soundtrack to a heretofore unreleased Michael Mann or David Lynch film from around 1986.
Yes, I know and enjoy the song Midnight City but need to dig deeper. MGMT is all good too, and The Limousines are quite interesting as well. Thanks!
For long trips, I actually prefer old radio shows to music, since having a narrative to follow makes it easier to not zone out.
This is as good as the hobbies thread! I actually don’t listen to music much in the car anymore, and have had the luxury of living my whole life in a metro area with great broadcast radio, everything from NPR to Americana and some of the country’s (US) pioneering alternative rock and country FM radio stations like KMPX/KSAN and KFAT/KPIG, plus lots of college radio. So when I do listen, it’s usually radio, and in fact often NPR talk and news. I got Sirius XM free for over a year on my Tacoma and briefly enjoyed its variety, especially on my cross country drives in 2016, but quickly tired of the repetition and constant commercial breaks and didn’t re-subscribe. But when I was younger … I got an under-dash cassette player with one of my first engineer paychecks for my Vega in 1977. Pre-recorded cassettes were pretty pricey so I recorded a lot off the vinyl I or friends owned, but I still remember finding a big bin of $1 cassettes at Gemco (Target predecessor) and picked up a few, in a genre that I still listen to today: New Riders of the Purple Sage, Little Feat, a “best of” Commander Cody with Hot Rod Lincoln and a Taj Mahal tape. The tapes themselves are long-gone, and in any case, since passing down our New Beetle last year, we no longer have any car with a tape player. On road trips, and in my garage, if radio doesn’t appeal or is unavailable, I do listen to a random shuffle of all the songs on my phone, no playlists. And yeah, Radar Love, Willin’, Maybelline, Hot Rod Lincoln, Crawling from the Wreckage, and Dodge Veg-o-matic are some of the road/car songs I have on my phone.
Well, I’m a 1986 High School grad who first became licensed in late ’83, and a lot of the references in the original post strike a nerve.
More all-purpose and user-friendly than just about anything though are either Fleetwood Mac or Queen. Both had their prime heyday just a bit before my driving years, but both are universally awesome for just about any road trip, be it local or long distance.
I must admit though, whether I want to or not, that I’m a bubble-gum pop junkie at heart, so gimme some Carly Rae Jepson or One Direction and a bit of traffic-free asphalt and I’m a happy camper.
Driving and music have always gone together for me. I can still remember the first song that I heard in my new ’79 Malibu, The Sultans of Swing.
When I was younger my friends and I always told each other what song was playing on the radio when their odometer rolled over 100 thousand miles.
A few years ago I pulled a joke on my brother by calling him on my cell when my ’03 Mustang turned over 200 thousand. I told him that I couldn’t believe it but Mustang Sally was playing on the radio right then and had him listen on the phone. Later I had to confess that he was actually hearing a CD.
Some of my favorite driving songs are Mustang Sally ( of course), Running Down a Dream, Born to Run, Highway Song, Radar Love, and the little known Foreigner song, Rev On the Redline. I learned long ago that if I don’t want to get a speeding ticket I can’t listen to VanHalen when I am driving.
Gee, nobody has mentioned going submarine race watching with Murray the K, on the swinging soiree, with his blasts, from the past, on WINS 1010 AM.
Scratchy AM mono signal radio with one speaker and a coat hanger antennae.
I guess you just had to be there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E5qbOqKgzQ
Hey FM, stereo, 8 track, cassette, CD, DVD, thumb drive, Blue tooth, Spotify, and satellite radio wonders; put this in your pipe and smoke it. Or is it “put this in your smoke and pipe it”?
and this:
I got my license in 1981 and discovered the “alternative” radio station WLIR and Punk and new Wave shortly afterwards. My definitive driving in the rain songs are “Can’t Let Go” by either Roxy Music or Bryan Ferry solo, which sings about driving in the rain and Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” which I first heard on the BBC while driving on the M1 in the rain.
I was also fond of The Clash and Joy Division once I had a car with a cassette deck. These days I still listen to the local alternative radio, and laugh at the weed shop ads and my got CDs are The Teddy Bears, James and China Crisis, unless I want to get in touch with my inner Slav, in which case I have a hard bass mix CD.
Always personal choices, but Mike Oldfield’s tubular Bells on loud and repeat is normally good, along with Dire Straits, Genesis, Supertramp, Electric Light Orchestra and of course Edward Elgar and Vaughan Williams for quieter times, though I find classical music does not normally work well in a car. I often use the Bluetooth to the phone and listen to some 500 songs on shuffle, jumping through those that don’t appeal on the day.
If it’s OMD, then Enola Gay takes a lot of beating. Abba are proving very durable too….
BBC radio podcasts are always worth tracking down, relatively easily worldwide I suspect.