In Cars

Music is the right thing to be happening when you're driving.  It sets the pace, clears your mind, focuses your concentration.  That's why they play it so often in the background at work - studies have proven it.  I just don't get the attraction of the distracting things - televisions, cell phones, texting.  Text while driving - are you mad?  I can't even text while texting.  It's odd, I'm usually an early adopter for most technologies, but I still barely use my cell, and resent the hell out of it.  Why is being accessible at all times considered desirable?  One of the world's best inventions was the answering machine...I love sitting there, listening to the message, having the power to decide whether I want to engage in the contact or not.  I just don't understand my students, their attention pulled like a marionette by the still-audible buzz of the phone set on vibrate...

But I digress.

When you're a kid, you don't get to choose the music in the car, your parents do.  When I was really young, and my parents were still in the hungry years, we listened to the radio.  AM radio.  I remember one road trip to York Beach, Maine...I couldn't have been more than five.  I wasn't in school yet.  The drive was like one long dream, watching the miles, sleeping in the back seat.  I'm an introvert, so I wasn't really asking "Are we there yet?"  I really liked the sensation of going somewhere unknown, with other people in charge.  Now that I'm an adult, I'll never get that back.  It was one of the few "carefree" things about a childhood which was mainly stress caused by pressure to get the best grades and stress caused by being teased about my good grades.

So anyway, that summer, pop music seemed to be obsessed with dogs - I remember the radio kept playing "Me and My Arrow" from that movie The Point.  I loved the song and the movie as a child.  As an adult, the song is just too treacle sweet.  Dunno about the movie - haven't seen it in years.  They also played "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo."  Yeah, it's as bad as it sounds.  Other car music from my early years..."Games People Play," and "Uncle Albert."  Aside here - I've never really listened to Wings because everyone around me always bad-mouthed them, probably out of resentment for the breakup of the Beatles.  Think I should give it a go.

As my parents moved up the social ladder, they had an 8-track installed in the car.  Let's pause a moment to savor that - an 8-track!  Worst format in the world, especially the bad track changing which always seemed to happen in the middle of a song.  And then, in their typical style, my parents bought a metric shit-tonne (affectation here, but I think this word just cries out for a British spelling) of discount 8-tracks at a clearance sale, pretty much at random.  We got, among other things, a tape called Switched on Bacharach, (punning off of "Switched on Bach") which was Burt Bacharach's greatest hits played on a moog synthesizer.  Let's just savor the kitchy glory of this.  We had a tape of Glen Campbell - dunno why, my parents hated country.  I'm no fan of the genre myself, but some of those songs were really good, especially "Wicheta Lineman" which is melodically gorgeous and also more lyrically sophisticated than I expect from country.  And we had the soundtrack from Cabaret.  I had that memorized, down to the spoken bits, even though at that age I hadn't a hope of understanding the dark humor of "If You Could See Her through My Eyes" or the risque "Two Ladies."

A reflection - why do I still love "Hold Tight" and hate "Two Ladies"?  They seem to be in the same sort of lighthearted burlesque genre.  But "Two Ladies," to my adult ear, is just so damn annoying.  Actually, most of the Cabaret soundtrack annoys me now, even though I loved it as a child.  Somehow "Hold Tight" just seems to have a groove, a rhythm, and if I had the language to describe why that hits my sweet spot, I could probably make a mint on the next music search engine.

I think the only 8-track my dad ever paid full price for was a two tape set of Elvis' greatest hits.  My dad loved Elvis.  Say what you want about Elvis, but he was still a legend - the looks, the stage presence, the voice.  In the era when I grew up, you had to be a songwriter to have any artistic credibility, but Elvis was a pop star.  Better him than Bieber, eh?  And also, he had better material to work with.

OK, for better or worse, here's the playlist:

Me and You and a Dog Named Boo - Listen at your own risk.  I can't believe what I can find on YouTube!

Me and My Arrow - The clip is actually from the movie, not the radio version.  Well, the song is pretty annoying, so maybe the less of it the better.  And the movie is cute, and narrated by Ringo Starr - I didn't know that!

Games People Play - Wow, here's a version on vinyl...and the first thing I hear - crackle, hiss, pop!!!!  Yes, I really don't understand today's love of vinyl.  Having grown up with it, I know it's easy to damage and prone to noise.  One of these days, I have to listen to some audiophile vinyl, to maybe convince me that it's better than digital.  But the song...first time I've heard it in maybe 30 years, and it's awesome!

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey - This is wonderful.  If I were 20 years younger, I'd go take some drugs now.

What's New Pussycat - Well, this review/bootleg link says that Switched on Bacharach is probably one of the better moog albums of the genre - except for this song.  But it's this song I remember best.  You really gotta hear it.  The only thing that could make it better would be if Martin Denny did bird calls.

Wicheta Lineman - I wish they would have axed the cheesy strings.  But that chord change behind "searching in the sun for another overload" just gave me chills.

Two Ladies - This is such a clever bit of filmmaking that I can almost forget how damn annoying the song is.  It might make an interesting post about how music that is perfectly wonderful in situ is absolutely awful out of the context of the original musical.  And I know that legions of lovers of those kinds of soundtracks disagree with me.

Jailhouse Rock - You smiled, didn't you?  Caught you smiling.

Re-Wired - and now for something completely different...my favorite song to play while I'm driving today. It's such a good car song that the official video even looks like a car advert - made by Monty Python, maybe.  Rock on, doooods.