Growing up my family went on a lot of road trips to visit family in either Tennessee or Chicago. On the way we always had a box of CDs in the car that seemed to be almost designated for the road trip. Sometimes I would be allowed to pick them out before we left, or choose them while we were in the car.
I distinctly remember sitting in the captain seats of the car looking out the window as the fields and telephone lines that you would normally find in Ohio whipped past our car. Porcelain by Moby was playing. Despite all the motion and chaos, the calm streaming sounds of Moby made my view out the car window seem like poetry worth contemplating. This wasn't uncommon. As I grew older, I started packing less and less to take in the car and spent more and more time staring out the window. Moby is one of the few artists that has the capability to successfully make everything more serene, more contemplative and almost mind boggling. I mean that when I listen to Moby it occurs to me that we live on an earth that rotates the sun that is in only one galaxy and we are just a floating orb in a vast space that never ends. Yeah. He does that to me.
But that's only one aspect of car rides in my family. We also leave at the wee hours of the morning when my mom is ready to start truckin' down I-80, and Ian, my brother, and I are ready to sleep 7 hours of the 10 that it takes to get home. So when we all grumble and stumble into the car (except for Mom, who's exceptionally chipper) we are all coherent against our own wills. I have all of these fuzzy memories of a dark car, my head squashed up against my seat belt in a desperate effort to seek comfort, freezing feet...and Counting Crows.
Now, there are so many words in a Counting Crows song. It's like he took 3 poems and squashed them into a kinda-melodic, almost Dave Matthews-like "ramble" verse form. But if you're only half there, like I was in the car in those wee hours, those lyrics can make for some pretty interesting dreams.
There is yet another aspect of our car rides- the four of us get really excited and hyper for about 45 minutes- the perfect amount of time for a typical LP. From my childhood I remember these times being filled with Ben Folds (who you will soon learn is my favorite artist of all time) or Propellerheads. But what I remember the most is the White Stripes. The dynamic duo: Jack White on the guitar, absolutely wailing, and Meg on the drums...just hittin' it.
Dad and I have this joke about Meg White's simplistic, driven drumming style: "Hey, uh, Meg?"
"Yeah?"
"Hit, uh... that."
"Okay"
And the song begins.
I tried desperately to pick another song besides Seven Nation Army...but I just couldn't do it. The song is just too good- especially for what our family needed in those hyperactive 45 minutes. All of us singing, Ian and I bobbing our heads next to each other, Dad slapping the steering wheel to the beat (obviously trying to emulate Meg's style), Mom is gettin' a little too funky with the dance moves in the passenger seat. I pretend to not like car trips but what can I say? Family bonding is the best.
What a way to start the blog with Eric Whitacre...the soundtrack which accompanies the blog really puts me in the car with you and your family. I can RELATE to those long car rides, dozing in and out, then hearing that one particular song and suddenly waking up and knowing every word (and occasionally inventing a few...). I love the music choice and the variety of soothing "car" music and pump up music (a la White Stripes).
ReplyDeleteI love the idea for this blog, listening to the music while you describe your feelings and memories about them really put me back seat in the Gregory family van.
ReplyDeleteI can identify exactly with your feelings about these long family trips to anywhere, pulling out the stock car-trip CD collection in preparation for some quite hours with just my family and the outside world flying by around me. Unfortunately, those CDs typically consisted largely of my dad's terrible terrible selections that have forced their way into the nostalgia centers in my brain as a result of forcibly repeated listenings. That's what family is i guess.
This is a great idea for a post. Every person has sat through those long family road trips. I also can relate to how much of a part music plays in those car rides. Those occasional sing-alongs along the way are memories that will never die. This is also a perfect selection of songs to picture myself on one of those long car rides.
ReplyDeleteOh no! I got here a week late, but now the songs in the player are only for the current week's posts. :/
ReplyDeleteIs there a way to get them to play still, or could you perhaps list them at the bottom of the posts to track down later?