It is T minus less than a month until the so called camping trip of less than epic proportions. Kathy just got a new cd player stereo somethingorother as well as an ipod that she is quickly pumping full of mp3s to take with us.
This has gotten me thinking about roadtrip music. For family trips, usually we listen to whatever my parents feel is most palatable out of whatever my sister decides to bring. This usually boils down to a mere handful of overplayed albums: Great Big Sea's Up, U2's The Joshua Tree, The Dandy Warhols' 13 Tales of Urban Bohemia, Santana's Shaman and Nickelback's The Long Road.
Some songs and albums are permanently tied in my mind to places and events. There's one section of the Malahat Highway on Vancouver Island that I can picture quite clearly, and every time I remember driving through that stretch Aqualung by Jethro Tull has been playing.
I used to think nothing of it until the time when I got a ride with Kathy and her dad to a regatta in Elk Lake and we took the long, scenic route to Victoria. Her dad had set the radio dial firmly on some soft rock station or other, the kind of station that plays sappy love songs and too much Phil Collins, when all of a sudden just as we entered that particular stretch of highway I heard the characteristic opening guitar riff from Aqualung. Soft rock stations never play Jethro Tull. To this day I can't explain it.
The whole Nickelback album, The Long Road, will always remind me of the barren wasteland that they call Alberta because somehow or other we managed to go on a roadtrip there in the middle of winter and only take one cd with us, or at least, that's how it felt.
I know that whatever I take with me will depend a lot on who else is coming. If Riki comes I'm definitely bringing Kaizers, no matter what Kathy says about my odd taste in foreign music. If Jess comes, we may just have to try and fit her into a box. I think I put far too much thought into things like this.
My head is full of philosophical questions today, questions like:
If you buy a prefab house from Ikea, does it come with a huge allen key so that you can put it together?
|