Pushing My Buttons

Radio buttons, that is, or Tunes for the Road.  I got to thinking very specifically about music in the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, where the p.a. system was playing rock-and-roll oldies, like ‘Who Put the Bomp’ and ‘She Loves Me.’  Interesting choice.  Very interesting.

Several people have asked what I do while I’m driving.  I’m tempted to answer that I trim my toenails, but of course one glance at one of the photos of my feet on this blog disproves that.  The next comment is usually on the availability of radio, or else the paucity of it in vast stretches of the USA.  It’s all true...

I did not bring any recorded books, as I can’t imagine I would drive well and listen well at the same time.  However, I brought about 15 music CDs, and so far (over three weeks now) it has proven an enjoyable selection.  And there’s the radio, too, which has its advantages.

Of course, I also enjoy the relative silence of the car, with the sunroof open (the Honda sunroof makes a great deal of racket, unlike my old Saturn’s quiet and discrete sunroof that bust three times, expensively, and finally couldn’t be repaired) or closed.  There is a lot to think about when you’re seeing new sights, or familiar ones with a new perspective, or different level of concentration.  But sometimes I want to sing, and me a capella is not me at my best, so poke that button, and see what the radio offers.

At home, I hit a new pre-set button every time a commercial starts.  On this trip, I’ve been listening to the ads a bit, especially through the mid-west and west, when there were a lot directed to ‘producers’ (of beef, or wool and mutton) and several very corny ones that would usually irritate me but seemed somehow folksy when there was no human habitation in sight.  I have had a finger on the scan button pretty often more recently, while I’ve been driving down the Pacific coast, and when visiting big cities.  I not only dislike the ads, I also dislike hearing the same playlist (curse you, I Heart Radio) all day everywhere.

But there are a few radio stations I’ve liked especially:

I mentioned KOYA, 88.1 in Rosebud, South Dakota.  Eclectic music with news programming of interest to Sioux tribe members and others.

Once I got 50 miles outside Fairbanks, to the Chena Hot Springs Resort, the only station that came in was something called ‘real country.’  It played a mix of mostly older with some contemporary country songs, and I’m always happy to hear classic Dolly Parton, and especially so in Alaska.

I was surprised that I couldn’t find a good station in Seattle, but then I wasn’t looking for very long.  There was one in Portland, though:  KNRK 94.7, playing alternative rock much of which I hadn’t heard before, as WFNX in Boston, where I used to get my music updates, has gone off the air.  But now I’ll just listen to 94/7fm Alternative Portland to catch up!

Gold Beach, Oregon, has a great radio station that I wrote down as KGBO.  Sadly, the interwebs tell me that those call letters belong to a station in Waco, Texas.  Whatever station it was, it played ‘Me and You and a Dog Named Boo’ as I was leaving town, and then announced in a deep, dramatic voice that it was broadcasting on three thousand watts of power.  Then it played ‘Cat Scratch Fever,’ ‘They Call it Puppy Love’ and ‘In the Arms of the Angels’ before I lost it.  That’s eclectic!

Speaking of eclectic, I’m always happy to find a station that carries Morning Becomes Eclectic.

Some public radio station offered me an à propos clarinet concerto as I drove through the redwood forests in California.  That’s a great combination.  I turned off the radio for the Avenue of the Giants, though; it seemed disrespectful to listen to anything but those trees, and the sounds that surround them.

South of San Francisco, I listened briefly to KOIT – get it?  Like the tower? – but however much I like Alicia Keys and enjoy hearing Tears for Fears from time to time, I’m pretty sure that was soft rock.  I like a broader mix.

Like KPIG in Freedom, California.  I didn’t take notes on what I heard there, but a recent playlist on their website includes Tractors, John Cowan, the Eagles (‘Busy Being Fabulous,’ not ‘Take it Easy’), Boz Scaggs and the James Band.

Radio is unreliable, though.  So I’ve got my CDs, and deploy them frequently.  Early in this journey, I noticed that I often choose something that contrasts strongly with my environment.  Sometimes there’s more of a complement than I first notice, though.

Leaving quiet, small-town Pennsylvania, I slid ‘London Calling’ into the CD player.  Chiming, slamming guitars and ferocious vocals celebrating the refusal to accept London slum living offers a rich contrast with the gentle countryside slipping prettily into fall.  But I was in a freedom-celebrating mood, and the album echoed that.

Coming into Detroit, I listened to rural Virginia’s Jan Smith singing bluegrass love songs.  Turns out I’m in love with Detroit.  Excellent.

Driving through rural Montana I got a yearning for Echo and the Bunnymen.  Foppish Englishmen with synthesizers just felt right.  Then I noticed how very green and pleasant the land was around me, and Ian McCulloch started his tenor soaring, and his voice is as big and wide as the big Montana sky.  So maybe my sub-conscious is onto something.

I celebrated, quite coincidentally, sunset over Coeur d’Alene lake with kd lang’s version of ‘Allelulia,’ from her ‘Hymns from the 49^th Parallel’ album, and it was perfect.

On my way to the hipster haven of Portland, I put on old-school LA punk-rockers X.  They are, of course, revered forebears of any contemporary hipster.  Or they’d better be.  Don’t make me come over there.  Also, the band comprised John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake.  Bonebrake was the drummer.

Heading toward Santa Barbara, on the sunshiny, California-dreamy Pacific coast, I had Treat Her Right in the stereo.  This is my favorite live band of all time; I used to drive, walk, bus and cab to about every smoke-filled music-offering bar in Boston for them.  (That’s right, children; gather ‘round and I’ll tell you of the olden days, when people smoked in bars – even in Massachusetts; even in Cambridge, Massachusetts – and terrible days there were, too.)  The drummer was about as cute as a man can be, with a smile of perfect happiness and blond-y curls.  He played what they called a ‘cocktail drum’ kit, standing up, and I would watch his t-shirt get damp and darken, starting at the neckline and armpits, and spreading slowly down and across until, at the end of the night, only the tops of the lower arms and the bottom three or four inches of the shirt were the color it had started out.  The harmonica player, Jim Fitting, put his whole heart and lungs and most of his intestines, I think, into his playing.  I once saw him pull a back-up harmonica out of his jeans pocket to play one note before switching back to the main harmonica – something about keys, I think.  I couldn’t watch him the way I did the drummer, as I was always afraid one of his blood vessels would just burst out of his temple and make a terrible mess of the whole show.

Anyway, smoky-Boston-bar band playing countryfied, funky blues-rock in the middle of all that California sunshine was a perfect contrast.

Somewhere in my journal I’ve written, “Why didn’t I bring any show tunes?”  They are so good for singing along and faking emotions.  Oh, right – I’m done faking emotions, aren’t I?

In the desert of L.A. County, I got a yearning for the precise, perfectionist urban cool of Steely Dan.  Later, in the desert of Nevada, I had a yearning for classical music, something with big strings.  But I didn’t bring any and the radio wouldn’t oblige, so I default to kd lang’s Hymns and Linda Thompson’s greatest hits.  Pretty good, really.

Your suggestions always welcome.