I’m cheating in two ways on this one. For one, I already compose a monthly mixtape for my other blog (the crazy one), and I’m going to use one of those compilations for this prompt. For two, this compilation isn’t about a particular place as much as it’s about a trip I took one weekend in January of this year.
The trip was from Pullman to Salem, Oregon and then to Seattle Washington and then back to Pullman in a rented neon blue Ford Focus hatchback during the worst snowstorm to hit eastern Washington in my three years living there so far. I was chasing my favorite band, the Cardinals, up the west coast for two nights in a row, and then being chased back east by a fleet of snow-laden clouds. I had been a bit of a social recluse for the entire previous fall, and hadn’t gotten out much except to work, and so the idea of going on a road trip, especially by myself, was a little overwhelming. I was nervous as I headed towards Salem, despite the then-perfect weather, that the entire trip would end up being a depressing, lonely wash, and therefore a waste of about three hundred dollars I had already had to conjure using my credit card.
The trip ended up being fantastic. The weather was beautiful for the first day and a half, and I got to both Salem and Seattle in time to spend consecutive afternoons wandering around each downtown, and then walking from my hotel to the theatre. Both Cardinals’ shows were easily the best concerts I’d seen in ten years of seeing live music. Even the driving, even in the heart of the snowstorm on the way back across Washington from Seattle, was enjoyable.
As well as being an adventure in and of itself, the music I played while on the road ended up being an almost perfect music of genres and emotionally important songs that served as the ideal background to the landscape rolling by, whether it was the dry, sun-soaked rolling hills of southeastern Washington or the lonely wind-swept snowdrifts of the I-90 shoulder coming down out of the Snoqualmie Pass, heading towards Pullman.
Music is already a very important element to any road trip for me; many of my friends can attest that I put more time into picking CDs to my car CD wallet than I do planning the trip’s route, or packing more necessary things like food or clothes. It’s important to me to have a good sonic accompaniment to any adventure. Supposedly smell is the sense most strongly tied to memory; to me hearing (and hearing music in particular) is a close second. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of songs that for me are tied to specific memories, events, people, etc., some to the point that I can’t listen to a certain song without tearing up, or smiling, or laughing, or having a nearly overwhelming urge to call a certain person or to sit down and write a story before memories balloon out of control in my brain.
So, having said that, here’s my mixtape for the Seattle and Salem roadtrip of January 2008. I’ll reupload this album as well, so when you’re done reading if you want to download the songs onto your computer, you can. Hope you like.
1) The Flaming Lips – “Fight Test” – Everyone loves “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, but the first track off of this album is just as good in my opinion. This is the song that came on as I rolled into Salem for the first time, and navigated a few one-way streets while crossing through a wonderfully homey and rural downtown area on my way to my hotel while the sunlight from the setting sun glinted off the roof of the capitol building. The song’s excellent soul-searching lyrics (remarkably straightforward for a Flaming Lips song) are perfect for a roadtrip song, for being on the road and for being between definite points existentially and/or geographically.
2) Nujabes – “Blessing It (Remix)” – A few tracks from the Nujabes albums Metaphorical Music and Modal Soul factor into this mixtape. They are two of my all-time favorite albums, partially because they are great albums in their own right and partially because they were albums that I listened to heavily from January 2007 to August 2007, which was a pretty dramatic and transitional time in my life, and so just about every song is loaded with extra meanings and memories for me. This song came first on the mixtape because it’s more upbeat, and is all about just being appreciative and humble, which is always a good feeling to have when you’re tearing through southeastern Washington with the wind in your hair. Plus, there’s some biographical significance in the line “Children of the Sun, watch out we’re comin’ for ya, rockin’ from the ‘natti, midwest to California” in the sense that I’ve definitely rocked this song a few times while driving west from the ‘natti (also known by non-locals as Cincinatti, Ohio) to the west coast.
3) Radiohead – “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” – This song has a sort of feel to it that’s lilting and driving at the same time. It builds throughout the song, and is the perfect sort of tune melodically for the ups and downs and winding high-altitude roads leading through the mountains in the heart of Washington on a sunny fifty-something day. Plus, In Rainbows had just come out recently and I was listening to it obsessively at the time.
4) Stereolab – “Hallucinex” – Stereolab was a band I was introduced to in the whirlwind summer of 2007. In particular their album Sound Dust was a soundtrack to a lot of summer adventures in which I was attempting to forget the uncertainty of my future professionally and emotionally. This song in particular stuck out to me when it came up later during my January trip because of its jammy, relaxed vibe in comparison to some of the other, meatier songs on the album. Plus, the moment when the lead singer shouts “Ka-bang!” is so hilarious and adorable at once, it’s enough to recommend the song on its own.
5) Girl Talk – “Hold Up” – Incorporating a Girl Talk song into a mixtape is a tough business, but Night Ripper was an integral part of the first part of my roadtrip (if you haven’t noticed, this tracklist is largely chronological, starting on Friday in Pullman and progressing as my drive progressed). I picked this particular “track” from the album because of the inclusion of the guitar line from the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” and part of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So”. I don’t care much for the other Girl Talk albums, but I love this one and this is one of my favorite parts of the album.
6) Nujabes – “Feather” – This is a slower Nujabes song, and if I’m not mistaken I was now moving from Salem after the first night’s show towards Seattle, in a light but grey coastal rainstorm on Saturday morning, still entranced by the brilliance of the show, but also a bit reflective from spending an entire day and half alone in my car, in a hotel room, and then in my car again. This song also reminds me very clearly of my drive back to Pullman in August 2007, where I played the album twice while passing through Minneapolis en route to visit my friend Sarah, and then again right after on my way through Montana.
7) Jurassic 5 – “The Influence” – It was hard to pick a single Jurassic 5 track, because they’re such a great band to listen to when driving. This was shortly after the sun came out on the second day of driving and the realization set in that the rest of my day literally would consist of driving on the highway, walking around in downtown Seattle, and seeing my favorite band at the Paramount. Needless to say, I rapped along with the whole thing. This song also contains the anti-bourgeois battle cry “Fuck yo Lexus!” which was adopted by my friends and I in middle-class Ohio years ago.
8) Nujabes – “The Final View” – This is the last of the Nujabes songs on the mix. It’s an instrumental, and a little more atmospheric. This was during a particularly quiet and reflective part of the drive. It’s off the same album that I mentioned earlier, and also puts me in mind of the trip I took to North Dakota in August 2007. It’s also a song that I associate with driving around my “hometown” of Kent Ohio in the summer of 2007, searching for spots in the hazy, humid, mugginess of midnight to play frisbee with friends undisturbed for a few hours.
9) Radiohead – “Reckoner” – This song is sort of the lynchpin of the mixtape. This song I played a few times on this trip, but remember most clearly the time that I had already come down out of the mountains and was nearly back in Pullman at the end of the trip. It was dark at this point, and the snow was still blowing (there was already a foot or so on the ground) and the road was nearly non-visible. This song is what Radiohead does best; it’s absolutely haunting, empty, and dark, and best represents the lonely, still sensation that is always part of driving hundreds or thousands of miles by yourself on empty roads.
10) Wilco – “Heavy Metal Drummer” – This song is set in the tracklist as it is to be a sort of foil to “Reckoner”. Wilco does melancholy very well, but this song is particularly nostalgic while remaining idealistic, and makes me think of the optimistic beginning of a journey, or the optimistic end of one. The refrain “I miss the innocence I’ve known/Playing Kiss covers beautiful and stoned” is almost creepily evocative of my experiences as an early-20-something…
11) The Jayhawks – “Tailspin” – This is another perfect roadtrip song; in fact, the album (Rainy Day Music) as a whole is a great driving album. This was playing as I came into Seattle under a perfect, bright sun which illuminated the peaks of the waves in the sound as I drove over it.
12) The Rolling Stones – “Shine a Light” (Live) – This is one of my favorite Stones songs, which is saying a lot. Whereas most of their songs are really fun, or dark, or a cross of both, this one is almost hymn-like in its beauty. No wonder Scorsese chose to title his Rolling Stones doc after this song (even if the song itself isn’t actually in the documentary). Anyway, it’s another really good song to hear when you’re rolling through the middle of nowhere maybe (or not) reflecting on some of the things you have to be grateful for. Plus, Keith’s guitar solo towards the end of this version is just ridiculously great (at about the 4:00 mark).
13) Coldplay – “God Put a Smile On Your Face” – For some reason, at some point after crossing the Pass, I decided to put on Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head. This was a CD that I first heard during my first road trip with my then-girlfriend in 2004 (always an important first during a dating experience, at least if you’re me), and I hadn’t really listened to it since then (though not for the reasons you might suspect, I just didn’t like it that much). This song really struck me, there in central Washington, as a really great song off an album that spawned a few radio singles and a fair amount of critical disregard for all the other tracks (including this one). This song in particular brings to mind memories of driving snow and struggling snowplows.
14) Grant-Lee Phillips – “I Often Dream of Trains” – I find this song really haunting. Maybe because I often dream of trains. Trains themselves are very lonely, cold, almost phantom-like to me. They’re also a really significant part of my past (having lived close to heavy train traffic everywhere I’ve lived in my life until Pullman). So a song about trains that already has a creepy sort of melody to it is risking achieving record levels of creepiness if it hits my ears. I don’t want to get on a rant about the awesomeness and loneliness of trains and train tracks here, because I’ve written about it before and no doubt will again soon. Anyway, this song just had to go on here.
15) Norah Jones – “Thinking About You” – I like Norah Jones a lot. I’m not even a closet Norah Jones fan, because I’ll fucking admit this to you and everyone else. So there. I think Norah Jones writes fantastic music. And this particular Norah album kept me from freezing to death in a snowstorm with a malfunctioning car heater. She’s that awesome. Like I said earlier, there are a bevy of different emotions that go along with any roadtrip, and smiley-cloud cuddle-jazz, Hammond organs, and subdued horn lines are just some of those emotions that come up in this song despite not really being in any of the other songs on this mix. Great song.
16) Bert Jansch – “Hey Pretty Girl” – Every Bert Jansch song (just about) and the ones off of The Black Swan in particular evoke either autumn leaves crunching underfoot while navigating a stiff breeze or the crunch of snow underfoot while navigating a biting winter gust – depending on the song. This one is in the latter category. Headlights reflecting off of falling snowflakes in the wan light of a sunset nearly hidden by a grey wall of clouds is what this song brought to mind even before I listened to it while seeing that exact thing out my windshield.
17) Grant-Lee Phillips – “City of Refuge” – This is another GLP song; this one ended up on the mix particularly because when it was on, I was at a point in the snowstorm and at a point between central and eastern Washington where I honestly wasn’t sure that I was going to get out of the storm in one piece, and the lyrics seemed appropriate. With nothing but more snow behind me, I got out of the car, dug my feet into a knee-high drift and pushed the car back onto the highway (with some help) from a nearly snowed-in gas station driveway, then put on this song as I made my run for Pullman.
18) Ryan Adams and the Cardinals – “Down In a Hole” – This is actually the Cardinals covering Stone Temple Pilots, but it was one of the last songs they played on the second night in Seattle, and one of my favorites. It sort of represents the bottom rung of the existential ladder that I was talking about earlier as much as Norah’s song embodies the top rung, and I think is sort of appropriate in that sense. Plus Ryan and Neal Casal’s harmonies are fantastic.
19) Coldplay – “The Scientist” – I lose double points for this one. First because it’s a really obvious mixtape choice, on account of being cheesy and commercial, and second because it’s already on the Long Way Round soundtrack, which is one of my favorite roadtrip compilation CDs. But I stole it anyway. I like Coldplay, for some reason, and this song is suitably epic/cheesy to encapsulate the feelings inherent in any stage of an adventure. I got a huge smile on my face when this song came on. If that makes me a loser, then I guess I’m a loser.
20) Bob Dylan – “Trying To Get To Heaven” – Who better to close out an epic adventure than Bob Dylan? Nobody, that’s who. This song is from his 1999 masterpiece Time Out Of Mind. Even if you don’t like Dylan, or think you don’t, try listening to this whole album, really just sitting down and listening to it, once. If you don’t get a lump in your throat at some point, you might want to check your pulse to see if you really have a heart. It was really hard to pick one song off of this album to include, but this one seemed the most appropriate, because isn’t “tryin’ to get to heaven before they close the door” what life, and road trips are all about?
Sorry this post got a bit out of hand. Here’s the link to the CD if you want to download it. If there’s a problem with the download, let me know and I’ll fix it.
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