The husband and I traveled up to our homeland last weekend to take care of some things to do with the Condo That Would Not Die (or Be Sold). Usually, the husband does all of the driving when we travel to Chicagoland. At some point, I entirely lost my stomach for city driving. Even the Indiana side of things makes me nervous, but making the drive on the interstate through the city is downright excruciating for both of us. I spend the ride flinching and deep-breathing, and generally acting like people with normal anxieties do on planes. And while I am totally fine driving back to CollegeTown (nothing scary there but soybeans and corn), the husband usually offers to do it.
The end result of this is that the husband pretty much has free reign on which cds to bring along with us. Which is usually fine, except for those rare occasions when he actually takes me up on my offer to drive us home, and I am stuck with his choices.
The thing about the husband is that he has good musical taste; he just sucks at figuring out what to play when. In the car, he likes music like The Books (quiet atmospheric music with random sound samples), Stereolab (quiet atmospheric electronica) and Fourtet (quiet modern melodic jazz). He has confused his "Music to listen to while driving" list with what should be a "Music to listen to while writing a paper or getting ready for sleep" list.
I should state for the record that he has his reasons. He says that he likes driving music to be like the musical score moving him through his journey. I couldn't agree more; I just don't think we're driving through the same movie. Proper driving music, as I'm sure you clever people know, should be singable or danceable. Not that I dance in the car, or anyone else for that matter - except, of course, in front of large groups of impressionable children (though I doubt the Hokey Pokey counts). Nevertheless, a good car song should make you regret the fact that you are securely buckled, even as you feel grateful that you don't have to do the shoulder-shaking head bop that passes for dance in your sad, repressed, white girl mind. (Or maybe that's just me.)
Anyway, for your edification (or at least for the husband's), here is my list of top musical choices for a long drive. Please note that many of these rely on singing loudly, and thus being in the car alone. Perhaps that's the problem; perhaps the husband totally belts out pop songs in the car when I am not around to hear. Or perhaps the husband is driving to the score of our life's journey, while I am driving to the pop-heavy soundtrack.
1. London Calling, by the Clash. It is something of a tradition for me to play this on the first day nice enough to drive with the windows down. Oh, Joe Strummer, you are gone, but not forgotten.
2. Cabaret (the one with Alan Cumming as the Emcee). Oh, shut up. A girl can be totally punk rock and totally music theater. It just so happens that I am neither. Whatever; I can replicate Natasha Richardson's English accent to perfection when no one is around to hear. This cd caused me to feel a totally imaginary kinship with her, and I was very sad when she died.
3. Anything by Belle and Sebastian and Fountains of Wayne. It is pretty much a scientific fact that hand claps and perfectly crafted pop songs make cars run more fuel-efficiently.
4. Anything that happens to be on the radio and was popular during the second half of the 90s, when I was in high school. There is absolutely nothing wrong with singing all of the lyrics to Oasis's "Wonder Wall", even if the Gallagher brothers are total tools. Absolutely nothing.
5. Anything by Queen or Fiona Apple. Freddie and Fiona both have a much larger vocal range than me. This does not stop me from attempting to sing with them, or from imagining that I could totally rock their songs at karaoke.
Those are my favorites. What are yours?
