In no particular order, I have a few songs I think of whenever I'm on a specific part of a road:
- The Dandy Warhols - "Wonderful You" - US 321 between Boone and Blowing Rock. This is the song I was listening to when I first drove that stretch of highway. It's catchy and good to speed along to in my opinion.
- Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - "Falling Thunder" - Blue Ridge Parkway. I think it goes really well just cruising along this road, and I listened to it my first time driving it solo.
- You know who they are - "Free Bird" - NC 194 from US 19E into Banner Elk. I listened to this song while speeding perhaps too fast on this road at 1 AM. I was coming back from Tennessee, having a late night drive to blow off some steam a few months ago after I had a rift with a friend.
- The Black Keys - "Weight of Love" and "Bullet in the Brain" - I-40/85, AKA "Death Valley". Listened to these driving this road solo for the first time.
- The Dandy Warhols - "Now You Love Me" - Any part of I-40 in North Carolina
- Immigrant Union - "Ahmed" - Listened to this on an overcast evening driving on the HRBT. I thought the feel/sound of the song fit the atmosphere.
Before anyone points that out, yes, there is this thread:
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=2901.msg64617#msg64617
But it's over a decade old and doesn't mention routes or parts of routes specifically.
America - Ventura Highway
Associated with the Ventura Freeway portion of the 101. But it was actually referring to the section near Vandenburg.
There's a specific stretch of US 131 where The Wallflowers "One Headlight" would play on the radio whenever I was driving to or from college back in the 1990s. Let's say that when I'm driving through the area now, I cue it up on my phone just for nostalgic reasons.
I Can't Drive 55 with the Chicago Skyway.
'can't get there from here' by REM seems like it conjures up i-270 in denver for me.
I've heard Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home" numerous times on the drive to work, but never on the way home. So every time I drive to work, that song plays in the back of my head.
For some reason "Welcome to the Jungle" would come on the radio very often when I would cross the Brent Spence Bridge right in front of Paul Brown Stadium.
Quote from: GCrites80s on September 27, 2021, 10:50:40 AM
For some reason "Welcome to the Jungle" would come on the radio very often when I would cross the Brent Spence Bridge right in front of Paul Brown Stadium.
Heh. I had fun blasting Verdi's Anvil Chorus out my window when I crossed the bridge both ways this past week.
I may have been born five years after Nat King Cole died, but his rendition of Get Your Kicks on Route 66 is the one I associate most with my childhood trips on the Mother Road.
Randy Newman's I Love L.A. makes me think of the freeways there, plus the four thoroughfares mentioned in the song.
These wind generators (https://goo.gl/maps/oFvfaZWeZbcKpNzs7) always remind me of "A' Soalin' by Peter, Paul and Mary, but not the album version. No, the live version on 'Peter, Paul and Mary In Concert'. I was listening to this the first time I was on I-10 in West Texas on a family trip, after many, many, many trips east. East through areas where you would go through a town every 10 minutes and sightlines off the highway were obscured by tall trees. Then we went west to California in 2001 and was floored (I had gone to Albuquerque a few years before but I flew and I played in a baseball tournament so I didn't really explore or get the whole effect of being in the American Southwest). I was floored by there being no trees, no towns and no....anything. Then these wind generators popped up out of nowhere. I had never seen them before and they looked haunting in the distance. That song was playing. It was late June and the summer sun was low in the west. It wasn't set, or setting, but it was a "tired" sun. The vastness and emptiness of the scenery fit perfectly with the live recording of that song with it's empty sound of a hushed crowd in a theater, combined with the almost eerie guitar part to begin the song was very much in line with being in an area where you can see for literally 40 miles in every direction, yet not see anything at the same time. I felt this loneliness out there with a side of mystery. The trip continued through New Mexico and Arizona and that same feeling was there through those areas until we got to San Bernardino. The same feeling of extreme isolation and also mystery. This is why I love the desert southwest so much even to this day. I have made the drive on I-10 in West Texas so may times since then I have lost count, yet I still have those same feelings to this day making that drive. I have many times left on a Friday or Thursday evening from Austin trying to make it to that spot before the sun goes down to re-live that moment. I can't seem to make it there before the sun goes down.
Young Turks by Rod Stewart reminds me of I-70 between Columbia and St. Louis. The Future's So Bright by Timbuk 3 reminds me of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Because John Mellencamp is from Seymour, I always associate his songs with US 31 and US 50.
Les Brers In A minor, by the Allman Brothers with I-70 in West Virginia
Too Rolling Stoned, by Robin Trower with US 15, between Allenwood & Williamsport Pa
Bryan Adams' Run To You reminds me of the PA Tpk/I-70 in W. PA.
Not a song but a commercial. Driving back from Boston with my parents in the seventies, I remember the old Double Mint Gum Commercial with a man who resembled Frank Sinatra who sang the song, playing while traveling I-95 under the Larchmont Metro North Parking Lot tunnel.
Now when I think of doing a road trip to anywhere along I-95 in Westchester County, NY the old commercial pops into my head.
In high school, my parents moved to Florida my second semester junior year. I went to high school down there during that time and didn't care for it and wanted to move back home. So I moved back to Colorado and lived with friends. As I was leaving the airport on E-470 after having dropped my dad off to fly back, Dammit by Blink 182 came on and the line "Well I guess this is growing up" stuck with me. I think about it every time I'm on that stretch.
Chris