Saturday, July 19, 2008

Blinded By The Light (or the bug spray, as the case may be)


I know what you’re thinking.

That E, with all his “lists” and “links” and such, what a lazy sunofabitch.

And you’d be right on the money.

The normal excuses abound: work is crazy, the kids are a handful, the yard work is a nightmare and work…well, it’s crazy.
Adding to my lackadaisical attitude on blogging and listless demeanor (in general) of late is the fact that I’ve been planning a camping trip to the mountains of Northern California for the last few days with my wife and two daughters. Those of you with kids know just what a chore that can be. I won’t bore you all with the details because, after all, this IS a music blog. It’s not called “Uncle E’s Family Nightmares” although I do have plenty of past memories to fill a blog entitled as such.
Didn’t think about music too much on the trip, but I will tell you that my wife nearly blinded me by accident (I hope) by squirting bug spray in my eyes, and that my little iPod cigarette lighter FM ‘port’ thingy friggin drove me bananas on the ride up there.
Ever use one of these things? I’m not fortunate enough to own a vehicle with an MP3 jack, so this is all I’ve ever used with my iPod. You need some clear FM frequencies to get a semi-clear sound and believe me when I tell you that there ain’t many of those travelin’ up old interstate 5 to Mt. Shasta! I kept hitting the search button, it’d get better for a song or so, then…STATIC. When it got to the point where all I heard was static I yanked it out and threw it down on the passenger’s side floor mat and went searching for some home burned CD’s. The problem was since I haven’t used my CD player in my car for a very long time I didn’t have much of a selection. And those that were decent were scratched all to hell.
So I was buggered for music on the trek North. When I got there, however, I took out my headphones, found my campfire play list and shared the tunes with my family. Just in case you’re curious, here’s a snippet from the play list . Bear in mind that my family doesn’t necessarily share my eclectic taste in the musical arts, but rest assured I got some subversive cuts in there anyway:

Iron And Wine, The Devil Never Sleeps
Primal Scream, Higher Than The Sun
Jack Johnson, People Watching
M Ward, Chinese Translation and Magic Trick
A3, Speed At The Sound Of Loneliness (acoustic version)
AIR, La Femme D’Argent
Flying Burrito Brothers, Hot Burrito #2
Frank Sinatra, One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)
Lambchop, The Man Who Loved Beer
Jackson Browne, Doctor My Eyes
Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald (come on, I’m ½ Canuck! You gotta have some ‘Foot!)
The Replacements, One Wink At A Time
Roxy Music, While My Heart Is Still Beating
John Prine, The Sins Of Memphisto
The Beatles, Norwegian Wood

7 comments:

Simon said...

I had a trip a couple of years ago with my wife - a nice little driving holiday around Scotland, up into the highlands. Some of the most beautiful scenery in the world in my humble opinion.

We hired a car for the trip, picked up from Glasgow Airport. I had a nice little bundle of cds picked specially, and some home made compilations. We got in the car, looked at the dashboard and saw: a cassette player. Probably the last car made not to have a cd player.

Disaster! So we set off and I found a pretty good radio station. The only trouble is, once we got up into the Highlands, surrounded by mountains there was no reception. A musicless holiday. Not good!

Uncle E said...

Ok Simon, that trumps my experience. A mixed CD of Scottish bands would have made an awesome com panion to that wonderful scenery, I'm sure. Thanks for sharing!

Erin said...

There are times when you have no choice but to rely on your own voice.
Next time you are thwarted by lack of car tunes, entertain the kiddos with some good old, annoying camp tunes.
Singing - however it's done -- is good for the soul. Though you may want to make sure the bug spray is safely stowed out of your wife's reach.

Uncle E said...

Ahhh, Erin, I'm afraid my singing voice would attract the wrong sort of animals to our campsite...

GE said...

Uggh. Those FM transmitter things really are a total waste of time and money. It also amazes me that it's taking so long for the auto industry to get a clue and stick a simple audio input jack into every car. What would it cost? $1.99? Anyhoo, nice shuffle.

RumpRoast said...

I heard Uncle E sing once. I believe he made the right choice in opting for the headphones.

Uncle E said...

Thanks GE. And Rumproast is spot on. I can't sing worth a shit! My voice makes people vomit.