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Are there some songs that you associate with places you were traveling? Such as a very popular song that you heard for the first time in some foreign place, or a song that acquired special significance while you were traveling?
Here are some of mine:
Roger Whitaker, The Last Farewell: Salisbury, Rhodesia (Now Harare, Zimbabwe) (First time)
Diana Ross, Mahogany: Johannesburg, South Africa (I had been wondering if any black singers were played on the radio during Apartheid.)
Procul Harem, Whiter Shade of Pale: Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen. (First time)
Mary Hopkin, Those Were the Days: Malta (First time)
Glen Campbell, Wichita Lineman: Bucharest, Romania (My GF's favorite American song).
Gerry Rafferty, Right Down the Line: Nebraska (Heard hundreds of times on the car radio in two days)
Tom Jones, Delilah: Swift Current, Saskatchewan (First time while driving through highway construction zone at night in the rain.)
Roberta Flack, Killng me Softly: Amman, Jordan (Wife and I always danced to it in the only disco in Jordan)
Whitney Houston, I Will Always Love You: Asuncion, Paraguay (first time)
Juan Luis Guerra, Bachata Rosa: Leon, Nicaragua (First time, and still a favorite) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkhSqy7ldEg
Demis Roussos, Forever and Ever: Khartoum, Sudan. (My friend described him as a Mediterranean Wayne Newton. A huge hit all over Africa and the MidEast) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3vCB...eature=related
(I've provided links to the songs most of you might not be familiar with, but not essential for this thread. Just name them if we all know them.)
'Eye' by Smashing Pumpkins/Driving around in the Hollywood Hills (South Slope of the Santa Monica Mountains, Whitley Heights to BelAir) with my Decorator, when the song had just been released. What an afternoon! We'd finished shopping Melrose for my new house, and were just 'canyon crawling'...basking in what was still the golden world of LA. As soon as the song was finished on one station, we'd find it on another... for hours.
What a golden dream! Still almost a sacred place for me... the theme of the song... the golden sunlight...the beautiful houses hanging in sky, on those narrow, twisty streets! We both dreamed of escaping Mississippi and moving there. "It's not enough...Just a touch..."
How little we knew that those were among California's last good days. I only let myself hear that song, now, when I want to revisit that afternoon, floating along in a rented Bentley, with someone who had been my aesthetic mentor since we were both penniless seventeen-year-olds. We'd done so much dreaming together, and now here we were... almost...touching Heaven.
Since then, DH & I have owned a homesite in Malibu. And we've rented houses in the Malibu Colony. We've stayed at the Marmont and the Beverly Hills Hotel. But that golden afternoon was the closest I've ever come to really living the California Dream. In the past few months, we've come to the point where we could buy in Bel Air or Bev. However, the magic is gone from those places. The electricity of that magical time has subsided. But I can pull up that song, and close my eyes, and still be drifting along in the golden afternoon haze, past Palms and palaces and Lemon trees...
Last edited by GrandviewGloria; 12-13-2011 at 12:21 AM..
"Guantanamera"-sung to my husband and me by a wandering mariachi band as we sat at dinner on the Mayan Riviera. Maybe it was the margaritas, or the warm breeze that smelled like salt water, or the excitement of our first trip out of the country, but I will never forget that song! That vacation sparked a love of travel and I treasure the photograph of us with the band (braided hair, sunburn and all).
Eagles - Take it Easy: Winslow, AZ. They even have a "Sittin' on the Corner Park". That alone should tell you just how little is actually going on in Winslow.
Christopher Cross - "Sailing" as well as his other popular hit "Never Be the Same"
Both of these songs remind me of being in the Bahamas--quite possibly my favorite place in the world, and at the very least in the Western Hemisphere.
It's kinda weird, those songs have a somber tone to them and make me feel the slightest bit sad but at the same time perk me up thinking about that purple blue water, pure white sand and palm trees.
Might not make the most sense, but thats the best way I can describe it.
Switching gears now to a place as opposite as you can get from the Bahamas climatologically---Northern Quebec and Labrador (Google "James Bay Road" or Trans Taiga Road" to get an idea).
The song "Something About You" by the band Level 42 reminds me of being in these places in the middle of winter on a very bright and sunny, but COLD day with temps well below zero.
When I hear it, I imagine being deep in the Boreal Forest in the conditions described above, dozens (or even hundreds) of miles from the nearest town surrounded by Spruce Trees and pure white snow that is untouched along with the occasional deer, wolf or caribou. Then as darkness falls I envision a pack of wolves off in the distance standing up on a hill howling one after another at a bright full moon high in the sky!
I can think of others I'm sure, but those are the most vivid. Don't know wht these songs remind me of that, but they just do for some reason.
Sweet Home Alabama. I worked on a race team at the time and I was traveling in the hauler with a couple other crew members. That song came on as we entered Alabama. I mean, seriously, how does that happen? Everytime I hear it, it reminds me of that weekend, it was a good one and of the 10+ years I spent with my 'race family' and all the good and bad times we had together.
While visiting southern California, I was stuck in traffic on the 91 freeway when Lenny Kravitz "Fly Away" was popular. Now anytime I hear it I relate to how much I hated being there.
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