Music

I believe it goes without saying that any good road trip is made all the better with just the right music. (By the way, if you’re curious as to vision of the perfect road trip, watch the last half hour of Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom. It’s beautiful.) Some would think to just plug in their favorites and hit the road. I have found this tends to narrow the mind a bit, thus dampening the impact of the trip. Stretching your ear as much as your eyes leaves an indelible print on your views of the trip. For some reason country seems to fit the Midwest so well and if you turn on your radio, there’s PLENTY of it to find. What I love to find are the eclectic stations, the ones that stray from the top 40 pop charts and seem to have no rhyme or reason to their playlist, which means there is some guy just tooling around their collections to find something. It keeps your awareness perked and adds a particular ambiance to everything. (For instance, we are driving through Indiana listening to 91.9 WITT; they played the orchestra overture to the original Superman, then an offbeat jazz tune, and straight into a folk piece.) Now I’m sure that some of you may not feel comfortable with that so try a little hopping(or get your passenger to hop stations for you) from your favorites to something different to keep things interesting; even better; make your passenger the DJ for a while and see what happens.

On this same vein, I have to mention the dying breed of record stores. We passed one in a small town so I snapped it, knowing it’s a rarer thing these days.

Some would say this is not true, however did you know that even the CD is beginning to die out? Take a look at your local CD section and see if you can find anything other than the mainstream, pop, rap, or country. Chances are that in the past decade your local WalMart or Target has reorganized and reduced the music section due to dwindling cd sales. Its no one’s fault really since the digital music age is in full swing. Just think that possibly in the next decade there may be no such thing as music browsing in a store anymore.

Oh, in case you are interested, check out used book stores for lightly used records. I’ve noticed in the past few years records are making a small comeback and some artists are releasing their latest on the press. Check it out!

So, next time you are in your car, take a minute and see if you can find music on the radio you’ve never heard before. You might be surprised by what you find.