Last night, I couldn't sleep because I was caught up in nostalgia--a very specific moment of my childhood, a memory I couldn't stop thinking about. I was a kid, small enough to stand upright in a car without hitting my head. I was driving somewhere with my grandpa and my dad, my grandpa driving his metallic green Pontiac. I was standing in the back seat, leaning over the front. We were drinking little cans of V8. The hot, Utah sun was pushing through the windows making the vinyl seats sticky and smelly. The radio was on, that tinny hollow of an AM car radio.
The radio is what started me thinking about this memory, that sound that only old AM radios can make, that sound that makes some songs sound so impossibly perfect. I'd been thinking about old country songs from the sixties and seventies and how much I like them and how my reason for liking them was very much because of the drone of the AM radio in a sunny, sleepy car.
So, here for you are a couple of songs which may not sound as good as they should in their MP3-ness, but maybe they will take you to a sunny car somewhere perfect, some time ago.
Woven Histories and Modern Abstractions
3 months ago
8 comments:
I even miss the big knobs that stuck out and sometimes got stuck in and I had to pull them out. For me, it was a Chrysler. But also my dad's old Ford.
This is really a beautiful piece of writing lis. Well done.
Send stuff out. You got skillz.
Love this post. Also, love Glen Campbell of this vintage.
Very nice. Amarillo by morning took me back to my parent's old green and white Nomad camping trailer where we would play card games and listen to country music.
Amarillo by morning is one of my all time favorite songs.
Love it! We had a silver Datsun wagon and we would fold the back seat down and ride lying in sleeping bags in the hatchback area listening to ABBA.
I have a very similar memory, except the song in question was Seals & Crofts' "Summer Breeze."
Whoa. Just listened to "Amarillo by Morning" and wow, that took me right back - to 4-H, to our tire swing and gravel driveway, to our sweet little dog ... such strong nostalgia, I almost cried.
God, I love sad country songs like this. I grew up on this stuff. Thank you :)
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