The Perfect Road Trip Songs

Yesterday, I was making my way home from a show in Ravenna, MI, which is essentially in the middle of nowhere. Mind you, I use the phrase "middle of nowhere" not as a sleight against the fine town of Ravenna, but merely as means of description. In fact, it's almost a complement. Many times, I find myself driving to work or a friend's house, staring down the highway, lusting for the "Nowhere" it leads to. Too often, I'm tempted to neglect all of my responsibilities for the day in order to serve my desires to explore the unknown that lies just over the next hill, but I digress...

The point of the story is this: The trip from Ravenna to Grand Rapids is decent enough, about 45 minutes. Not enough to be considered a "Road Trip" per se, but at a certain state of drowsiness, the crooked country roads wrapped on all sides by the furrowed cornfields of Spring create the illusion that I'm really very far away from home. On my own. A pioneer.

So, I started the trip out with "Golden Age" by Beck, which appears as the first track on the album Sea Change. It matched the situation perfectly, and I'll go so far as to say, if you're setting off during the afternoon or early evening (when the sun is not yet orange), and you're in the farmlands of the Midwest, you want "Golden Age" to be that first track of the journey.

It's a perfect Road Trip song.

In fact, the entire Sea Change album is excellent, especially in the car.

But we're not talking about albums, are we? We're talking about songs, and my pick for this week is "Golden Age".

What's your pick?



[Put your hands on the wheel. Let the Golden Age begin]