05.13.2008
ARE WE THERE YET?: 10 SONGS FOR TRAVELING
KARLO PINEDA HAS GONE ON A ROADTRIP! HOWEVER, HE LEFT WITH US A LIST, WHICH MAY COME IN HANDY, AS WE VENTURE ON OUR LAST TRIP FOR THE SUMMER. HERE ARE HIS TOP TRAVEL SONGS.
Ano'ng trip mo?
Music and travel are quite a pair. This twosome may come instant to us as we are fond of setting off to places new to us (the urban dwellers retreat to the provinces for a breath of fresh air while the rural folks go to the city for the malls and the bars) and are, by nature, receptive to music, regardless of the genre. The link between the two is further strengthened by the times of today, wherein disassociating the day-to-day commuter with plugged-in iPod/MP3/MP4 earphones is hard to do.
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As it is dashed with a personal flavor, my list, like most top 10 lists, might as well be open to debates, too, say, why Led Zep’s Immigrant Song or the like is not included in my selection. Well, if it doesn’t work for you then maybe you could pack your own songs and advance on a trip separate from mine. If you do, please don’t forget to send me a “wish you were here” card when you’ve finally arrived.
1. Setting
If there’s one song to capture the free-spirited and vigorous mood of pursuing an itinerant adventure, this has definitely got to be it. This one-minute-and-so ditty from Pearl Jam’s frontman serves a comforting preparation as you hop on the bus with your heavy gear packed in one of them colossal mountaineering bags, set for
Chris McCandless wannabe? Some info here.
2. Beautiful Day – U2
What the song initially paints is either a young sun slowly emerging from the horizon or blue eyes full of hope opening. And that’s just in the beginning. Many more beautiful things are to be beheld: “the world in green and blue,” “China right in front of you,” “canyons broken by [a] cloud,” “tuna fleets clearing the sea out,” “Bedouin fires at night,” “oil fields at first light,” “the bird with a leaf in her mouth,” and, of course, my favorite, “the heart is a bloom [that] shoots up through the stony ground.” What sights to behold for the wandering mind!
Now we know why Michael Stipe was being so zealous about not writing this one for R.E.M.
Here’s some psychedelic spice for the journey. Let’s leave the rolling (“Roll up, roll up…”) of the joint elsewhere, okay? As most of us go on traveling to escape “something,” it is best that we be taken away magically (Magical Mystery Tour may not be among the best Beatles songs, but we could at least try, for a little less than three minutes, The Fab Four’s command to take us some place with their musical enchantment). Despite this song rolling briefly, on wheels of swirling colors if you may, we are still guaranteed, as John promises in the song, “a trip of a lifetime.”
On the way back, a rock-easy feel-good Beatles song to complement the trip would be Two of Us.
It’s the strange feeling of singing it aloud without remorse even if you’re a devout Catholic. That’s the drive of it. There’s much positive energies to this Rock ‘n’ Roll keystone (thanks to it’s delivery and melody) to overturn the Satanist folklore behind it. Much positive energies from it to last you throughout the trip.
5. Highway Star – Deep Purple
If memory serves me correct, I first heard this song from a TV ad of an oil company (was that Shell?). Later did I realize that it’s a Deep Purple staple. Anyway… it’s pretty good a pumped up song, which very much manifests the charged feeling of being road-bound (“Nobody gonna take my car/I’m gonna race it to the ground/Nobody gonna beat my car/It’s gonna break the speed of sound”). If you imagine yourself as a 10-wheeler speeding on the highway, then this song might as well be your yellow-orange-red flame paint.
6. Fantastic Voyage – Coolio
Ain’t no reprezenting the East or the West side, foo’, but this Coolio classic is undeniably an easy trip on hydraulics and some booming speakers. Yes, yes, the booming speakers (even Who Do You Think You Are by the Spice Girls sounds hell groovy when put on this configuration). Or perhaps the “Slide slide slippity slide” part. Wait, maybe it’s all about Coolio’s braided do. Whatever. While “Life is a bitch and then you die/Still trying to get a piece of that apple pie,” we can always afford to ride down the avenue old-school style, right—in a lowrider?
7. My Favourite Game – The Cardigans
No, this is not here just because its music video features a bad-ass Nina Persson (The Cardigans vocalist) in a dusty Cadillac recklessly driving on a desert highway. (But then again, it’s a convincing image to play over and over in your head while traveling. Give the trip some attitude, dude.) My Favourite Game is one helluva catchy song—its tune, actually—that can accompany you sit through the long hours of your journey. Makes you wanna press Repeat Track and dance your head to small nods, your feet to the usual in-sync floor taps.
8. Summertime – Another Level feat. TQ
So this one’s seasonal (and, I guess, another guilty entry here). But, c’mon, isn’t it that time of the year? Anyone for a wide beach and an even wider sun?
9. Road Trippin’ – Red Hot Chili Peppers
Ah, a windswept song on the road. That during sundown, you’d press your forehead against the window glass of the bus and blankly stare at the still and shadowy scenes passing by. Maybe if ‘tis the season to be jolly falalalala-lalalala, a better song for that effect would be A Long December by the Counting Crows. Y’know, “the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls” given that “it’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean.”
10. Alapaap – Eraserheads
Obviously, the odd one out. It’s just irresistible not to include though. If The Beatles have the Magical Mystery Tour for a cunning reference to cannabis, could it be possible that Alapaap is the Eraserheads version? Or was it just erstwhile senator Tito Sotto getting too much hype on the song’s alleged inkling to substance abuse? OK, so that was a needless footnote to the much celebrated Beatles-E-heads comparisons. Just to bulk up the word count, hehe.
Kidding aside, this song, instead of the more road-y Overdrive, has always been on my cousins’ and my Walkman every time we headed for Batangas. We used to sing the lyrics in the bus as if the vehicle was rented for family use. That’s how the song has taken us. And that’s reason enough—not that it was played on a scene of a certain Eric Quizon movie, in which he is seen driving a car; not that Aga Muhlach sang it in his pickup truck in the movie
