A new web site launching next year has asked me to write an article about travel and music and it got me thinking about how inextricably linked they are. On every journey I have ever been on there has been an instance when a song and a moment have become so entwined that I can’t help thinking of one when I’m remembering the other.
They’re not always good songs. Every time I hear ‘All That She Wants‘ by Ace of Base I’m back in the Buzz Bar in Oludeniz in Turkey flirting with pretty English film students. If I catch a few strains of ‘Kiss (When the Sun Don’t Shine)‘ by the Vengaboys I’m transported back to a crowded bush taxi in Madagascar. ‘Do You Believe?’ by Cher has me stumbling around Mayan ruins in Tikal in Guatemala. A dire bunch of songs by anyone’s standards, but the memories are priceless.
Other songs have the power to make me really, really want to go somewhere. Thanks to ‘In The Wild’ by the Hoodoo Gurus I’ve always had this crazy notion to drive across the Nullarbor with some mates, each of us taking turns to sit on the roof drinking beer. And I’ve just booked a flight to spend a week in Stockholm in December because of the Jens Lekman song ‘The Cold Swedish Winter.’
I’m sure I’m not alone on this and was wondering if you guys have a song that takes you back to a particular time and place whenever you hear it. And don’t worry if the song is a shocker. It can’t be any worse than the Vengaboys. Surely.
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The “Buena Vista Social Club” soundtrack takes me to Poland. Strange, but true.
I know exactly what you mean. For me, Cotton-eye Joe by the Rednex takes me back to New Year’s Eve party in Warsaw. Why is it that the worst songs are always the ones I remember…
Funny .. ‘All that she wants’ by ‘Ace of Base’ reminds me of my time in sixth form college when I found out that my boyfriend cheated on me with my so called best friend .. bad memory .. and slightly off the point!
Songs that remind me of travelling are:
Going to Ibiza / Vengaboys .. reminds me of .. well, going to Ibiza with 11 other girls after finishing our A-Levels – mayhem!!
Up & Down / Vengaboys .. reminds me of dancing with a tramp outside a kebabshop when I was hammered in Shepards Bush after returning from travelling!! Not a good memory!!
Down under / Men at Work … reminds me of The Bristol Hotel in Sydney. Oh how the Aussies love us poms mutulating their songs!!
Around the World / Daft Punk .. reminds me of living in East Germany on my year placement at University. The Germans are mad for Electro pop!
Last night a DJ saved my life / Indeep .. reminds me of Greenwich Village NYC. Those gay men know how to shake their booty!
Son of a preacher man / Dusty Springfield .. reminds me of watching Pulp Fiction for the first time and being scared outta my tiny mind. It may have been because I was under influence – who knows?
Hehe, yeah I’ve got the same thing with the Vengaboys, but in a different place. When my girlfriend, a mate and I were travelling through Vietnam in late 2000, Vengaboys was played absolutely everywhere: buses, bars, taxis, little shacks you passed on a cyclo. Takes me straight back.
The main memory is the sadness of leaving Vietnam speeding through the monsoon rains in a taxi heading for Hanoi airport. It didn’t make us cheery heading for a European winter and the task of finding jobs in London. And no more dirt cheap Bia Hoi!
Di-do-di-do-di-do-do,
Di-do-di-do-di-do-do,
The Vengaboys are coming…
‘If you let me stay’ and ‘Wishing Well’ by Terence Trent d’Arby (and everything else from his first album in fact) take me back to travelling around the Costa Brava with my gay friend Doug, being the only straight person in a gay hotel in Sitges, seeing the ugliest prostitutes in the world in Barcelona – oh happy days!!!
I picked up a dodgy copy of Belle & Sebastian’s The Boy with the Arab Strap on Khao San Rd. and almost immediately the title track became the soundtrack to my contrasting feelings of wide-eyed excitement and stark loneliness while lving in Bangkok. The ultimate song to listen to while on a bus gazing out at a city that couldn’t care less about you. Fantastic.
This blog was bound to be popular, Peter.
White Lines by GrandMaster Flash and Melle Mel in the clubs of Benidorm when I was just 17 and too young to know better.
Blur’s Song 2 being played by a cover band in O’Malley’s, Kings X Sydney, seemingly every night i was in there.
A funky version of Motorhead’s ‘Motorhead’ by Corduroy, heard on the streets of Chetrapati, Kathmandu.
Do You Come From a Land Downunder played by me on my old fender acoustic, perched on the back of a 19 yr old, Maroon Nissan C2 somewhere north of Coober Pedy with only my girlfriend as an audience.
Metallica’s version of Whiskey in the Jar (O) blasting out the radio in the desert en route from LA to Vegas.
I’d better stop now!
Rod Stewart’s “Mandolin wind” – the (seductive) background music to my first, erm, you know…
First border crossing? Matatu ride? Asian sunset? Not sure what you mean Mr D.
Anything by the Muttonbirds reminds me of the west coast of NZ and listening to Alex Lloyd,due to the radio in the hire car not working and it being the only cd i had when driving vast distances in WA
I just got back from the Philippines, a mad place at the best of times… loved it! Never wanna hear the Crazy Frog tune again(does anyone??) I think this will outdo Spiller’s ‘Groovejet’ banging through my skull from my extended foray to Ko Phan Ngan foray a few years ago… this is a popular topic isn’t it??!!!
Hey guys – thanks for all the responses. I was pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one brainwashed by the Vengaboys. I wonder if they realise the effect they have had on the backpacker community? Cheap alcohol, bad music, it’s a toxic combination.
I was interested by Paul’s entry about buying Belle & Sebastian in Bangkok and it proving to be the perfect soundtrack. Same thing happened to me in Bangkok but with Pulp’s His & Hers. There must be some kind of mystical link between the Thai capital and louche English pop stars. I think a university somewhere should spend a lot of money looking into it. I dibs doing the research for them.
Some other quick songs/places from me:
Rio – Achtung Baby by U2.
Proof that you can’t manufacture these things. I expected it would be The Girl From Ipanema, Copacabana, I Go to Rio and even the old Duran Duran song, Rio, that would remind me of my visit there. Instead it’s Zoo Station and Mysterious Ways. I can even smell the floor wax of the hotel I was staying in when I put that album on.
Lamu – In Pursuit of the 13th Note by Galiano
Some English guys I’d fallen in with – Stuart and Neil – had a tape of this and it was the perfect soundtrack to sitting around on the roof of our hotel in the old town, watching feluccas sail past. We’d play it on the cassette player that belonged to Simon, the hotel manager and the world’s most uptight Rastafarian. It was a dual cassette player so you could make copies and had a high speed dubbing feature that played the music at double speed as you used it. We thought it was hilarious but Simon was convinced we were destroying his precious machine. I’m still smile every time I hear ‘Storm Clouds Gather’ and think I prefer the speeded up version.
Perhaps my favourite memory is that of awaking before dawn & following a vague path down into the caldera of a volcano. I had David Sylvian’s “Brilliant Trees” cassette on my walkman. Strung out before me were the twinkling lights from kerosene lanterns swaying from the pony’s used to ferry tourists across the landscape to the foot of Mt Bromo in eastern Java. The first light created this huge silhouette of an almost perfect cone (reminiscent of the Devil’s Tower in “Close Encounters”). The ethereal atmosphere was complemented perfectly by Sylvian’s spooky, sparsely constructed songs. Hearing that music now (20 years on) instantly transports me to that place & time…
Fly like an eagle by Steve Miller band. Standing on the track at Madrid airport, waiting for lift off. We never left. The plane had technical problems, they tried whatever they could, but after a few hours we went back to the terminal. Every single time they tried something, the tape with background music started all over again. The first song was Fly like an Eagle. I must have heard it at least a dozen times. In my memory it felt like much more.
Just had to contribute one more time.
Saw the film Touching the Void on TV last night, in which climber Joe Simpson and partner conquer the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Alps (in 1985). In case you haven’t seen it:
On the descent he broke his leg while still near the summit, had to be cut from his rope by his partner, went crashing into a deep cravass and spent the next four days without food or water (other than snow) crawling his way back to camp – never expecting to survive.
Towards the end and in a severely delirious state, he recalled one song in particular going round in his mind: Boney M’s ‘Brown Girl In The Ring’.
Now THAT’S bizarre.
Hi Ian,
That IS bizarre. If I were ever in a delirious state and thinking of a Boney M song I think it would be Rasputin.
crevasse.
(XXXX)
Do you think that the advent of iPods will reduce this effect?
I think they insulate you from the surrounding atmosphere and other peoples music which enhances this effect you are describing. I know Walkmans have been around for a while, but you can’t carry as many cassettes to compete with a 1,000 tracks on your iPod.
My memory – Perfect day by Lou Reid, takes me back to a 24 hr motorbike race in the South of France and a particular ex-girlfriend….
True, it’s the crap songs you remember.
For me, all through East Africa, Matatus, taxis, whorehouses thinly disguised as restarants, ‘The Macarana.’ Sad thing is I LOVED IT! Only when I got back to civilisation did I realise what a piece of shit it was.
Tiwi Beach, Kenya: Peter Tosh, ‘Feeling Irie.’
Fish River Canyon, Namibia: Travelling with Dutch couple, Crowded House and a song called ‘What if I were Romeo in Black jeans?’ Still don’t know who sings it.
London, Edinburgh: U2, ‘Beautiful Day’ and ‘Music’ by Madonna.
Kande Beach, Malawi: Best of Steve Miller
OK, how’s this for bizarre – ‘When I’m cleaning windows’ by George Formby reminds me of the backpackers I stayed in in Nairobi (there wasn’t much by way of choice among the CDs in the bar), plus Boney M’s greatest’(?) hits that got played constantly in the restauarant/brothel next door.
Plus, Amharic ‘bus music’ from too much time spent on Ethiopian public transport. I never want to hear it ever again (it even came as a relief when the driver put some Bob Marley on). God, I really should’ve taken a walkman with me!
Good point about iPods Chris – with the old Walkmans you could at least swap tapes with other travellers when you got sick of the ones you bought with you. And you could supplement your collection with local tapes of the music you heard on buses and in restaurants. (On reflection, that’s probably a good thing. I have a box full of tapes of Turkish pop and Kurdish protest songs that I never listened to again)
I must admit though that my iPod was a Godsend on the big trip around Australia for Crikey. Outside of most towns you can’t pick up any radio signals so it was quite handy to have most of my record collection with me on my 30 gb iPod. I mean, how many people can say they’ve driven along the Flinders Highway listening to Eddie, Old Bob, Dick & Gary by Tenpole Tudor?
I love musci and i love travel. Than i love IPOD. The new ipod is ideal for travel. you no need put mp3 only.
now you can introduce a whole CD.
Ciao!.