We Be Jammin'

Every good road trip needs a good soundtrack that has music to keep you alert at the wheel, to bond you and your co-travelers, to get you safely to your destination and to lock into your memory bank the entirety of the trip with certain moments linking to certain songs from now until forever.
There are a number or questions that must be answered to even start the compilation of a good road trip soundtrack. It’s important that you don’t throw together songs willy-nilly and expect that to be tolerable, because let me tell you, if you are riding with me, it isn’t.
The first question to be answered being who I am riding with. It’s just dense of you to assume that whoever is in the car with you will want to listen to exactly what you want to listen to for the whole trip. I don’t care how tolerant you’re friends are, no one is indulgent enough to listen to fourteen hours of nonstop Johnny Cash. I don’t care how big a fan they think they are; it’s unconscionable to think to force someone to endure such torture (David Hayes). This weekend I will be traveling with my mom. So that means that music which is overtly suggestive, has blatant sexual overtones or has any profanity are to be left at home. I don’t have much of that but it’s still wise to include that proviso in my list. It would be nice of me to include music that I know she enjoys listening to, not just music that I think she might like listening to. I’ll be taking into account that my daughter will be in the car and it might be fun to look up music from November of 1981, being as that was the first road trip my mom and I ever had together. There are also songs I remember her singing along to when I was young and I’ll add some songs from 1999, that being the last year we took a road trip together.
The second question to be answered being what is your destination? If you are on your way to go fishing in the Tennessee woods then I’d suggest leaving the Greatest Hits of the Banjo Brothers at home seeing as how you wouldn’t want to freak yourself out before you were even halfway there. If you are on your way to a concert, don’t listen to nothing but the band you are going to see, that will just burn you out and you’ll be disinterested once you get there and end up drinking too much to compensate for your boredom and then you’d have to get your co-traveler to take care of you and then you’d be screaming out the window all the words to the songs that your friends just heard live and you’ll ruin the entire experience for them(You know who you are). This weekend I’m traveling to my Aunt’s funeral. Now, considering that it is a long drive there and back and we don’t want to be all weepy the whole way, a little disco to seriously lighten the mood would be a good start. Songs that will make us want to bop our heads and sing along are defiantly getting added, but not too much of it, we don’t want to roll up to the burial site doing the twist and giggling like adolescents. That wouldn’t go over too well. So we can add in some late 70’s hippy stuff, Simon and Garfunkle and Peter Paul and Mary should be mellow enough.
The third question to be answered being are we planning on talking over this music. If there is one thing I hate in life it is when people talk over good music. I will turn that music off and wait for you to finis… who am I kidding, I’ll stare at you with the stink eye until you shut up and then I’ll start that song over. So, if I choose to bring new music that I want to introduce to my mom then there will be no talking or else I will have to keep starting the song over every time she says anything and considering that she talks as much as I do I am going to opt for not choosing to bring new music. So I’ll need to choose music that is well known to the both of us and music that isn't something that I need to sing along to. It needs to be music that can easily be turned down and spoken over. So no story telling songs needing to be followed in order to be enjoyed can be added to the list; sorry Justin Timberlake.
The final question to be answered being is this trip really worth spending the time to make a soundtrack for. Because lets face it, sometimes a road trip is just a radio road trip. When you are driving in the country, on back roads, or across state lines you need a CD to keep a constant flow of music with no static. Static is the number one cause of road rage in this country, did you know that. True story. However, if you are driving from one suburb to another and you do not leave the big city or the range of its radio stations then there isn’t a need for a soundtrack. Oh man! This weekend I will be going from League City to Spring to Beaumont and never leaving Houston’s radio stations range so there isn’t a need for a soundtrack at all for this trip. JEEZ!

Whatever.