I did some driving over the past few days for some family-related reasons. It was about 1,300 km in total through mountain passes in the winter, but I was fortunate that the weather made the drive fairly easy.
I did something during the drive that I haven’t done in several years: I listened to music. I’m not some sort of weirdo who hates music or something, but the way I like to listen isn’t really compatible with my normal life. I like to play music fairly loud, and Mrs. Ubergeek (Irene) is not fond of my preferred volume. She also, to be honest, isn’t a fan of the same music I like.
I used to listen to music while commuting for work, but I’ve been either remote working or retired for well over five years now. And I kind of forgot to listen the last couple of times I drove a significant distance by myself- but not this time. I played my weird collection of music on shuffle for a total of about twelve hours during the sessions of driving this week. I even made a mental note of the artists from my collection I listened to.
The artists that came up on shuffle
These are the ones I remember, and be warned: there is no rhyme nor reason to the music I like enough to add to my iPhone. Most of these artists only appeared in my shuffle once or twice and are in no particular order.
- Roy Orbison
- Rag’n’Bone Man
- The Doors
- Bryan Adams
- Rod Stewart
- Ariana Grande
- George Thorogood
- Alan Parsons Project
- Annie Lennox
- Basil Poledouris (Conan soundtrack)
- The Beatles
- Bruce Springsteen
- Christine Lavin
- David Bowie
- Dire Straits
- Doris Day (a couple of Irene’s songs!)
- Enya
- Golden Earring
- Guns N’ Roses
- Shaggy
- Paul Revere & the Raiders
- Paul Simon
- Prince
- Soundgarden
- Taylor Swift
- Warren Zevon
Yes, I have rather complicated musical tastes. And a lot of my 1,000 or so tracks were apparently ‘in the cloud’ instead of on my phone, so I didn’t hear (for example) anything from the Beatles White Album. I’m also have never put much of my classical music preferences into my iTunes library. One day…
How loud is it, really?
I don’t play my music at ‘burst your eardrums’ levels- it has to still be clear and not painful to listen to. So certainly quite a bit quieter than most concerts these days I would say. But I do set the volume at a high enough level to ‘feel’ the music, particularly the bass line. It definitely wouldn’t be possible to have a conversation while the music is playing.
Adding music back to my life
I enjoyed listening to my weird music these past couple of days. I think I need to find a good way to add a regular listening session back into my schedule. But driving for over ten hours isn’t a very efficient way to fit in some music time. Maybe I will just carve out a few hours with headphones occasionally. It isn’t quite the same as feeling the windows shake, though…
I love listening to music while driving, sometimes I’ll belt out songs like no one is listening and it’s one of the reasons why I chose to get my license in the first place.
Freedom to sing along, in my case badly singing along, is another benefit to listening to music in the car. I do that too!
I listen to a lot of music at my PC and some on my old iPod Touch but the only time I really have it up loud is in the car. Cars are just about the perfect place to listen to really loud music except for the imminent danger of dying. I definitely don’t pay as much attention with music on and the louder it is, the less attention I pay.
As for the weirdness of your list, it looks pretty consistent to me. Other than the soundtrack the only names that stand out from the general classic-rock-adjacent theme to me would be Ariana Grande, Shaggy, Taylor Swift, Doris Day and Christine lavin, who was also the only one I had to look up to see who it was. Maybe Rag n Bone Man but he feels pretty much in tune with the older names. Sounds like a good mix for a road trip, anyway. I wouldn’t complain if I was sitting in the passenger seat. Well, not too often, anyway…
Christine Lavin is a ‘folk comedy’ singer- I went to one of her live shows a few decades ago and, along with Weird Al, added her to my “I need a laugh” selection of music.
I do have proper playlists so my comedy doesn’t get mixed up with my heavy metal or Christmas music, but for the long drive I just picked ‘shuffle the whole lot’ and skipped any that didn’t seem fitting when they popped up. The Doris Day and a few others are nods to Mrs. Ubergeek, who is partial to show tunes and that kind of thing. I skipped a bunch of those (sorry, honey!), but a couple of the Doris Day songs I enjoyed enough to let play through.
One of those Doris Day tunes was a bit of time travel cultural shock: “A Guy is a Guy”. Yikes- I had to listen to that to make sure it was as completely inappropriate in a modern context as it seemed at first to be. Definitely would not fly today: but it has a nice beat and you can sing along! Eeesh….