It was a long time ago. A warm night in 1975. I was driving my first car, a white XP Falcon four-door, to the Mornington Peninsula where my family had a holiday house at Somers. I had just turned into Coolart Road, that long stretch that always seemed to take forever.
1975 had not been a good year in music, unless you liked disco ducks or Barry Manilow. As usual, I was punching the radio buttons to find something decent with which to drive past endless pine plantations. I hit a button and a new song came on and by the time it had finished I was most of the way down Coolart Road without even noticing. A kind of haggard vibrato was dragged along by an insane chop of a beat that sounded like a Harley Davidson ticking over and then, near the end, a sax break blew the whole thing out of the water. In fact, it almost blew the speakers out of the car, which would have been a shame because they were only new.
That year they were calling Bruce Springsteen the new Dylan.
*
The other day I was making exactly the same trip; two wives, four children, countless cars, many dogs, one and a half careers and thirty-three years later. A song came on the radio right there at the same spot on Coolart Road and it took me back to a night in 1975.
But it wasn't Born To Run. It was a new one, title of Radio Nowhere.
How loud can you crank up a car radio when children are on board?
1975 had not been a good year in music, unless you liked disco ducks or Barry Manilow. As usual, I was punching the radio buttons to find something decent with which to drive past endless pine plantations. I hit a button and a new song came on and by the time it had finished I was most of the way down Coolart Road without even noticing. A kind of haggard vibrato was dragged along by an insane chop of a beat that sounded like a Harley Davidson ticking over and then, near the end, a sax break blew the whole thing out of the water. In fact, it almost blew the speakers out of the car, which would have been a shame because they were only new.
That year they were calling Bruce Springsteen the new Dylan.
*
The other day I was making exactly the same trip; two wives, four children, countless cars, many dogs, one and a half careers and thirty-three years later. A song came on the radio right there at the same spot on Coolart Road and it took me back to a night in 1975.
But it wasn't Born To Run. It was a new one, title of Radio Nowhere.
How loud can you crank up a car radio when children are on board?
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