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Wanderlust
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Imagine that one day the famous fairy from the tale knocks on your door and tells you that you have three wishes. And one of these wishes should have something to do with vacation and travel. Where in the world have you always wanted to go? What would be one of your dream destinations (also from a musical point of view) ?
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hi Juergen et al,
I am just catching up.
Damn did this thread get long.
Here is one from The Who. It seems that Entwhistle’s wife was the inspiration for his travels.
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Hi Tom,
nice that you drop by again. And even nicer that you present a song from The Who. The somewhat different kind of wanderlust and a very special reason to travel and just get away. Apropos The Who: It does not quite fit the topic, but it’s still a nice song 🙂
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Jurgen, 3 wishes eh?
It would be pretty simple for me:
1..Visit Liverpool
2..Catch a live MLT performance
3..Meet Mona and Lisa backstage, give them a big hug of gratitude and have them sign their autograph in my special bucket list journal.
A bonus wish
4..Try some authentic UK sticky toffee pudding while I’m there.
Given the Who is top of mind today, here is one of my favourite Who songs.
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I have forwarded your wishes immediately, Jung. Maybe it will work out, but I can’t promise. I share the first three wishes with you. The fourth one is really a matter of taste…
Thank you for the very nice song. I have seen Quadrophenia a long, long time ago. The movie was a topic in my English class. I can only roughly remember the movie, but not the song. My English teacher was very enthusiastic about the movie. The English class rather less. We must have been 17 or 18 years old at the time and the subject matter of the film was light years away for us. At that age, you have all kinds of problems and worries. Fortunately, being chased by a bunch of motorcyclists was not one of them. The English youth scene at that time was rather dominated by punk and new wave.
It’s only a small step from The Who to The Kinks and their holiday experiences:
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Great topic Jurgen!
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I’m right there with you Jung !
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When I retire, I plan to do a zero gravity plane ride. I guess it’s the next best thing to….
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Hi Diana. I’m glad you stopped by. You have chosen a great song and an even better idea: if you’re going to travel, then really far away and something really special. When the time has come, don’t forget to send us postcards. 🙂
While we’re on the subject of film quotes, there’s a scene from the film „Spacecowboys“ that is touchingly beautiful and sad at the same time. Maybe we can enjoy such a view one day. Only this time with a happy ending.
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I’m sure this isn’t every ones cup of tea….But I like it
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Yes it is sometimes difficult to find the right sort of tea here in the forum. I like the flavour of this one variety very much. Very aromatic with a certain spiciness. I heard „American Boy“ many times ago without ever knowing exactly who composed that song. Thank you for posting.
Here is a song with its own special motivation to cover many miles.
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Jurgen, she sure gets around to places with that piano. I remember this song, really cool video.
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Jurgen,
I love that “Space Cowboys” clip. You have a great sense of humor
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Diana you once wrote that you like ABBA and the musical “Mama Mia”, if I remember correctly (or the other way around 🙂 ). The theme of the musical fits very well with this topic and here is a song that reflects a happy, exuberant vacation feeling.
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Jurgen,
You are absolutely correct. I’m a huge ABBA fan. I have to post another ABBA song. Seems like I keep choosing flying songs. Maybe I’ll take flying lessons when I retire.
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Hi Diana,
thanks for posting the video. Eagle is a very beautiful song by ABBA. From the time when they were already musically mature. The video with the flight and landscape shots goes perfectly with the topic. When I was in my early twenties, friends gave me an ABBA Hit Box as a gift. I put the box in the farthest corner. Listening to ABBA at that age wasn’t very cool. From today’s point of view I have to say: the band had an incredible feeling for beautiful melodies and nice arrangements. And they always exuded a lot of fun with their music. Here I have a title by ABBA that is rather unknown and certainly not one of their best songs. But it goes so well with the theme of travel and vacation.
PS: We like to watch „Mama Mia“ on New Year’s Eve.
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Thanks for this beautiful song about shattered dreams and lost hopes Tom. I haven’t heard anything from Tracy Chapman for a long time. Is she still musically active?
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I don’t think Tracy is dong much.
Willie is going to outlive all of us. He must have some great medicine.
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Until I can go to Europe to see an MLT concert…..
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Diana, that Steppenwolf song, and Jurgen, your reference to the movie Quadrophenia reminds me of this other road trip song by Steppenwolf. The lyrics kind of expresses the passion I felt of embarking on a road trip in a hot powerful machine:
“..take the world in a love embrace, fire all of your guns at once and explode into space..”
Just like Janitor Joe.
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After all these years, it’s still a cool and rousing song that somehow doesn’t want to age. Maybe because the attitude to life behind it is still current and lives on in the hearts of many people. The longing for freedom and the need to be free (at least for a short moment):
“Racing with the wind
And the feeling that I’m under”
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And once again another nice song about the journey into the inner self. The theme of journeying as a metaphor for self-discovery and self-knowledge seems to be quite popular in music.
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Hi Jurgen, a couple of nice videos. Journeys for self discovery are the best kind of journeys. I enjoyed disappearing on my own for a couple weeks along lonely country highways and deserts. I’d come back with a refreshed perspective, a kind of Zen. A Horse With No Name reminds me of my times around the deserts of Palm Springs CA. Always loved the barren desert, the mysterious feelings it evoked.
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A never-ending highway that winds like a curving ribbon through endless steppe and prairie. The shimmering layers of air reflected above the road. I know all this only from movies, but I imagine it very meditative Jung (as long as the car doesn’t break down or run out of gas early). 🙂
My travels usually take me to the sea. I always find the endless blue stretching to the horizon very relaxing and somehow meditative. No buildings, no cars, no people and no civilization (at least as long as you don’t turn back to the beach). It has become difficult to find a spot where there are no noisy people around and any exhausting sounds of civilization. Perhaps the Desert is such a place. Or the mountains. I remember vacations with my parents. We often went to the Alps. Austria was very popular. By cable car to the “Alm” (that’s what we call the high pasture areas in the mountains). Grazing cows, now and then a cowbell sounds, the buzzing of insects and the wind blowing gently through the high grass and the wildflowers. Otherwise only silence, wonderful silence. For me, an absolutely fantastic experience, since I grew up in an area where blast furnaces towered like bizzare mushrooms. Chimneys as far as the eye can see and at night you could sometimes see how the sky glowed red when liquid steel was filled into the railway carriages. When this happened at Christmas, my mother always said: the Christ Child is baking cookies again (because the sky shimmered so beautifully red, like the embers of a huge oven). Or across Switzerland to Italy. Our VW Beetle named Max (year of manufacture 1962, unbelievable 34 horsepower), two adults, two kids, the trunk filled to the brim and up the mountain passes in second or third gear. Up to 2500 meters (8.202 feet), right up to the snow line. My father always had quite a bit of fun when the new, fast cars of that time, which were constantly overtaking us, had to stop along the way because the cooling water was overheated. Our Max didn’t have these problems: he breathed the cool, fresh alpine air. Like us. Further up the pass then the wonderful view over the snow-covered mountain peaks. Feeling the fresh air in your lung and the warm sun on your face. After that quickly getting back into the car and heading down towards the Mediterranean Sea, where the vast endless blue awaited us.
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Juergen,
i was going to enter “The Long & Winding Road” but let’s hear from Gordon Lightfoot instead …
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Thanks for the very nice song Tom. Im not familiar with Gordon Lightfood, but I really like the music. A nice melody and thought provoking lyrics. I wonder what it would be like to turn back time one more time. Back to situations and people in life that probably changed the future forever. If you had made a different decision in the past, how would your entire life have turned out?
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Thanks for posting this song David. The lyrics bring me back to the the root, the idea of this topic: Originally I wanted to name it “I have never been to New York”, after a song by the Austrian singer and composer Udo Jürgens (“Ich war noch niemals in New York”). It’s about a man who dreams of exploring the wide world, of escaping the grey everyday life, of simply being spontaneous, but then he still does not manage to break out of his usual life:
And after dinner he said
Let me go and get some cigarettes.
She called after him Take the keys with you
I’m going to look after the girl.
He pulled the door shut and walked silently out
Into the neon-bright stairwell
It smelled of floor polish and stuffiness.
And on the stairs he thought, how if this were a departure now
I’d just have to go for ever
For all time…
I’ve never been to New York, I’ve never been to Hawaii
Never walked through San Francisco in torn jeans
I’ve never been to New York, I’ve never been truly free
To be crazy and escape from all constraints.
And as he stood outside in the street
He remembered he had almost everything with him
His passport, his Eurocheques and some money.
Maybe there was a flight tonight.
He could take a taxi at the corner or just stop and go.
The longing in him was awakened again
To be full of dreams once more, to free himself from the confines of this place.
He thought about his departure, his departure to…
I’ve never been to New York, I’ve never been to Hawaii
Never walked through San Francisco in torn jeans
I’ve never been to New York, I’ve never been truly free
To be crazy and escape from all constraints.
Then he put away his cigarettes
And went home as a matter of course
Through the stairwell with floor polish and bourgeoisie
The wife called out “Man,
What’s keeping you? It’s time to go.”
She said, “What’s the matter?” – “No, what’s the matter?”
I’ve never been to New York, I’ve never been to Hawaii
Never walked through San Francisco in ripped jeans
I’ve never been to New York, I’ve never been really free
To be crazy and escape from all constraints.
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Hi Jurgen, what a McCartney gem of a song you found, it sounds so distant, mysterious, and charming at the same time, the perfect travel the sea kind of song. Thanks very much for sharing your travel experiences. I like the ocean too, lately through many cruises, but also use to enjoy going along the westcoast along Oregon and California coast. There was a particular waterside hotel, “Surfrider Hotel” in Depoe Bay Oregon I enjoyed going to, to take in the lonely ocean. The mysterious vastness of the ocean and the desolate wide open expanse of the desert was always appealing to me. There is a kind of serenity and purity in that, if you spent enough time, it kind of purified or cleansed you inside somehow.
I love the story of your road trips with your father in that VW Beetle, and love the name “Max”! Cruising those winding Swiss mountain passes in a 34 horsepower 62 VW Beetle sounds like perfection to me. When I went to University, I use to carpool with a guy who picked me up every morning in a green VW Beetle just like that. It was old and beat up and the defroster and heater didn’t work so we use to freeze our butts off while wiping the fog off the windshield in the winter, but it was fun, and woke me up good. Luckily we didn’t have too far to go. I presume that is a picture of you and your sister. Driving along in that VW Beatle from the snow covered peaks down to the blue Mediterranean sea sounds just amazing. Wow you were an incredibly cute and adorable little guy! 🙂
Here is one for traveling the waters.
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Hi Jung,
thank you for posting the Beach Boys song and I am pleased that you liked my little vacation memory. In this day and age, where you can fly (almost) everywhere quickly by plane, such trips by car have something very nostalgic. Right after graduating from high school, I toured France with three friends. There are many nice private accommodations, which usually always have rooms available. Sometimes simple rooms in an old farm or on a small vineyard or any cozy little houses on the countryside. Only my friend Claus-Peter knew a little school French and was allowed to interpret (he visibly suffered). The language skills of the other three of us were very limited: “Bonne journée”, “Bonne journée à tous”, “Au revoir”, “Oui”, “Non” and “Merci”, friendly nods and smiles. But it worked surprisingly well. This time we were traveling in a VW Rabbit (with an amazing 72 horsepower). Four adults and way too much luggage. Yes it was kind of cramped in the car. But that didn’t bother me much, since I was sitting behind the steering wheel most of the time. 🙂 And it was actually a very relaxed way to travel, as there is a speed limit on the highways in Belgium and France and some of the routes are also toll roads. Very few cars on the road, nice music on the radio, and beautiful scenery in front of you. What more could you want?
I have found someone else here who has thought about traveling and perhaps the meaning of life.
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And here is another song that comes to mind in connection with my vacation in France. The single was placed high in the music charts at the time.
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Yes Jung, flying is synonymous with freedom, travel and wanderlust. In a few hours to get there, where people of earlier days have needed months. I also once had the idea to post “Music and Flying” as a separate topic here in the forum. Maybe soon. It is a pity that we humans will never be able to fly under our own power. The ratio of weight to muscle power does not fit. Tough luck, then we have to keep on walking. It’s also quite beautiful, but does not approach the elegance of bird flight.
PS: thanks for the song “Jet Airliner”. A groovy song that I did not know yet and beautiful pictures of now partly historic commercial aircraft.
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Hi Jurgen, wow that video is amazing with those people in the Ultralight flying with the birds! The video captures such an incredible perspective with a glimpse into the world of these birds when they fly. They look so alive and free flying through the air like that. I was just imagining Mona and Lisa in an Ultralight flying with little grown up Neve. Thanks for sharing this incredible video, and that George Harrison video was great too.
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