The (s)Wheat Spot!

Blogging on the Road

Tomorrow, I'm leaving Austin for 6 weeks for Ft. Collins, CO. Looking forward to sustained human contact again, but I'm not looking forward to a few things:

1. Altitude adjustments. Drink that Water!

2. Leaving my girlfriend in Austin, when she just moved here.

3. Four words: 800 miles, no a.c.

I tried to get the a.c. fixed on the hybrid today, and nobody would touch it. Boo.


But! I've got lots of time on the road to absorb some music (the Hold Steady, some Daniel Johnston, Death from Above 1979, etc.) and enjoy some great old favorites.

Since I'm going to be in four different places in five days, I'm going to try to blog for the next five days and list my Top 5 Road Albums. The Road Album cannot be a mix CD. The Road Album (TRA) cannot be a pre-produced compilation (like, say, American Eagle's Rockin Roadtrip Summer '03 Mix). There is a possible exception for Greatest Hits collections. TRA can however, be an album intentionally written with travel in mind, which means that it can (but doesn't have to be) named after a road (like Route 66, or something... that's foreshadowing, btw). This also means that albums including the themes of air flight or train travel or sea passage are not disqualified from this list.

That said, here's #5, from Austin, the beginning of the journey: The Joshua Tree by U2.


What can I say that hasn't already been said? This album cannot be topped in U2's discography, and with good reason. Irish boys fall in love with the American West, and write songs rich with the spirit of the desert and the pulse of the open road.

The album's opener, "Where the Streets Have no Name," opens with the Edge's infamous guitar riff that moves into the song like an oncoming car appearing out of a mirage. All of a sudden, the beat is there, and the album never lets up again. For my money, I don't know of a better starting four than Joshua Tree. "Streets Have No Name" leads off, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" on deck, "With or Without You" gets to advance a runner into scoring position, and "Bullet the Blue Sky" at cleanup. I defy you to name a better lineup on a Road Album.

...and we're only at #5!

posted by paul @ 10:54 PM