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Driving home from the south end (Kingarth and beyond, that is) Sing Something Simple on a Sunday evening in the old Commer van, a wireless perched precariously on the dashboard as far as I can remember. Not that we were going on holiday at the time - who needs a car in Millport?

we used to have these monster journeys from the hebrides to battle/hastings for a chess tournament. the hastings xmas chess tournament is the oldest longest running tournament in the world.
it would be a 5 hour ferry followed by a 600 mile drive just in time to arrive on xmas eve and get a xmas tree then go to the midnight service in the 11th century norman church in battle, across the street from battle abbey where it all kicked off in 1066.....truly magical.
as the family dozed off about birmingham i would slip on this song to entertain the rabbit guinea pigs and the dog (we liked a busy car)..............

'i drove all night'.......................roy orbison

this very same RETURN journey was once done between a thursday and a saturday...but i've never heard a song that replicated the tension anxiety and sheer exhaustion trying to catch that ferry at 6.45 on the saturday morning.it would have been a 3 day wait had we missed it...........we didn't , though it took a 'discussion' between the passenger and the pier crew. man, even the rabbit guinea pigs and dog were cowering. i was just wanting, praying to get on that boat.
but it was always worth it because i witnessed some amazing chess at the ymca in bohemia road in hastings.
memorable and unique in fact.

cheers frae the dale

Childhood musical memories in my dad's car? Play the entire Robbie Shepherd collection. In fact, my dad's thoughts on "aw that rubbish played on the wireless" can be summed up by his name for this show: "Get It Aff".


Looks like I'll have to miss out Thursday again. That is unless you want to play

Donald whaur's yer troosers - Andy Stewart

DC

#2 you didn't try the old dodge of phoning Macbrayne's to say there's a party of - whatever age the oldest in the car was - coming for the ferry, please can you hold her?

#3 DC - We like our radio on and it's tuned to Radio Scotland in the kitchen. Inevitably that means, every Sunday when I'm cooking/ cleaning / making a cuppa, I get an earful of Robbie and his selection of "Mrs Campbell from Inversomewhere" played by Wullie MacScottish and his accordion band in the Blairgowrie town hall, as requested by Jimmy for his wife of 50 years. It's somehow reassuring in its lack of pretension - but you won't catch me running out to buy any of the recordings. Not proud to say that. It has its place, though.

THURSDAY


I wasn't actually on this journey, but watched it on tape.

Picture the scene:- Sunny day. Southern California. Red Mustang. My favourite daughter sitting in the back of said Mustang. (My favourite sister-in-law was driving, my ex was operating the camcorder). And because of all this, the song playing on the car radio has a special place in my heart. Released as a single in America, it reached #7 in the U.S. Rock Chart.


Farm on the Freeway - Jethro Tull


Make an auld git happy. Get It On!

:o)

Torn between two parents. I think I've given my mamma's musical influences a couple of shouts already. Heading off to visit my pappa in a few weeks. So, it's his turn.
There was a brief time just after their break-up when we still lived in the same country and we had to visit by boat. I'm not claiming any sort of precocious understanding of the significance of this song to myself or the situation at the time, just that I remember hearing it at my dad's and loving it.
Rod Stewart Sailing
For balance and the sake of family harmony, mamma and her new (still current) husband had an American car (they are strangely popular in Norway, even today) with an 8 track cassette player. Favourite singer and song from that time:
Neil Diamond It's A Beautiful Noise

Enjoyed Ed Sheeran's A Team on Alison Again. Reminded me of this:

#6 Scotch - stormin' shout. If that doesn't sound too whatever. Love it.

#2

dale_kelvin,

It's fun to play at the Y.M.C.A.


May I recommend Michael Chabon's book, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

For chess players and fans of alternative history.

#9

Mary-Doll,

Thank you for the support!

#4 @ ya gaie...........

now you've got me started

island life teaches you 3 things

1. how to pack a car
2.there are important people and important people.
3.how it bestows on you the ability to attain a best ever personal achievement.

#1.........i once had to dispose of 3 eggs because it was claimed that there was no more room in the car.........i too find that highly improbable but being the driver i lack empathy cos i have loads of room.

#2.... i was once sitting sunning myself on the upper deck waiting for the skipper to draw anchor as an announcement was made that there would be a delay in departure as there were important people still on the road.
so i tried that one. see #3 below and above.

#3 seasoned night road travellers time the arrival on the pier to perfection...exactly 45 minutes before sailing.
however there is an in-built weakness to this. its called 'gettin' a puncture'.
more precisely its called 'getting a puncture as per #1'
sitting in the dark 8 miles from the pier with a puncture and unable to get the wheel off , i suggested that we abandon and do the same journey next evening. but loud swearing indicated that this was a bad plan.so on phoning the police (ferry office not open!!! ha ha) i politely asked if they could maybe persuade the ferry operators to hold the ferry for as long as it took the break doon man to come and change the wheel....epic fail...........presumably not important enough.
so desparate times require desparate measures ..............i jumped on the wrench one last time with all my might and lo! the nut moved......to cut an even longer story short i was enjoying my 'roll and square sausage' with cup of T while some poor bloke had been got oot his bed to search in the dark for some broken down vehicle.....i did phone him from the sound of mull to apologise though.
but i regard making that ferry as one of my best , if not the best, ever personal achievements......it also taught me how many friends i have as i saw each one (as i thought) zoom past on their way to the pier.

cheers frae the dale

Three suggestions which will always remind me of three classic American drives:

Gulf of Mexico by Alabama - was on a quiz compilation cd my brother gave me when he dropped the family off at Glasgow airport for a flight to Naples, Florida. This song always reminds me of the drive from Naples through the Evergaldes and down the keys to Key West.

All I want to do by Sugarland - I bought the CD in LA and played it as we headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway to San Fransisco.

Angel dance by Band of Joy - again purchased in LA and the soundtrack for a drive through the mountains and the desert to Las Vegas.


Joe
Linlithgow

#5 @ ya mary-doll..............

stick with robbie and you might get these two road gems.............

'calum's road'......................capercaillie

'on the road again'.....................skerryvore

cheers frae the dale

This is another ageist theme. My parents didn't have a car and on the few occasions we were in one there wasn't even a radio. At that time a heater could be an optional extra.

Coincidentally, my first car was a Morris Traveller like the one above. It had had eleven careful owners and featured a view of the road through the floor. My next car was a Beetle and it used to make me wonder how we could ever have won the war.

Driving - The Kinks

First family motor was the Morry Thou it didn't have a radio same as the second, the Traveller. Third was the Singer Gazelle which had a radio as did the fourth the Morris Marina! Then came the Fiats 127, 128 & Strada all with radios but alas no tape player. The Ford Fiesta and Citro毛n AX were to be no different.. Faither had a real issue about paying for un-necessary extras!

Waterloo ~ Stonewall Jackson "Dad wasn't that bad a singer"

Keepin' it country!

There were seven of us, mum dad and five weans would go holidays in the cortina estate with five weans fighting over which two would go in the boot with the luggage.
For weeks before my dad would tape the Frank Skerritt and Peter Mallon shows off the tranny and then subject us to it the whole holidays. Then in 1978 he had a penne arabiata moment and discovered pop or to be more precise boney M. It was the height of punk new wave and saturday night fever but all i can remember was my dad driving along beltin out 'hooray hooray its a holi holi day' whilst i buried my face with embarrassment in the suitcase in the boot havin beat up my wee brother for the pleasure of sitting there

#15, 16 ditto

At the risk of sounding like the "Cortina??? You were lucky" type sketch from the Secret Policeman's Ball....

The 'wireless' in our car was actually battery operated in that it had three cells wired in series with crocodile clips & short lengths of cable. The whole lot was kept in a wooden box under the passenger seat. The 'aerial' was a coil of wire hung out the window. I seem to remember it working if we travelled in an east / west direction.

And now that I think back, we were allowed to listen to Russ Conway on the Light Programme. So, for all the bloggers who pre-date in-built car radios, please play:

Side Saddle



DC

Ooops, should have mentioned that we had an Austin A35 van which had been converted to allow us kids seats in the back. All cars had names in these far off days, ours was 'Aggie Austin', registration TSP 738. I bet the car (or indeed the number plate) would be worth a lot of money now!

My parents took us on long drives all the time. 8 track cassettes.

Charley Pride, the pride of country music - Crystal Chandeliers

Don Williams - Til The Rivers All Run Dry

I drove up and down Glasgow / Highlands and wore out several cassettes. Literally. The 3 I remember most were Peter Gabriel - Play, Peter Gabrirl 4 and the Jam compilation Snap!

Peter Gabriel - San Jaconto or I Have The Touch

The Jam - Strange Town

And the tapes on the road trip to mis adventure in the Capri to Wales included Born In The USA, Little Steven Men Wothout Women/ Voice of America and the big hit at the time Purple Rain

Prince - When Doves Cry

Little Steven - Until The Good Is Gone

#1

Gaie,

North Glasgow. Early seventies. Commer vans were invariably full of polis.

:o)

SG, I hate to admit it, but this was before the 70s, by then we'd moved on to Bedfords, one of which I learned to drive in, taking it through a hedge second time out. There was one polis car on the island, with a number plate everyone knew of course, SJ something as all Bute cars were.

Were you a Bedford Rascal?

Congratulations Adam, your attire of choice has made it in to the latest edition of the oxford english dictionary.

Easy one...
Petrol blue 1978 Ford Cortina
Parents up front
Labrador in the footwell of the passenger seat
Three kids in the back fighting over the window seats
8-track stereo
Ill Never Find Another You: The Seekers (There's a new world somwhere, they call the promised land....)

#25
Did they get the description right?

#26
That'll be the New ones, right Mike?

I used to love watching the stones in the road go bye under the hole in the floor in several of my Dads cars and his work van. Springsteen summed up the whole car thing for lots of hard working families.

Springsteen - Used Cars

#22

Whit aboot the red ones that always sat on South Frederick St. back in the day, were they full of Polis also?

talking aboot roads...............no matter what you're listening to in the car should you be driving through the centre of glasgow and george square then you'll have a job finding cochrane street. what you will find is 15th street through to 16th street.
you'll thank me for passing on that information cos its no' in the morrisons atlas.

philadelphia freedom...................elton john

cheers frae the dale

In the early 80s there was a spell where I was having to commute from Pittenweem to Edinburgh in a wee sporty Datsun. I only had one cassette in the car - "Business As Usual" by Men at Work. It got worn out.
If you play this then dedicate it to Laura, whose tape it was and who, to this day, has never let me forget it.

"I Can See It In Your Eyes" - Men At Work

Not played as much on the wireless as the other tracks and its a great driving track.

In our car, it was always my dad singing, and the 3 songs I always remember are
* Doris Day - Que Sera Sera
* Frankie Laine -
* The Pride of Petravore
and repeat, all the way up the old A6 from Shropshire to the grandparents in Glasgow.

A great song about going out in the car for a family drive is
* The Saw Doctors - Galway and Mayo
Me mother in the front seat
Children in the back
We鈥檇 be imagining Indians in the Fields
Waiting to attack
And we鈥檇 be asking 鈥渁re we nearly there?鈥�

#22, #29 - were none of these polis vans filled with scallywags?

#17 , I used to sit in the boot of our estate car too. When we stopped, the family would all get out and pretend they'd forgotten about me (at least I think they were pretending).

Rockin' all over the world - Status Quo. Remionds me of listening to the Live Aid concert as we drove to Cornwall.

Justified and Ancient - KLF. Spotting number plates with the letters KLF on them on the way to Ireland.

Driving to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix, there can only be one choice;
Fleetwood Mac, - The Chain

For those of you not familiar with this song, - you soon will be when you hear that unmistakable base line, then you have to imagine Murray Walker's voice reaching fever point and sounding like his trousers are on fire.

Little-known fact, that this song always makes your car go faster. True!

Ian
Gartcosh

hold on tight I have a form in front of me right now which states:

In accordance with Section 1 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act, 1988 I herby give notice of presecution blah blah etc.

Should I just score across it "Fleetwood mac - The Chain" and send it back?

Previously on the blog,'Enri the Earnest!Progressive Rock is not Jazz.Depending on who you're listening to then I would say that Prog Rock draws its influences from Jazz,folk and Classical Music(and in some cases all three plus the kitchen sink).I'm in no doubt that King Crimson were Jazz informed but can you say the same for portentous Pomp Rockers like The Moody Blues and there titterworthy "Concept"albums.Even The Who's "Tommy"sounds like it was concocted by some15 year old who had one too many mushrooms. I was one of the lankhaired greatcoat wearing gatefold album toting blokes that Bill Bailey takes the p*** out of so hilariously in his History of Prog Rock but then along came Steely Dan and Weather Report and I saw the future and binned "Topographic Oceans".Hark,is that a melotrone I hear?:0)Cheers Willie Bartke

#32

I've remembered an exception to the 'no radio, dad singing' rule in our car. I remember we listened to the original broadcasts of Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the car.

Therefore can we please have
* The Eagles - Journey of the Sorcerer

#36

Do you mean persecuted - is it the voices again?

#37

You're right. Apart from Pinball Wizard, Tommy's all filler with an incomprehensible narrative. Like many bands who started to believe their own publicity, the Who's forte was the two-minute single.

#22, #29

South Frederick St. is City Centre, as weel ye kain!



#22, #29, #33

We were too quick for them. The trick is to run where a Commer van cannot follow.


>8-D

#36

I empathise. Try ignoring it. Surprising how often it goes away.

#37

Agreed, Willie. I have a series of prog rock mugs in the house -Topographic Oceans - In the Court of The Crimson King - Foxtrot etc. These days I think the artwork on the gatefold sleeves was probably the best bit of it.

These mugs are highly decorative and a great talking point when visitors turn up, though recently I listened to 'Suppers Ready' and throughly enjoyed it.

Yep,agreed, it's not all jazz music - I didn't count The Moody Blues as prog - but I think that even for those not making jazz based music, the 'stream of conciousness' thing, which is a jazzy thing,conciously or otherwise, infected the music of the time and experimentation broke out with unpredictable and very uneven results:-))

regardez youse

henri

FRIDAY


I don't get it. Are we really being asked to request songs we can't stand?



































revolting git

Scotch
What's the name of that jethro tull track again that i can't stand?

# 14 dale - I've not heard either of those on Robbie's program, it would make a nice change from the usual. Mind, I'll still listen to it (if only as I go about other business) as he has such a cheery way about him and the music is not that bad, even if it is hard to distinguish one tune from the next one.

# 42 Scotch - yes, that doesn't make much sense unless we're being asked to request music other bloggers like and they do likewise to return the favour with no requirement to actually hate said song, just like it less than they do .....;o)

I see paolo types beat me to it! That's the spirit!!! xx

types better/ beat me. either, or or both!

#43

Paolo,

See #6



#44

Mary-Doll,

Sounds like a plan!

#44, #47

I draw the line at Neil Young...


>8-D

# 48 still leaves plenty of scope..... ;o)

I love everything and everyone so I'm stumped....

PUT THE BOTTLE DOWN! STEP AWAY FROM THE BOTTLE!

#40
Naughty Scotch!

The Sth Frederick St. Commers were full of sacks that you'd have helped to make had you been caught ;-)

Was sure you'd have remembered the main Post Office.

#52

That reminds me of the overzealous traffic warden who called in for a flatbed lorry to uplift a Post Office van. It was parked outside the main P.O. in George Square.

Bam.

Queen again?!?

Och, weel. Nae Queen ramorra. Everybody loves Queen...

It's now Jamie's Italian. Have your chips done in truffle oil with shavings of Parmigiano - so Glasgow.

You know I'm really gettin to hate Queen.





I mean love...love queen




Dammit!

Christ help me Scotch.. I whilst cleaning up the kitchen found myself subconsciously doin' handclaps.... Commer van for Gartnavel Royal?

#55

Eric,

The eastern corner is Brown's restaurant/bar/grill/whatever. I wonder is there a connection to Danny Brown's, formerly Saint Vincent Street?

Again!

#57

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

#54

GIO has them down as Prog you know.