I recently had to drive 1200 miles from southwestern Pennsylvania to southern Louisiana. I had to do the same thing a few years ago but my cassete player was working then. That was a piece of cake. When you can listen to music of your own choice, driving all day is painless. My first choice would be Hayden string quartets, after that Gregorian chants. With the player not working , and forced to depend on radio I found only two acceptable choices: country music or conservative talk radio. What appalled me about the country music was the lyrics - you don't hear Roy Acuff or even Willy Nelson but all these modern country songs. The music is fine but the lyrics are inane. A friend of mine once said: "The catholic mass and italian opera are alike in this: their beauty can be most appreciated by those who don't know the language in which thet are sung. The same goes for contemporary country music. I would have been quite happy listening to those country music stations on my drive south if only the songs had been sung in Italian.
With the player not working , and forced to depend on radio I found only two acceptable choices: country music or conservative talk radio. I think I have that one beat. I had the same experience (nothing but radio) but was driving all the way from SE Wisconsin to NW Wisconsin. Guess what was all I could find, after passing, say, Madison, WI?
Nothing but........
SOLID GOLD POLKA
When I stopped for gas, the first thing I did was to call my dad, who'd studied CLASSICAL accordion and let him know of my musical predicament and harmonic torture (grin). He really hates "3-chord polka".
Actually, though this article is a goof from the Weekly World News, they are not totally wrong. If you listen to any of the country acts they named, you will lose IQ points. There is horrendously bad country music out there. Too often these days, country music is bad Backstreet Boys with a banjo thrown in. But there are tons and tons of great country music:
Junior Brown (the greatest electric guitarist ever in any genre), Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton (her new bluegrass stuff is poetry, as opposed to her crappy pop hits of the 80's), Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Lyle Lovett, Alison Krauss, Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson (his new "Austin Sessions" CD is a masterpiece), BR5-49.
Plus, the old classics (Eddy Arnold, Hank, Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline, Doc Watson, Jimmie Rodgers, Chet Atkins) won't lower anybody's IQ.
But the most important question is - Where the hell is Bat Boy?
Poetry is also good. I have Alec Guiness reads TS Eliots poetry cassettes. Can listen to Wasteland over and over. Also books on tape make the time pass. Joseph Campbell sets are sehr interessant. I was on the road yesterday and 19 minutes into Wasteland I was thinking how nice it was to hear the whole poem without interruption when BLAMPATHOOEY!!!, the water pump busted. 75 miles in a tow truck back to Little Rock and all I could think was "Between the idea and the reality falls the Shadow."