A Traveller’s Tracks: My Musical Memories

Music delivers, rather like aromas, a sensory hit that can instantly take you back to a place and time, thus becoming synonymous with particular settings and circumstances. Naturally, there are a number of tracks I either listened to quite deliberately or heard playing whilst I was travelling that, for me, will now always evoke certain places I have visited. Here is my list (and, of course, I may well add to this in the future) of songs and pieces of music that have particular associations with place for me. 

1.      ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ by Bob Dylan. I remember listening to this at Hintok River Camp in Thailand, whilst sitting alone on the steps outside my glamping tent in the evening, watching the campfire in the communal area a little way off where people were eating, wondering all the while what creepy crawlies were insinuating their way into my sleeping quarters (see ‘Creepy Crawlies: The First Leg (of many)’). I’m not sure why this tune particularly sticks in my head, as it wasn’t the only thing I listened to that night. Maybe it was something about ‘traveling on’ that got me.

2.      ‘Overture’ and ‘Main Titles’ from Lawrence of Arabia (Original Soundtrack) by Maurice Jarre. Another evening listen, this time in a desert camp in Wadi Rum, Jordan. I had predetermined that when I stayed amongst the sand and the rocks in the magnificent landscape T.E. Lawrence travelled through during the years of the Arab Revolt, I would listen to Maurice Jarre’s stirring and sweeping score. How can one not? I recall wandering through the camp, headphones in, barefoot in the sand, and half expecting to spot Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif approaching on camels. There were lanterns placed in rock cavities casting a magical light over the camp, and it was all really quite an emotive experience.

3.      ‘Take It Easy’ by the Eagles. I’m not a massive Eagles fan, but this was what I listened to as I was waiting to fly from Lahad Datu Airport in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, after my adventures at Tabin Wildlife Resort (see ‘Boots and Bikini in Borneo’ post). It’s probably the smallest airport I’ve ever visited, about the size of a large living room. Quite nice when you compare it with the manic hugeness of somewhere like London Heathrow. Anyway, as I awaited the call to venture the twenty metres or so from my seat in the departure lounge (little bigger than a lounge, as I said) to the propeller plane on the tarmac, I tried to ‘lighten up’ while I still could, enjoying a favourite laid-back lyric from the cool Californians: ‘such a fine sight to see / It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford / Slowin' down to take a look at me’. It’s very American, isn’t it (in a good way)?

4.      ‘A Horse With No Name’ by America, and ‘Galvanize’ by The Chemical Brothers. Clearly these are two separate tracks by completely dissimilar artists, but both take me back to the days when I used to visit relatives living in Dubai (gosh, that was handy for holidays). Naturally, the lyrics of ‘A Horse With No Name’ (which I think I first heard on the Hideous Kinky film soundtrack) were desert-appropriate, since ‘the heat was hot and the ground was dry’ in Dubai. It’s a great tune, a sort of meditation on isolation and solitude and getting away from everything. ‘Galvanize’ appealed largely due to its prominent sampling of Moroccan Najat Aâtabou’s ‘Hadi Kedba Bayna’. I also listened to Ahlam’s ‘Oqsem’ (or ‘Aksem’, depending on the transliteration) in Dubai. I know I’m overdoing the number of tracks here, but I visited Dubai several times, you see, so there are various musical associations. Mostly I was sitting by the pool when listening to these. It took me a while to properly investigate the Middle East, and I can’t say I’m done yet.

5.      ‘Love Backs Down’ by Walking on Cars. Someone told me about Walking on Cars back in 2016, just before I took a trip to Iran. Consequently, the long coach trips along desert roads between places such as Yazd, Kerman, and Shiraz were regularly filled with the sounds of their debut album Everything This Way. This song was a favourite and is forever associated for me with the sandy roads and blue skies disappearing and reappearing through the coach windows as we made our way through one of the most fascinating countries I’ve ever visited.  

6.      ‘In Your Eyes’ by Peter Gabriel. More coach time, this time in Sicily, sun-drenched land of churches, mosaics, and monuments. Perhaps the lyrics sum up many of the things I like about Mediterranean holidays… ‘The light, the heat…I am complete…I see the doorway…To a thousand churches’. Ah, splendid.

7.      ‘Waves’ (Robin Schulz Radio Edit) by Mr. Probz. You probably know this one, as it was everywhere a few years ago. I heard it whilst walking beside the beach in Tel Aviv, heading towards the old fort at Jaffa. My flip-flop snapped, as I recall, and, barefoot, I ended up walking like a cat on a hot tin roof across the sunbaked asphalt. I can’t remember if someone was playing it on the beach, or if it was being pumped out of a building, or even if I stopped to listen to it to rest my feet, but somewhere there I heard the track, and it’s therefore forever associated with that coastline. The original song is a bit more thoughtful (slower, of course) with mellifluous (I like that word, so I’m going to use it) strings and brass parts that are somehow more appropriate to the simple but effective lyrics.

8.      ‘Want’ by Recoil. One of my more recent discoveries. Miles and miles of a coach trip through the Kyzylkum (Red Sands) Desert in Uzbekistan were punctuated by Nicole Blackman’s sensual, sinister lyrics. She is incensed, insatiable, mesmerising. From the very beginning, she wants ‘to know how it will end’. But it won’t end, because (and here, I suppose, we can draw an analogy with a desert) she ‘will always be hungry’. Driving all this is the hypnotic harshness of Alan Wilder’s music, which wraps its tendrils around you, managing to be claustrophobic and expansive all at once. Disappearing, unforgiving sands now always insert themselves into my mind’s eye when I hear this.

9.      ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’ by Peter Sarstedt. This 1969 classic was playing as I was driven from my hotel in Goa to a night market. It became clear on the journey that the taxi driver had no idea where this place was, and considerable delays ensued. Still, we got there in the end. One always does, one way or another. I should add that I am nothing like the fascinating creature of the song, and anyone who wanted to ‘look inside [my] head’ would likely change their mind promptly following a cursory rummage.

 

So, there we have my musical memories of places. A little random, but then so is the world, and aren’t we all? Do you have your own list?