Music Day: Have Rock Will Travel

By: Ben Tiernan

Time spent traveling on a train is pensive, philosophical time, or, at least it can be. For me, right now, I’m a bit hung over, and rocking out in my little cocoon of sound to a new CD from She Wants Revenge – which, by the way, rocks – and I’m en route from Solana Beach to Los Angeles. So, on the train I speculate about rock and travel.

It’s important to provide a sound track for travel…in life. People know this, that’s why there are millions of road-trip mixes. The association of travel and music is primal – there’s something basic linear about movement. Getting from hear to there paired with the fixed pace of footsteps or the wurr of engines simulates the basic sensation of the progress, and the steady reassuring tempo of a song.

Today, I like She Wants Revenge, which seems to be a self titled album. They employ satisfying bass-lines that lay footsteps to the wurr of my whisk up the coastline: punctuation to the sage and limestone blur to the east, and vast, steel ocean to the west. They have an 80’s, English, Mod thing going on if that can be said – I’ll have to check my lexicon with David and Tom. They feel English, and I think they even sound English, but everything I can tell from the liner notes, says they’re from Santa Monica.

Rock is the thing for modern travel. Hyper-speed progress leaves you no time to consider the your place in time and space. There is no consideration of the elements of the landscape: a tree, a house, and a fence. There is just landscape, and your place actually has nothing to do with the landscape because your place is in motion (relativity plays in here, I’m sure).

Rock always feels two steps ahead of me as my mind moves from chord to chord, rarely pausing and always quick-tempo. The elements blend as the tempo drives forward and there is no time for meditation. The state of the rock song is simply in motion.

I also have a new Eels CD: “With Strings Live, At Town Hall”. I haven’t listened to it yet, because She Wants Revenge rocks so hard.