[music, travel, books]

[wispfox]

The line in Ghost, by the Indigo Girls, which says "the Mississippi's mighty, but it starts in Minnesota at a place which you could walk across with five steps down" means I just added seeing the source of the Mississippi to the things I want to see, in my year of wandering.

Because of this, I'm wondering if there are any other places in the US that I should visit, based on lines from songs. Alternately, suggestions from books.

Anyone have any musical or literary suggestions for places to travel in the contiguous US?

Comments

[keyne.livejournal.com]

All along the southbound odyssey, the train pulls out of Kankakee,
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields:
Passin' graves that have no name, freight yards full of old black men,
And the graveyards of rusted automobiles.

---

Please come to Denver with the snowfall
We'll move up into the mountains so far that we can't be found
And throw "I love you" echoes down the canyon
And then lie awake at night till they come back around

---

Memories of East Texas
And piney green rolling hills
Covered in the springtime
With golden daffodils
Rowing on Sandy Lake come April
Harvesting hay in June
Sitting by the road watching well-fires burn
By an old October moon

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I know the first one...

What songs are the other two?

[khavrinen.livejournal.com]

Well, the second one is "Please Come to Boston," which I've always loved:

Please come to Boston for the springtime
I'm stayin' here with some friends and they've got lotsa room
You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a café here I hope to be workin' soon
Please come to Boston
She said "No, would you come home to me"

And she said, "Hey ramblin' boy now won't cha settle down
Boston ain't your kinda town
There ain't no gold and there ain't nobody like me
I'm the number one fan of the man from Tennessee"

Please come to Denver with the snowfall
We'll move up into the mountains so far that we can't be found
And throw "I love you" echoes down the canyon
And then lie awake at night till they come back around
Please come to Denver
She said "no, Boy, would you come home to me"

And she said, "Hey ramblin' boy why don't cha settle down
Denver ain't your kinda town
There ain't no gold and there ain't nobody like me
'Cause I'm the number one fan of the man from Tennessee"

Now this drifter's world goes 'round and 'round
And I doubt that it's ever gonna stop
But of all the dreams I've lost or found
And all that I ain't got
I still need to lean to
Somebody I can sing to

Please come to LA to live forever
California life alone is just too hard to build
I live in a house that looks out over the ocean
And there's some stars that fell from the sky
Livin' up on the hill
Please come to LA
She just said "no, Boy, won't you come home to me"
And she said, "hey ramblin' boy why don't cha settle down
LA can't be your kinda town
There ain't no gold and there ain't nobody like me
No, no, I'm the number one fan of the man from Tennessee"

"I'm the number one fan of the man from Tennessee"

****
It's one of those songs I've always turned up when I hear it on the radio, but never managed to catch (or remember) the artist to find a copy of my own. Results of Googling it just now say it is by David Loggins ( Kenny Loggins' second cousin ), his one and only hit.


On my one and only major road trip, I stopped in Hoople, North Dakota, for a picture of the "Welcome to Hoople" sign, because Peter Schickele (http://www.schickele.com/) is supposedly a professor at "The University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople." Though not nearly as widely known, Peter Schickele is to Classical music what Weird Al Yankovic is to Rock/Pop music. His "research" about PDQ Bach ( "the oddest of JS Bach's twenty-odd children" ) has been a Classical music "Spinal Tap" for over forty years now.