FWY!

In 2003 I was in two different bands that toured Europe back to back. After a little over nine weeks with the first band, I had a ten day gap before the next crew of victims (bandmates) arrived. I made plans to meet my wife in Stockholm and we would spend a week driving rather aimlessly around Sweden and Denmark - it was a wonderful way to decompress and remove myself from the world that I was about to dive back into. I arrived at Arlanda Airport in the afternoon, and Karoline was not scheduled to arrive until early the next morning so I had some time to kill. After two months surrounded by people, the thought of solitude was rather pleasing, and after I sorted our rental car and our room, I decided to get a jump on our "driving aimlessly" agenda and cruised into Stockholm in the mid evening with no destination (or maps, or GPS, or direction, or plan) and just drove. As the evening turned into night and the streets gradually emptied, I found myself virtually alone in a place that was totally comfortable, but that was so totally removed from my reality, and I just drove. Turning randomly, driving nowhere in particular....just driving and watching the night get darker and more empty. But I wasn't without direction, and when morning traffic started to appear I turned the car north, and trekked the 40 kilometers back to Arlanda airport and scooped up my wife, and the days we spent there were excellent, some of the best I've ever spent. But the point of all of this is that on that night before she arrived, I listened to one record over and over, and that record was the soundtrack to my night alone in and out (and back in and then out again and then all over the inner streets) of Stockholm - that record was BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE's Sunset Mission, and that record is forever etched into my brain in a way that few records can ever be (we're talking in a league with Zen Arcade, Red Headed Stranger and Big Lizard In My Backyard...it's that important). And really, the point of all of this is that the moment my ears heard San Clemete, I knew this could be the soundtrack to someone else's experience driving in Los Angeles. With tracks named for stretches of Southern California freeway, this cassette was absolutely made for nights like the one I had on the streets of Stockholm, and I fukkn hope that someone in this world has had (or will have) a similar experience late one night, hitting Corona Del Mar just enough before sunrise that it makes sense to make another loop up the coast before picking up the person that makes life worth living at the airport. I imagine the perfect end to that experience would be cruising the Orange Freeway while listening to "Orange FWY" at maximum volume with the windows down and still slightly chilled dawn air whipping your cheeks, but everyone's experience is different...

SAN CLEMENTE

Moon Glyph is responsible.