Cars And Music, Man.

"colorfulyawn" (colorfulyawn) 08/26/2015 at 00:41 • Filed to: None

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They say that scent is the most effective memory trigger. For the most part, I agree. Any time I poke my head into the cabin of an air-cooled Volkswagen I am hit with an almost euphoric wave of nostalgia for my 1974 Karmann Ghia. But I also think there’s something else out there that can be just as evocative: music.

There was a time in my life when I had recently discovered, and become somewhat obsessed with, a genre that would stick with me to this day. My friend Will, guitarist in my first high-school band, had introduced me to a sort of experimental, noisy offshoot of psychedelic rock that had a brief period of, well, almost popularity in the late-’80s and early-’90s. Some called it Spacerock. Others said it was Shoegaze. Some used the terms interchangeably. Some said, “Don’t label it, you lamestain, it’s just music.”

But it was around the same time I was getting into this music that I ended up buying my 1994 Acura Integra. It was fall of ’95 when I started listening to bands like Medicine and My Bloody Valentine. It was late summer of ’96 when I bought my Integra after my Ghia was totaled by a dickhead in an IROC. I put a set of Boston Acoustic 2-ways in the Integra soon after I got it. My first mod, heh. It was actually my first car with a decent sounding stereo, even with the stock deck and dealer add-on CD player in the double-DIN slot in the dash.

It was all around the time I was turning 20. I drove a lot. I saw a lot of shows, but unfortunately wasn’t playing many. Somehow, being in my car and listening to this music meant something I can’t quite explain now, and probably couldn’t have then either. But even today, when I listen to something off My Bloody Valentine’s “Isn’t Anything,” “Glider,” or “You Made Me Realize,” the first thing I think of is a cool, cloudy autumn day in Texas. I’m in my Integra, sunroof open, driving from Dallas to Austin on the old concrete of I-35 as it makes its way from Oak Cliff south of Dallas to my destination. I’ve got a CD in the deck, and it may be blasting one of these songs.

I can almost smell the faint hint of fireplace smoke in the air now. The blanket of thick clouds, gray with white edges. The grass in the filtered light looking impossibly green, as if it had been photoshopped. And that peculiar putty-like color of weathered concrete on a day when it looks like it should be raining but it isn’t. The sound of performance tires humming along on that concrete. That Honda smell their cars had in the ‘90s. A smooth motor ticking along, 80 mph, 3.900 rpm. A little dip into the throttle and it’ll pick up and pass that semi rig without downshifting from 5th, heh-heh. Those clouds, reflecting off the hood.

It was almost 20 years ago now. Jesus. Two decades. The “import scene” was still in its infancy. It was a few years before the whole Fast and Furious franchise, and having a modified Japanese car was still a fairly unusual thing. And the cars themselves were still relatively new, not the multi-colored, oil-smoke belching beaters a lot of them became by the time the visors and the flatbillers and the Hollywood made them into caricatures of automotive culture.

I didn’t have a cellphone yet, and while I’d heard of AOL and gotten the CD-ROMs in the mail, I’d never even been online. Buying parts online didn’t happen, and if there was such thing as a car forum or a blog, I’d certainly never heard of it. We got our news about new parts from whatever local speed shops we were loyal to, plus Sport Compact Car and Super Street.
And we still got our music from the radio and our friends. We went to the shows, bought the CDs and the T-shirts. It seems like there were a lot more music stores. The iPod didn’t exist yet, but MTV still played a few videos.

Cars and music, man. Cars and music and youth. Someday I want to make the “Dazed and Confused” of my generation. Not a campy street-racing movie, but one that more or less gets it right. One that captures the music, the cars, and, pardon the cliché, but the innocence of those days in my life before instant communication and Internet use were widespread.

August 25th, 1996, was the day I took my Integra home. Maybe that’s why I’m thinking about this now. Here’s to great cars gone by.

911e46z06 > colorfulyawn 08/26/2015 at 01:18

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Dude, I randomly decided to cruise through the forgotten annals of my itunes and make a playlist of like 300 rap songs I haven’t heard since high school (due to the fact that my taste in music has improved drastically since then). And every night for the last week or so, I’ve just spent an hour or so kicking it in my jacuzzi, drinking fancy rum, and listening to the playlist. And the memories it’s bringing up are insane. All these stories I haven’t thought about in years just keep popping into my head.

Baeromez > colorfulyawn 08/26/2015 at 02:56

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If I may paint a picture...

Imagine the harsh drone of a GM 3.8L, retrofitted with a glasspack muffler, purring away at a steady 3000 RPM under a raucous blend of Queens of the Stone Age, Led Zeppelin, and Bassnectar, all fighting for your eardrums’ attention through an aftermarket Pioneer head unit, haphazardly installed in the dash of a ‘98 Firebird. The sweet, tanned note of leather from your new black jacket cuts through a melange of tobacco and hash before being sucked up through the t-tops and into the starry night at 90 mph. The wet Florida air cuts through your exposed T-shirt, simultaneously whisking away evaporated sweat and depositing condensation from the late November sky. Josh Homme croons over the wailing ripple of air against the car’s body as it gently slices around a long left-hand bend. You can barely blink in the time it takes to traverse the next overpass, and the slight buzz of this evening’s spliff nullifies the lingering headache from the strip of acid you ate the night before.

You take another drag at the Black & Mild in your right hand and catch the now-familiar scent of a girl you met last week on your fingers. The smell rouses something primal deep in your brain and you drop the cigar into the open ashtray while dropping the hammer under your right foot. It’s ‘only’ a V6 but the Firebird isn’t lacking for power, even at these speeds. 100, 110, 120, the needle climbs the face of the speedometer in a hurry. Jimmy Page’s guitar is drowned out and the “Communication Breakdown” solo is lost under the howling, hurricane force wind over the open t-tops. You’re more awake now at 2 am than you’ve been all day, your senses dumping information into your mind like a team of firetrucks putting out a 5 alarm blaze. The empty waste of S.R. 528 pours out before you and is gulped down by the cheap, Korean, Ultra High Performance tires as fast as your neurons can observe it. The car feels like its going to break up around you and the image of the Space Shuttle Columbia on its final reentry commandeers your thoughts.

You shake it off and back the old ‘bird down to an easy 85 while you reorganize your thoughts. The sky ahead of you starts to burn with the light pollution from Orlando, and the salt air of The Beach leaves your nostrils, not to return for several months. Your mind wanders again to the lithe little redhead you’ve left behind and then to the ample brunette waiting ahead and your mouth breaks into a grin that would embarrass The Joker. The air is so clean out here that you catch a whiff of the upcoming Racetrack station miles before you can see it, then suddenly you’re a part of civilization again. The city seems to grow up out of the ground right around you, gaining in scope as you penetrate its depths.

You pull into the parking lot of the apartment complex you’ll too soon be leaving and sit for a minute, letting Robert Plant cry out the ending of “Babe I‘m Gonna Leave You.” A familiar shadow breaks the square of light pouring out of the apartment across the parking lot from your building. The last few days have left you tired, but at 22 there’s always more gas in the tank. As you step out of the car you take a quick glance back at your building and make a mental note to appreciate the feeling of your own bed the next time you find yourself in it. Heading across the parking lot, a door opens up in front of you and a voice like a siren’s song exclaims that she “Thought I heard that old car!” Your wisdom teeth are probably showing at the corners of your mouth as you embrace this heaven sent enchantress in the light of the kitchen. The unopened bottle of Jack Daniels on the counter beckons, and you take just one shot before getting down to business. You don’t want your senses dulled for this moment, and 5 years later your memories thank you. The following weeks and months are a blur. Nostalgia is a funny thing.

I can only hope this memory is as sharp on my death bed as it is now.

Nauraushaun > colorfulyawn 08/27/2015 at 08:08

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I’ve owned 3 300ZXs and now an MR2, but dammit if listening to The Fall Of Troy doesn’t remind me of cruising in my shitty ‘88 Pulsar with the windows open on a hot Australian Summer day. Great post.

Chairman Kaga > colorfulyawn 11/24/2015 at 10:34

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How crap man. I had a Milano red 1994 Integra GS-R. It’s still my favorite car, and the list isn’t exactly indistinguished. Same for the music. I lived in semi-rural Arkansas and would often spend lunch breaks, weekends, boring nights, or whenever I had the time just driving and listening to music.

I went through a pretty heavy experimental/prog phase and would jam to endless hours of King Crimson bootlegs. Or MBV on random repeat. Or Minutemen, Husker Du and Black Flag mixes. Or sometimes 80’s hair metal, just because.

Gas was less than $1.00 a gallon if you bought it on Tuesday at Valero and I could literally drive 500 miles exploring country roads, mountains, and lakeshores and spend less than I would on a night at the bar. I was desperately bored but I also had more fun just being by myself with my car and my music.

God I miss that car...