As We Go Up, We Go Down - Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes - 1995

The drive through England was not exactly what we planned. The sun set 2 hour into the drive, meaning the site of the English Country would have to wait until the return journey. Rance got car sick about 1/2 an hour in, and all three of us were hung over and tired.

Anand and Rance both napped when they weren't driving...as the non-driver, I stayed awake through both shifts. I've never been very good at sleeping in cars, and I felt like somebody needed to keep the driver company. Driving on right is odd for several reasons...the American driver tends to want to hug the left side. As such the car was constanly drifting left, sometimes into the lane or traffic that was over there. If you are in the passenger seat, you have the odd sensation that you should be driving. I can't tell you the number of times that Rance or Anand started to drift into the car to the left of them, only for me to reach for a wheel that wasn't there, or press down on non-existant pedals. It just feels wrong to be on the left hand front of a car and not be driving.

We drove through Birmingham, which is not that different than driving through St. Louis. Due to the lateness of the hour we debated spending the night in Manchester and finishing the drive to Glasgow in the morning, but we had no Intel on Manchester, no idea where we should stay or where we should go looking for a good time on a Sunday night. Ultimately, we decided to just tough out the drive and at least have one day in which we did not have to travel.

Incidentally, we made this decision in a Burger King rest stop thing about halfway between Manchester and Liverpool...I also had Burger King on my last trip to Europe, during a moment of desperation upon realizing that all the restaurants in Dublin were closed and I was starving. This means I've had Burger King TWICE in the UK within two years...which is less than the number of times I've had Burger King in the United States in the same time period. Very odd. Also, they don't put ice in their fountain cokes over there...which is just plain wrong!

The drive north of Manchester was increasingly dark, as the sun had well and truly set. No street lights or lights from cities were there to be seen either, and the low hanging clouds obscured any moon or starlight. It might have been the closest to total darkness I've ever seen in the out of doors. As our Saab barreled down the highway into the blackness, it was almost like driving through outer space. For some reason we played "Wanted Dead or Alive" on the iPod and it became the running joke for the remainder of the trip.

We finally arrived in Glasgow a little before 11 and checked into the sweet room at the Marriot that my buddy Shani had hooked us up with. The people at the desk were wonderfully friendly and let us know where we could expect to find a drink at that hour on a sunday and with that we were back off into the night.

As I'm fairly sure I've pointed out before, Robert Pollard, at his mid 90's best was all about crystalizing the great moment in a song. Why bother to have a 5 minute song that leads up to (or has in the middle of it) a great moment, when you can write a 1:37 song that uses that great moment and then gets out before you have a chance to get bored? In this case "I speak in monotone, leave my fucking life alone" will do just fine for a great moment.