redpaul1
Well-known member
I prepared this for Season 65 of the Ukulele, but as everyone's already up and running with Season 66, I'm posting it here too.
My thesis is that we Brits generally appreciate & enjoy road songs, but we don't come up with songs that celebrate going on the road or driving around in cars. You can probably list all the classic British car songs on the fingers of one hand.
I'd suggest that there are two reasons for that. First, going on the road is not normally a something to be celebrated here in Blighty: it's normally the result of failure and/or loss. And, as we live on an island approx. the size of Oregon (thank you CIA World Factbook), any long trips normally involve sea, not road, travel. The 'The leaving of Liverpool' would be a perfect example, then, of a British 'road' song
Secondly, British teenagers don't have the same relationship with cars as N. American teens. First, the minimum driving age here is 17; and 2nd, the minimum drinking age is 18 - or rather "pass for 18", as historically no-one ever got 'carded' in a British pub (it's creeping in only now). So, no need to get a licence to use as ID, nor any need to get a car to go dating. British teens normally by-pass the car stage altogether, and head straight for the pubs. We get it (what cars mean in American culture), but we don't live it - or as Freud might say, there's an association, but not an identification.
(In Essex, where I grew up, there is a huge subculture associated with cars, but that, in a way, just proves my point - Essex is England's answer to New Jersey!).
Anyway, the following is a rare British song, by Frank Turner, that does focus on the consequences of a life lived more or less continuously on the road. Frank Turner may not be not a name familiar to you, but he has built up a huge "word of mouth" following, gigging incessantly around the the world since around 2004.
I don't know if Frank has ever read Robert Park's 1925 "Reflections on upon the relation between mentality and locomotion"*, but they're pretty well accurately summed up in his lyrics:
He's bound to be coming to a town near you in the near future. If Joe Strummer had had Bruce Springsteen's babies, they'd have probably sounded like Frank Turner. So if that's your bag, go check him out.
*The hobo is, to be sure, always on the move, but he has no destination, and naturally he never arrives… The hobo seeks change solely for the sake of change; it is a habit and like the drug habit, moves in a vicious circle. The more he wanders, the more he must.
Park, R.E., (1925) The Mind of the Hobo: Reflections on the Relationship between Mentality and Locomotion
My thesis is that we Brits generally appreciate & enjoy road songs, but we don't come up with songs that celebrate going on the road or driving around in cars. You can probably list all the classic British car songs on the fingers of one hand.
I'd suggest that there are two reasons for that. First, going on the road is not normally a something to be celebrated here in Blighty: it's normally the result of failure and/or loss. And, as we live on an island approx. the size of Oregon (thank you CIA World Factbook), any long trips normally involve sea, not road, travel. The 'The leaving of Liverpool' would be a perfect example, then, of a British 'road' song
Secondly, British teenagers don't have the same relationship with cars as N. American teens. First, the minimum driving age here is 17; and 2nd, the minimum drinking age is 18 - or rather "pass for 18", as historically no-one ever got 'carded' in a British pub (it's creeping in only now). So, no need to get a licence to use as ID, nor any need to get a car to go dating. British teens normally by-pass the car stage altogether, and head straight for the pubs. We get it (what cars mean in American culture), but we don't live it - or as Freud might say, there's an association, but not an identification.
(In Essex, where I grew up, there is a huge subculture associated with cars, but that, in a way, just proves my point - Essex is England's answer to New Jersey!).
Anyway, the following is a rare British song, by Frank Turner, that does focus on the consequences of a life lived more or less continuously on the road. Frank Turner may not be not a name familiar to you, but he has built up a huge "word of mouth" following, gigging incessantly around the the world since around 2004.
I don't know if Frank has ever read Robert Park's 1925 "Reflections on upon the relation between mentality and locomotion"*, but they're pretty well accurately summed up in his lyrics:
He's bound to be coming to a town near you in the near future. If Joe Strummer had had Bruce Springsteen's babies, they'd have probably sounded like Frank Turner. So if that's your bag, go check him out.
*The hobo is, to be sure, always on the move, but he has no destination, and naturally he never arrives… The hobo seeks change solely for the sake of change; it is a habit and like the drug habit, moves in a vicious circle. The more he wanders, the more he must.
Park, R.E., (1925) The Mind of the Hobo: Reflections on the Relationship between Mentality and Locomotion
