Missoula Notebook

Road Trip Radio

By Sutton Stokes, 5-25-08

A few weeks back I drove a Ford pickup truck from Missoula to Flagstaff and for the first time I felt like I had the right vehicle for these Western highways. In stark contrast to when I am driving my Corolla, I could see what was coming and felt confident that, in an accident, I would give at least as good as I got.

Bringing up the rear of a three-vehicle convoy, I was helping my wife and one of her coworkers move equipment and vehicles down to the field-research site in the Arizona mountains where she spends her summers.

Our route took us through one jaw-dropping mountain vista after another. This was in late April, so the mountain tops were still covered in snow, but brown earth and green grass were starting to show through on some slopes and the colors swirled and blended into each other like oils on a painter’s palette.

The F250 Super Duty manual-transmission king-cab truck I was driving had on-the-fly four-wheel drive and a towing sensor system. What it did not have was a tape deck, and even if it did, my wife had the iPod up in the lead vehicle.

When you are making a long drive with nothing but the radio to entertain you — well, the radio, and peering down into cars as they go by, which has more to offer than you might think — it is important not to be too picky. These days, as you scan up and down the radio dial, you are unlikely to find anything other than a commercial or an echoey voice explaining how the United States is “no longer” a Christian nation.

So when you do find an actual song playing, it is important not to worry too much about what particular song it is and how much you think you will enjoy listening to it, and instead consider what clues this song offers as to the kind of radio station you have found. In other words, the particular song you have found may be awful; you might never normally choose to listen to such a song; but will a station that plays this song play others that you might actually like?

Consider the song “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” by Fleetwood Mac. Of course no one ever actually wants to hear this song, particularly those of us who have come to pity and regret the politician who once used it as his campaign song. But a station that will play “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” might be devoted to “classic” rock — i.e., “whatever people 40 or older were listening to in high school” — and so might follow up with some decent road music from Led Zeppelin, or maybe even “Radar Love,” the ne plus ultra of lead-foot anthems, at least among the dreck you are likely to find on the radio.

You must be braced for disappointment, however. “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” might indicate that you have found a classic-rock station, but it is a pale and bloodless-enough song that it also might turn up on the kind of general soft-rock station that plays in dentists’ offices and claims to help “get you through your day.” (I’ll stick with vodka, thanks very much.)

Even if you do find an actual classic rock station, there are classics and then there are classics. “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” came on as our convoy was nearing Helena. Following the reasoning I laid out above, I swallowed back my nausea and let it finish, only to hear the opening chords of another essentially unlistenable song, the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” This told me I’d found a station that probably claimed to play classic rock, but were they going to start playing good songs anytime soon? How much longer could I listen to this crap? How much longer could I survive on just the radio?

We turned south onto I-15 toward Butte and I checked my copy of the driving directions: 623 miles on this leg.

As we wound our way through narrow mountain valleys, and as large human settlements became fewer, my choices of radio stations became even more limited. Up and down the radio dial, all I could find was preaching and static for minutes at a time. Now, stir crazy, alone with my thoughts in my king cab, I was glad whenever I found any station I could hear, never mind whether it was playing a commercial. The banal poetry of commerce lulled me into a peaceful trance. “Misses’ tops, twenty nine ninety nine.” “The drive-in is open during our renovations.”

Other commercials mirrored our current economic woes. A car dealer said he knew we were trying to hang onto every penny, so why not a used car? And for those trying to stretch a dollar, there is always the all-you-can-eat buffet.

The signal was loud and clear. This was a station I would be able to hear for a long time.

But what kind of music would it play?

The commercials faded away, replaced by the familiar 2/4 disco beat, the soulless fiddle riff, and the generic southern accent that are sure signs of a modern country-music station in the wild.

I tuned in the preacher and went back to peering down into passing cars.

For more like this, read the rest of the Missoula Notebook.

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