The other thing the clocks going back heralds is the lowering of tops. A bit of sun, and down they come.
Driving music is very dependant on the weather, state of mind of the driver and the route being taken.
Mostly this does my heart good, and makes the soul soar. But only slightly, as you realise you could never attain such expensive damage. And there is a lot of expensive damage around this way. I may have mentioned my penchant for tall and posh before.
Grey, cold, claustaphobic conditions leads to, of all things, tight psychedelia, epitomised by () and Phaedra. You may argue with my classification there, but italicised asides aren’t the place for that.
When you see the parade, as I can while I eat my lunch, most of the tops which are down are bland. Carbon copies of each other. Daring to be original in the smallest of ways, that don’t cause anyone to try too hard. (To blend my analogy further, Norwichshire, and its blonde groupthink clones, is more divergent than this edge of Fenland. Contradiction? I think not.)
Hard, sunny but still cold days leave me wanting to thrash along a bit more, and for that we need dirty, grimy, geetar-driven excellence. Boy/girl duos with attitude. Keep on Your Mean Side being an exemplar of this.
As I wander down town, the top-down approach gets more and more. (And, in the cases where there isn’t such scope for showing off in that direction, brash and loud tactics are employed. Reduction from the lower end. The vigour of youth interests me not. It needs to be of a certain age, but not of a certain age, as I am old, but not that advanced yet. A combination of lower top and acctenuated undercarriage of course, is the Holy Grail.) And, this not being outside Belfast City Hall for the three sunny days they get there a year, the quality is so much higher. No frizzy orange nor painted green slap-ons to be seen. Class and breeding (and old money, no doubt) shines through.
Lazy, warm days (as start now) need something a bit more restrained. We aren’t talking Beach Boys here, more Goodbye Jumbo. (Note to website designers: I would link to official sites more if it wasn’t all flash.) You may have noticed that there is nothing overtly modern in my musical driving aids. There is a reason for that.
I am sure some things mean oh-so-much-more than cars and girls.
Pigtails and curtains, gaze down, gaze down
