New-fangled gadgets meet some great music

One hour. That’s how long it takes me to drive each day to get from Clio to Eufaula. You could say this Tribune reporter “covers the county” quite literally.

It’s a lonely drive, taking me through cotton and corn fields, acres and acres of pine trees and tiny communities like Texasville where I swear I once saw a UFO land (Though, now that I think of it, I was going home after a Baker Hill council meeting that night, so I might not have been thinking too clearly).

It’s great to have some company along the way. Since I don’t pool out with any of my co-workers and my 1994 Buick LeSabre “Lucy” isn’t a big talker, sometimes the only voice I listen to (beside my own) is that of a radio dee jay.

In the mornings, as I’m charging down Highway 131 (you might know it as Baker Hill Highway), I just can’t deal with the overly perky morning show disc jockeys on my favorite radio stations (I don’t mind getting up at 5:30 a.m., but overly perky morning people make me want to stab someone in the eye with a ballpoint pen).

But in the evenings, as I take Highway 431 up into Henry County to the Abbeville city limits and then hang a right on Highway 10 in route to Blue Springs, a dee jay can be a great distraction, especially when the sun goes down and white tailed deer and great horned owls are auditioning to be my car’s brand new hood ornament.

“Blues Power” with Gil Anthony on WOAB (Wow, oldies are back!) Ozark and “Get the Led Out” (a Led Zeppelin music show) on Rock 103 Columbus are great nighttime radio programs, but my hands-down fav on the drive home is the “Five O’clock Traffic Jam” with J.B. on Rock 102.5 Dothan.

J.B. spins some great (and rare) rock ‘n’ roll tunes. Plus, he’s a huge Deadhead, which means he’ll “play Dead” as we say in the business at least once during the five o’clock hour. His motto is, “If it wasn’t on eight-track, we won’t play it during the Traffic Jam.”

Okay, I’ve never played an eight-track in my life (I barely know what one looks like).

These days, many dee jays “spin” their tunes from downloaded music on computers - I guess they should be called “MP3Js” or simply “Jocks”. Several classic songs seem to be in need of an upgrade themselves. J.B. pointed this out one evening during the Jam when he played “Call up Trudy on the Telephone” by Charlie Daniels and said the song should now be called “Text Trudy on Your Hand-held Blackberry.”

I mean, com’on, no self-respecting bar room brawler would be caught dead without his Blackberry, right? With the Blackberry, the song’s protagonist can have access to e-mail, Web, phone and many more features, so there’s no need to “call up Trudy on the telephone or send her a letter in the mail.”

That got me thinking about other songs that include obsolete devices and concepts that leave the younger generation going, “Say wha?”

One of these is another Charlie Daniels classic “Uneasy Rider”.

Well the spare was flat and I got uptight,
Cause there wasn’t a filling station in sight,
So I just limped on down the shoulder on the rim.

If the protagonist had OnStar, he could request roadside assistance without having to venture into the hostile territory of a rural bar which didn’t welcome “hippie-types” like him to ask for assistance.
Or if he would have just booked that plane ticket to L.A. on Priceline, he could have avoided driving through Jackson, Miss. in the first place.

One stanza in the song - I stuffed my hair up under my hat/ And told the bartender that I had a flat/ And would he be kind enough to give me change for a one - put me in mind of another obsolete device, the pay phone.

Ah, the tragic pay phone. It gets kind of lonesome nowadays in an age when everyone and anyone seems to own a cell phone. Pay a dime to talk on a phone attached to a funny box? You’re kidding, right? But in the days of Ricky Nelson and Jim Croce, pay phones were a big deal.

In the song “It’s Late”, Nelson “can’t phone, we done spent every dime.” Too bad Ricky doesn’t have a cell phone to call his girlfriend’s parents. Then he wouldn’t be checking to see how clean the barrel of her dad’s shotgun is on their next date.

Croce also seems to be in need of cellular service in his song “Operator”. “And you can keep the dime,” he tells the phone operator.

The phone operator has been celebrated in song with hits like Croce’s as well as “Operator” by The Grateful Dead. Back in the day, the operator seemed to get an earful of everyone’s problems (Remember “Sarah” from The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry’s faceless phone operator who was, no doubt, familiar with everyone’s business?)

Chuck Berry requests her help in “Memphis, Tennessee.”

Long distance information, give me Memphis, Tennessee,
Help me find the party trying to get in touch with me.
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call,
Cause my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall.

Com’on, Chuck, Switchboard is the obvious way to go.

Just borrow Charlie’s Blackberry and look up little Marie’s number on the Internet.

But sometimes, Chuck doesn’t even bother to call. “Gonna write a little letter, gonna mail it to my local DJ,” he says in “Roll Over Beethoven”.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time when folks wrote letters to communicate. But, I’ve got to admit, ringing up someone on your cell phone or shooting an e-mail is much quicker than waiting on the United States Postal Service.

Maybe in “Return to Sender” - So then I dropped it in the mailbox/ And sent it special D/ Bright and early next morning/ It came right back to me - Elvis Presley should just text message his sweetie so that his heart is broken faster: i hte u!

As with phone conversations, in the low tech world of classic rockers, sometimes your music listening pleasure is limited by how much spare change you have.

Poor Ricky had no money to phone his girlfriend’s rents, but he always keeps spare change handy for the juke box: “Throw a nickel in the jukebox, then we start to rock” (“Waitin’ in School”).

“Long as she got a dime, the music won’t never stop,” says Berry in “Roll Over Beethoven.”

Chuck, Rick, just download your favorite songs from the iTunes Web site. Then you can listen to your tunes over and over again and in the privacy of your own home.

Plus, it’ll cut down on all that jangling coming from your pockets.

And with Sirius satellite radio offering custom radio channels that exclusively play The Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen 24/7, maybe The Guess Who won’t have to call up Wolfman Jack anymore to request their favorite songs: “Clap for the Wolfman … he’s gonna rate your record high.”

Maybe Chuck can also save some of that stationary he would have used to drop his dee jay a line.

Keep reading and keep rocking.

Read more great columns in the weekend edition of The Tribune avaliable Friday, March 6.