Jumping (Off) Someone Else's Train

There aren't enough songs about trains.

Sure, I bet there's hundreds or thousands of songs about trains, but still, I don't think there are enough. The metaphor of the train as it pertains to music is at once too compelling, too fitting, too satisfying. Toot.

A train takes us from one place to another, the way a song carries us from one emotion to another, or circumnavigates the brim of a feeling.

Garibaldi, on the Oregon coast, is home, or graveyard, to a great-looking train. With a nice caboose (though it wasn't the only one).

Erin and I love westerns, especially one with trains and folks jumping on or off them. Like this:

Train songs are often sad. Folks leave on the train. Take "Train Song" by Tom Waits:

It was a train that took me away from here
but a train can't bring me home

Yet there's the cheery train song as well. Crosby, Stills & Nash are having a helluva time on the "Marrakesh Express," and Sheena Easton can hardly wait for her's to arrive:

My baby takes the morning train / He works from nine till five and then
He takes another home again / To find me waitin' for him

Apparently, John Peel was a big fan of that one.

My favorite train song might be "Dixie Flyer" by Randy Newman. A most evocative outro.

Erin and I don't only jump on and off trains -- we also delicately alight. Erin, in Tinkerbell fashion...

and I, sort of, like Magneto.

Choo, choo, baby!

For more songs about trains, visit here or here.

We Got Those Subterranean Homesick Blues (or "Adam's in the Basement Mixing up the Semi-Gloss")

In 1965, Dylan had the "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

In 1980, The Jam sang "We're going underground..."

In 1983, Tom Waits informed me, "There's a world going on underground."

Dostoevsky wrote his notes down there.

Dylan and The Band recorded their tapes down there.

And I practically grew up down there. In the basement.

I love the basement. I'm from the basement. Now Erin & I are moving into the basement.

Not any dreary, unfinished basement, mind you. It's Adam & Josh's renovated basement! We might be moving down, but in many ways, we're moving up. Freshly painted, new bathroom, cable TV. Not bad at all.

So what's to write about, huh? Big deal, you're in a nice basement. Ah, but the underground is rife with metaphor! And literary allusions! Plus, there'll be the constant struggle of living without our usual amenities -- our books and LPs stored away! Fewer kitchen appliances and gadgets! Less room to roam! Our cats living with dogs!

Did I mention the dogs? Howl! Ha, there's a literary reference right there! (I'll try not to write in a vein too similar to "In the Sellwood Kitchen", with my now legendary, off-topic blathering.)

So onward and upward! Or downward! Either way, forward!