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A Long Drive Spawns a Semi-Schizophrenic Rate-A-Record
The struggle is real
My new regular commute from Dallas to the wilds of East Texas typically takes around two hours, depending on traffic, construction, and my ability to resist stopping for chicken fried steak at a roadside diner midway through the journey. While the best use of my time during this drive would be catching up on the countless audiobooks clogging my Audible account, I invariably cycle through a stack of CDs instead. As you would probably expect, the stack is heavy on Springsteen, but on my most recent drive this past Sunday even Bruce just wasn’t enough.
That may sound outlandish given my adoration of the man, but he’s not the most calming artist in a frustrating traffic jam. What I needed yesterday was Maniacs to keep me from committing a jailable offense; in fact, I needed 10,000 of them. Thus, I threw in their second-best album, Our Time in Eden. My fellow drivers on Interstate 20 never knew how much they owed their survival to the soothing voice of Natalie Merchant on “Noah’s Dove.”
