It's kind of a culture shock after being away from home for a week to
live the life of a vagabond, driving on Arizona byways and pass-ways
and lose myself into the desert skies and air. I've drove 1,135 miles
in my trip around Phoenix and up to the north country to Kingman and
back. So many people live there, the roads are congested when the sun
is out and even if Sedona is good therapy for the zen crowd, the fucking
traffic and one lane BS made it feel like rush hour on the Black Canyon
Freeway. Muzak lives on up there. KAHM 102.1 is that station and is
used for that peaceful easy feeling while dealing with wall to wall
traffic there.
http://www.kahm.info/
The other was KZKE 103.7 Route 66 Goodtime Oldies, to which they
would play one or two overplayed oldies and then stick 10 minutes of
public service commercials afterwards. It moves over to 104.9 at
Kingman. Once upon a time, the good time oldies format was one reason
of keeping music alive but all it does is replay the same 200 songs per
day. In reality kiddies, radio in the 50s and 60s played a little bit
more music than what is out there now. Somewhere on the radio wasteland
Bennie And The Jets or The Joker is playing 24/7. And as I said
before, if we knew that these good time oldies would be played on a
regular basis, the record collection would be a bit more thin.
Update 2015: KZKE is no different than of the Corporate Classic Rock and Oldies stations out there, basically covering the number 1 hits of the 60s and 70s without the lesser known songs that made oldies radio the way it used to be when AM radio was the rage. The ads are misleading, I'm sure they don't have it all. Basically this station reminds me of a Four Tops song that's perfect for Corporate Oldies/Rock and KZKE, it's the same old song. Even if it's based out Seligman Arizona, it sounds like nobody bothered to bring any more records to that place since 1975.
http://www.kgmn.net/KZKE.htm
The freedom of coming and going up around Kingman was to get away
from the stress and strains of life here. For a town of 20 thousand,
Kingman is a bigger city then say of Marion since things are spread
out. Most of the convenience stores we know are around Strougten Hill (Sic)
Road, or at the tail end of Andy Devine Blvd. No Best Buy or Target but
they do have a K Mart or Safeway although some fool thinks Hastings is
their version of Best Buy. It is so quiet walking on old 66 roadway
over to the KFC/Long John Silvers and most of that part is in the dark.
It's so dusty around the poles that when I came back to the motel room,
I looked in the mirror and see I have wiped so much dust around my face
that I was painted white and looked like one of the guys from
Slipknot. No wonder the folk at KFC were freaking out a bit. But even
in the night, I still felt at home as hearing train whistles blowing off
and on in the night that I rather prefer the lonesome lifestyle of
downtown Kingman rather than the traffic jams of Sedona and Prescott,
although while pretty from the mountains and red rocks, there's simply
too many people and cars to live a long life there.
If Arizona, the final (?) tour ended up being, in the end it proved
that the CD era is over. That the pawnshops don't have the selection
that they used to be, Hastings overprices their used stuff and even
Zia's selection was hit and miss. The internet may have killed off the
independent record dealers but i did notice that Zia's record selection
was bigger than the last time I was there. It would have been nice to
get the Neu! 2 CD but since it's back in print, I can just as well order
it online rather than trying to stuff another cd into the carryon.
Rockaway Records is now for the ages, they're history just like
Wherehouse Music. And the FYE stores that took over the Wherehouse
franchise are beginning to feel like FYE stores, with pushy clerks
bothering you every five minutes and it's a bit unnerving to see a
security guard at the Tempe store. Probably there to protect the clerks
when angry customers come back to bitch bout the used cd that they
bought for 8 bucks is scratched up.
Which leads me back to Crookton Overpass Bridge that I spent a couple
hours at on the way and back to Phoenix. The feeling of zen as you get
out of the car and all you hear is the wind blowing through your hair,
seeing high cirrus clouds float lazily by as you see thunderheads from
the monsoons not being let in by the mountains surrounding the pass.
They tell me it doesn't rain all that much up around here. And that was
the reason why I came up from the valley below. The perfect feeling of
being alone without much traffic going by, to watch trains fly by below
and thinking i can hang out here a while. And wishing I can stay out
there longer, maybe a lifetime if I could....................
A day later after coming back home, I still have a feeling of being a
guest instead of being the occupant of home again and feeling a bit out
of place. I don't think I was missed all that much, there wasn't much
in my inbox when I checked it Thursday and the TE website reminds me of being back at Crookton Pass, nobody came by to visit it. I donno, I
haven't posted much over there. Nothing going on, nothing will be goin
on for a while I guess. I played a bit of Email tag with Russ here but I
guess most of the myspacers are playing Gangsters and don't keep up
with the latest dealings over here. I didn't meet any Minglers out in
the desert. There were chances but nobody responded to any offers of
meeting so I kept busy and did my zen thing around the high country.
But I couldn't get over the humidness of Mesa and the only time we got
that hot dry heat was Bullhead City.
So here I am back home again, keeping up on the dealings of Hurricane
Goddam (Gustav is such a dumbfuck name, should have called it Gus, so I
renamed it Goddam since all it's doing is making OPEC rich and
destroying the gulf coast) and noticed that Judge Joe Brown has been
replaced by the fucking Info-commercials at 11 at the Fox station. And
debating whether or not to return to a five day work week. It's
September now, the weather will be changing in a hurry, and this is the
last official weekend of Summer, which began on Memorial Day during F5 Tornadoes and 40 days and nights of rains and floods. Too bad the
weather wasn't this nice at the beginning.
So life is back to what it was before escaping to Arizona. I have a
peaceful feeling but I do know that I'll be back to being a crabbapple
when I head to work tomorrow. It's important to me to document things
now, for if I don't, I won't remember them like I once did. Despite
heading and coming back with a banshee screaming kid and a punk rock
daddy on the verge of being smacked around by angry customers, the trip
once I got out of the airport was a pretty good trip. Uneventful
mostly, but that's the way I like it.
I'm sure if I go back to the desert be it Vegas or Phoenix, I'll
return to Kingman and the Route 66 road to visit once again. I think it
was the only time I really smiled and meant it.
Bill Melendez made the Peanuts characters come to life with the TV
shows and movies that starred Charlie Brown and the others. He managed
to keep them alive after Charles Schultz passed away. The comics
haven't been the same since the passing of Charles and now Bill. He was
91.
