I was introduced to it on I-35, from Wichita to Kansas City, a late afternoon when the sun from the west made the Flint Hills in fall look like they were on fire.
It was with me when I drove 2 hours northwest of Albuquerque, where the streets have no name through the Rio Puerco Valley, to hike up Cabezon Peak, with the dirt creaking yellow-red in the dryness.
It was with me almost every day for a year after my fiance was killed in a motorcycle accident.
It was with me through the Valley of Fires, the volcanic stretch along the asphalt from San Antonio, New Mexico to Ruidoso. I was on my way to a new job in Texas. But I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
Do you remember the law firm Cage and Fish, the attorneys Ally McBeal and John Cage? Ally's psychologist (played by Tracey Ullman) recommended to Ally that she have a theme song. I don't remember Ally's -- but I do remember John Cage's theme song ... "we got it together baby," the first line of Barry White's "You're the First, the Last, My Everything."
Do you have a theme song?
I know mine. It's most of the songs on U2's The Joshua Tree.
Over the weekend I watched the DVD about the making of the CD. The album has sold 10 million copies in the United States alone. The Joshua Tree was # 26 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; and in 2001 (fourteen years after its initial release), it was # 6 on Contemporary Christian Music's The 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music.
U2's guitarist, The Edge, said this about one of their goals for the music of The Joshua Tree, "We talked to Brian (that's Brian Eno, their producer) about the cinematic aspect of music, where music can actively evoke a landscape and a place, and can really bring you there."
Not surprisingly, the band was often evoking America's desert Southwest.
If you're in tourism, lodging or even in retail, are you using music effectively to bring your customers to the place they dream of going? To the place they want to be?
Now it probably won't surprise you if I tell you that I own about 2 dozen CDs; when I'm not listening to NPR or classic rock and roll, I play them. But I've bought 3 CDs of The Joshua Tree over the years.
As long as it's with me, so are the Flint Hills in the fall, Cabezon Peak and the Valley of Fires.
Maxwell Parrish's Evening
