I've always loved what Bill Drummond said about the road trip evoked by KLF's Chill Out. From an interview in X Magazine in 1991:
[Chill Out is] a frighteningly evocative composition: a single forty-five-minute-long ambient road-trip across the southern gulf coast of the United States. Surprisingly (especially after hearing the record), it's a trip that the band's never actually taken.
Drummond's up-front about that aspect of it. "I've never been to those places. I don't know what those places are like, but in my head, I can imagine those sounds coming from those places, just looking at the map."
In 2002, I served on jury duty for a week, and every day I'd take the 38 Geary from the Outer Richmond (where we lived at the time) down to the federal courthouse. It was a dreary, foggy ride, around 45 minutes in total, and I'd make the trek early in the morning, around 7am.
And every morning, I'd listen to Chill Out, and I'd imagine that I was taking that road trip through the south.
At Divisadero, I'd hear "Elvis On The Radio, Steel Guitar In My Soul"; at Polk, I'd hear "Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard"; and while walking from the bus to the federal building, I'd hear "A Melody From A Past Life Keeps Pulling Me Back".
And now, listening to the album & just looking at the map, it all comes back.
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