"High" enough anyway

As I was driving home from a late day at work, racing to make it in time for the series finale of LOST (which was ab…so…lutely… AWESOME by the way), I was flipping through the channels on my Sirius radio and stopped by a station called “The Vault”. This is the station where they play “deeper classic rock.” Basically all the B-sides, lesser known and lesser played songs from classic rock artists. When I switched it on I heard a familiar and eerie sound of church bells. The text on the screen confirmed what my ears were telling me. It was the intro to the song “Fire On High” by Electric Light Orchestra.

I haven’t listened to this song in… maybe not years, but definitely a long time. And I really can’t remember the last time I heard it while driving in my car. I have the song on mp3 on my computer, but with no CD player in my car (and the fact that they rarely ever play this song on regular radio) the only place I really had the option to hear it was while sitting at my desk. Which is probably the reason I haven’t listened to it in so long, because this is and always has been one of the greatest driving songs ever. With no lyrics, incendiary and impossibly fast guitar riffs as well as crushing drum fills, it’s the perfect song for speeding down an empty Maine road, picking imaginary chords with your fingers and pounding out hardcore beats on the steering wheel.

Whenever I hear this song, my thoughts turn immediately to my college days. And anybody who was real close to me at Emerson at the time knows why. I used this song my sophomore year as the background for a marketing promo I edited for the Evvy Awards (which if you don’t know, is Emerson’s version of the Emmy’s). I had wanted to cut something to that song ever since I’d learned to edit a couple years earlier. The fast beats and guitar were perfect for quick cuts and movement. This ended up being the promo that first made people at Emerson think I was some kind of kickass editor. I’m not saying that conceitedly, in fact I kind of laugh when I think about it. I laugh because when I watch the promo now (well I haven’t actually watched it in… god, I don’t even know when, but I can remember exactly what it looked like), I think the editing was actually pretty… childish is the only word I can think of to describe it. I know I was only a sophomore in college, so I was still learning, but the whole promo is nothing but a series of lightning fast cuts. Cut,cut,cut,cutcutcutcutcutcutcut… Seriously, the only real talent it required was the ability to find a beat and the patience to tediously lay in each individual shot. That’s why I really think it was the song more so than the actual editing that made the promo be perceived as awesome. There’s just something about that song.

Tonight when I heard “Fire on High”, my thoughts didn’t go to my Emerson days… well maybe just for a second. Mostly this time, they returned to highschool, back when this song first came into my life. This was the song that they played when our soccer team ran out onto the field every game. I can think of no better song to get you pumped up for a game as much as this one. Alternating between majestic sounding verses full of strings and angelic voices, and the adrenaline-inducing chorus with its signature guitars and drums, that song made us feel like gods as we ran our warm-up laps around the field. I mean, you know, before the game started and we got our asses kicked six to nothing.

And like I said, as far as driving songs go, there simply was no better. But only when you were driving on the kind of empty two-lane cop-less roads we drove back home in Maine. Because inevitably, as you jammed on air guitar and pounded out steering wheel drums, your speed increased by at least ten miles an hour. It was seriously unavoidable. When that last round of badda-ba-ba-ba-bom… badda-da-daddadadada-dom-dom-dom… dadada-DOM ended, and your hands were numb from bashing against the steering wheel and your body was tingling in the now complete silence from how loud you’d had the radio cranked, you’d look down and realize you were doing almost eight and had drifted half-way across the center line.

As much as “Fire on High” took me back tonight, it just wasn’t the same. Driving down congested Street Road, one of the major thoroughfares through the Philly suburbs, it was impossible to truly give in to the music. With lights every thirty seconds, cars all around me, and a forty-five mile per hour speed limit on a street that’s loaded with cops, I couldn’t really concentrate on my guitar and drums too much. I was mostly using my thumbs as opposed to my whole hands on the drums. And the meat of my palms stayed planted on the wheel, rather than down near my side, as I picked out the notes on air guitar. For a second or two I tried to play the way I always remembered doing it back in Maine, but the second my car drifted and inch, I grabbed the wheel again and muted my performance a bit. Plus, whenever I stopped at a light, I had to ease it back for fear of the person in the next car looking at me.

But in spite of not being able to really cut loose, the song put me in such a great mood and got my adrenaline coursing through my veins the way it always had whenever I ran out onto that field, or whenever that marketing promo ended and one of my peers told me it had given them goosebumps. It was the most perfect appetizer for the most kickass episode of LOST ever. I only wish I had thought to lock the song into my radio’s memory on the off chance that it would come on again someday while I was out and about on one of the few two-lane roads in the area. Then I would be able to click over and experience “Fire on High” to its fullest. Oh well. With luck they’ll dust the song off and pull it out of The Vault again while I happen to be passing through and it’ll be just like the old times… you know, minus the getting creamed by our rival school afterward.