It wasn't so many months ago that a few posts appeared on the R2 blog about road trip music. But this morning, a fine sunny summer morning in these parts, I found myself wondering if Road Trip Music (will give it the Caps in honour of its significance for many a summer) is an endangered species. As endangered, say, as road trips themselves.

Others are of course musing on this same thing. At The Tyee, in a post called Spring Road Trip! ("songs for the beginning, middle and end of your journey") one writer asserts that the era of the road trip is definitely coming to an end, but still proposes that as long you can fill a tank, you can take one last road trip -- and then goes on to suggest the three ultimate road trip scenarios and the music that should accompany them. (An environmentally indefensible pov, but I agree strongly with his choice of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings' 100 Days 100 Nights.)

Meanwhile, yesterday over at NPR I noticed a post called Songs For The Gas-Guzzling Blues, a short list of songs that "go well with a ride in an old fashioned luxury gas guzzler." It's part of a series they're running called Road Trip: Songs To Drive By, subtitled "gas may cost a fortune but you still need music for the road." Other fun entries in the series include Jazz For A Summer Rental Car.

It seems there's a kind of pre-mourning going on, not so much for the potential loss of the road trips themselves, as for the feeling of listening to music on the road. And that's kind of sad. On the other hand -- I can attest to the fact that there is also something glorious about getting on a train and heading out of the station with your travelin' music playing as the scenery flashes past. And I should note that having already "rail tested" it, Sharon Jones makes for excellent train trip music too.