hbombgraphics wrote:dubkitty wrote:when i was a little boy in Chicago we lived six or eight blocks from a fairly broad railroad bridge/underpass at 83rd and Vincennes that had at least 12 tracks on it and overhead signal lights and stuff, so when i was small i literally had that Woody Guthrie thing going on of laying in bed seeing the red and green lights far away and hearing the trains and wondering where they were going and imagining where all the things on those freight cars would end up. because rail freight was (and is) still such a part of the transportation system in the US and so much of it hubs through the Chicago area, i always had the sense that the place i lived was linked to this vast world of places along that web of rails and wires and roads, and that you could see and go to these places someday. mysterious places you saw glimpses of on television, New York and Miami and Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Grand Canyon and the Alamo, all out there on the rail lines...the Interstate Highways were still being built then, with huge gaps of two lane roads out in the Plains and a stretch in Northern Idaho that wouldn't be finished until well into the 1980s, and airplanes were for people who traveled in suits, people with credit cards. for kids at the end of the 50s, it was rails that still carried the dream.
This is so flipping cool.
and more proof that this is the best gear forum ever
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMS_ykiLiQ[/youtube]
I know you said Woody Guthrie, but it still seemed so relevant.
But I really think that listening to trains is what built me up to later appreciating noise music. Something about the sound of pure mammoth power careening steel-on-steel across the ground just has such a fantastic depth to it. Every train car sounds a little bit different. Some rattle, some shake, some bump, some creak, creep and crunch, some just sound displace a lot of air, but either way you can sit in the dark and hear each one go past.
EDIT: Also on the subject church bells, I don't consider it a tradition in many instances. Often times they ring their bells on the hour to, y'know, tell you what time it is because people didn't used to all have watches (which are even outdated now with cell phones). Ringing them at 9am on Sunday morning would be maybe a little annoying but there's plenty of other noisy things you can't control and I'm not a grumpy old man so I don't really care. I also have enough self respect to not be the guy who wastes his life calling in noise complaints.
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