Music that evokes a place

" In 100 years from now, when people will want to know what California was like in the 60s, they only had to listen a single by the Beach Boys." - Kraftwerk

Which music do you find especially transportive?

For me at the moment it's The Terror by the Flaming Lips. I listened to it whilst reading a few sci fi books recently and now it evokes the (dystopian) environments from those books very powerfully. It's an amazing (and underrated) album IMO.

 

What were the books you were reading?

 

Whenever i hear I Know a Place by Petula Clark I envision a sunny , mid-sixties Summer day in London (even though I think she's singing about Liverpool).

 

Beach Boys & Sunny Days



The Doors & Street Nights



Creedence Clearwater Revival & Swamps

 

I've never been on a Southern California freeway, but "L.A. Woman" makes me feel like I'm driving down one...

 

Lovin' Spoonful, Summer in the City and the feeling of being young and free in New York City.

-Richard

 

"Paradise" by John Prine absolutely transports you, first to this lovely spot in the country and then to the hell it was turned into by strip-mining. And the Beatles' "Good Morning Good Morning" always leaves me feeling like I've been dropped right into London circa 1967.

 

Talk Talk - It's My Life
Laurie Anderson - Strange Angels
Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll

These and a lot of other albums from that period all remind me of chilly Fall evenings.
Nice times those were.

 

The Beatles great times in a great decade when life was a dream compared to today...

 

R. Carlos Nakai
Canyon Trilogy

Purchased on first trip to the Grand Canyon in 1987.

 

@Mike Bass

 

Everything said so far is great.

Bob Dylan and Neil Young put me in the relaxing country

 

Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz and Albert Ayler's New York Eye & Ear Control (as examples) are the sounds (and smells) of Manhattan as filtered through the minds of musicians.

 

Dr. John evokes the French Quarter in New Orleans, I think.

 

The Steve Roach & Roger King album, Dust To Dust evokes exactly what it is supposed to...the Arizona deserts.

 

The Woodstock 40 Years On box set transports me to the 1969 festival...

 

New York's a Lonely Town by the Trade Winds manages to evoke both New York and California at the same time. Great evocative and poignant song, for some reason never got airplay up here.

 

The Drowned World by J G Ballard and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. When I listen to The Terror now it evokes the swamps, buzzing machinery and sense of desolation of the Ballard novel so powerfully it's like I'm right there. It's really given the album an extra dimension.

I had the same thing when OK Computer came out. I was reading Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke at the time and whenever I hear the Radiohead album I'm right back there on the spaceship!

 

"Interzone" by Joy Division, the dog-end of 1970s Northern England, terrorised by the Yorkshire Ripper serial killer amongst other things.

 

Iced Earth - Gettysburg (1863): Day 1, Day2, Day3

Every time I listen to this 30 minute Epic piece, it places me at Gettysburg during the Civil War 3-day battle. (I consider this song a condensed Cliff Notes history lesson about The Battle of Gettysburg.)

 

Whenever I hear the Drifters doing "Up On The Roof" or "Broadway" I instantly get this nighttime, downtown, neon lights, urban feel which I guess is exactly what they were hoping for. I've never been up on a roof higher than two-stories so I guess I got the mental image from a movie I saw when I was young.

 

Doobie Brothers - "Black Water"

 

The Cure-Seventeen Seconds sounds like a log cabin in the winter at 7 AM.

 

George Thorogood-Gear Jammer sounds like a neon-lit tavern with pool tables, Schlitz on draft, and a Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner.

 

KISS-Trial By Fire sounds like WWF entrance music circa Wrestlemania III.