Song playing during your car accident...

Or "Crawling From The Wreckage".

 

A few years back on New Year’s Eve, I proceed through a green light and a car screams through the red light on the intersecting road. Would have T-boned me had I not seen and avoided it. Blasting on my system was (not T-Bone but) Don’t Fear The Reaper.

 

Thank the Lord you are still here!

 

No memory of what was on the radio moment of accident,5/10/68,while a junior in high school. My guess,from the taste of the driver-Philly's WFIL. Faded in and out of consciousness all day(remember a priest giving Last Rites,my Pop looking over me) but early evening,my Mom wisely brought in my radio to the ICU,tuned to the new hippie station,WMMR(actually only rock after 9PM). What caught my attention-this new hippie monologue about littering and getting the draft-yes,Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant. How screwy was that? My brother bought two LPs-Sinatra & Duke Ellington and Sergio Mendes' Favorite Things to my bedside. Possibly helped me heal faster to get home and eventually rip 'em open and listen.Still have the original copies. A week later-returned to school.

 

I'll admit that the topic is somewhat morbid, but interesting takeaways so far:

1) There are plenty of people in the world who have never been in a car accident.
2) Tennessee drivers are supposedly the worst in the U.S.... would have guessed Florida.
3) Few people here have been permanently turned off by a song because it was playing during the crash.
4) Perhaps not so surprising, but in the cases of the most traumatic accidents, the driver or passenger involved could not remember whether music was playing at all.

 

I posted this before, but in January 2007 I was driving home and listening to the Doors "Moonlight Drive" from the Perception box set and right when he sings "park beside the ocean on our moonlight drive" a car going 45 mph ran a stop sign and plowed in to me. My car's engine took most of the impact. I had bruised ribs and a banged up knee.

At least I didn't "Break On Through (To The Other Side)".

 

Thank you! It was scary, a true near-death experience. I broke my jaw, busted a lung and broke my collarbone in the crash. Spent 5 days in the hospital and my jaw was wired shut for months (I did end up getting a decent $$ settlement out of it).

While in the hospital, my family brought me a portable CD player (this is around 20 years ago now), and I also asked them to buy me the King Crimson's CDs Lizard and Starless & Bible Black, as I was first getting big into Crimson at that time. Some crazy music to hear for the first time under the influence of Demerol!

 

An ironically seasonally appropriate topic for me. My first accident was my first time driving in snow, taking my father to pick up the Christmas tree in 1982. As we crested a hill, the Olds Cutlass started slipping, and despite my father telling (eventually shouting at me) not to, I stood on the brake as we slowly descended the hill sideways, eventually coming to rest against a phone pole at the bottom. As the car stalled, and I waited for my father to completely explode, WDRC's "sounds of the season" promo came on, followed by the Ronettes' "Sleigh Ride."

Years later, in 2005, I drove a rental car into a river in Yavapai County, Arizona. The river wasn't normally there - that spring had seen unprecedented rain and the desert was in bloom. The Eagles' "Hotel California" was bubbling from the speakers underwater as we swam/waded free to start the 5-mile walk back to civilization.

 

I was rear ended on the west side highway NYC in the early 80s during Eminence Front. Ever since that song became known as Eminence Crunch!

 

I got sandwiched in a mild fender bender several years ago. The adrenaline was intense and I could not turn off the Smashing Pumpkins CD that was blasting fast enough.

 

I didn't need a car accident to make me not want to hear that.

 

1975. Cruising down H1, For The Love Of You by The Isley Bros. cranked up on the radio, singing my heart out. Next thing I know, the car in front of me slows to a crawl, I misjudge the distance between us and wham, bam, ke-rash. And I loved that song!

 

Good point...

 

Jane’s Addiction “Ocean Size”

 

Anyone remember the D.O.A. hit back in the 70's??? Bought the 45, played the ship out of it, but don't remember much more than that. Must have banged my head!!!

 

Airbag by Radiohead

 

I'm quite surprised that so many people have a specific memory of a song playing on the radio immediately prior or during an accident, some even down to specific verses in the song. In the several accidents I've had, that is the last thing my mind focused on, especially in the 2 where nitwits ran red lights and plowed into me at intersections. At that point my mind went into react and survive mode and I had no idea or memory as to what was on the radio. Thankfully in both my instincts and reactions were quick enough to avoid major injuries even when the vehicles were totalled. No idea what was playing.

 

I dozed off and drifted off the road hitting a telephone pole then a tree many years ago. I am lucky to be alive today. The cassette I recovered from when gathering my stuff from the auto shop was a Pretenders compilation I put together. From that point on the tape had a drop out right in the middle of "Never Do That".

 

Never really been in an accident (luckily), but I remember the song that was playing when I received my first ticket - "Moby Dick" by Zeppelin. I was 16, scared, and hoping the cop was a Zep fan and thus would magically not write me the ticket (for rolling through a stop sign) because he thought I was "cool" or something.

Not surprisingly, I did get the ticket...!

 

The only reason it sticks out in my mind is because it was my first time and you always remember your first time.

 

.... and every other one I had for 15 years straight till 1989.
Alcoholism will kill you.. one way or another.

 

1998, I had just picked up Terror & Magnificence by John Harle. Not really my type of music but I had picked it up because Elvis Costello was on a few tracks. I don't remember which track was playing as a lady pulled up beside me on the outside lane heading West on a smallish 4 lane country road. She attempted to go around me, I'm not sure if she wasn't paying attention and didn't see me or just thought she was going that fast so she could whip it around and go the opposite direction.

Smacked me pretty hard, luckily I was the only one hurt (if the point of impact on her van would have been just a little further down, she would have been seriously injured at the least), and the damage to me was from the airbag (knocked my eye out of shape-had to wear an eyepatch for a few weeks and take ocular steroids, the airbag burned a stripe of skin off my face from my forehead to my chin, and she totaled my car). To this day I still have a ringing in my right ear from it. I lost the CD thanks to the accident, it wouldn't come out of the CD deck, and I never cared to repurchase it. Coincidentally, my next purchase was the Radiohead Airbag E.P.

 

"Music Never Stopped" from the 7/13/85 Ventura Dead boot, fortunately just a fender bender, but the music did stop!

 

Lenny Kravitz "Are You Gonna Go My Way." There was no major damage or bodily harm (just a damaged ego and a broken back window). Just a distracted teen driver backing out, not paying attention. That mailbox had it coming though. And there might have been air drumming involved...just saying...