• Trains and Music: From Hank Williams to Afrika Bambaataa

    Last month our esteemed editor got his mellow well and truly twisted by Translink. I offer a short meditation to ward off the bad vibes next time you’re waiting on a train. First off the train is the rock ‘n’ roll form of transport. Planes, cars and even spaceships are nothing in comparison. As Ian Carter has written “the blues characteristic yearning tone arose from enslaved blacks’ hopeless response to passing trains – freedom and a better life glimpsed far away, then gloriously present, then receding once more into the distance…The insistent rhythm of railroad wheels on fish-plated railroad tracks…