For the next 30 days, I’ll be taking the #AprilAcrossAmerica challenge, picking one song a day as I make my way across the country and across genres at the same time.
Day 24: Flagstaff, Arizona
This cover is absolute perfection. It was the right cover song at the time and for the right place. Thematically, it coincided perfectly with Depeche Mode’s North American tour which culminated in L.A. and was chronicled famously in the documentary 101. It also worked perfectly as the b-side to the single, “Behind The Wheel”, incorporating a driving theme and instrumental elements from “Behind The Wheel” in between verses that made the b-side in lock step with the a-side.
I still remember the day I first heard “Route 66”. It was on the radio – and, for me, the preeminent station was WDRE/WLIR in Long Island. I was struck by how Depeche Mode it sounded. The band took an Americana original and truly made it their own. The synth hooks, drum machine, and guitar riff are all unmistakably DM. It made a resolutely American-as-American-as-it-gets song feel like it came from a band from Essex. Because it did.
“Well it goes to St. Louis, down to Missouri. Oklahoma City looks so, so pretty. You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Wynonna, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino.”