Tulsa, Alberquerque, Broken Arrow... and Gene Pitney? American places, names, songs, movies... and bands.

Somewhere over the USA

Travelling a lot, I love a window seat on a clear day; or even a cloudy day, when the sky above the clouds is open. Flying over the USA, I'm always stunned by the natural beauty of the vast, huge areas which are still free of human habitation. And, by contrast, the cities, towns and ranches viewed from the air.

Last week, the skies were clear for a trip to Boston via LAX, and the pilots on both the outward and return flights took a more southern route, across Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma... Virginia, New Jersey, rather than the more usual routing where you see the Great Lakes.

(Yes, that's a road, and yes, those are mountains and dry creeks.)

I kept checking the in-flight map, matching what I was seeing from the window, with placenames and states. And it struck me that almost every town, city and state in the USA has either a song, a movie, or a band named after it.

Broken Arrow? Rod Stewart has a song by that name. There's a James Stewart movie, And a John Travolta movie.
Alberquerque?  Doesn't rhyme easily, but Weird Al took that one on...
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhklahoma? (Movie, musical, and song!)
Chicago. Not on last week's route, but a band.
Kansas! A band.
And don't forget... Sacramento! (Sound quality on this is awful... and I refuse to talk about the quality of the song itself... make up your own mind. No, it's not in my iTunes.)

But one of my favourites? Gene Pitney, and the classic, 24 Hours From Tulsa--a song that made sure I heard the name of the place as a little kid, but only now have I seen it... and that was only from the air!

(Side note: watch how "live" this is... and how he magically performed "live" without a microphone. But what a voice, what a voice!)

If you want to join me in my window seat, I'm updating this photo collection regularly. I love how some of these photos turn out: they are mostly taken with a Nokia Lumia phone, not an SLR camera, and edited for contrast etc. in Lightroom.

And if you don't see me at local shows, I'm probably on a plane. Again.