You're driving along a small road in Florissant, Missouri. You're in your late teens, in your parents' white Mercury Topaz. It's early summer, a muggy night on the single-lane road. You roll down the window to allow the wind to stream in, through your hair, flapping your shirt sleeve. The only other sounds are from your car and the nocturnal insects in the passing trees and modest forest, before the first few notes of "Come in Number 21" pour from the car's modest speakers.
This is a road that connects to the back of your parents' subdivision northwest of St. Louis. The road winds, goes up then down hills, and to the nearby lowlands, which flood during heavy rains. Your baseball fields are here, too. You've spent summers playing ball on those fields, for a range of teams, then the select summer teams. You're good at baseball, but those days are gone; you played this past summer, during your first year at university but you're ready to stop. It's not the same, and you're becoming more bookish and less interested in playing sports.
Your parents have lent you the car for the evening. You have a brief period of freedom, driving home from your summer job at a local hardware store. On the way home, you stopped by Streetside Records to pick up the new album from The Charlatans UK. Soon, you'll realise that this is by far the most jammy of The Charlatans' albums. The album is more moody, and the lyrics are as obtuse as ever but they mesh with the music. Although some 30 years later you'd read about the tumultuous origins of the album, you are oblivious to that when driving along this road: to you this album feels more cohesive than anything else they've done to date, the songs more of a piece and their trademark Hammond organ incorporated well. For the rest of your life, this will be your favourite Charlatans album, although it will be joined a few years later by Tellin' Stories.
You love that summer, spending time with high school and university friends who are also in St. Louis. You begin to see more and more shows. That car is great, too, but its days are numbered. It's a small sedan and in two weeks it'll be totalled. You'll be driving, just pulling onto a road when a teenager jackrabbits his Ford Mustang from a gas station onto the road, straight into the Topaz's passenger side -- fortunately empty at the time -- and the car will be totalled. You'll be spun around. Fortunately, the Topaz and Mustang are the only cars in the crash, and everyone in the accident will be fine but shaken.
Tonight, though, and for a few more weeks, the music and car sound so good.
