I read a blog post recently on The Pantograph Punch by local muso Tiny Ruins, aka Hollie Fullbrook, which was an account of her tour through the UK, Australia and US last year. In it, she writes a lot about the books and movies she was reading and watching, and the music she and her bandmates listened to on their endless van journeys.
"We seem to gravitate toward music that roughly relates to the environment we're driving through," she says, and for her this translated to Melbourne's Courtney Barnett through Australia, Welsh singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon in the UK, and US country and blues artist Lucinda Williams in the American south.
Part of the fun of visiting a destination is going to it in your imagination first.
I read Patti Smith's autobiography and listened to a lot of her music before going to New York last year, and I rewatched The Goonies before driving through Astoria, Oregon, on that same trip.
One friend has been reading books on the Mob before her upcoming trip to Sicily, and another's been rewatching Colditz before visiting the German castle which served as a POW camp during World War II.
