0:07

The title of this post refers to "seven seconds." Not "double-o-seven." GoldenEye. 

I had such an incredible time writing about my ten favorite band names that I have returned, two weeks later, to list ten more musical things I enjoy. 

My top 10 seven-second album intros! 

This does not mean that each one of these selections is a strict, seven-second long intro. No sir. I am just ranking the first seven seconds of albums. What the hell kind of sample size is seven seconds, you ask? As always, I will not offer empirical evidence. Only speculation. But upon my further investigation, it is quite a riveting block of time. I believe that seven seconds is the threshold for committing to something. Think about it. If you think about seven seconds for seven seconds, you'll realize that you're engrossed in thought. Five seconds is a noncommittal flash-in-the-pan when it comes to pondering. But seven seconds can breed an idea. At five seconds you're still mentally processing. At ten seconds you're often neck-deep in an idea. But seven seconds? The minimum spacing-out threshold. 

MORE EXAMPLES: I feel like I look at myself in the mirror for seven seconds, after everything is taken care of and sexily groomed. I have no idea how long other humans spend doing this. But for the purposes of this discussion, I am assuming I possess an average amount of vanity (a laughable underestimate). Next: after turning on your car, how long does it take before you put the car in motion? Buckle your seatbelt, quick glance at yourself in the rearview mirror (mirrors are a recurring seven-second theme), check your mirrors for traffic, and boom. Seven seconds. Seven seconds is the amount of time you are allowed to laugh about something before it becomes maniacal. During a marriage proposal, seven seconds equals the appropriate shock-value grace period between the "Will you marry me?" and the response. Anything past seven seconds means the proposer is panicking. Seven seconds seems like the amount of time it takes to make my breakfast in the morning (cereal). Seven consecutive seconds of smiling indicates that you're extremely happy about something (like when you notice a new I've Been Gone a Long Time post). Experiencing anything for seven seconds is just enough time to form an opinion about it. Most importantly, seven seconds is all you need to be hooked on an album.

Tasteful portrait of sevens.

Much like the topic of best band names, the topic of albums with the best intros has been something I have considered abstractly in my brain from time to time. It most frequently crosses my mind when I hear a killer album intro, I've found out. However, unlike the best band names discussion, I'm not sure "albums with the best seven second intros" is a oft-debated topic among music fans. 

PRO TIP: Read the following paragraph in the most snide, hipster tone you can imagine: 

I don't think most people listen to albums. Young music fans live for radio singles, itunes shuffle, and free mediafire downloads. No value is placed in the album as a whole. I am opining that music and singular songs cannot be appreciated fully until experienced within the context of the album it originates from. Musicians release albums, not individual, isolated songs. Whether this is caused by a "that's the way it's always been," type of tradition-ridden culture, or because the sole way for a musician to express themselves is through a collection of songs, I will stand by tradition (for once!!). Whoever dictated/suggested the album format knew a thing or two about the artistic experience. 

Now that the album argument is off my chest, it is time to explore the magic of the very first seven seconds of an album. The purpose of this list is almost decidedly anti-album, in that the first seven seconds are all about the hook. I ranted about how albums should be experienced as a whole. Now I'm waxing poetically about seven seconds? Yes, it is hypocritical. But the bottom line is that this is fucking fun to think about. Think of the previous paragraph as more of a disclaimer for this blog post. A killer album intro is much like a great band name. It is a bonus stroke of artistic genius. Icing on the cake. 

PERSONAL ANECDOTE: When I'm driving around in my car, I'm listening to CD's. When a CD is over, my car stereo automatically loops back to the beginning. My personal policy is to then remove the CD and put a new one in, affording me ample opportunities to enjoy the many different facets of my CD collection. I am a stickler about it and it's weird. But sometimes, I don't eject the CD right after it ends. And I hear those first seven seconds. And sometimes I let it play out a little longer because those first seven seconds were so exhilarating. And I want to listen to the whole album all over again (alas, I always restrain myself). The reason for this blog post is to honor and pay homage to those moments. The best seven-second hooks. My specifically seven-second rationale: please see the above paragraph beginning with "MORE EXAMPLES." Also, five seconds doesn't give an intro quite enough time to develop. Ten seconds feels like an eternity and like you're already a full-fledged listener of the album. But seven seconds in? Well, that's all you need to experience the most important part of the album. 

The official mantra of this post. 

As with any of my blog lists, I will outline my personal criteria: a goosebump-inducing seven second experience that embodies the entire album, builds suspense, and absolutely implores you to listen to the album all the way through. And again, these are only songs that I own personally. Readership, if you have given this topic ample thought (I'm sure you have), throw out some suggestions to me. I want to know all the best album hooks in the world. 

SIDE NOTE: After compiling the list, I noticed that only one of these seven-second cuts contains vocals. This happened organically; a vocal ban was not explicitly administered in my criteria. Letting seven seconds pass before incorporating your vocals accentuates them and makes your music more dynamic, most of the time. 

So I encourage you to give the following ten intros a shot; if nothing else, pause it at the seven-second mark to humor me. Cumulatively, it will only take seventy seconds of your time. But I'll wager that you'll be sticking around for more. Suspense will have been built and you'll be google-searching the entire album before the song ends.  

P.S. if you're not ready to rock, please respectfully close this tab. 

(I will list the band and the album name. As, essentially, this list is an ode to the album format. Also I apologize if there is any sort of youtube-related delay. Or advertising. First seven seconds of sound.)

10. The Dillinger Escape Plan- One Of Us Is the Killer

Mind-warping, time-signature slaying destruction. This is hxc, so make sure you're not in a library. Or do, if you want to scare librarians in time for Halloween 2013. Good luck figuring out how to headbang. 

9. Tom Waits- Swordfishtrombones 
Mischievous, ominous trombones over a singular percussion roll? Check. Best enjoyed with a glass of bourbon.

   (Also, this fucking video........)

8. The Hold Steady- Stay Positive 

How does one possibly resist the invincible riffing that precedes the best song ever written about getting drunk on top of water towers? 

7. Bars of Gold- Of Gold 

FULL DISCLOSURE: This is the intro that got me thinking about this list, in my car, about a week ago. Ugly, loud strings expertly crafting a suspenseful aura.  

6. Weezer- Pinkerton 
Dissonant, chill-inducing guitar squealing. Sets the tone sinisterly for one of the greatest albums of all time. A million times more raw and emotional than any other Weezer album. 

5. The Menzingers- On the Impossible Past

The only seven seconds where vocals matter most. Along with the lightly strummed guitar, these seven seconds are the perfect microcosm of an extremely heartfelt, blue-collar album (and one of my all-time faves).

4. The Bronx- S/T 
S/T means self-titled. A deceptively quiet and sleazy riff. By the time you've finished turning the volume up to compensate for the seemingly muffled recording quality, you are blasted in the face with punk fury. Good luck. 

3. Crime in Stereo- Is Dead 
DRUMS.

2. None More Black- Loud About Loathing EP
The lone EP representative on this list, I am extremely excited to be able to rep None More Black for the first time on the pages of this blog. If this song doesn't get your fist pumping and your pint glass swinging back and forth in the air, nothing will. There is not a better album-opening riff known to mankind. 

1. blink-182- Dude Ranch 
I have never been able to find anything that tops this. I acquired this album the summer after 8th grade. I bought it used at an FYE. I remember popping it into my portable CD player on the car ride home and immediately thinking "WHOA!" No other album, to my knowledge, starts off as full-throttle and unrelenting. Not even a count-off. All instruments playing the chorus immediately. It will never get old. 

I hope those were the best seventy seconds of your life. Thank you for reading these words .  

Wanderlust IV

Complimentary catch-up links: I, II, & III.  

The preceding italics are links to the previous chronicles of Road Trip 2011. In case you don't trust links I offer on this blog. I suppose I understand what you're thinking:

This is a blog that incessantly provides links to previous blog posts. This is most likely a tool to drive the view counts of each post up. How shameless and self-promotional of the blogger. Also, I now have a million tabs loaded onto my browser and it feels cluttered. X-ing out of I've Been Gone a Long Time. 

Valid, sobering points. But I refuse to assume that everyone reading this post has already pored over each chapter of the Wanderlust chronicles carefully. The method to my self-aggrandzing madness. 

Despite this tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation act, I really just needed an excuse to mention my blog's view count. I've Been Gone a Long Time hit a flattering view count milestone the other day and I wanted to sincerely thank you, readership. Couldn't have gotten the views without you. I appreciate you clicking on my blog, even if you're just scrolling down and mocking my pictures. And to anyone that has directed someone else to these pages, I am deeply indebted to you and am dedicating this post to you informally. To all my readership, I appreciate your time and hope you at least mildly enjoy these posts. Cuz it is certainly a hoot writing them. 
  
With that being said, we resume in western Nebraska. I mentioned the strength of the winds we felt that morning. It turns out, per the Historical Atlas of the American West, that the western part of Great Plains region is among the most consistently windy places in the world. SCIENCE LESSON: Basically, the winds blow off the Rockies from the west and there is no vertical relief in its path to slow it down.The average wind speed of Kimball, Nebraska, the town we stepped outside to on that day, is around 12mph. Doesn't sound very significant. But think about it. At any given time, winds are blowing at 12mph. Extreme gusts are both frequent enough and strong enough to drive the wind speed average up to 12mph, at any given moment throughout the year. So, hold on to your hats. 

It was an incredibly gorgeous morning as we peeled out of the Super 8's dirt parking lot back onto I-80 West. We shortly hit the Wyoming state line and our Western suspicions were officially confirmed: 

The first sign with cowboy imagery! Along this stretch I also captured one of my favorite shots in all of Road Trip 2011, a colorful Union Pacific train chugging alongside the interstate and into the West:  

As that train passed by it was like I could smell the greatness in the air. And shortly after that, we got our formal introduction to the West courtesy of the landscape. We curved around a bend and there it was: our first glimpse of the Rockies!!!!

(with the help of the windshield/windshield wipers)

That moment is a lucid memory. I almost felt dazed. We were one with Lewis & Clark; we were Kate & Travis. We had grown up on the East Coast and had never seen a real, geological masterpiece like a legitimate mountain range (sorry Appalachians). It had taken almost twenty-two years to be among them. And I knew that I never wanted to let them go. 

We made our first stop at a Laramie, WY Sonic for lunch. Please recall that the previous day's lunch was in Omaha, NE and it was about 102 degrees. In Laramie, it would be a stretch to say it was 60 degrees. Also, the winds had strengthened since Kimball. The town gave off the distinctive "college town" aura and seemed charming enough, but frankly, it was a straight-up 50 degree drop in temperature from the previous day's lunch. And did I mention it was ridiculously windy? We rolled out of Laramie pretty quickly.     

But we could not escape the wind. Driving down the interstate in east/central Wyoming consisted of Kate white-knuckling the steering wheel to prevent the winds from blowing the Nissan Sentra into a ditch. It was a challenge. The old-school Nintendo Boss-Level equivalent of highway driving. But we managed. All the while, the elevation was rising. We were driving into the heavens. We soon found ourselves on a mountain pass that, mercifully, had a rest area. We pulled in and got out of the vehicle to recuperate. 

I will reiterate that it was a crystal-clear, beautiful day. The winds I experienced at that rest stop were stronger than any non-hurricane-condition winds I had ever experienced in my life. And they were constant. Unrelenting. I had to use significant leg strength to stand up straight. Kate fled for her life almost immediately and got back into the car. I stayed outside a little longer to feel the PUNISHMENT. An official acknowledgement of the conditions:

Elk Mountain, from the rest stop grounds. 

A mind-altering experience.

SIDE NOTE: We saw another young couple with a New Jersey license plate at that rest stop. We hypothesized that they were on the same journey: post-graduation road trip from coast-to-coast. I wanted to talk to them and bond over the preposterous Rocky Mountain winds but shyness got the best of me. I have always regretted this. MESSAGE: if you were at the Wagonhound Rest Area around June 8th, 2011, and are a young couple from New Jersey, please contact me. I want to apologize and befriend you and talk about road trips.     

The wind was never as much of an issue after we conquered that particular mountain pass.  Our drive through Wyoming continued at high elevation with rocky (not Rocky)/dirt colored peaks in the distance, with the high plains dotted in green shrubs in the foreground. It doesn't sound like much excitement, but I was transfixed all the while. We were in the West and it was never getting old. Also, Wyoming is the least populated state in the country. So that meant few exits and even fewer signs of civilization. There was a ranch here and there, but zero farms. Meandering cows sometimes in the distance. A couple of frolicking deer in a shrub-filled meadow. But other than that, it was just us and the Frontier. 

It seems like the Wyoming DOT tries to maintain your driving focus by peppering signs throughout the state advertising "Little America," which is located in the far western part of the state. However, the signs never really let you know what Little America is. My best guess was that we would drive by a mildly-amusing-looking patriotic-themed amusement park. It turned out to be an extremely ho-hum (relative to the sheer quantity of advertising) rest stop. Wyoming 1, travelers 0.   

By late afternoon/early evening we had crossed into Utah. I still wager that every state has a unique landscape, no matter how slight the differences may be. The first thing I noticed about Utah was a distinct redness to the dirt and rocks. The trains chugging alongside the interstate became much more immediate and the road itself was much more winding. Snow-capped mountain peaks were also very close in proximity to the road as opposed to appearing far off in the distance. The sun descending in the sky made it all that much more spectacular. 

I swear it looked reddish (not radish).

Snow-capped.

The sunset quickly became dusk and we were coasting through the winding highways of Salt Lake City, navigating the many lanes of the I-80 & I-15 interchange. At this point, the plan was to stop off somewhere in downtown SLC, grab some dinner and find a place to lodge, given we had already covered some pretty solid distance on that day. But before we could blink, Salt Lake City was in our rearview mirror. The constant lane changes that come with interchanges had did us in. Focusing our energy on staying with I-80 had prevented us from exiting the highway. So we did what we could, exited at the actual Great Salt Lake, a few miles west of the city. 

This wasn't a total loss for me, as I have always been intrigued by the Great Salt Lake. So I suggested that we go down to the waterfront and scope it out. It was quiet and deserted where we parked, on a side road adjacent to the beach. And when I say beach I mean large dirt area bordering the Salt Lake. And when I say deserted I mean aside from the one million mosquitoes. 

The Great Salt Lake "Beach," w/ lonely cigarette butt.

Not pictured: 1,000,000 mosquitoes. Me trying to morph into a mosquito's worst nightmare and failing.

And when I say one million mosquitoes I mean one trillion mosquitoes. I don't mean to sit here and whine about mosquitoes like every other fucking human being. I am trying to paint a picture. My best summary is: I didn't even know this many mosquitoes existed on Earth. Kate and I couldn't stand still enough to snap a cute picture together alongside the lake because we were too busy fending mosquitoes off. After I snapped the shot above, both my camera and any of my exposed skin were promptly swarmed by mosquitoes.

In this moment on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, I believe Kate and I encountered the mosquito perfect storm. It was a not only a lake, but a salt lake. Not only a very shallow standing body of water, but a tasty salt version, which probably these miniature flying vampires of the sweaty human skin they love to feed on. It was early/mid June, which seems like mosquito primetime to me. It was dusk. There were no other human options around. They probably knew we were tourists. Needless to say, our tour of the Great Salt Lake shoreline was abbreviated.  

We quickly hopped back into the car and made our way back to the frontage road (note: all the lights in the above photo). We still hadn't had any dinner; a secluded Del Taco ended up  being the destination. Advice to future blogging self: don't go back to Del Taco. But it got the job done. The only problem was that we had seemed to bypass all the Salt Lake City area hotels. 

No matter, I told Kate. Our road map, a 2009-edition "American Map," (I WILL NEVER OWN A GPS) which had served us admirably up to that point, showed a few more exits and a few small towns  on our route until a vast, 50 mile stretch of the "Great Salt Lake Desert," in which there were no exits or towns until the Nevada border. It's fine, I insisted. No way do we have to go back into Salt Lake City to find a hotel. The only rule of this road trip, I decreed in that moment, was no backtracking. So we soldiered on in search of lodging. 

First town/exit up, according to our Utah map, was Rowley. Please follow that link. Yeah. There was a gas station immediately off the exit, and then a dirt road leading into darkness. We got back on the highway. Next up on the map was Delle. I swear I remember seeing signage for a hotel off of that exit, but when we neared the off-ramp, there was nothing but darkness as far as we could see. We stayed on the highway. Our last hope was Knolls. I remember seeing the exit for Knolls. There was no "Knolls 1 mile" or "Knolls 1/2 mile" warning signs. Just one "Knolls" and an arrow pointing in the direction of the off-ramp. What did that one look like, you ask? Complete darkness. 

By then it was about 12:30am local time. We had already driven about 600 miles total on the day. There was a "rest area" shortly after "Knolls" in which you could presumably pull into a parking spot and "rest." In the pitch-blackness of the Great Salt Lake Desert. We figured we probably wouldn't be getting any "rest" since we'd be "fearing" for our "lives." So we coasted onward.  Next exit? Wendover, about 50 miles away. 

For those 50 miles, the road was a perfectly straight line. I didn't even need my hands on the wheel. The Great Salt Lake Desert was to our right. We could see the moon reflected on the desert floor. It was the strangest thing; it seemed like we were driving alongside the ocean. It felt like this would be an appropriate area for UFO's to land, or at least for secret government operations to take place. We were tired and a little cranky, but it was amazing. We felt alive. Despite the lack of exits, I was noticing a lot of cross-highway turn-around spots. As in, you could stop and take a left onto the other side of the interstate if you needed to.

About 45 minutes later, we hit the Nevada state line in Wendover and checked into the first hotel we saw. I also made a vow: we would wake up early and drive back east for a little, through a part of the desert. We would utilize one of the turn-around spots to head back west. I had to see the Great Salt Lake Desert in daylight. 

Listening...