Interesting story about Let’s Go Away for Awhile.

I had to spend the whole night in the giant St. Louis airport almost 10 years ago because of weather delays. It was an overseas flight so my sleeping schedule was totally off. It was actually fun having an entire airport almost all to yourself to run around in. They even kept the moving sidewalks on all night!

What wasn’t fun was the music. Any airport or department store or corporate place often has “MUZAK” versions of classic rock songs, making them soft, wimpy, and uninspired. Listening to that stuff when you don’t have the originals available is frustrating to your ears.

So there was hours of this bland music pumping throughout the airport, until “Let’s Go Away for Awhile” came on. Much to my surprise it was the exact same version on Pet Sounds! I thought it was really interesting that of all the songs I heard that long night, that one was universally pleasant enough to not have to be changed or watered down. It actually really flowed well with the other music. I’m not saying Pet Sounds is bland and sterile, just that instrumental is something special if even airport music programmers don’t mess with it.

Interesting story, Jonah...
There is really something special about this song "Let's go away for awhile". It seems to be the mother of all the instrumental song we hear nowadays (I talk about "pop" genre).
A band like The High Llamas almost has built his own career on this song. Fascinating how such influencial can be a 3 minutes simple instrumental song (played in airports !)...

Any of the stuff on You Forgot it in People by Broken Social Scene.

Prince- "Venus de Milo" and "Alexa de Paris"
Björk- "Frosti"
The Cure- "A Reflection"
Eurythmics- "I Did It Just the Same" (if this counts), "Winston's Diary"
David Bowie- "Warszawa", "Subterraneans" (if they count), "Speed of Life", "Moss Garden"

Of course, "let's go away.."

But what really comes to my mind when it comes to instrumentals are blues instrumentals

Last post was about acoustic guiter, but you have great harmonica instrumentals

Big Walter Horton Off the wall (1953)
Sonny Terry "Fox hound"
Little Walter "Juke" (1952) : Little Walter was the first harp player in Muddy Water's band. He was the first to play with an amplifier, like most rock-blues bands did afterward

And, speaking of blues-rock : J-Geils Band "Whammer Jammer" (1972)
Tony Joe White "Home made ice cream"

Aargh! I totally forgot to include any Bowie in my earlier post - and I just listened again to LOW (my favorite Bowie album) and HEROES, too. I've always loved "Speed of Life" - how ballsy to START the album with an instrumental, signaling instantly that this is Something New - but I'm only beginning to really appreciate the second-half mood pieces on both albums.