Songs About Bikes

December 10, 2005... I don't mind telling you, I've been struggling with this whole blogging thing for a while now. Even though I don't post very often, I sometimes feel that Afterbirth is taking up a lot—maybe too much—of my time.

Then I sit down in the morning, close my eyes, and try to clear everything from my mind ... and Afterbirth keeps intruding. In fact, it is almost the only thing I think about. Hey! I could write about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Lenine, or Wu Tang Clan, or Dinosaur Jr., or No Trend, or Roxy Music, or The Easybeats. Maybe I'll be able to post tracks by Radiopuhelimet, the Rhythm Pigs and Nice Strong Arm soon... The ideas never end... So here I am again, blogging away.

The rewards of blogging are different that I thought they'd be. When I started Afterbirth, I hoped that it would be a bit like the old days of loafing around with friends, hipping each other to groovy tunes; and there has been some of that. Mostly though, the reward of blogging, for me, has been the sense of accomplishment I get from exercising creative control over one tiny, little aspect of my life.

It's actually kind of similar to the feeling I get from riding a bike. I am in control of that fucker. I determine where it goes and how it gets there. My competence or incompetence is a big part of what determines whether I get there alive. (Luck has something to do with it, too.)

Which leads me to the "real" focus of today's post: songs about bikes or bicycling, or that at least mention bikes or bicycling. There are a hell of a lot of them out there. Songs, I mean. Here are three of my favourites. If you can think of any others, I'd like to hear about it.

Codeine - Jr

Tomorrow - My White Bicycle

Pink Floyd – Bike

The Codeine track is from the 1993 EP Barely Real. If you've never heard Codeine before, you should know that playing s-l-o-w was the band's modus operandi. Quite a few others—Low and Idaho come to mind—took a similar approach in the years that followed.

Tomorrow was a British band including future Yes guitarist Steve Howe and a drummer named Twink. “My White Bicycle,” a single released in 1967, was inspired by the white bike program in Amsterdam, which made a fleet of bicycles available for short term use, free-of-charge, to anyone who wanted to use one. Similar programs currently exist in a number of cities around the world, including the BikeShare program in Toronto.

“Bike” is the last track on the first (and best) Pink Floyd album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, released in 1967. At the time, Pink Floyd was led by vocalist/guitarist Syd Barrett, while Roger Waters played more of a supporting role and David Gilmour watched from the audience.

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