Song in my head July 21

July 23, 2005--Life Is a Highway-Tom Cochrane. Long a staple on the FM band, Red Rider (in one form or another) tunes have been blasting out of a radio near you since 1979. Having spent that long on the Canadian music scene has seen Tom Cochrane find success, failure, interest and apathy as he traveled down the rock and roll highways.

One of the more infectious of his songs is Life is a Highway, from it's high energy opening with the harmonica riffs to the scatter like recitation of lyrics it kicked ass as they say. Which is more than appropriate for a song that came from an album called Ragged Ass road. Cochrane has been a master lyricist in Canadian music since those early days of White Hot and Don't Fight It. His songs were more of an entry in a novel, than the run of the mill quick hit pop song of the eighties and nineties.

Life Is a Highway is just a salute to life on the road, "from Mozambique to the Memphis nights, from the Khyber Pass to Vancouvers lights" the song kicks out the whistle stops in a nonstop pattern and you understand how busy a guy that Cochrane has been. In addition to his status in the music industry, he's become quite active in the African relief efforts, doing the hard slogging on the ground visiting the villages and trying to understand the hurt and need in those countries. In many of his songs those experiences are recounted in some form, sometimes subtly sometimes in your face, but his way with words certainly help to focus your attention on them.

With Life is A Highway we're treated to a high energy rocking work of art. The tempo starts fast and keeps its frenetic pace throughout, so as to show us the energy level needed to keep the pace. Over the years Cochrane and Red Rider were always in the pack of Canadian rock, they seemed to come close to breaking the barrier to American success but always seemed to come up just short. Which is truly a loss for that American music machine, Cochrane is a heck of a songwriter and can weave a tale with the best of them.

Long respected in his home country it's well worth a trip down the Discography and listen from the early days up to today's solo efforts. It was full octane Canadian rock at it's peak and even in these latter years, he has many gems just waiting to be discovered.