The Legend-News

What We Got Is The Cotton-Pickin' BBC
You may recall that I've mentioned the lack of parodies of songs by C.W. McCall. With the exception of Sheeler and Sheeler's "Car Phone", no one seemed to have attempted a parody of any of C.W.'s works.

Well during my searches for all things C.W., I found a reference to a hitherto unknown -- to me, anyway -- parody of a C.W. McCall song. It's "Convoy G.B.", as in "Great Britain", recorded by Laurie Lingo and the Dipsticks. According to the article on Excite Music, "Convoy G.B." made it to number 4 on the British pop charts. Laurie Lingo and the Dipsticks were not an actual group, but a pair of disc jockeys for BBC Radio 1, Dave Lee Travis and Paul Burnett.

I don't have a copy of the song, or even the lyrics to it; so far, I haven't found any online or offline sources who have a copy. But I did find a way to contact Dave Lee Travis: he's now doing the Breakfast Show for Classic Gold Radio in the U.K. I've filled out the contact form on their web site, asking Dave for help in locating a copy of "Convoy G.B." Maybe someone on the east side of the pond still has one.

Didja Know? The Followup
Last week, I made a mention that CB radio started in 1947, and received a few queries about that date. Well, you couldn't buy a CB radio in '47, because that's the year in which the concept of the Citizens Radio Service was created. Commercial units weren't available until mid-1950s. Obviously, the world was not yet running on Internet Time.

Join The Midland Convoy
And speaking of CB, didja know that C.W. advertised Midland CB radios? I did, and on Saturday afternoon Chad Schaefer alerted me to an item that was being auctioned on eBay: a Midland model 13-882C in really good condition, with the original box.

Of course, being the eBay fool that I am, I entered a bid. And, as usual, I won. (No, there is no moral here.) Here are two pictures that were uploaded by the seller:

I'll post my own pictures, and probably the entire manual, when the item arrives.

Convoy 2000
The preliminary itinerary: we depart from Los Angeles on the morning of Tuesday, June 6, and arrive at that one Atlantic Ocean on the evening of Saturday, June 10. Read the details on the Convoy 2000 Information Page.

Major decisions still need to be made. For example, do I go into serious hock to buy my dream Grand Cherokee, or do I buzz the Interstates in my '94 Saturn? What model CB should I bring along? And what about a radar detector? Hmmm...

Song A’ Th’ Week
It's Leftover Truck Songs Month at the Legend-News!

Convoy 2000 will involve a trip from California to New Jersey. But the first step is to get to California. Alan (he's organizing this party) and I will be following the Lincoln Highway -- usually, that's U.S. Route 30 -- westward. We'll be travelling the route of the first coast-to-coast highway in the U.S.A.

Old 30

(Bill Fries, Chip Davis)
From the album Wolf Creek Pass

She was mud and sand and concrete
Mixed with water made a' tears
From the rivers runnin' down the Great Divide
She was three thousand miles
Of rockin', rollin' highway
A million mem'ries long and two lanes wide

Far across the wide Missouri
To the ol' Wyomin' line
From the Jersey shore to San Francisco Bay
She was known to all the truckers
As the mighty Lincoln Highway
But to me, she's still Old 30 all the way

Now the Interstate goes screamin' through the backyard of her life
But it just don't send those shivers down my spine
So before I take that exit
To the Highway In The Sky
I'm gonna take Old 30 one more time

She was radiators boilin'
In the burnin' summer sun
And a blizzard blowin' wild across the plains
She was tumbleweeds a-rollin'
In the gentle winds of Fall
And the lights of old Grand Island in the rain

She was mud and sand and concrete
Mixed with water made a' tears
From the rivers runnin' down the Great Divide
She was three thousand miles
Of rockin', rollin' highway
A million mem'ries long and two lanes wide

Now the Interstate goes screamin' through the backyard of her life
But it just don't send those shivers down my spine
So before I take that exit
To the Highway In The Sky
I'm gonna take Old 30 one more time

One more time

Original contents Copyright ©2000 Edward Floden. All rights reserved.
"That probably would have been more commanding had I not been wearing my 'yummy sushi' pajamas." -- Buffy Summers, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Goodbye Iowa".