Interiority Complexes (Music About Places)
When a 60s musician passes away, I get a chance to re-listen to their music. I've always liked Wichita Lineman because it had an eeriness or sonic 'interiority', that started to show up in recordings in the mid-60s. Sometimes it is the sound of a particular venue (such as the Fillmore West or the Matrix Club in San Francisco for example), that becomes a 'sonic synecdoche' for San Francisco itself. [1] It's a vibe, that I think the song possessed--produced by bounced tracks and heavy compression for AM radio. In the 60s, car radios sometimes had optional reverbs. I recall my Uncle's 1963 Galaxie had one. This had a kind of "Fillmore effect", of giving music a sense of place, or interiority --literally in a car interior. Wichita was undoubtedly played a lot over these systems, but in retrospect, the wide-open space was already evoked in the lyric, and could be recalled with a photo like this. (In fact when you Google "Wichita Lineman" ...
