You know the conceit behind these “Spatial Track” posts, right? The idea is to post something that is either informed or enriched by some connection to spatiality or is itself somehow evocative of, or at least ascribable to, some place. Hence posts that explicitly state their setting or are otherwise heavy from the weight of their implicit location.

But this post is different. This recording of Bill Haley’s “Within this Broken Heart of Mine” is so explicitly spatial that it almost shouldn’t even count. First of all, the song itself is entirely inconsequential, which is already trouble. It doesn’t even start until 2:28. What’s in those first two point five minutes? Directions!!!!! Fo real, friends and neighbors - it’s Billy Williamson, a member of Bill Haley’s Saddlemen, giving egregriously long and overrought, possibly even dangerous directions to The Twin Bars in Gloucester, New Jersey. Over the radio, of course. To imagine somebody listening to live radio in 1951, furiously scribbling several different iterations of terrible directions to a bar somewhere between Philly and Gloucester, NJ, is to know exactly what was wrong with old timey stuff.

MAPPING IT

Turn right at the main street of Camden (which is “Broadway”) and be (pointlessly) forewarned that the main street of Gloucester is also “Broadway.” You there yet?

HEARING IT

This is a gem from some radio recording. Not a Spotify thing.