Civic Musical Road
The Civic Musical Road was built on Avenue K in Lancaster, California, United States, on 5 September 2008. Covering a quarter-mile stretch of road between 60th Street West and 70th Street West, the Musical Road used grooves cut into the asphalt to replicate part of the Finale of the William Tell Overture. It was paved over on 23 September after nearby residents complained to the city council about noise levels.
After further complaints from city residents about its removal, work began to re-create it on 15 October 2008 on Avenue G between 30th Street West and 40th Street West — this time, two miles away from any residence. This road is named after the Honda Civic. It opened two days later. The new section on Avenue G is only in the far left lane of the westbound side of the road.
The road appears in Honda Civic commercials. The rhythm is recognizable, but the pitches are so far off that the melody bears only a slight resemblance to the William Tell Overture. The intonation is not affected by the design of the car or the travel speed. It is likely the designers made a systematic miscalculation which affected all the groove spacings.
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Famous quotes containing the words civic, musical and/or road:
“It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Telephone poles were matchsticks, put there to be snapped off at a whim. Dogs trotting across the road were suddenly big trucks. Old ladies turned into moving—vans. Everything was too bright, but very funny and made for my delight. And about half a mile from my long liquid breakfast I turned carefully down a side street and parked, and sat beaming happily through the tannic fog for about an hour, remembering how witty we all had been, how handsome and talented ... [ellipsis in original]”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)