ZZ Top – "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide" (1979)

I’m bad, bad, bad, bad, bad

I’m nationwide

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my mother’s car – which is my car now, although I still think of it as her car – had a small oil leak.

I took it to a local Chevrolet dealership, where it was determined that whoever had last changed the oil had failed to tighten the oil filter properly.  Hence the slight leak.

At a Skyline Chili in Indianapolis, IN

I didn’t have to wait very long at the Chevrolet dealership, and they didn’t charge me a cent.

Best of all, I got an e-mail from the SiriusXM radio folks a few days after that:

Dear Gary, 

Thank you for having your Chevrolet serviced recently.  To show our gratitude, SiriusXM and your dealer are giving you a free 2-Month SiriusXM Select trial that includes over 140 channels of world-class entertainment.

No credit card needed.  No strings attached.  Really.

You’d best believe I jumped on that free trial like a big dog.

At a Dairy Queen in Sullivan, MO

So when I hit the road to drive from my home in Maryland to the house in Missouri where my parents lived until my father died last year, I was neck-deep in satellite radio channels – including the two Howard Stern channels, which usually are premium channels that cost SiriusXM subscribers extra.

At a gas station in Rolla, MO

Here’s a day-by-day summary of the trip:

Day 1: Rockville, Maryland, to Terre Haute, Indiana, via I-270, I-68, I-79, and I-70 – about 630 miles.

At an Arby's in Beckley, WV

Day 2: Terre Haute to Joplin, Missouri, via I-70 and I-44 — 450 miles.

Day 3: After cleaning out what remained in my parents’ house and attending the closing on the sale of that house, I drove from Joplin to St. Louis via I-44 – 285 miles.

At a computer repair store in Staunton, VA

Day 4: St. Louis to Morehead, Kentucky via I-64 – 400 miles.

Day 5: Morehead to Rockville via I-64, I-81, I-66, and I-495 – 490 miles.

Total distance: a bit over 2250 miles.

My route

As the photos that accompany this post show, it was an interesting trip . . . although I never want to drive 2250 miles in five days again.

I’ll be writing more about my odyssey in the next two or three 2 or 3 lines posts.

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ZZ Top was always so full of sh*t that their eyes were brown, but I enjoyed some of their songs – especially “La Grange,” which was their first hit single.

Our featured song

I heard “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” on XM’s “Classic Rewind” channel while driving on I-64 between Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky.  

Here’s that song, which was released on ZZ Top’s 1979 album, Degüello.  

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: