There’s always something about drinking and driving… it just shouldn’t be done… but thinking and driving? Well, that’s another story altogether and a very successful one at that: there must have been so many broken-hearted out there doing just that – that it became one of the Greece’s biggest hits in the late (and blaring) ’80s and a mantra for truckers countrywide.
Titled “Odigo kai se Skeftomai” (Driving and Thinking of You), this song was one of many to have marked Thessaloniki-born Antypas’ (Masloumidis) stage career.
Off his 1989 same titled album, the song, penned by Andreas Fountoulakis and music by the man himself, goes something like this:
Antypas was as a football player early on in life before singing won him over in the ’80s. So he hung up his soccer cleats and tried his hand at the annual Thessaloniki Song Festival, where he came in third. For most of the ’90s, Antypas’ career was smooth sailing representing what is often deridingly called the skyladiko idiom – literally translating into “of the dogs” due to the distinctive resemblance of the singing to… dog howls.
The lyrics of lost loves and illicit affairs were mostly dressed in crying bouzouki-laden oriental-style rhythms. Whatever one’s musical preferences however, there were few despairing Greeks who didn’t at least once whisper the lyrics, hum the tune or sing along out loud. Today, following the “fusion” of mainstream pop and the popular laika, this term is used less often and its place laiko-pop covers all ground.
Decades later, and to demonstrate that music knows no boundaries, Konstantinos Matsikas and Dionysis Christodoulatos rework this very same song, adding fuzz guitars, driving drums and solid bass and transforming it into an intoxicating rock sensation. As a homage, the intro features Antypas in the original singing the first two verses.
And this time around, it’s not about the middle-aged trucker but about the youthful black leather-clad motorcycle rider cruising town and lost in his thoughts of her (or him)…
♪‘Odigo kai se Skeftmai’
Loose translation by The Greek Vibe
Driving and thinking of you
And that’s a hazardous thing to do
With my thoughts on you
to sidestep the danger.
Driving and thinking of you
With tear-filled eyes…
I feel I’m losing myself
Since I’m losing you.
Driving and thinking of you
I take pity on me
I feel I’m losing myself
Since I’m losing you.
I get sick at the thought
Wherever you go, when others you see
When you don’t speak to me
I get sick…
I get sick at the thought
Wherever you go, what doors you knock on
When you don’t speak to me
I get sick…
Driving on my side,
I have only your thought
And no other I promise
Will ever take your spot.
Driving and thinking of you
With tear-filled eyes
I feel I’m losing myself
Since I’m losing you.
Driving and thinking of you
I take pity on me
I feel I’m losing myself
Since I’m losing you.”
