lovehate summerdrivecast for a musicmonday

Inspired by my recent spate of musicmonday podcasts and a blog post from almost a year ago entitled "The Top Ten Classic Arena Rock Summer Fast Driving Songs of All-Time". At the time I simply listed the tracks and tried to justify the list. This year you get to share one of my favourite hour-long playlists. Hope you dig it as much as I do. Feel free to comment below if your list would be different.

While almost everything else on lovehatethings is Creative Commons, this is not, and if the RIAA or any of the artists ask me to take this down, I'll gladly comply. But until then, if you dig it, maybe you'll go and buy it, which will make everyone happy in the end.

thinglets: I will not see any summer movie that...

With the myriad of films released each summer, it takes a discerning formula to parse out the titles I will NEVER see from the ones that I might. As such, I offer up a filtering system to reduce your summer wallet suck to a minimum.

I will not see any summer movie that...

  1. Has Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, or Jack Black.
  2. Has Sara Jessica Parker, Renee Zellweger.
  3. Has people wearing leather armour, chaps, or quivers.
  4. Has the word Fockers, Karate, or MacGruber in it.
  5. Has candy-ass sparkle vampires.
  6. Has the words Nightmare, Elm, and Street.
  7. Is an animated film featuring a green ogre, an over-sized dog, step-dancing or cheerleading.
  8. Has a title beginning with "Legend of the Guardians" or ending with "The Owls of Ga'Hoole".
  9. Has 3D in the title.
  10. Is a sequel, remake, re-imagining, has a "Part" or colon in the title.

Wow... guess I just saved ALL my money this summer.

lovehate: Top Ten Pieces of General Admission Summer Concert Etiquette

  1. I know you love your 3 year old. I know I don't. There are beer, drugs, and scary-looking people at rock concerts. For the price you paid for a ticket, hire a sitter.
  2. I get that there may be a song that you don't like and so you use that opportunity to go buy a drink or hit the bathroom, but if you're putting double digits on the odometer before the first hour is up, maybe you should just stand in the concession area.
  3. Your friend does not need to know RIGHT NOW which song the band is playing, nor do I need you to scream into your cellphone for 5 minutes while standing 3 feet behind me on the lawn.
  4. This is a concert, not a ball game. I can get my own drink. I don't need beer-laden shills waddling through my view to sell suds at my seat. I'd like to watch the show!
  5. As much as I might not like, but respect your right to walk up out of nowhere and stand right in front of me on the General Admission lawn, must you light up your shitty-smelling clove cigarette when doing so?
  6. Remember the inspirational maxim "Dance like nobody's watching"? Well I AM watching, because you're 5 feet in front of me and flailing around like a spastic marionette on an amphetamine bender. How about giving it a rest during, oh, I don't know, setbreaks!
  7. You know how there are times when the band WANTS you to sing along with them... oh, that's right, you do! And you think it's EVERY WORD of EVERY SONG! If I pay you the ticket price, will you shut up for the rest of the night?
  8. Your blanket is NOT eminent domain!
  9. While I know you want to get rid of you $9 beer cans so that you don't have to step on them while getting your "groove thang" on, letting them roll into my space so that my equilibrium on a hill is threatened. Especially if you move downhill from me... I'm a big guy.
  10. I'm guessing you talked to your concert-mate on the phone earlier, on the drive over, and pre-show. While the music is playing, here's a general rule: How about a little less talking and a little more SHUT THE HELL UP!

lovehate: The Top Ten Classic Arena Rock Summer Fast Driving Songs of All-Time

Okay, I know it's another list, but this is one I've been thinking about for a while and summer driving has prompted me to put this together. If you have to drive somewhere for about an hour this summer, and you've got some open highway on the way, put this playlist together and hopefully you will be inspired to put the windows down, turn the air conditioning off, and go 10-15 mph over the speed limit... remember I said OPEN road. If I had to give you my straight-up Top Ten Songs of All Time, NONE of these songs would make the cut - but for summer driving, they're perfect.

In my suggested mix CD or playlist order:

  1. Boston - Foreplay/Long Time: Yeah, okay, you all love More Than a Feeling, but nothing in MTAF beat the guitar breaks in Long Time before each "Well I'm takin' my time..." instance. I know some of you may also find the pompous grandiosity of Foreplay a little overbearing while driving, but when the Tom Scholz signature riff comes in after the bass punches at the beginning of Long Time, you know it was worth it. Also, in as much as some of you may argue this is two songs and shouldn't count, tough sh** - my list. Plus, when have you EVER heard Foreplay on its own?
  2. The Allman Bros. - Jessica: A true driving song. It's hard to top the beat this song has when you're chugging down the blacktop with the wind whipping in your hair. The best of Southern Rock and driving music wrapped up in one neat KSA bow.
  3. Rush - Tom Sawyer: If just for the first 30 seconds alone, this song makes drivers jump on the gas pedal and make the dials go to 11.
  4. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run: I've never been a big fan of The Boss, but I can listen to this song over and over again. Perhaps the only song with glockenspiel that makes the list.
  5. Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell: I know some people LOVE Paradise by the Dashboard Light, but the Jim Steinman-penned title track to this epic album kicks serious ass. From here on in, "kicks serious ass" will be reduced to KSA, because it will be used repeatedly.
  6. Foghat - Slow Ride: "Slow ride - take it easy." And yet every time this song comes on I seem to find myself speeding. It's now a song I'll always associate with the film Dazed and Confused - and that's not a bad thing!
  7. AC/DC - Back in Black: AC/DC is SO overplayed. I get that the simplicity of the rock riffs and beats appeal to masses more than almost any other band thats been around for 35 years, and I know that everyone probably has their favorite tune, but for driving, Back in Black is IT. Definitely not what you would call a fast driving beat, it is, however, perfect for pulling up to a stoplight somewhere along your journey.
  8. The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again: CSI has done more to destroy the image of this song than the publicity was worth, but herein again is a case where the long 8 minute or so version is essential to your summer drive. And plus, how can you beat a song where the single coolest lyric is a Roger Daltrey screamed "YEEEAAAAAH!"?
  9. Jackson Browne - Running on Empty: Maybe not the "heaviest" song out there, but definitely one that was written for those behind the wheel. Incredibly singable - there's no way you can avoid belting out the chorus and looking like a fool while soccer moms in their hybrids give you weird glances. That said, if you're driving slow enough to be parallel with a soccer mom in a hybrid for more than a couple of seconds - step on it!
  10. Derek and the Dominoes - Layla (full version): Forget about the short AM radio version that came out back in the 70s. You want the 8 minute long epic with piano and slide guitar at the end so you can imagine you're Henry Hill being chased by a helicopter while on a cocaine bender. When listening to this version, try to also forget the devastating acoustic turn on this song done by Clapton in the 90s... made me want to drive into a telephone pole. The easy ending coda on this song makes it a perfect conclusion to the playlist - perfect for pulling up into the driveway.
If you have longer than an hour to go, please consider some of the tracks that didn't make the cut: Kiss - Detroit Rock City, Doors - L.A. Woman, Golden Earring - Radar Love, Stevie Ray Vaughan - Couldn't Stand the Weather, Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls, Deep Purple - Highway Star, Thin Lizzy - The Boys are Back in Town (I know, done to death, but fits this category so well), Elton John - Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, Triumph - Magic Power (slow build, but great anthemic climax), and last [on the alternate list] Rainbow - Stargazer (I know a lot of you may not have heard this one before, but this song has a huge KSA factor).

If you want to spend $9.90 on 10 kick ass driving tunes on your favorite mp3 download site this summer, you could do a lot worse, and not much better, than any of these.

Here's a link to a Youtube Playlist I created that has full versions (most with video) to the 10 songs above. The embedded player below seems to have only caught five of the songs while embedding, so click on the link if you want all 10.

lovehate: My Summer Bucket List

Below is my summer "bucket list" - i.e. things to do before summer kicks the bucket.

  • Think of a better name for this list than "bucket list"
  • Get back to Las Vegas and find a way to break the bank and come home with enough money to fund a winter trip to Vegas.
  • Spend ample time deciding whether I should get an iPhone.
  • Reassure myself that my decision to not buy a BluRay DVD player is completely justified because the cost is still too high for its own good, and even though I own a couple hundred DVDs, I never watch them.
  • Try to regain the same blogging output that I had last summer when lovehatethings first started. (Two weeks until the first anniversary!)
  • Try to encourage more of friends that Twitter is about way too much more than lifestreaming for them to use that as an excuse to stay away.
  • Catch up on the latest seasons of Weeds, Burn Notice, Ashes to Ashes, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and True Blood.
  • Go to see some late night movies... I wish they started at midnight - 10:30 is too early for this night owl.
  • Get on the ball and reserve a night for my 3rd annual Backyard Film Festival.
  • Book a gig so that my gracious friends who keep asking me to play are kept happy for another six months.
  • Find a cheap source of watermelons. Those things are like crack in the summer; gotta have my fix.
  • Play some poker with friends and at the closest casino.
  • Try at least five local restaurants I've never checked out.
  • Do at least one day of buying rush tickets for Stratford and checking out a couple of plays.
  • Find things that really piss me off... it helps the podcast rants so much.
  • Start to write the Great American novel and then give up in a violent fit having drowned myself in a sea of bourbon.
  • Start to read Finnegan's Wake... and then give up in a violent fit having drowned myself in a sea of bourbon.
  • Do annual summer viewings of Dazed and Confused, Almost Famous, Big Fish, a Kevin Smith marathon, and, if the moment moves me, a John Hughes marathon.
  • And last, but not least, read the books that have been gathering dust on the shelves for far too long.