Monday, January 24, 2005

Rip Snorting Drivin Music

Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen are on deck right now, this moment, in media res, that sort of thing. It's their live best of album, and I bought it because of its great music and Hot Rod Lincoln.

Driving music has pedal slapping bass. Driving music has velocity: horns that pull beats and machine gun drums. Driving music has vocal speed. It's your music fix for Route 66. A twanging rythm and rippling piano careen through the music like bank robbers in a Cadillac DeVille, cash and a blonde in the back, leaning through downtown Las Vegas.

Except! Why is it that when people make live albums they always screw up the music by adding in some extra "story" to the songs. With Hot Rod Lincoln, they did just that. Right smack dab in the middle of the hottest, swankiest high-octane riff, they slow it down and blah blah their way through some bull crap that's not in the original. The pump-and-jump, the side-step the clutch and go, the concrete rumbling, tire burning guitar crescendo and vocal power play gets bogged down in some explanation of what happened. I don't want someone to explain what happened. I want to feel what happened. That's why Charlie Ryan didn't include a bunch of crap at the end of the song. It's because he was done! It was a race he was singing about, not a funny thing that happened on the way to the office.

A pox on deviations from the original.

Ok. I'll shut up. And I think I'll get another root beer.

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