Cruisin’ at the Speed of Sound!

Below is just a portion of the stories we cover in this episode, enjoy these seemingly random musings and more!

• Some of my all-time crusin’ songs: Megadeth – High Speed Dirt, Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now, Boston – Let Me Take You Home Tonight, AC/DC – Highway to Hell, Jay-Z – Big Pimpin’, Golden Earring – Radar Love, Cake – Going The Distance, David Bowie – Stay, Cry of Love – Highway Jones
• Cruising down the main strip in Ocean City blasting “Sunglasses at Night” with my brother and friends in the car, hitting on girls
• Playing GTA Vice City and literally spending hours riding a motorcycle and listening to the radio stations in the game. 
• Some of the best times of my life were creating playlists just to go for a drive at night and listen to them over and over again with friends and alone
• Grabbing a 6 pack of beer, driving my jeep to a secluded spot with a girl, putting on the CD and watching night sky, talking and dreaming
• Flipping through my 100 page CD book while navigating traffic on 495 searching for that perfect CD and perfect song
• I found my favorite band, Opeth, while working at a car dealership. I would wash and fuel up cars and every time I got in one I would immediately tune the radio to Liquid Metal for fun, one time I did it and “Ghost of Perdition” was one, I stopped the car, closed my eyes, and thanked the gods that music like that existed. 
• Cruising to the beach as a kid with my mom, tapping on my knee to the music 
• I got the idea of road trip playlists from my dad after helping him make one for a trip to Florida
• Camping out for concert tickets all night with the radio blasting and 100 becoming friends with 100 people instantly
• I have issues with self confidence, but when I drive or when I’m listening to music, I feel unstoppable and like I have all the confidence and self esteem in the world
• Movies like American Graffiti, Baby Driver, and The Fast and The Furious, all car-esque movies with heavy musical influences and undertones all throughout the movies
• Driving 3 hours up the road to Philly just to see a concert in a venue the size of a shoe box. And meeting for the first time a friend who would eventually be in my wedding party

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports related.

Anyone that knows me knows I have two passions in life, cars and music, and often I find that these two passions overlap or have an indirect relationship with each other. I feel that there’s a deep seated connection as both worlds can ignite feelings and emotions unlike anything else on the. Today on the show, we’ll talk about that connection as well as other car and music adjacent musings and topics coming to you live from W G G M Studio in the basement of Washington DC It’s Break Fix with Bread and Eric , right?

You are Pete. And please join me in welcoming back Pete Klein from Vet Motorsports, along with Donovan Lara from Garage Riot and GTM members Rob Lores and Mountain Manam. So just kind of give some uh, I guess history. Into your car slash musical background. Now we’ll just go around horns. I guess I’ll start with Rob.

I know [00:01:00] you’ve got a, a huge musical history, I think, what was it? Your uncle taking you around? Boston area, you name it, there’s a history there. My mom was a soundboard operator at the original Woodstock, so their album collection was completely off the hook. They’ve met everybody under the sun. My dad, they met when they went to college at Northeastern and he had a Volkswagen bus there that they would wheel all the stuff from the radio studio from Northeastern out to the cliffs over the beach and have full weekend long beach parties with just do the whole show.

The Northeastern radio shows from the overlook over the beach, just blasting music out for the whole time. And so this is sort of the culture I was raised in of. We always had pretty ridiculous speakers and pretty much every album you can imagine, every type of music. The earliest band I ever listened to was the police.

My mom was a guitar player as well. And so. That started everything. I got multiple trombones, a ukulele, a banjo keyboard. Played with a bunch of SC bands all over the place. I dunno what I said. Where’s the, where’s the two Timane and the two tubas? [00:02:00] Uh, my brother’s house. , which, which sounds funny except that my brother’s wife is a town sort of district music teacher up in Massachusetts.

Literally they have a temp and multiple tuba and euphoniums and clarinets and everything else in their house. And their car purchases were driven by what could actually fit a Timon . So early on she got a, she got one of the like manual transmission Honda element because with the seats folded up, you could actually just slide a temp in there and a tuba together at the same time and take it places you can fit an eight by 10 base.

In a Honda element, you can fit it. Honda, Honda Element. You know what? You can fit a piccolo in, you can fit it in everything. , everything. Let you know. . In addition, my uncle was a record producer for hard hardcore bands, sort of a few steps beyond, you know, noise bands and hardcore, et cetera. And so he would, uh, at a pretty young age in, in early high school, he was the one who would drop off mix tapes at my house for every possible excuse he could, and then [00:03:00] give me the list of every tiny five person size club up to the big clubs and every show that was possibly going on.

And so we were always at the, at the forefront of hearing all that. As you got further along in high school, there was a ton of vehicular shenanigans in getting to shows as a 16 and a half year old and out until three in the morning at some tertiary show you were at after the, you know, two shows after the first show was over.

And someone’s either basement or Newbury comics backroom or wherever it might happen to be. That’s sort of where it began. That and into car stereos and into every possible type of music from the trombone history to a little bit of banjo, playing to all sorts of stuff. You name it, I listen to it and you name it, I’ll drive it.

So it all sort of dovetails together pretty well. So let’s go with Donovan. Always around music. Uh, even when I was a kid, I mean, we were talking a minute ago about the, you know, the, the hi-fi speakers that were, you know, three feet tall, blasting, you know, Zeppelin and whatever, you know, I was always gone by that, but became a musician really to get outta class.

I, I probably wasn’t the best student. And in fifth grade, they, they [00:04:00] said, Hey, anybody that wants to play music, uh, you know, an instrument come to the band room. So me and my two hooligan buddies went to the band room and, uh, the only instruments that we thought were cool enough were drums. So we started playing and I was really the only one that stuck with it.

And, you know, at the same time, my mom had gotten remarried to a musician who was fairly successful in the Atlanta area, and he had a studio in the house. So I was always around that, you know, moved from obviously concert percussion to drum set, started playing, played all the way through high school. Uh, actually paid my way through college on a jazz band scholarship, which was cool.

I did that. I did. Basketball band and show choir, anything I could do. But I got in a band in college that, uh, was pretty successful. And I have to think now, you know, if social media had been, you know, around back then, we might’ve, might’ve been something, but, uh, we played the college circuit across the southeast.

Pretty big deal, I guess, you know, making a lot of money in college. Did that, and then, then went on to, um, you know, continue to play. I, I’m still in a band twice over midnight. We’ve got a disc out. Got some videos out for the previous iterations of the band. So I keep it going. But, uh, yeah, that’s [00:05:00] kind of in a nutshell, I guess that’s it.

My, uh, ex-wife was a singer, so I’ve always just always been around that. And, you know, music is still really a, a important part of our household right now. There’s always music going on, you know, somebody’s always singing. We got pianos all over. There’s drum sets back here. I mean, it’s just ongoing thing with us.

Is that when we ask you, Donovan, when the reunion tour is with your ex-wife, if you were in the band? Or is that, does that not happen? I’m sorry, did I speak out of turn? I apologize. Is that, you know, if we were into the same type of music, maybe that would work out, but, so no reunion tour? That’s what I’m hearing right now.

No prob probably not anytime. Oh, okay. Okay. Just that I just wanted to clarify. I wonder what the band was that was touring, uh, in the southeast and. Man, the worst band name ever. They, we were called Cool Beans . Yeah. Terrible. I didn’t come up with a name, but it’s funny, you know, I was just going through some stuff the other day in the basement and I found one of our flyers and like Vertical Horizon was on the bill with us and.

You know, we did some crazy things. One of the weirdest gigs I think we ever had, cuz we were kind of a, like a widespread panic, grateful Dead man, which wasn’t music I [00:06:00] necessarily listened to. I was more of a three 11, you know, that kind of guy. But that was the big deal. I mean, we were getting booked a lot and we somehow got booked for, I don’t know if you guys remember the band, I think they were called All For One.

They were like a a boy band. We opened up for them in a baseball field in Huntsville, Alabama. So you can imagine you’ve got 12, 13 year old girls freaking out over this band. Here we are, you know, right. We’re playing, you know, grateful Dead and all the stuff that they’ve never even heard of. In the meantime, they set us up in the front of the stage.

So, you know, my drums were in front of the drum riser and they started testing the lights while we were playing. And I don’t know if you guys have ever been close to park ends that big, but I thought I was gonna catch on fire. It was, it was just constant heat. So not the most cringeworthy gig I ever played.

Maybe we’ll talk about that later, but, uh, it was, it was certainly up there. I think we should go to Pete and then finish off with, with the GTM OGs. For those of you listening, this is Pete Klein. I did the, the intro. We’re in the basement of, uh, the studios somewhere in, uh, Washington, dc Uh, I didn’t really have the illustrious start that some of the [00:07:00] other presenters have talked about.

My parents burned records for a living. No, I’m just kidding. They did nothing like that. So I didn’t really get into music until really I got into college. I mean, I grew up in Cleveland, was really into sports. I tried playing bass when I was in high school, but it really didn’t pan out that great. But I loved rock and roll and I loved music and so, When I was in high school, I, I was a big metal head.

I mean, and, and if you grew up in Cleveland, that’s kind of, I mean, it is heavy metal central to shows like the reunion tour for De Purple on the first day iteration of, of that with Ian Gillon and, you know, Jimmy Blackmore and, and all that. I did the Roger Waters pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, and that was his first time doing his solo work right after he left Pink Floyd or Gilmar kicked him out or whatever and really didn’t pick up playing music.

College, like I said, and then I went, went to Ohio State and ended up picking up bass down there and getting involved in a band in, over the course of 20 years, we had a recording contract and I [00:08:00] would say toured with my hand quotes in the air, you know, the country. And played South by Southwest and North by Northeast and North by Northwest New York City.

Um, and did some pretty cool things. We opened up for a band called dig. They were out from the LA scene, opened up for the early version of Creed. I mean, right before they broke. Huge. But, you know, we were more like built to Spill or Neil Young, an alternate kind of vibe. And I mean, Neil Young, kind of like live Russ, but not an emo thing.

But it was really kind of a country esque Americana kind of vibe. You know, I did that for 20 plus years and, and I’m sure everybody here has these stories of being in bands. It’s like being in a marriage with, you know, X number of people that are, and after a while I just got. Kind of burn out from it.

And then I decided to go motorcycle racing and went from a, being challenged emotionally by four or five guys and being stuck in an a econo line van with a bunch of guys that are overly fraudulent. Tube driving around in a van with a [00:09:00] motorcycle in the back and road racing. So, I mean, that’s more or less my background.

Was your pit crew overly flatulent as well? Well, pit crew was me of one, so yes. Consistently, overly flatulent? Yes, I am. . This is a great fan name. . Overly flatulent. I like that. It’s good. Overly flatland. Donovan, what was the name of your band again? Woo Beans and their album. Overly Flatulent? No, the uh, yeah, overly flatland.

Is that your first release? Mine as Will man. Yeah. Sorry, Donovan was like, these guys are something. What was your first release? Overly flatulent. Well done. Yes. No flag. Well play. Oh, by the way, so Rob asked, so the, the band that I was in was called Silo the Husky, so that might be on par with cool beans. So it’s S I l O t h e H U S k I E, not y.

That’s still better. In fact, I don’t even refer to that, that band as cool beans. I just call us the beans. So when somebody says, oh yeah, that’s back in the beans day. So, which it really isn’t any better, but you know. [00:10:00] All right, let’s go to Mountain Mandan. So what’s your, do you have a musical background or are you like, Eric, you just, you’re just a, a hobbyist

My musical background started when I was a kid. My mom and stepfather used to have parties at the house. Friends would come over and they would bring their instruments. This was back in the mid eighties. They’d always bring their guitars and stuff like that. I always had interest in learning guitar, but my age, my hands being so small, I couldn’t stretch my fingers out far enough to hit the chords.

So one of the guys decided, Hey, I’ll bring Manda Lynn. So I brought a mandolin. I learned my chords initially on mandolin to play a lot of like blue grassy type stuff, or like classic rock. They showed up with a banjo one time and I just started plucking on it and having fun with it. And then from there in school I wanted to play saxophone.

but unfortunately my family didn’t have the money to afford one, which just by chance someone in the family had a clarinet. So I got stuck with a clarinet and then wound up being in a drum corps for a little while cuz my sister was in a majorettes. I got stuck with [00:11:00] going along and it was boring for me.

So whenever a group would come through and there’s two people carrying the flag that says what the group is. . That was me and my brother for a good while before they decided to open up, do a drum court. So I started doing adding, I did a little bit with Tom’s and a little bit with the uh, bass drum and kind of got out of it.

By that time I was having a license and wasn’t as interested in that portion of it. Well, had a friend of mine’s brother had a band that was doing pretty decent locally on the local scene, so I kind of roadied for them for a while cuz it was fun to just go hang out at the clubs with them. I can see that And and the cool thing is, cause even though I was, I wasn’t 21, I could get into the clubs cause I was rodeoing so I’d be hanging out in the crowd underage.

Back then in the nineties, nobody cared. So you also had that beard too? ? Yeah, he’s had that since the eighties. What are you talking about, ? I was born with it. . Whenever they would practice and stuff, I’d get on stage and sing their songs and stuff. At one point they asked if I wanted to sing for ’em. I had too much stage fright to do it.

They wanted to get another singer and they [00:12:00] actually almost had a record deal. And then the band broke up like shortly after they were in the talks for a record deal. and then they wound up splitting up. So unfortunately I never went. I have a feeling if I heard you sing, which I’ve never heard you sing, it would end up something along the lines of Randy Travis.

So we’re just gonna leave that where it is. But if you go to a concert with him, you’ll hear him sing. Oh really? Oh dang. Yes, you will. . So I gotta, I gotta share a little tidbit though. And this is something that I don’t even know that Brad knows. I do come from a musical family. I come from some Renaissance artists as well, right?

Some real. And the Kaos Don. Hey, hey, Piccolo. All right, but , but seriously, no. My grandfather, he would build instruments from scratch. So there’s all these stories, and I don’t have to share all of ’em, but basically, you know, guitars, violin, like all sort of stuff. He would make his own wood, Joel, this crazy stuff.

So at one point my grandfather decided, He was gonna build accordions, a typical Italian thing to do, but in their case, he’s old school. So this is not the accordion with the keyboard, like, [00:13:00] you know, the black and whites. This is actually the old school push button kind right on both sides. And not, not a squeeze box.

This is a full size. Okay. So he built one for me. He built one for, uh, my uncle, uh, my cousin, stuff like that. And so all built from scratch and he brought it over here one year for Christmas. It’s at my mom’s house. And he proceeded to try to teach me to play over the two weeks that they were here on vacation.

And I tell you what, I am not musically inclined. And after that horrendous experience of trying to learn an accordion, which is extremely difficult, I never picked up an instrument ever again. But I have a huge appreciation for music. I do. Like polka. I’m just gonna throw that out there. And I have no affiliation with that whatsoever.

But, uh, I just thought that was just fun to share. I can see you in it, like the . No, I gotta, I gotta ask though. Another tradition is using copper pipe for like car parts and stuff. Did this accordion have copper piping anywhere? It did have copper piping, but it did have copper rivets and a lot of other [00:14:00] stuff.

So it, it’s, yeah, it, it’s just, it goes with the territory. It’s par for the course. So anyway. Brad, you played an instrument in school. I know that you were band. So, yeah. Yeah. I started playing saxophone back in fifth grade, and I played all the way through high school. In some college I had a, you know, a music scholarship for saxophone and everything.

And Where’s your saxophone At? The farm shop. I sold that thing years ago. Really? Yeah. It was great. I mean, I, I was good, you know, I had fun and everything, but I just, I lost interest in playing that. I always wanted to play guitar or something Cool. So I tried teaching myself and I was terrible at it. I’m still terrible at it, and I pick it up every once in a while.

But then I really kind of started just, I love live music. There was a time about five or six years ago, I just started going to concerts, like, like crazy, even from high school. And I was going to concerts probably two to three to four a month. I, there’s something about music, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t have that much to say about my musical background, just that I love music and ever from when I was a little child, [00:15:00] you know, riding around in the car with my dad and my mom and I was the first person, actually the only person in my family to actually play an instrument.

But we all have like an appreciation for it and just making playlists and riding around to the beach and, and just listening to the tunes and everything and just getting in the car and going for a ride. Not no particular place to go. Uh, and just listening to songs and everything. And those are some of my fondest memories with my parents and everything.

So it’s just that has stuck with me, you know, to this day. And I just love music. Is that like how you guys feel about music though? Is that like an escapism, I don’t mean escape from running from something, but it, it’s able to transport you somewhere, right? I, i, Brad Is that kind of what you’re think? Is that kind of what you’re touching upon?

It, it, it definitely transports me somewhere and it puts me in a, in a different mindset. Or you were saying how music can be an escape. I’ve always thought music is a universal language. Cause it doesn’t matter where you are in the. . If a song comes on and has a good beat, it doesn’t matter if you know the words you or not, you’ll still like tap your foot, move your head boots [00:16:00] and cuts and boots and cuts and boots and cuts.

you know, that’s the one thing that nobody hates, right? I, I can’t think of anybody that hates music. I mean, they may hate certain disciplines of, or genres of music, right? It’s like the one common thread across everybody. I use music to focus, like someone laughed, one said like, oh, I have to write this big paper.

And how do people do that with music? Like right now I’m sitting here and I can, I can hear my kids playing cause they’re not quite asleep. I can hear a helicopter going by. I can hear cars going by. I hear like 75 noises when it, whereas if I need sit in focus, I put on my serious audio file headphones and I blast something so that my brain can only hear that music and it cuts it down to just one thing.

And by doing so, my ability to focus on that second thing is infinitely better. While, uh, especially as something I know, I can sit there and bop along to it. As you said, it’s that bopping along. It’s just so ingrained. It eliminates. every other distraction from my existence, but just the music and what I’m doing, and it’s so much simpler for me at that point.

I’m with you on that, Rob. [00:17:00] And you know, my wife knows that when the, the house and the down tempo and a lot of that stuff starts playing, I’m either writing code or I’m writing an article for, you know, the club or something like that. So you’re right, it, it helps me align in a certain way and gets me focused and for whatever reason, just having that soundtrack in the background, even if it’s something, you know, down tempo or whatever, it helps me filter out the rest of what’s going on.

You know, certain music can make me feel a certain way. So if I’m, it’s an emotional release pretty much. And so if I’m, if I’m feeling a certain way, if I’m angry, I’ll go listen to something to help me kind of. Frustration or that anger out? If I’m feeling happy, I mean, you can tell by my mood by kinda like the music that I’m listening to, pretty much.

But yeah, it’s, it’s kind of like an escape from the idiocy of normal life. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about, man, because when I l I’ve ridden with you in the car for hours and hours. We even had one trip when it was completely silent. Oh my god. You know why? Because the only station your truck got was [00:18:00] NPR and we were driving 13 hours.

From Maryland to, to fucking Kentucky and we couldn’t get NPR in every state. You asshole . So it was silence for like, yeah, but when I ride with you, it’s the opposite. All I hear is so I can’t tell if you’re happy or sad or getting revved up. It all sounds like somebody’s eating rocks. Like to Yeah. But, but it sounds different to me.

So you know, what you hear is like someone just garling nails. It actually does sound different to me. I’ve developed that ear for the little nuances and the screening and the growling and, you know, all that good stuff. Just, you know what, Eric, the next time you get ’em in the car, get ’em in the car during NPR R’S pledge drive and that, that not to knock on NPR because, uh, the Tiny Desk series on YouTube is amazing.

That is excellent. That’s good to legit for a while. Fantastic. Yeah. All right, so, so that’s our musical backgrounds. But why the hell are we on a car podcast? [00:19:00] And, and to make the connection between music and cars, cuz we are a car podcast after all. To Peter’s question about, you know, is it like a escape? I gotta stop right there.

You’re Pete, right? Not Peter. Yeah, not Peter. No, no, it’s just Pete. I mean that’s to, to Mr. Klein’s question. Oh man, it’s sir or overlord to you, sir. His question about escapism, you know, music can be an escape, but obviously cars and driving, that’s an escape as well. I mean, there’s only one way to get away from something.

It’s stop in your car and drive the fuck away. I mean, I think music and cars is like red wine and steak, right? I mean, it’s one of those pairings that just goes well together and I think it opens the floor up to what’s that song or that album or that band that kind of gets you revved up or, or when you’re out there on a twisty mountain road.

I mean, let, let’s go with Donovan. He’s on the tail of the dragon on the regular, I mean, what are you playing when you’re out there on the mountain? Hi this tiger. You know, man, it varies [00:20:00] honestly. You know, I listen to music on the way, but when I’m on the road, I, it’s windows down, listen to the exhaust and sound the engine.

But it’s really interesting for me, you know, early on it was just, you know, whatever I could turn on that was loud and made a lot of noise and, you know, depending on where I’m going, it it really. It does kind of turn into a soundtrack for me. You know, like I, I go to visit my family in Florida and you know, I’ll take the interstate as far as I can.

Then I get on back roads and you know, like out of cell phone range, kind of back roads and you know, I’ll put on whatever it is. Some kind of alternative, you know, Paramore used to be big one. Anagrams a big, you know, I love fan agram, stuff like that. And, and you’re talking about the escape part of it. And for me it’s always like this alternative track that I haven’t heard on the radio 1500 times, you know, that kind of thing.

So it really does kind of transcend, especially you get on a road, you know, there’s one, one particular piece of this road where it’s an old logging road and you know, half the time it’s all just torn down on the side and all you can see is blue sky. You know, you’ve got this, you know, amazing music soundtrack going on.

So, It’s been a while since I’ve really gotten [00:21:00] jacked up for, you know, some kind of outing like that. But I can tell you, uh, I had a buddy of mine’s, uh, guyardo for a couple weeks, fire Starter prodigy, all those a spit fire that was, that was on demand in every time we got in that car, it was like crank it up and just haul ass.

So, and I, I’m really trying to put some really serious thought into us, even though we’re having a great time talking about it, you know, it’s whatever mood I’m in is what’s playing on the radio, right. And so, you know, my Motorsports background, you know, from recent motorcycles and stuff, you know, typically if I’m, if I’m at the line for autocross now and you know, I may be cranking Queens of the Stone Age up until the point where, you know, I’m up n next or whatever.

But it just depends on what’s going on. And I think for me, I. music is a soundtrack. It sets the mood in tempo for whatever I’m doing. And I think especially depending on the mindset, it amplifies and provides a lot of color to what’s happening. And it, and I can’t really explain it any more than that. It fills my day, uh, with immense joy.

It, no matter what I’m listening [00:22:00] to, you know, but I, I, I have my favorite songs, but I tend to pick and choose really where my mood’s at, and that’s what I’m gonna listen to for a while. I don’t know if that, if that makes sense or not, but there’s, there’s not one song where you, you pull the scrunchy out of your ponytail and start doing donuts in your iroc.

Z uh, yeah. Iro Z. No. Listen, I think I love. A great rock anthem, right? And I think rock anthems and cars go well together. And so if you had to say Khi, if you’re in the car and you’re listening, what anthem would you play? Because you’re from Cleveland and you love Heavy Metal, but you love Hard Rock, what would you be listening to?

So I would tell you right now, Boston more than a feeling is like the quintessential rocking anthem or Kiss Detroit, rock City or anything. Van Halen up to Diver Down. So any you pick anything out of a catalog is a great summer rocking anthem song. Love Comes, walking in the End is great. So those are the songs I would gravitate to.

But you know, [00:23:00] Boston, Boston was the first album I ever had next to, uh, houses of the Holy with Led Zeppelin first re serious record. So I’m gonna say that song more than a feeling. And Barta Yeah, I mean, Rush claim. They got their start in Cleveland, wasn’t it? The, they played the long play, what was it, blue Collar Man or whatever the song is.

That’s hard working man. They played that always at midnight on Sunday on W M M S. They played that song and Maggot Rain. It’s a actual song. Look it up. So that’s, I, I’m sorry if I screw skirted the question, but that’s kind of where my headspace at when I’m listening to music in the car. Something I miss from back in the day, late nineties ish, I think for me in this case was actually the music discovery aspect of driving.

I used to frequently drive from like my parents’ house out to UMass, which is where I went to school, and you have to climb a mountain up, sort of a nice twisty road. And I had, you know, 16 valves Chico for a while in there and at the very end, you know, the different things. And I’d be driving up that road and like I was listening to some random station into the middle of the [00:24:00] night.

The first time I ever heard, and this is where it gets interesting to me, is maybe it’s because of my background playing in jazz bands and big bands and sky bands and things, but there was this brand new album by Michelle Camilo who was a, a Latin jazz pianist and he had done his first ever big band album, this thing called, uh, hot House, like I’m Driving.

And as a song built in crescendo, just the way the, the rhythm kept getting faster and faster, just the way it accelerated was on a different planet and the song’s like a seven and a half, eight minute long song. By the end of the song, the car is barely staying together with the speed I’m going. I literally had to pull over cause I was just drenched and sweat from like the act of listening to it because something about it was just so driving and it was different.

Like other time. Hard Rock goes very well together with fast driving, but there’s the discovery of different styles of music that can actually compel you. To do those kind of things in a different way in a car. It was the first time I’d ever heard that I went and soughted out the album and it became this huge thing.

It it, I was a music minor in college as well, but as everybody started to listen to this album and [00:25:00] realized that it was one of those albums where it was never actually done live, the level of complexity was just never done in one take. It took them too many takes from all the different musicians to get it, and these were like the best studio musicians across the board in the horn sections and everything.

But I, I can vividly remember having to pull over in the middle of the night, you know, windows were down, the sunroof was open. This was just blasting out of, you know, I built up the whole stereo in this thing too, and it was just exhausting at how fast I was driving and just how in sync with the music I was from something that wasn’t expected.

Right? It wasn’t hard rock, it wasn’t alternative, it wasn’t any of those things. It was literally like big band, Latin jazz stuff, but it was. Just amazing that sort of the way it all felt at that moment. Would you say though, thinking about the Michelle Camilo comment, amazing piano player, by the way. And if you listen to him, the thing that’s really kind of enticing about is you can hear him in the background going like, like he’s singing what he’s playing as he’s, it’s incredible and it draws you in and it made me think about it, you know, really.

Is there two states of driving with [00:26:00] music? I mean, I think there’s. the escapism though, right? Where I’m listening to music that’s making me think of being somewhere else. And then there’s like the prodigy where I’m like, okay, I’m all jacked up. I wanna fecal every corner. I wanna feel the performance of this car.

You know, I think they’re different, but to me that when you guys are talking about it, that sounds like the two states, uh, you know, other than you’re just cruising the McDonald’s or something. But, you know, when you really, for me anyway, it’s either, either I’m outta my head somewhere and I’m appreciating the drive, or I’m really in the moment with the car itself, you know, trying to be, be one with it.

For me, like when, you know, driving around in cars and listening to music, I mean, that’s something I did from a, before I could even walk. I mean, my family, we were always on the move. We were going to the beach. We were going to, you know, to a, a trail to go bike riding or walking or whatever, and you know, and there’s always music going in the car.

I remember distinctly, I get very distinct. Riding to the beach to Ocean City with my mom, and we’re listening to the Moody Blues, and her favorite song comes on and, you know, she’s sitting there belting [00:27:00] out the lyrics, you know, at the top of her lungs. And I’m just, I’m like a, a two year old sitting in the passenger seat looking at her with all, and you know, the same thing with Michael Jackson and Elton John, just all the time.

And my dad, we’d go to Florida every year, two to three times a. and he would spend hours, if not days, just crafting the perfect playlist for this 18 hour trip. You know, and it is on cassette. So we’re flipping the cassette over, we’re listening to the same songs like 10 times. And then I discovered my favorite band when I was a, a car porter at a dealership locally here.

Uh, and I had to take the cars and wash ’em and fill ’em up with gas. And one of my favorite things to do, because all the cars came with a free subscription of Sirius XM, is as soon as I got in the car, I would tune into Liquid Metal and turn it up, you know, as soon I left it that way for the customers.

I know they loved it, it was great for them, . But one time I did it and then, uh, o’s uh, ghost Rees was on, and I was like, what the fuck is this? My mind was completely blown. I, I was just sitting there. [00:28:00] I mean, you wouldn’t think that like metal music can bring you to tears, but I mean, I’m such an emotional guy anyway, like listening to some of this music, it just brings me to tears, you know, it just tears of saddest tears of joy, whatever it just.

And then I found, you know them. And actually that’s, I was at that con, one of the concerts. I drove up to Philadelphia with a couple of our, uh, club members and we went to see ’em. I’ve been in New York to see em and it’s like, I’ve been following ’em around ever since. And that’s because I was working at a car dealership moving cars around.

I just happened pawn ’em and it was just, It was just amazing. It’s that discovery. No, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But I, I wanna go back to something that Pete alluded to way earlier, talking about driving anthems and stuff like that. And so I wanted to chime in on that for a second. And so for me, I think one of those songs, and this gets to like where I, you know, like Brad talked about his favorite band and how you get into all that.

It’s kind of a weird thing because I got this connection to the cruising idea of like that car anthem by the opening of Revenge of the Nerds [00:29:00] too, which if you’re familiar with that movie, is Back to Paradise by 38 Special. And for me, that’s one of those just. Car Anthem songs like, you know, it, it’s just happy, it, it’s, it gets you in the mood to go drive in and stuff like that.

But my dad was a big audio guy, right? He, he wasn’t musically inclined. He appreciated music and he had a ton of music. I found out, especially after he passed away, there was like, you know, a treasure trove of reel to reel and all sorts of stuff that I went through. And so, you know, he was big into disco and all that kind of stuff, which is, you know, one of my guilty pleasures and we’ll talk about that.

But I found, you know, as a kid, the song that got me and got me hooked on my favorite group was in the eighties when they played the look. by Roxette for the first time on the radio. And I heard it in the car while he was driving me to school and I was like, this, this is it. Cuz that’s a big, you know, guitar, he electric guitar, heavy song.

And so that’s always gotten me, I’ve always appreciated their music and, and it’s absolutely fantastic. But I found though you guys were talking about [00:30:00] drive-in and it, it seemed like a lot of daytime driving and for whatever reason I found myself as a young driver driving at night a lot. And so for me the connection was the songs at night, they’re a lot more chill, maybe a little bit more down tempo, which got me into, you know, house music and, and some other stuff.

So I was wondering for you guys, like what’s your nighttime soundtrack like when you’re out driving, let’s say on a long. So my first ever nighttime album, uh, I think I was just learning how to drive. I learned how to drive on a drive from, from Massachusetts up to the Finger Lakes doing the night shift.

The only, I think it must have been a tape that we had was Paul McCartney’s Give my regards to Broadtree Phenomenal album. That album became the soundtrack to my night driving because as I was driving, my dad would just flip it over cause he didn’t wanna distract me at all. Cause it was like multiple hours of like learning how to drive with this, you know, all the manual in the, in a Volkswagen bus and everything.

But that became the Night Music was that album for me was, was that big thing for [00:31:00] me. I’ve got a couple albums. One is, uh, David Bowie’s Station Is Station because my father, well, when he was making his playlist, he would pick a lot of songs from that. One favorite is Stay Fantastic song. And then, uh, pink Floyd, I Wish You Were Here.

Shine on Your Crazy Diamond. All the parts of that. And you just nice and chill and a lot of guitar and everything. Just, uh, nice to cruise too and everything that, and, uh, the wall. You know, the wall gets, it’s got a very, uh, dynamic. There’s a lot of mood changes in that, but, you know, just cruising to those at night, uh, and just regular song that that just gets me going is that, don’t stop me now by Queen, you know, if I, if I need to get pumped up, I just put that on and I just screaming at the top of my lungs.

My wife is like giggling at me and laughing at me. When I start singing that song. I mean, even in the kitchen, you know, if I’m sitting here getting ready to cook, I put that song on and it just, I get all riled up. That’s the two different types of night song too, right? There’s the type of like, you’re fully wide awake and you’re driving and want that background music versus the like.

I’m sort of half dozing, but I know I need to get there and I have an hour left. [00:32:00] And what am I gonna crank to, as you said, to sing along to and be in the moment. So you finish that drive. Yeah. That, that second one for me, for me was always, uh, synchronicity That album by the police. Phenomenal for that purpose.

For me, that was my big one. You know, nowadays my soundtrack is, God, how many bugs am I hitting with this car that I’m gonna have to clean tomorrow? . Um, you know, really like when I’m on a, you know, road trip, I, I think that’s when I start to go through kind of the deeper albums on my, you know, my iPod. You know, you go back to, you know, like you said, the police or you listen to All Rush or, you know, I’ve gotta say the, the classic driving album for me though is still Journey’s, greatest hits, right?

You put that on something like that where you’re just kind of going back through some of the old stuff. I mean, you know, right after, you know, pit stop when you got Red Bull and stuff in, it’s whatever the new stuff is and you’re cranking it up, but when you’re really kind of in that zone, to me it’s stuff that I’ve heard a million times.

It’s comfortable, you know, I know it. , just kind of go through it. Yeah, and it’s a lot of that stuff, it’s a lot of the, the classic rock, but it’s, it’s always the full album at that point. It’s not, I’m not [00:33:00] jumping songs, I’m listening from end to end and, um, 10 Sumner’s Tales for example. You know, something that’s really good from beginning to to end I think is really, like you were saying, right.

You know, it kind takes you on a journey and stuff and you can, you know, peak valleys and you can, the full experience when I’m with you, when I was younger, I listened to a lot of. Right, especially at night. So that seemed to kind of keep me going. And their albums were one of those where it’s like, you know, you’re two minutes in and suddenly you’re 20 minutes in and you didn’t realize, cuz it’s like they’re just designed in such a way that you just plow through it and they’re seamless in, in a way.

And so I always, I, I appreciated Phil Collins and the whole group there, but you know, that I think my tastes have changed since then. Now I find myself 80 synth wave. I’m listening to stuff like the acrylics aisle and a lot of, you know, the DAF Punk album, like the Tron soundtrack is a fantastic night cruising.

Uh, Martin Salve, a lot of the, this newer stuff that has like this retro feel. Those are a lot of fun. And I find those to be relaxing too cause I don’t wanna be overly amped at night [00:34:00] either. Right. And to kind of piggyback on that, the big thing about music is you, you feel it. It’s not just something you’re listening to.

You actually can feel it. They get, I know guys that used to wrestle and everything and they’ve listened to like stuff to get ’em amped up before they went out on the mat. I think for me, like the initial connection of cars and music was. . When I got my license, one of the first modifications I did to my car was improve the stereo system.

That’s what you did. You put big speakers in there, put an amp in there, you could just ride around everybody, hear your music, and of course get cops caught on you quite a bit. But that was part of growing up because you’re all about that base. Just to jump on that for a second, I wonder if there’s an a connection there.

Right. So everybody I knew ended up in cars, like my brother’s, a mechanic. Everybody did, did get their start of like, I can replace the speaker, right? And so replacing the speaker was like on, on day one was, I gotta be able to take a door panel off. I gotta be able to not screw up the windows, the locks, everything else.

I’m replacing speakers. I gotta figure out how to run wires to amplifiers and how to not fry myself on the battery a second time or a third time as a [00:35:00] gateway drug, like music gets you into comfort with the fact that a car is just a machine. And no matter how complex you’re doing, At some point you can stick it apart and figure it out.

But that’s sort of like a huge gateway into being a car buff, right? Is is that hands-on attention that you get from that, that simplistic car stereotype stuff first and, and new cars have taken that away from us as, uh, if you think about it, the, the head units a lot have I still, I’ve taken brand new cars still apart to do speaker changes, but like yeah, the degree to which I knew how to take out a head unit and take apart a dashboard and how to funnel everything around, that’s, that’s sort of gone cuz now they all use fully integrated where you’re doing that, you gotta cut re plastic, all that, all that stuff was connected to the clutch pedal.

Right. So it all went at the same time. And, and funny to, so your, to your point Rob, I mean around the club it’s a big joke, you know, between us that Eric built my car, he’s the one that does all the work on it and everything. It’s funny because I, I won’t touch my car. I mean I will, I’m trying to learn but it’s, it’s hard for me to get the confidence to go in and, you know, do a, a brake swap or your suspension swap or something like that in the car.[00:36:00]

But I will take a part of dash and I will pull out the head unit and the speakers and all the wiring and all that other bullshit and put in all brand new stuff cuz. , I’ve done it before. You know, it’s, it’s, which is funny because when we stripped the black G t i, I had Brad do all the interior work because he had a lot more experience and surprising with his big sausage hands.

He was way more delicate than most of the other people would be. So I was very proud of him for that. Actually, I think you’ve touched upon something here. I want to, I actually want to take it one step further because the majority of people, uh, here have been on the road with a band or touring with a band, and I think there has to be a certain amount of self-reliance.

If you’re in a vehicle far from home with a bunch of other people and it breaks down, you’ve gotta have that ingenuity to fix it. It’s no different than if you’re towing a car to a racetrack or trying to transport yourself to v a r or mid Ohio. But it, it’s the same thing except you’ve got a van full of equipment and you’ve gotta figure out if it breakdown, how can I get it fixed and how can I get to the next show or [00:37:00] whatever.

And I think, I don’t know if Donovan or Rob or Mountain man, Dan can, I know, I certainly have my stories. , but I’m sure you guys have your stories as well, right Before you guys continue, I have this fantasy in my head that here you are, you know, let’s say 18, 20 years old and you’re in a band or whatever and you go to a used car lot and the gentleman there, you know, older guy probably wearing tweed and he’s like, what are you looking for Sonny?

And the first thing out of your mouth is, I’m in a band. And they go, come right this way. So is there like a particular part of the used car lot where you guys are, you know, absorbing these fantastic vehicles? Oddly enough, they always came from family members. The first. Vehicle that I drove was my stepfather’s old 77 Dodge van that he used to carry all his gear in, in the van.

So you imagine being in high school and pulling up to a girl’s house in a van, I mean, full size van, no windows on it. That that was, uh, did it say free candy on the side? It was very rarely a good idea. And it was her, her father loved that . Yeah, A lot of times in the middle of [00:38:00] nowhere and the back roads, pre-cellphone days and, and all that stuff too, for sure.

No wiring, thankfully, but always, you know, a, a tire or a transmission issue or, you know, something like that. Constantly. Yeah. I got a story for you guys. I wanted, so we had a show in Youngstown and we were driving back in, we had an extended ocon line, one 50 van with the inline six, and I, I think it was like an 89 or something like that.

And we had built a partition of wood between the. Area to put all the equipment and then in the, like the seating area, and it wasn’t a window van, right? It was like a workman’s van. So the one slide door on the right hand side, which is the passenger side, there was a huge window, but on the other side it was just nothing.

So like if you wanted to look out to see where you’re going, all you could see was everything going by. So we broke down right outside of state Route 57 on I 76 outside of Riman, Ohio, and we ended up calling a tow truck cuz we had aaa. And so three of us got [00:39:00] in the front seat of the tow truck, but we didn’t tell the tow truck driver that there were other band members and they hid in the back of the van and they towed the van all the way from the exit of Riman on I 70.

Back to Columbus, and they were all drunk. They had no place to pee, you know what I mean? They were basically stuck in the back of this van. So for two hours, I have to say something, you know, when somebody’s from Ohio, because they have to tell a story by giving you all of the intersecting highways, to, to a, to a location, it’s, it is something I’ve just noticed from my in-laws.

My wife’s from Ohio. It’s the funniest thing. So I totally appreciate that. Uh, name me some towns, . He’s like random McNally over here. Like lemme get him across Cross Virginia. Yeah, it was on the turnpike somewhere. If you, and for those of you listening, Walkman, Atlas Rotary phone, they’re all in the same generation.

Right, right. And I do appreciate that partition you guys set up, cuz that way [00:40:00] the flat limbs could be even tighter. Right. We can press the error. Exactly. Like it doesn’t seem like anybody in any band van, cuz we had the same, you know, kind of thing. Ever knew anything about the exhaust because there was always an exhaust leak in every single van we ever had and we always fought over who sat in the cave.

That’s what we called in the back. In the very back. And you always like Chichen Chong, except you were just getting monoxide poisoning. We had a percussionist that carried a three foot bong in the van, so we were always like clam bake and you know, then she got that and then the exhaust and so it was just whoever, whoever got the short straw was screwed in the back.

So. In terms of silly, I mean, there’s, there’s too many to count is the problem. Uh, I think the most fun ones were, we were out in North Hampton and I played with the, an opening band prior to the, the Bosstones playing a show. And I had known all the mighty, mighty Bosstones guys for a while. I’d played with ’em in a few, a few gigs and so I wasn’t supposed to be playing with them this gig, and they decided to let me play afterwards.

So I played with him and they were like, oh, we have another show tonight at like three in the morning [00:41:00] back in Boston. And I was like, okay. And so I figured we’re taking the big van. The van had already left cuz we were all just sort of hanging out, chatting. So we all piled into their Volkswagen Fox. Oh.

So this was a two door fox with the entire band in it, plus me. They threw me in as well. I had my, with my trombone and I remember being on like the mass pike halfway, halfway down the road and the alternator fir died. So the headlights slowly died. The whole thing came down. Luckily they actually, like, they had a bunch of replacement parts for this thing.

Cause they broke down all the time. And, but none of them know how to do anything. So I distinctly remember on the side of I 90 in Massachusetts replacing the alternator in a VW fox so that we, so that myself and the rest of the bosstones could get to the gig except for my tmo. And everything else was already sound checked as we pulled in, but it was like seven bodies crammed into a two-door fox.

And like all of them are like on the side of the road just making fun of me the whole time, like holding up flashlights and other crap while I’m replacing this alternator in the dark. And. One of those, [00:42:00] one of those fun moments. What was the cross street? The guy from Ohio wants to know what the cross street was.

I think. I think every time. Yeah. Good numbers all changed on the Mass Pike. So they’re all different. Slightly, I think every time. I, I think every time Rob says, uh, trombone we should take a shot,

But this podcast will be very short. You’ll be on the ground in no time. Brad, what you really wanted to know in all this though, was what, what kind of music or what was the song that was playing when we started Cruising with the Windows Down First Cruise Strip. It’s gotta be one of the, I, you know, you guys all know you did it.

I I didn’t do it. Well, I, I did it. Well, let me go ahead and kick this off, because I remember, I have a distinct memory of visiting my brother. So my, my brother had a job with one of the local radio stations here, DC 1 0 1. I went and visited him and a bunch of his, uh, radio station friends at the beach.

One year. It was like the last day we were hanging out. A bunch of people had already left and we decided we’re gonna go to crabs and we’re in Ocean City going down the strip and I’ve got the car. , you know, and we’ve got like three or four other people with [00:43:00] us and we crank up as loud as we can.

Sunglasses at night, driving down the, you know, the, the main drag in Ocean City. You know, we’re in our twenties, the song’s like 30 years old at this point. And we’re, we’re like looking at girls screaming our lungs out, singing and everything. They’re just pointing at us and laughing. And then disgust or I, I don’t know, embarrassment or whatever.

And that was like one of the first real times, you know. I did that. I got you there bro. Picture this. Annapolis 19 Sicily. 19 Annapolis, 1990 something, right? And my first car, I had a, yeah, I had an 87 Audi coup alpine white open exhaust. Sounded like a screaming dragon every time you just wrapped on the throttle, right?

So my we’re cruising down into Annapolis for whatever reason. I got guys in the car and my buddy’s like, Hey, I got an idea and I had a cassette deck. So he throws this cassette in there and cranks the volume all the way up. So here’s four young kids in a white Audi. They’re playing German rap . So I’m [00:44:00] like, yeah, this isn’t gonna end well for any of us.

So yeah, that was a big mistake cruising song right there. Oh, I got a great soundtrack story. I’m using my soft radio voice right now. We were in college and buddy of mine owned one of the older style FJ cruisers, and he took the top off of it and put in this really like obnoxiously loud. Stereo. And then he painted it like, I guess you would call it now, like a, a desert fox tan.

So it had this like desert tan camo thing. This guy, and his name was Ashley. He’s, he’s a great guy. He’s just crazy. And he put like a skull on the door, like, you know, by the front fender. And we drove around town playing the Apocalypse Now soundtrack at full volume. Nice. All right. That didn’t go anywhere with you guys, but the whole soundtrack was, um, Colonel Kurtz speaking in these very insane monologues that he did in the movie.

That was the majority of the soundtrack. So I just wanted to . It was a very weird experience that that reminds me of the devil’s [00:45:00] reject soundtrack, where e each, uh, every other song is a, a snippet from the movie and then they play part of the song or whatever. Does anybody else you want to, you wanna chime in with their first experience of rocking the windows down with a, some embarrassing song playing in the radio?

Definitely all through high school was the offspring. I had a buddy with an old cut list, two door with a sunroof, and at full volume come out and play was literally the only track we would ever play in that car. Oh, you didn’t have a bad habit. going to school, back from school, anything. And at the right moment, everybody like, um, the dashboard was cracked because of how many times, whoever the path you had to do the, the double hit every time it happens in that song.

And it was literally the way you could identify us from, from miles away was just. Blasting the hell out of that song. The other, the more embarrassing one, I’m trying to find the name. It was some early eighties bass song. My, my first best friend had a, uh, what was it? A 50th anniversary. Trans Am black and white, the anniversary edition one.

And he had built, like, he still is a [00:46:00] car stereo installer now as a 40 year old. So it gives you some idea of what he was doing back then. Built one of those car stereos that was competition ready. I remember going up to somewhere in New Hampshire. We won. He won first place, not because when he cranked this song loud enough, his car could bounce, but because it could get the cars on either side of his to actually get off the ground.

It was, you know, a realm of like eight eighteens all fired differently with baffles built so they could go out the bottom. The base was just like shaking the whole place and anything within a hundred yards, it was just starting to bounce and bounce and bounce. I remember the first time we built this system in this car, you literally were not allowed to turn the volume past two.

because the decibels would’ve, like, the windows would blow out. Like we did it once where the windows like popped out a little bit of, uh, of their tracks when the windows were closed too much. And so the windows had to be down in order to actually go above like one and a half out of 10 on the volume.

And anything above two was only for competition really. No. I want to hear Daniels, I know it’s Charlie Daniels, man, I’m sure or Alabama, some honky talk stuff, man. , [00:47:00] no, surprisingly, I don’t think it was embarrassing by any means, but one of the first songs that like had that whole nice feel to it, good bass suit it and everything the guy went to school with had no Volkswagen Bug and all he had was one 10 inch sub in it.

But because the Volkswagen bugs were sealed so tight, it had such a good sound to it. And he used to always play, uh, sublime Love is what I got. Mm-hmm. . And that, that was just a great song. And so for myself, I used to list a decent mix of rap and everything at that time, cuz. That are like the bass track CDs, cuz that was a big thing back in the day.

Bass track, CDs, . I remember Bass, bass, bass . Yeah. So the Friday soundtrack, oh my god, I used to play that a lot. And my favorite song for the bass on that was one, uh uh, super Hose . It was just a comical song and it had really good bass. I could totally close my eyes and see you rocking out to [00:48:00] that in like a Volkswagen Bug.

I didn’t have the bug at that time. That’s when I had square body and some square body I had, I had Toyota Corolla at that time. Ah, that makes more sense. Blast also known, also known as the silver bullet with three different color body panels, . I try not to touch my phone when I’m driving now, like just as a principle.

But when I was like 16, 17 years old, I’d be damned if I didn’t have my hundred 50 page CD book. And I’m sitting there with 50 miles an hour, 70 miles an hour flipping through trying to find a perfect cd. Cuz in my head there’s one song that I wanna listen to at this exact moment and I gotta find that fucking cd.

Yep. We’ve, we’ve all done that. Start with those like 16 from the, the, the, the, you flip the visor down and you start looking through it and, and rob to, to the visor CD holders. I used to do auto crossing with Eric back, like just after high school and I had one up one day and forgot to take it outta the car.

And sure enough I’m like, wait a minute, where are my CDs? Go And then like cars are spinning around the autocross track cuz they’re slipping on them. [00:49:00] I lost, uh, rock La Amelia the, the Jay-Z album because of that, that memory. Brad? No man. I got books of those that call into the house. Yeah, right. I refuse to get rid of them.

I still have them. Yeah, we’re gonna be in the Smithsonian soon just in case. So let me ask this question since we’re kind of going there, we’ve touched on it a few times. What do you guys think? Just stock out of the box without manipulating the system. What car had the best audio system or stereo system from the factory?

The cars we owned or just the car. Or car? You rental turd. Somebody else’s car You got in, you went, wow, this is a really good stereo system. For stock. I think mine would be, you know, some of the Lexus systems, they, they were pretty nice. I was about say, I think that was a transition when the Japanese car started really doing it.

You know, my, my mom bought a Mazda back when I was in high school and it was just outta the box sounded pretty. I mean, you know, relative today, I’m sure we’d laugh at it, but at the time it was like, whoa. This was a step up from, you know, Ford and everybody else. It was kind of doing their thing. They seemed like Japanese cars kind of came out at the first, I [00:50:00] remember mid to late nineties was when they started really improving stereos in general with cars prior to that.

But if you went over halfway, it was all staticy and Kraken. Yeah. Couldn’t put no base to it without blowing a speaker like GM did in the mid nineties when they re released the Impala, they had a bow stereo system in, which was huge at that time, you know, cause they partnered with a big stereo company and it sounded great for the few of ’em that I was ever around.

No highs, no Lowe’s. It must be Bowes. I mean, Bowes and Harmon Carden were the two firsts that actually sort of jumped into that frame. I mean, like my Miata had a Bowes. System. Yeah. I will say the, the Volkswagen Mark four is with the monsoon system. I mean, that was for, for being just a stock system with a, a fender small, A small am No, no, no.

This is pre pre-end. Pre pre-end. Right. Pre-end. This is the, the monsoon system with a, like a stock like little mini amp, you know, power of the four speakers or whatever. They had the separate, uh, tweeters and everything. That was actually a pretty good system for, uh, you know, a 20 year old kid buying his first car.

Uh, and then my father, you know, used to buy [00:51:00] vehicles. Back in the day, you could buy without a stereo. He specifically bought the base model without the stereo, so he could put his own stuff in, cuz he knew the stuff that was coming out of the factory was complete trash. But robed, to your point, you know, with the, the bows and the, and the Harmon Carden, I mean, Alpine and Pioneer were putting stuff in cars too, but they weren’t, they weren’t labeling, they weren’t putting their name on it, but they had contracts in the manufacturers.

Ev the first five head units I installed were all alpine. . I mean, they were sort of like the name of high quality, what you wanted to put into your, when you were replacing stock crap, you put in an alpine head unit. Like the wiring was clearer. The damping it had when they first started to get putting CDs and such like.

that was the brand that you swapped in first was Alpine for everything. Like my dad’s, you know, the 87th van again, whatever, which had the best area we ever put in it because you had all that space under the seats. We put in like two bazooka tubes and we updated the inside. Remember those two tubes under the back seat?

There were smaller self-contained ones. We had a separate amp running a set of Cambridge speakers, [00:52:00] studio monitor speakers that were in the back hanging up, as well as in the doors in the. . And so like our van again had phenomenal sound, but it was the Alpine head unit always started, all that stuff. You got rid of the stock BBL punk that they had been using for like 30 years.

I mean, what’s wrong with you? So the, so the 87 did not have the bbl pun It had a different one up to 86. They did the 87. Uh, the gl Synchros did not use the bl pun. They use the different one, . So I gotta say, I don’t remember about yours, Brad, because it’s, it was two years older than mine. But I think the stereo in the Grand Cherokee is really good because of the position of the speakers.

It does a really good job of doing surround sound because just the overall shape of it. It’s center speaker too. Correct. Center of the dash. Correct. And I think of all the cars I’ve owned and I’ve been in, I, I still think my Jeep has got the best stereo out of everyth. Some trashy cars though. , but then again, I only, I only need so much quality for npr.

Right. I’m just saying it’s true. How, how much qual, how much base and and trouble [00:53:00] and you know, good mid-range Do you need for sweaty balls? Sweaty balls? Oh, sweaty balls, . Oh, a lot of the like, I mean a lot of the more recent good speakers is just a factor of like the N V H being better, right? Yeah. Like I had a rental six month old Jaguar and just because it was so insulated, the stereo sounded great and the stereo wasn’t necessarily a great stereo.

It’s just you’re so isolated in that box. Volvo is one of those cars where like when you’re at the auto show, you close the door in the Volvo and you’re no longer at the auto show. Right? You’re in your little private vault that you can hear a pin drop in. And so I feel like the stock stereo and those things must sound pretty good cuz you’re so isolated that you don’t need lots of volume.

You don’t need big speakers, you don’t need crazy equalizer. It’s just gonna sound clean. Yeah. Coming out. and I, so I think like that’s what’s happening a lot more in the more recent stuff, right? Like I don’t care how much money you put in a stereo, your Jeep Wrangler soft top is never gonna sound half as good as a cheap ass Volvo, just because that isolation piece.

Now granted you might have a better [00:54:00] time in the Jeep with the top down and that stupid soundbar blasting your music out on the way to the beach with the windshield folded down Daisy Dukes. But where you got that Daisy Duke zone, she’s got them Daisy Dukes . But in terms Exactly. But in terms of, in terms of the quality of the sound coming out of it, I mean it’s, it’s probably that.

I mean if like, I haven’t been in one, but there’s a few of those. I think BMW’s got a couple, I wanna say Bentley does too, where they have, uh, the B BMW speaker setups and those. They are putting better quality speakers in too. I mean, the, the wolfers aren’t made of paper anymore. Yeah, yeah. But they’re actually, those were hilarious material.

Now, the number of times you went to pull out a speaker and you were like, this, this was the speaker in a car that I paid for, like from like somebody bought, paid thousands of dollars for it. . Yeah. Somebody was new and like this was the cone. Like this is the material they use , the code of their speaker.

For those listening, he was holding up a napkin. I, for those that were listening, he was, they’re like, what was that? It was a napkin people. I just wanted to clarify that. Well, other, no, that was a stock speaker from a 1987 Volkswagen GL [00:55:00] Jetta. felt the replacing head units back then. It wasn’t cheap. You had to save up, you know, especially a high school kid, you had to save up money to buy a lot of this stuff.

So I remember buying my first CD player head unit, and I was so excited to get it, put it in the car. Where I live at isn’t the smoothest roads, so I’m driving these roads and everything and all of a sudden the CD starts skipping and I’m like, what the hell? . That was the most disappointing, exciting purchase I ever made.

Hundred percent. I, I will say, riding around with my dad one day, he did have an a track player in his vehicle, and it’s a good thing that the, a track player wasn’t secure in the, the car itself, because we’re riding down the road listening to the A track, you know, for about half of the song, and then it stops, starts eating the A track.

You literally just grabs the, a track, the stereo, everything. It just tosses it out the window,

And then we just drive on to the next, I guess it was Circuit City at the time or whatever, and we get a new stereo to replace it. But yeah, this [00:56:00] weird juxtaposition of car audio and stereo stuff as Brad just brought up with Circuit City, which became CarMax. Mind blown right there, right. But we can, we can readdress that.

Let’s go back to Pete in the studio.

I want to tell everybody here, first of all, I appreciate everybody’s input regarding, you know, car stereo, but I think you’re all wrong on a lot of levels. And I’ll tell you what happened. In 1976, Chrysler came out with the integrated CB Radio AM fm stereo in the Town and country wagon. How do I know this?

Because I owned one and I’m telling you right now that put all of your so-called high-fi systems, I was using hand close listeners, high-fi systems to shame. So I think that was the pinnacle of stereo design. I think we are on the downward slide. Of audio file ism, if I can call it that. Ism . Well then that brings up one question.

What would your CB handled? I can’t, it’s not safe. It was [00:57:00] love, love muffin . Let the record show. He froze for a moment there. You almost told us people. It, it, I froze because I couldn’t get that. Effing CB Radio to work. , just talking to yourself, , his handle was, is this fucking thing on that was this handle.

So true story. I’m gonna, I’m gonna piggyback off of this, and it wasn’t a cb. So in the early days of us going to the track, you know, blasting music, having fun trailers were caravan and where we’re going, we, and we still do this, we take walkie-talkies so we can talk to each other. So we don’t have to have an open conference call or anything like that.

So I’m riding down with a buddy, we’re going to v i r, we got walkie-talkies and we’re talking back and forth and we’re having fun. We figured we’re on a private channel, whatever. So his truck was white, mine was red. So I kept saying, I’m Little Red Riding Hood. And he was, he was Snow White or something like that.

And so we’re going back and forth and then suddenly it’s like, Hey, hey, snow White, can you hear me? It’s Red Riding Hood, blah, blah, blah. And this guy goes, he comes on and he goes, It’s [00:58:00] the big bad wolf.

somebody completely different. And we’re like, new channel, new channel . Oh my God. I like how Brad knew that story was coming. It was doubled over by the way, halfway. Who? That story? Yes. Yes, I know that story. And by the way, I hate the whole like walkie-talkie thing because they’re trying to talk to me the whole time, all the way up to Watkins Glen.

And I’m just like, God damn it, I don’t wanna listen to you. I’m gonna listen to my music. Leave me the fuck alone. Well I Wait. Does Eric have separation anxiety? I think so. I mean is that why he needs to have the, to talk to people all the time. But he does. He doesn’t actually need to talk to people. Cuz like I said, 12 hours to Kentucky, not a word was said the whole time, dude.

It was all you heard was this V8 screaming across the continental divide for most of the trip . Cause of the four speed automatic with a six liter, 400 horsepower V8 and terrible gear. It was, it was awesome . And after that trip, I got rid of that truck. It’s true. Very true. But here’s the thing. During that trip, how much road noise was [00:59:00] there to where could you have even carried a conversation and heard, oh no, it was fine.

It was just, it was a weird day. It was just like, we’re not listening to anything. Because your options at that point on the road, you couldn’t get NPR and you couldn’t even get the gospel channels like the, you know, I was like, I’ll listen to anything at this point, . And it was like, there’s just nothing.

So we’re like, boop, turn it off. And Brad’s a quiet guy and I’m just like, well, I’m not gonna talk to myself. So we just drove and drove and drove forever. little story about lack of music in cars. So while I was in the military, got stationed Wichita Falls for our, uh, training school. We weren’t supposed to have vehicles while we.

One of the guys in my class snuck out, bought a car and kept it parked off base. So when we’d walk off base, we’d go hop in the car and drive down to town at 72 or 73, two-door Nova. It didn’t have a radio. I don’t know who decided at one time, but we’re driving down into town and someone starts to singing.

We all live in the yellow submarine by the Beatles. So we all just chime and started singing it. And he, [01:00:00] like, Chantel was getting pissed cuz he hated it. And so after that, every time we got in that car, we just start singing. We all live in the yellow submarine. It would just drive him nuts. Dude, that’s like singing that Sherry Lewis song, the song that never ends.

It’s like, holy crap. . That’s one of those songs that, that’s one of those songs that lights me up in the wrong way. I mean, you start singing stuff like that. Woo woo that, that’s my kid’s in Old Town Road. Yeah, right. Oh my God. That song for me is, is uh, it’s a small world. Don’t ever go to Disney and go on that ride because it’s nonstop and you can’t get it out of your head afterwards.

So, For a week at Disney. That’s all I heard in my dude. Dude, you want to torture me? Put me in a ciro on Ds and then play that song and I will go berserk. Okay. . But no, he’s not a violent man. But you know, he’ll kill somebody in that situation. Yeah. That’s like a cat locked in a closet right there. As we’re all talking.

Similarly, and this could be an age thing, which I’m curious, most of us have this memory and experience and, and thought pattern of [01:01:00] albums, right? Of like, yeah. Listening to the full album and, and a lot of it’s cause you grew up with tapes or CDs where you weren’t, you know, it’s not the Spotify generation where here’s my playlist, or here’s yeah, Pandora, or here’s my iPod on Shuffle.

Right. It’s, it’s, I wanna listen to a whole album. I think Donovan mentioned it where like it’s, it’s almost a comfort factor, right? I know what the next song is. Your brain leads you to the next song and you sort of have that anticipation of like, as this goes, I’m gonna flow into this, I’m gonna flow into that, I’m gonna flow into that.

I wonder if we were having this conversation with a bunch of our. 22 year old members or whatever, and the younger generation, if they’re. If that would be a detached thought to them. And it was much more of like, no, I put on, as you said, my trance station. I put on my eighties rock station. Yeah. I just see what comes on.

And just that, that juxtaposition between those two aspects I’m curious about. Exactly. And to your point, I think albums were also curated. and now it’s just this randomization of like, okay, one minute we’re listening to K-Pop. Next minute it’s Iron Maiden, and the next minute it’s, you know, classic bop from the fifties [01:02:00] and you’re all over the map.

And, and I think you’re, you’re right, it’s generational because if you look at how people use technology nowadays, it’s the same. We’re jumping from app to app. We’re moving around like never, nobody ever slows down to just kind of sit and appreciate it. And I think that’s also what’s lost in driving now too, is that appreciation for the long road that that’s going.

God knows where it, it, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey and what you make of it. And so that’s always resonated with me and, and I, I think what Brad as well. And that’s what we’re really talking about here. Yeah. And that’s something that an album does, like, like a long road and it’s a journey and everything and you gotta enjoy that.

A well put together album is a complete thought or a complete concept. Even if it’s not a concept album, like the, the musicians were in a certain head space when they put that together and it’s when it’s produced well and it’s put together well and the tracks are in the right order and everything, it’s, it tells a story, whether they mentor or not.

It tells a complete story or thought, which helps you get through, you know, whatever journey [01:03:00] you’re on in a car. Do you think that has anything to do with, you know, so many kids now don’t really care to drive so much where, you know, you wonder how much that is the experience in the car for us. You know, you got in the car, you turned the music on, and again, you were in a head space, right?

It wasn’t, I’m just going, you know, wherever. And now maybe, maybe that’s part of it. Maybe it’s so sporadic that you’re not getting the emotional attachment because you know how it is. I mean, especially on old albums like that, you know, where you’re coming to song two and, and maybe it makes you think about that girl you dated in high school.

Or maybe it makes you think about the summer trip or something. And you know, if you’re not having that experience and you’re not in a car, there’s no association there. So maybe there’s an emotional detachment these days with. With the car. I don’t know. The technology has changed that a lot. When we were younger, if we got into the car to go on a long trip, we might have been lucky to have like a second game gear or a Game Boy or something.

But the batteries always died within like a half hour a trip. So then you’re stuck with them to the radio and like nowadays, like the technology [01:04:00] for the batteries and stuff so much longer, kids can sit there and watch movies on their phones or tablets or stuff like that to where the entertainment possibilities, they have far succeeds anything we ever had growing up.

I was so excited, man. I got my driver’s license because I needed to escape the house right. I needed to escape whatever was going on, right? To have that car provided mobility to go and do all these different things. And I, it touches upon, you know, the newer generation, they don’t want to drive and maybe because technology is already providing them that certain level of escapism where they don’t need to have this very visceral, alive experience of driving.

And it’s a little bit interesting to hear about everybody’s music choices. And I’m not saying I’m the oldest guy. Although I may be the oldest guy here, you know, it’s interesting to listen to these music choices because when I was growing up, AM radio was being surpassed by FM radio. Right. So it is just, you know, I’ve seen this huge movement of music through different mediums.

I, [01:05:00] I guess I’m not sure where this is heading, but I think for me in driving, whether competitively or not or just getting out has provided me this escapism. And the music is that soundtrack to that escapism, right? Yeah. And it, it is that soundtrack that puts me somewhere else. And we also touched upon this earlier, there’s two phases, right?

There’s the amped up phase, or it’s in the filling, in the void in the background. I love albums like 2112 by Rush or any Yes album in the background. Even the doors are a great evening music, right? When I’m driving out and listening, like, the Door’s Greatest hits are LA Woman or, or you know, writers on the storm in the end.

You know, those are, are are great things to listen to, but I really just wanted to make a comment about, about escapism, right? And what car is provided and the soundtrack that music provides to that. I think you’re right, and I think Dan touched on something too, talking about like what the driving experience was for us as a child in the car.

Because I am thinking back now as I’m listening to you guys talk about [01:06:00] escapism in that I can’t count the number of times that I caught myself kind of staring out the window. From the backseat of a Chico and, you know, daydreaming about something. Right. And I often wonder, like my kids, like they got screens everywhere and school is all different and all these kinds of things.

And I’m like, is there a moment where they just kind of stare out the window and daydream about something or imagine something or, or you’re fantasize about it, but the music brings you there because just staring out a window, watching grass grow is, you know, super boring, let’s face it. But the music, it just, it makes your mind start to wander and, and think about things and come up with ideas.

And so I feel it incentivizes us to think in different ways, right? And it’s important on, on multiple levels. Part of that thought is also the, the music it, whether you’re doing it consciously or subconsciously, Interpreting that music into some sort of thought in your mind. Yeah. Uh, that helps you, you know, either escape or fantasize or, you know, just, just wander [01:07:00] and, and drift and daydream and the, the, the music points you into a direction, wherever your mind wants to take it.

You know, you, you, you determine that. He mentioned the fact that getting your license, uh, how it like changed things for you, in my opinion, is it, it gave freedom. Having your license was freedom. You could go places that you couldn’t before. You didn’t have to rely on others. It, it gave you that independence.

I don’t know if kids get that feeling today because they’re so connected through technology that there’s not that rush. Like, Hey, I gotta get into the mall to cruise up and down in the strip on Friday night to see everybody. I don’t think that’s a thing anymore. And it’s disappointing. We’ll go behind a Dairy Queen and talk about our Volkswagens.

What you talking about and speaking about that freedom, uh, for me, it wasn’t just freedom to get outta the house. It was freedom to get in the car and, and turn up on full blast, the Metallica’s Black album for the first time without my dad in the passenger seat telling me, turn that shit off. . A hundred percent on that one.

A hundred percent. You had the freedom to listen to whatever you wanted to in your own private [01:08:00] space really allowed to. That’s true. You, you know, and it makes me think about, you know, and I don’t, I don’t think it’s just kids, right. You know, my, my wife, I, I, I kid her about that too, about being buried in her phone or something, you know, in the car.

Or we’d gone to Europe. It’s the first time she’d been over there, you know, we’re, we’re traveling through, we’re, we’re driving to Paris and, you know, just amazing front countryside. She was reading a book, but I’m like, you know what, this is probably the time to just let your mind go. You know what I mean?

And, and really just, have those thoughts. And it makes me think about when I was a kid, I think the first time that I realized that my parents put me on a bus and I was heading up to West Virginia to visit some family, and Russia’s Presto had just come out and, you know, on a bus, you know, it was a seven hour trip, but you know, on a bus it was 16 hours or something.

So, you know, I had my cassette and I’m just listening to that thing over and over and over. But I remember looking out the window and, you know, taking roads that were not interstate and your, your mind just, just kind of goes, you know, it just kind of, it kind of wanders. But to me, you know, it is an escape and, and I think it’s therapy.

You know, there was about a year ago or so, maybe it was what, two years ago [01:09:00] I was really wound up, I mean, to the point where, , you know, I don’t think I was gonna have a breakdown or anything like this. No. When, that kinda thing, but I was just super stressed and just really just kind of, you know, tightly wound and, and I told my wife, Hey, listen, I’m getting in the car.

I had the E 28, M five, had just gotten it. And I said, I’m getting in the car, I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know when I’m coming back. I mean, I wasn’t gonna be gone for days, but I was gonna go out for a couple hours. I took off and the first thing I did is plugged in my phone, put on some, you know, some good music and took off and, and coincidentally found one of the, the mountain roads that we drive today.

Just by just going, you know, and that kind of sense of direction of I’m gonna go this way, I’m gonna go that way. And, and I think the combination of. The mountain roads and that music and just the escapism, you know, and that therapy was, was really good for me, you know, and it really did kind of reset my, you know, my batteries a little bit.

And so I think there’s that. But again, you know, it, maybe it’s because we grew up that way, you know, it was always the association of the car is freedom and the car is, you know, it’s just us. We can go anywhere really. You’re connected really anywhere, you know, short of the oceans and things. You can go anywhere.

Yeah. And, and you mentioned that that [01:10:00] therapy and you can’t really see it cuz it’s cut off, but in the, the picture behind me, the guitar Pick has a quote that says, music is what feelings sound like. I mean, I, I’m a quiet guy, as Eric alluded to earlier. You may not be able to tell from the podcast, but I, I’m a pretty quiet, reserved, shy guy and it’s hard to express my feelings sometimes.

So like, using music to just help me, I guess, get my feelings out. Yeah, yeah. I’m, I’m starting to tear up now. Whatever. I see you laughing Eric. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s just a way to, to feel it, it’s a way to, to express, you know, myself and how I’m feeling at that moment. Brad’s a hugger. Brad’s a hugger. So I give great bear hugs being, you know, 6 4, 300 pounds.

So Donovan, you were saying how on your bus trip you had your cassette, you know, your Walkman or whatever. Uh, I remember back that age that I’d have a cassette in and I’d be listening to it for hours, and all of a sudden the batteries would start to die. And like, if there were songs that had fast lyrics, that was the easiest way for me to learn it because as it [01:11:00] got slower, I could learn the lyrics that way.

If they were to a really fast-paced song, hit the stop button and wait like an hour or so and push five minutes to really slow. That was the way we got by. So that slow cassette story that Dan told explains why he speaks the way he does. I get it now. It makes a hundred percent sense . It also explains why he’s, he talks fast sometimes and then he starts to slow down.

that, that, no, that’s what blood sugar the batteries are wearing. Low , discard him. Film ’em with diesel. So I think we, I think we’ve, we’ve nailed this one, but I got a question to throw out there. There’s certain cars when you look at them and you go, that’s the perfect music video car. What is that for?

What kind of music? It doesn’t matter. You just look at it, you go, that would be perfect in a music video, whatever it is, it has to have a long hood so the blonde can crawl across to the fan blowing on her and they’re [01:12:00] whipping her hair back in the, their turning can, can, can roll around on the hood. I was gonna say, the hard part about answering that is the, is how different mu musicians have used cars in their music videos and stuff historically.

Right? Like I remember. You know, when I was first back in the days of downloading top gear episodes, you know, through whatever that website was that we all had to grab the Torrance from, uh, and I remember like when they had JK on and JK was, was, is huge into cars, and he would be like, oh, I chose this car for this Jamario video because it’s the one I had just bought.

And it’s like every Jamario video is, is strongly based in automotive stuff and Right. And so there’s certain cars I see. That fit that vein, right? So I’ll see a car and I’ll be like, that belongs in a Motley Crew video that belongs in a jamario video that belongs in this video. And like Arlis Klar has like a 900 horsepower hot rod, you know, sort of thing.

And I see what I like, I see his car, my brain thinks of the stuff that he’s been in. And so like, it’s hard to detach that from like seeing some eighties car and being like, oh, there’s an eighties band that screams eighties that we [01:13:00] belong there. Because every car that I see is attached to some bit of history or story in my head of when I’ve seen that, you know, beyond just, oh, it’s Grateful Dead, it’s a Volkswagen bus, or whatever it might be.

But all those different artists that, you know, uh, especially they’ve been guests on top gears because you see them and you get to hear their whole car history as you watch that show. And you get to see exactly what their, what they’ve had along the way. And, and I begin to associate that with that, making it harder to sort of separate that knowledge, if you will, from, from answering that third Gen F body is the correct answer for any music video.

Third Gen F Body. I was gonna say the. I, I knew it. I knew it. I knew you were gonna say that, pj. I was doing a walk because we can’t drive anywhere, really. I started walking around listening to music, like just walking around the city doing 7, 8, 9 mile walks and SAR fleet was dark. I wish I could have got it, a better picture of it.

There was a mint fi parked on the side of the road on East Capitol Street, like literally mint. I dunno if I could see if I can, [01:14:00] there’s, there’s no such thing as a mint firo. They all came from the factory with the, like, this is like with the flash on the back of mine. But it was just, I, I, I literally stopped in my tracks and I walked by and I, I turned the music off.

I had to stop the music so I could focus on what I was seeing. And some person walking, the dog walked by me and they’re like, are you okay? And I was like, do you know what this is? And they’re like, you have a good night, sir. They sort of walked away from me. . I was, I was floored at the fact that I was seeing this.

Beautiful fi there. It’s kind of awesome. Uh, you know, I’m really kind of ruined by all the rap videos, man. I automatically went to like the Bentleys and the Lambos and all that stuff, so I don’t know. I mean, you know, other than that, I think like the, you know, the hot rods and stuff back in the eighties days with things is easy top kind of thing is, is kinda where I go with that.

The big hair and the, all right. So switching gears. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There is one car though I think we can all agree on. There’s one that you look at it and you could say, yes, that belongs in a music video, every music video, and I, and it’s [01:15:00] not the F Body by gm and it’s not the little red Corvette.

No. All right, you ready? Lamborghini Kuta, I would’ve said Diablo. Gotta go. Kuta Kuta is the ultimate music video card. It just screams, it doesn’t matter what kind of music you put with. It could be in any music video, it could be in a classical music video if you want it to be. And you know what Resu cemented it for me was when I watched, and if you guys haven’t seen it, oh God, go look it up.

Hasselhoff True Survivor, which is the soundtrack to Kung Fury. Dude, he’s got a Kush and it’s legit. I mean, it is awesome. That’s the pinnacle. I, I mean, I don’t know , you know, Donovan, I think the runner up to the Kuta and it really links back to you, is a 63 split window Corvette. That’d be a good one.

There’s lots of curves and, and places to sit ladies on too, if you want that. Pushing gears here. I’ve got an interesting, uh, what I think is an interesting question. Uh, what’s [01:16:00] the best car decade and the best music decade, and do they overlap? I gotta lean towards the seventies on that. For both or for one or for which one?

If it has to be one decade that covers both sufficiently. I’d say the seventies, at least. Early seventies you still had your muscle cars. You had some good rock. So I’d say they had good cars and good music during that time. That’s not a bad answer. I feel like the eighties are slightly better, but, but again, I think that’s tainted by my age.

Right. So in the eighties is where you first started getting the test. OSAs, the Kutas, the nine 50 nines, like that stuff started going crazy and the hair bands and, and, and the hairbands. You could get metal hair bands, you can get more of the pop stuff, you could get the euro trash, the techno hip hop hiphop was actually starting all like the major Snoops and everything, all that stuff was coming into, into play.

So you got a pretty good range of stuff, but that could easily be tainted by my age. Right. If I asked my parents, they’d be like, what the hell are you talking about? There’s these, you know, amazing things in the sixties where a lot of these cards were just phenomenal and the music was out of this world.

You know, I think with different ages you [01:17:00] could say different things, right? Somebody nowadays could be like, well, Amazing new bands now that play almost everything. And you can get a, you know, virons and everything else. I mean, like, there’s different, or you know, McLaren, lar long tails. There’s all these different options there.

I, I think to your point about pre seventies though, Rob is, most people would probably gravitate to a 55 to 57 Chevy if they had to pick a car for that period of music. So that, I don’t think there would be like, oh yeah, that’s, uh, I don’t know, 63, blah, blah, blah. Then like, no, you know, Ford Galaxy, like, nobody’s gonna pick that.

You know what I mean? Versus to your point about the eighties, there’s like ACEs of cars that you can pick from eighties are over glorified though. I mean, I, I think, you know, Rob’s wrong. I think if you look at the shitty electronics that were out in cars, you know, and how they were trying to. Tune port injection and the really early versions of fuel injection and some of the hair-brained ideas that came outta Chrysler back then.

I mean, there were some really horrible, horrible electronics and I think, you know, I’m gonna side with Mountain Mandan [01:18:00] on this and say that the seventies was probably the purest part of Detroit, at least that came out and even to a certain degree. Some of the purest Japanese imports, the J dms that came in, right, the MX three from Mazda, the Carola gt.

I mean, those are some amazing cars during that timeframe. I’m not saying Rob’s wrong, I just think that we tend to, all of us are probably gonna come into this conversation a little bit with some, you know, rose colored tint glasses about what we think is the preferred era. But Rob’s wrong, but that’s fine.

I know. So I guess, I guess Donovan’s a tiebreaker. We got two for the eighties and two for the seventies. Oh, I think Donovan’s gonna stay in the nineties, but I want to hear, he’s all grunge. He’s like, you know, green Day and Sublime, like all this other stuff in a Toyota Corolla that looks like a suppository,

back and forth of, I was gonna say eighties to, to start with. Right. When you think about, I mean, what’s interesting music wise about the eighties is think of where it started, right? It was still, still, there was a little bit of disco still around, but you [01:19:00] had, you know, all of like the early, I don’t know, it wasn’t techno then, but electronic music was still getting power.

And then all the way to the end when grunge and all that stuff was happening and the hairband stuff and the cars were amazing. You know, you think about like that, of course the, you know, the gti, right? The, the mark one and, and all the Porsches and everything else came out. But I agree with you on the electronics and you know, a lot of the, the American stuff was garbage.

But when you think about the seventies too, great music, although I think. Eighties probably had better music. Completely. But when you think about the cars, I think that’s true for the most part. Except the American cars, like the early seventies American cars. Okay. But you know, when you got into the whole oil crisis and all that, it was just garbage for a while.

But you think about all the stuff that was come outta Italy in particular in the early seventies, just gorgeous masterpieces. And you think about, you know, like the early nine elevens, the Rs and some of those other ones, I, I think. I, I don’t, I don’t know what the answer is. I’m gonna No, I, I can easily, it’s your opinion.

It’s, I could be swayed. Right? So I think like, he’s [01:20:00] not wrong. Right. Sound a different thing. Like the 73, 9, 11 Rs would be, be agreed. Agreed, agreed. But if you had to put soundtracks with cars, let’s think about it from that perspective. Okay. It’s all eighties destroys everything. I’m sorry. A hundred percent.

Except when you talk about the s k car, cuz I wanna know what the soundtrack is for that. Right? But question the sound of flatulence. . So we’ll go to Pete on that one. But, so what I’m thinking here though is Donovan has hit on something and I’ve, I’ve always thought this, it’s kind of a theory I have that cars kind of evolved at the same time music did.

And he, he hit on something really important, especially from the seventies through the mid nineties. We talk about eighties music, and I’m gonna harp on that just for a second. There’s a weird period there. And, and Pete’s right. A lot of strong. You know, great rock and roll in the early to mid seventies.

And then you had the disco era come in in the late seventies that carried into the early eighties, and you get the beginning of the, like the synth [01:21:00] era, right? But the synth era only lasted from 78 to 84. And so if you look at the cars from 78 to 84, you’re like, ah. But then you get this transition in 85.

Much to Donovan’s point, the GTIs and the nine 40 fours and all the, the, the alpha males and a lot of the American cars, the new C4 Corvette in 85, right? You had this transition even in the automotive world and the sound, if you listen to songs from 84 and then go to the billboard top of 85, they sound completely different like the technology in.

Changed at the same time that the technology cars did. And that lasted into the early, almost mid nineties. Then we started to get the cab forward cars and the bubble designs and the music changed again. Right? We left the techno eurotrash era that we got, you know, along with the import cars. And then we started to get these, you know, oval shaped Mobius marshmallows on the road and the kind of the music went along with it, right?

You, you had the re you know, you had that, uh, the [01:22:00] growth of grunge and all that other kind of stuff. So I think there’s an interesting like dichotomy there between the music and the cars over that like, let’s call it 25 years span, where I think they were really interlocked. I can agree with you a lot on that, but I also wanna throw in the fact that for the best one, it can also depend on mood.

Just like music, your mood determines which music you’re in the mood to listen to. So like for cars as well, like I’d love some of the old, like thirties and forties and even early fifties cars compared to modern stuff cuz the flowing lines they had on ’em. , I agree that like society, music and cars all transitioned kind of together.

It also begs the question, did the music influence the designers and the engineers at the time? Like is there just enough overlap there where it may have, you know, we’re talking about daydreaming and escapism. Maybe those German designers or Italians or Americans are like, man, this music’s really motivating me to come up with something new.

You know? And so they evolve together. There’s, there’s definitely a truth aspect to that, right? I mean, every, if you think about a car designer, right? They’re in the arts, if you [01:23:00] will, just like music, right? So they’re coming to the same head space, if you will. As that gets refined, it keeps, you know, they keep pace with each itself, right?

With each other. By the way, I just looked up like top music from the eighties and I am floored by how good it was, so I’m even more right than I was before. I just wanna throw that out there. I wanna say that if you’re from the Miami vice generation too, in, in watching the show and how they basically soundtrack.

The show and cars and music, you know what I mean? The music in the car and Miami Vice, for those of you that are tuning in, Erica is in the background laughing. So please disregard the host as we make more rational sense of this music connection to cars . Um, by the way, Miami Vice. Best show ever next to Kit.

I could definitely see where music and designers are influenced by each other. I think Miami Vice comes to mind as, as a great example of that, whether I’m right or wrong, I, I only have one rebuttal to that Magnum pi,[01:24:00]

although I gotta say, you know, you look back to like some of the, the fifties and sixties cars and the music that was around, and when you’re in your V8 hot rod and the coolest music you have is some kind of. Bebopping, something that doesn’t align, you know what I mean? Like you listen to it now and I mean, skip like the little GTO and all those kind of songs.

Well, you had the Beach Boys, you had Elvis. I mean, you had a lot of stuff that could have been good for cruising, but there was a lot of stuff that was like reserved for the ballroom. I, I agree with you there. But you think about you, you know, you made a point about the, the music and the cars. You think about, again, back to the GTI in the eighties, it, I, I’d consider it quirky, right?

And some of the music was Poppy, kind of quirky in that time. And, you know, that, that did seem to kind of fit where, you know, you could probably pull up in a valet, in a mark one GTI and get parked up front because it was cool, you know, it was like, well over here, the new hatchback that was cool and quirky and everybody was doing it.

Not to say that your DeLorean wouldn’t get you up front too, but you, you heard it here first. The Mark one G t i is a cool car and it’ll get you parked up front in Monica. Every one of us would be happy to [01:25:00] drive either of those. Well, I wouldn’t fit in one, so there’s that. Oh, okay. Or XP is the answer. Ooh, good call.

I’m okay with that. But the DeLorean has an immediate soundtrack. We all go to Huey Lewis in the news. So I think you also hit on something there, Rob. A lot of cars have soundtracks with them. The Dukes a hazard with, um, Whalen Jennings. Right. Or, or Night Rider or Magnum or whatever. I mean, it’s like they’re, it’s, they’re so intertwined.

You know, you, you’re not wrong. But I, I, I’m floored. Like I honestly forgot. Like the late eighties. I mean, it was everything from Nwas albums and the Joshua Tree and Master of Puppets I didn’t realize was then too from Metallica. Yeah. And everything from Metallica pre-Black album was eighties. Was the eighties.

Then you still have like Paul Simon’s Graceland and you have Thriller from Michael Jackson and you still have, you know, back in black from ac d dc like you just have this, a huge pile of amazing music all through that part that I didn’t even think of as being like eighties music. Right. If you go and then you have the Fox body Mustang

[01:26:00] Yeah. Gosh. And at the end of VW Fox, he’s gonna cut over the audio. It’s gonna Rick roll us. That’s what’s gonna happen. Yes. I will never give you . All right, Brad, take us home. Let’s wrap this thing up. I mean, I think we’ve spent what, two hours now waxing poetic about the, the relationship between cars and, and.

Uh, there’s no denying that there is a connection between the two. I mean, can anybody deny it? I don’t think anybody on this panel can. But on that note, I think Brad struck a chord with this episode. I think there’s definitely a, you like my puns, I think there’s definitely a linkage there between cars and music and it’s deep, deep-seated.

It goes back to our parents. It’s a whole experience for all of us. So I hope that our listeners, as they review this, and hopefully they got some laughs out of, or whatever, remember that it’s not about the destination. It’s all about the journey and what you do along the way. And make sure that when you take these journeys be whether they be big or small, To [01:27:00] remember to pick up that soundtrack.

Whatever it is, whether you curated it yourself or it’s an album or an in eight track, in Pete’s case, you know, listen to some music along the way. It may change your life. Mr. Klein. Oh Lord, . Well, I can’t thank you guys enough for coming on yet Again, Pete Donovan Mountain man, and Rob, you know, Brad’s always here, but you know, thank you guys for coming on.

I think this was a lot of fun and we’ll hope to see you guys again on another episode. Enjoy, definitely good time. Had a great time. Pleasure. I wanna thank everybody for coming on tonight from W G T M in Washington, DC from the Basement Studio. Thank you for tuning in tonight, W G T M signing off.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows. You can call or [01:28:00] text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you. Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

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