this is the game that moves as you play

Before I started driving into work every day, a good driving music mix CD could last up to three weeks or more. In these days of stop-n-go traffic on the asphalt nightmare that is Route 93, I'm lucky if I can get a week's worth of listening out of one before wanting to toss the disc out the window.

Putting a mix CD together should be easy, in theory. I have a large and varied music library, and I can think of dozens of songs that would put me in a "rocking in my family sedan" vibe. In reality, however, I have to take into account the tastes of my intrepid co-pilot, a.k.a. my wife. There are more similarities than differences between our tastes, to be sure, but there is no way in hell I'd expect her to tolerate the classic rock and crap metal that loomed so large in my white-trash childhood and early adolescence.

So the trick is to balance tastes without sinking to a lowest common denominator. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn't, and I get to find out exactly what my better half really feels about certain favorite songs or artists, like with the “Shampoo Incident” of Fall 2006, where the wife took the unprecedented step of anticipating the a contested track (“Trouble” by Shampoo) and hitting the skip button before the music could even begin.

Here’s the track list for the driving music disc I burned this morning:


Many of the songs are ones I’ve posted here in the past few weeks. That’s a pretty common occurrence; in the process of pulling out material for various themes, I end up rediscovering forgotten favorites or encountering new ones. As per an unspoken agreement, I also include certain number of tracks from “Maura’s bands” (most of which I happen to like, but I’ll always associate with her listening tastes). This time around, they include X, The Epoxies, The Soviettes, The Gits, and The Dents. No INXS or Ladytron this time out, though they also fall under that category.

Another factor that has to be considered is the ambient sounds associated with highway driving. Many much-loved songs, especially in the goth and post-punk genres, fail to make the cut simply because they can’t be heard over the background noise of the road and/or the hum of Super Lumina’s engine.

Generation X – Dancing With Myself (from Kiss Me Deadly, 1981) – Punk rock has died more times than the heating coil of my old 1990 Cutlass. I’d venture that the video for this song was Death #73 or #74. Billy Idol’s relationship to punk rock strikes me as analogous as Poison-Mötley Crüe-et cetera’s to heavy metal: a having one’s cake and eating it too scenario that tries to juggle commercial aspirations and subculture mystique with an eye toward the teenybopper demographic.

X – The Have Nots (from Under the Big Black Sun, 1982) – Love changes people in subtle ways. Before we began dating, Maura’s love of X began at Under the Big Black Sun and ended with See How We Are. My love of X, on the other hand, began with Los Angeles and ended with Wild Gift. As we grew closer as a couple, so did our record collections. Today she is likely to be caught humming “Sex and Dying in High Society” while I quietly sing “The Hungry Wolf” to myself while I’m doing yardwork. Ain’t love grand?