A WXRT Labor Day Road Trip Playlist-- Part 1

Saturday, while looking to see the title of Wendy Rice's last song on her Saturday Morning Flashback to 1969 ("Hot Summer Nights" by It's a Beautiful Day"), I came across this interesting list by Jack Nechvatal. It took me a couple hours to go through because along with the song and why he chose it, he also included videos of most all of them. Well, I had to look at those, or at least a part of each. I had never heard of some of them.

An asterisk means I hadn't heard the song before. His quotes. Mine in parentheses.


1. KODACHROME-- PAUL SIMON-- That timeless opening line. "out of high school and heading for the open road." (I taught 9th graders for two years and didn't teach crap. It might have been boring, but it definitely wasn't crap.)
2. RUNNING DOWN A DREAM-- TOM PETTY-- "A great road trip song in all ways."

3. *WRONG WAY-- SUBLIME-- "A cautionary tale for young women, but set to fun, summer music."
4. LITTLE RED CORVETTE-- PRINCE
5. LOW RIDER-- WAR

6. TWO OF US-- BEATLES-- "You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead." (On the video, it looks like Ringo was sleeping at the drum kit. I never thought of this as a road song, but in my defense, never really listened to the words that closely.)

7. HIGHWAY TO HELL-- AC/DC-- (I've been on a few of them, especially once in Boston.)
8. *CITIES-- TALKING HEADS-- "All road trips...will involve driving through some cities." (David Byrne mentions several cities at the start of the song.)

9. THUNDER ROAD-- BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN-- "...goosebump inducing qualities."
10. BORN TO RUN-- BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Well worth a look and watch if they still have it at www.wxrt.com

And There Are 35 More to Go. --RoadDog