Open Road Show

So- road songs. Songs about driving trucks, driving cool sports cars, hanging out in cars, racing cars, and songs that are just good for rolling down the windows and blaring the music.

We started off with The revved up sounds of Gear Masher, by the Deuce Coupes, to get us in the hot rod mood, Alex Chilton and Big Star took us into the Back of A Car, local faves Mr Airplane Man did a Lonesome Road song, Warren Smith sang about a Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache and we rounded out the first set with The Dictators (I Live For) Girls and Cars. This set shows the incredible diversity of road songs-- a surf tune, power pop, sonic blues, Memphis rockabilly and early NY punk.


There are an incredible amount of Road songs out there-- it was almost too easy-- so I looked for some different types - John Zorn's Two lane Highway from Spillane was an interesting fit, with it's spoken word-noir feel. Kid Koala's Fender Bender perfectly evokes the kind of subdued chaos of a minor crash on a city street-- and you can dance to it! Dirty Three's 1000 Miles, puts a new twist on the "lonesome cowboy trail" song and Nina Nastasia's beautiful Nobody Knew Her is a modern take on the high school car crash victim song.

The cover-all was a lot of fun this week, there were so many songs to choose from. I like to find covers of some of the more obvious songs for a theme-- so here we heard Jim White's version of King Of The Road and Rounder Records' artist Marcia Ball's version of Route 66. I've always loved Trailer Bride's version of The Gun Club's Ghost on the Highway from the Bloodshot Records 5 year Anniversary disc. We also got to hear Giant Sand's version of Wayfaring Stranger with a little Fly Me to the Moon thrown in.

All in all a very fun show to put together. Hope you enjoyed it too.