What music to listen to on a High Performance Car filled roadtrip!

August 6, 2009 11:41 AM

I am leaving on a road trip tmw morning. What music should I bring and what GREAT road trip mixes do you suggest?

My boyfriend and I are driving from Framingham, MA to OH and back in four days. This trip is complicated by the fact that my boyfriend is doing a car swap. We are driving to OH in a 2001 500 hp Mustang Cobra mand driving home in a 1991 Mustang GT (with some cash in our pocket). High performance cars demand high performance music! What do you suggest?

Thanks!

posted by irisell to Media & Arts (31 answers total)

Lots of good previous threads here.
posted by nitsuj at 11:53 AM on August 6, 2009

i'm headed out on a road trip this weekend as well.

Iggy Pop - Real Wild Child. Ooh yeah, I'm a wild one. LOL.
posted by mittenbex at 11:54 AM on August 6, 2009

For a little diversity, get one or two books on CD from your library. I've been doing a fare amount of driving lately, and driving at night with a good book being read to me is actually kind of nice.
posted by 517 at 12:04 PM on August 6, 2009

as i type, i'm in the middle of burning some CDs for a road trip i'm taking this weekend.

i recommend popping a blank CD into your computer, and then going through your music library. any time i find myself saying, "ohhh! i love that song!" or "oh yeah! i forgot about that!" (especially if it's upbeat or loud), i add it to the CD. if your CD player has a shuffle option -- instant mix!
posted by gursky at 12:22 PM on August 6, 2009

Not sure about the cars, but no road trip is complete without Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69".
posted by yawper at 12:24 PM on August 6, 2009

I always start mine out with Robert Randolf and the Family Band's "Ain't Nothing Wrong With That." It's 3 minutes and 30 seconds of awesome. Some Others...
Plastic Bertrand - Ca plane pour moi
The Cat Empire - The Car Song
Funkadelic - I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing, Everybody's Got a Thing
Beck - New Pollution
Beck - Sexx Laws (Well, anything by Beck for that matter.)
My Morning Jacket - Off the Record
Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan
The Ting Tings - Fruit Machine
Animal Collective - My Girls
DJ Zeph and Lyrics Born - Hands Up
Hope this is what you're looking for! Happy road-tripping.
posted by lauren'spsychichotline at 12:26 PM on August 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

I am not a huge Jackson Brown fan, but we had Running On Empty with us on a rather long road trip and it just seemed so appropriate with its theme of being on the road.
posted by caddis at 12:27 PM on August 6, 2009

For a muscle car:

Megadeth - Into the lungs of hell
Mastodon - The Wolf is Loose
Opeth - Ghost of Perdition
Iron Maiden - The Trooper

Try it for at least a little while even if you don't like hard rock, you'll at least feel pretty cool.
posted by hellslinger at 12:28 PM on August 6, 2009

Magnetic Fields - Charm of the Highway Strip
posted by Spacelegoman at 12:33 PM on August 6, 2009

U2 - The Joshua Tree
posted by corey flood at 12:50 PM on August 6, 2009

Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. Yes, I am an old hippie. I always take Alice's Restaurant with me on a long road trip. When I start getting tired, I put it on and sing along. I am always feel better by the time the song is over and I am 20+ minutes further down the road.
posted by calumet43 at 12:57 PM on August 6, 2009

If you've never heard the Old 97's you should...particularly this song:
"Won't be Home"


I was born in the back seat of a Mustang
on a cold night, in a hard rain...
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:01 PM on August 6, 2009

*pulls up chair and sits down*

Corey Flood mentions Joshua Tree, which I agree with to a point -- it's really best for road trips in the American Southwest, and it doesn't look like you're going near there.

If you are allowing for an element of the kitsch in your trip, any B-52's album is good. A greatest-hits or a box set is even better (their "Nude On The Moon" collection covers everything from "Planet Claire" and "52 Girls" on up to "Good Stuff" and "Is That You, Mo-Dean?" and carried me from Pennsylvania clear across Indiana.)

Other songs from my own road trip mix from when I drove from NYC to Vegas:

"Who Do You Love," George Thorogood
"Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting", Elton John
"Steal My Kisses," Ben Harper
"Don't Give Up", New Radicals
"Jessica", the Allman Brothers
"Run On", Moby
"Skateaway," Dire Straits
"I've Been Everywhere", Johnny Cash
"Born To Run," Bruce Springsteen
"American Woman", The Guess Who
"Bad Girls", Donna Summer
"All For You", Sister Hazel
"Synchronicity", The Police

"Jessica" in particular makes most people's "best driving music EVER" lists.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:09 PM on August 6, 2009

A pony car road trip requires tunes from that "Lil' Ol' Band From Texas;" accordingly, I recommend everybody's favorite cruise music, Eliminator. And some Allman Brothers, maybe The Road Goes On Forever. And some pre-Michael McDonald Doobie Brothers, like Toulouse Street. And some Chuck Berry stuff, like Maybellene and some Steve Miller Band, from about 1973.
posted by paulsc at 1:09 PM on August 6, 2009

The soundtrack to Outrun...
posted by Nanukthedog at 1:11 PM on August 6, 2009

A pony car road trip requires tunes from that "Lil' Ol' Band From Texas;" accordingly, I recommend everybody's favorite cruise music, Eliminator.

I think their song "The Grange" trumps that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:12 PM on August 6, 2009

This is what the Elizabethtown soundtrack was made for, by the by.
posted by iarerach at 1:15 PM on August 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

Muscle cars require muscle music.

I was coming in to shout MASTODON at the top of my lungs. If you pick up Leviathan, you can play Ahab on the highway, harpooning schoolbuses and screaming WHIIITE WHAAALE HOLY GRAAAIIIL as they careen shrieking into a ravine.

Clutch is also a fantastic muscle car band, especially their Robot Hive/Exodus album. Here's a taste. Live sound is kind of crap, but you get the idea. Repeated exposure might make you get some sort of tattoo.

If driving at night, Sunn 0))) will give you the powers of a dark god, screaming noise that will melt the tar on the road before you and fuse the eyes of all who dare pass you into etched twisted glass.

While driving by day, you require the clay-baked riffs of Kyuss, swilling dusty water through sun-cracked lips as you wonder if your journey will ever end, or if you have taken a wrong turn on the confused and snaking road and are rolling pellmell towards your destiny, with a growing paranoia that something is alive under your skin.





You could drive a Mustang GT and listen to U2 or the Beach Boys, I suppose, but the Gods of Rock will frown on you. And frown mightily. Your car choices demand that you respect the riff.
posted by Shepherd at 1:17 PM on August 6, 2009

Why Georgia by John Mayer
Hotel California by the Eagles

Hard to get better than songs about driving down the highway..
posted by chalbe at 1:25 PM on August 6, 2009

The Ramones. I need hardly say more, but one of the first three albums, obviously. I have had good road trip results with Rocket to Russia.
posted by Infinite Jest at 1:26 PM on August 6, 2009

Can't believe I forgot this:

"Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin has the perfect driving tempo
posted by chalbe at 1:30 PM on August 6, 2009

Lab 4.
posted by pompomtom at 4:02 PM on August 6, 2009

Oh, man. I just found this album recently. "Pendulum - In Silico". It's a rather awesome, catchy, upbeat techno-fused-with-rock (excuse my illiterate terminology) album that I've been listening to almost non-stop for two weeks. If you like any one of the songs you'll probably like the whole album. Check it out.
posted by jgunsch at 4:10 PM on August 6, 2009

I've been really into Kurt Vile, Constant Hitmaker lately, and it's been giving me that road trip feeling. Perhaps because the first song is called Freeway and sounds that way (though not in the Autobahn way).

Also, motherfucking Springsteen.
posted by Beardman at 5:40 PM on August 6, 2009

Toss another vote in here for Alice's Restaurant. Can't believe I didn't think to mention this.
posted by mittenbex at 6:35 PM on August 6, 2009

Seconding the ZZ Top suggestion. Eliminator, Tres Hombres (and it's La Grange, named after the town where the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas used to be), and Deguello.

The CD I find is most likely to make the pedal hit the metal in my car on a long drive is Fluke's Risotto. It's electronic rather than traditional muscle car rock, but the beat just makes me want to drive fast.
posted by immlass at 10:07 PM on August 6, 2009

If you've ever seen the British car programme called Top Gear, well, it's all about fast cars and they have loads of compilation albums of 'driving music'. have a look at some of these as i'm sure they've fit the bill.
posted by mairuzu at 11:55 PM on August 6, 2009

obviously there'll be a slight british bias to the selections.
posted by mairuzu at 11:57 PM on August 6, 2009

If you've ever seen the British car programme called Top Gear, well, it's all about fast cars and they have loads of compilation albums of 'driving music'.

For the record, mairuzu, I'm not sure that the Top Gear albums would be easily obtainable for someone in the U.S. -- but perusing the track listings thereon does make good reference material for someone to get ideas.

To wit:

* Ooh, "Rock The Casbah!" "Don't Fear The Reaper!" GOOD CHOICES!




Oh, and to the OP -- ARG, I Knew I was forgetting one! "Baba O'Reilly" by The Who!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:35 AM on August 7, 2009

The music used in the TV show Supernatural on the WB was *MADE* for this:

http://freenet-homepage.de/screever/Supernatural-Music-Guide.html
posted by Spyder's Game at 3:37 PM on August 7, 2009

Back when I had a fun 5-speed and excellent curvy highways to drive on, Radar Love by Golden Earring would ALWAYS come on the radio at the perfect moment during my roadtrips.
posted by lilywing13 at 2:43 AM on August 9, 2009