Driving beats: Music for summer road tripping

Driving back to Auckland from Wellington recently, I got to thinking about driving music and playlists and what my Top Ten list would be if I actually organised such a thing in advance. Turns out after much (so much!) deliberation, it would have loads of old stuff and be the kind one would belt out joyfully, although most likely not terribly tunefully. Hopefully one would also remember to tone it down before slowing to 50 on the main street of a very quiet town where people look funny at you if you are still at it and the window is right down.

This, then, would be my list:

1. Elton John's Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding. Eleven minutes of bliss. The “One Night Only” live performance at Madison Square Garden is the best, I reckon.
2. Life on Mars, David Bowie.  One of my fav Bowie songs out of so many and great for the road because the lyrics are so weird, even for him.
3. Too much Led Zep to choose from but this is such a fabulous early one. Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You.  Joan Baez sang it first, but this... Robert Plant... Amazing... Sigh.
4. Puddle of Mudd, Blurry. A bit out of left field and a guilty pleasure now but it’s a terrifically loud, confused and angsty song.
5. Bad Romance, Lady Gaga. Perfect pop. One for the girls to crank up the volume to.
6. Calling On, Weta.  Another lyrically odd song, but possibly my all time fav Kiwi song. Great Desert Road stuff.
7. Alice Cooper's Poison. How good are kitschy lines like this. "I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison." Good vocab lesson for impressionable kids in the car, right there.
8. The Cowsills. The Rain, the Park and Other Things.  Cuteness. There has to be something light and fluffy to counteract all the angst and this is it.  Pure fun and happiness, even if the flower girl in the song might be just a dream.
9. I like you in Velvet, Malcolm McLaren. A bit obscure, late 80s, and actually a very creepy song with Malcolm singing (is it singing??) but I love this. Perfect for the last stretch of a trip, when you're almost there.
10. Bohemian Rhapsody. Just… Party on!
    

Want to listen right now? Here's a Spotify playlist for you:

Head Bangers Unite: Rock Music to Fuel Your Inner Rock God

I may be an 80's pop queen in my heart but my soul belongs to rock n roll. Hard rock, classic rock, blues rock, I'm there in all my head banging, foot tapping glory.

Of course it wasn't always that way.

In the late 70's and the early 80's I was a disco dancing pop queen. First with the Bee Gees and Abba,  then onto the likes of  Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Spandau Ballet and all the rest. Pop for me was it.  Then again I was only 10 so what did I know.

Secretly though rock music had an almost dangerous allure for me.

This was the music after all that the black t-shirt brigade listened to.  The bad boys who wore faded jeans, black t-shirt's (often with a band's logo on them), drove beat up cars and were the kind of guys your mother warned you about.  Mates who hanged around together drinking, smoking and listening to rock music while girlfriends came and went.

I admired them from afar until I became one of those girlfriends and my first love and I bonded over music. I introduced him to The Cure, The Clash and The Jam while he introduced me to AC/DC, Def Leppard and the ultimate rock legends - Led Zeppelin.

From the moment I heard the first few bars of Friends, The Immigrant Song and Kashmir I was hooked and my love of rock music has stayed with me ever since.  After all who can resist those moments when you can get in touch with your inner Rock God.

Led Zeppelin Head banging rock just wouldn't be the same without these guys.

They are the ultimate in rock gods and deservedly so.  My only regret is that I was too young to see them at their finest during the early 70's and that I had to make do to listening to their music on vinyl and admiring Jimmy Page on the posters on my wall.

Yeah that bad boy rock guitarist did it for me again.

Jethro Tull Aqualung is considered one of the best albums... ever.  It certainly is a must have album for any dire hard music fan and my own copy was frequently played when I brought it back in 1985.

An unlikely rock band Jethro Tull managed to combine rock, folk and even a touch of classical music to produce a unique sound that was all their own.

And all fronted by the amazing Ian Anderson and his flute.  Who knew that a flute could rock music the way it could.

Cheap Trick Not as well known here as they are in their native America Cheap Trick had the reputation for being one of the best rock bands to see live and their album Live at Budokan is considered another must have album for any music fan.

I discovered them courtesy of  American Top 40 which I listened to religiously every Sunday morning as a teenager.

Guns N' Roses Tattooed, drug taking, model dating hard rock gurus Guns N' Roses burst onto the music scene in 1987 with their album Appetite for Destruction and a rock legend was born.

Sadly 6 years later the magic was gone and the band fell apart but the legacy of their music lives on in such head banging classics as Welcome to the Jungle and Paradise City.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers One of my all time favourite bands Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers are my go to music for starting any road trip.

Their songs are the songs I can bop my head along to while singing loudly to the words.

American  heartland rock at it's best I'm just surprised that they've never played a song of theirs on my favourite show Supernatural.  Because they so need to.