Big Joe's Backseat Driver: Loud music, loud cars go together at race track
Posted On: Monday, Nov. 9 2009 05:04 AM
Since I wasn't around in the 30's (really), I can't say for sure if the first guys who drove fast cars carrying moonshine had their own psyche-up songs or if those whiskey haulers even sported radios. It's a lead-pipe cinch they didn't have CD players or satellite receivers, but if they had, what would they have been listening to on those midnight runs across the countryside?
A genre we now call Americana might have been one way to travel. I can just see a black Ford two-door coupe barreling down a back road, windows open, while the Clinch Mountain Boys wailed away, accompanied by the screaming siren of a Treasury agent's car from a few hundred yards back.
Sounds like a cool movie script, huh?
There actually was a film scenario very similar to that.
Raise your hand if you remember "Thunder Road," starring Robert Mitchum.
He played the "mountain boy" referred to in the song of the same name which Mitch (as he liked to be called) had a hand in writing and later recorded, which sold a bazillion copies. That may have been the first song about fast cars and the cowboys who drive them.
Stock car racing evolved from those long-gone days.
Since I was just barely around (really) when NASCAR was born in the late '40s and didn't become a fan until the late '90s, I can't say how music was incorporated into the sport's beginnings, but I know how we do it at Texas Thunder Speedway.
In a move I "borrowed" from WWE, each class has it's own entry music, which we try to time so the first notes blare out when the cars hit the track. More often than not, it doesn't work that way, but close counts, I guess.
When the crowd hears the first notes of AC/DC and "Thunderstruck," they know it's time for the Street Stock feature race.
It's a loud, rowdy song perfectly matched to all the metal grinding about to come.
Then, there's more heavy metal on the way, when the IMCA Stock Cars come out to "Give Me Fuel, Give Me Fire" from Metallica. These cars are bigger and faster than the Streets and I thought it just felt right for the class.
A change of pace is next when the IMCA Southern Sport Mods appear to rapper T.I.'s "Bring 'Em Out." It gets the crowd dancing and is also a fairly short song that usually ends about the time we're ready for the green flag.
We run two Texas Twister features and one comes out to "Big Show" off a WWE CD, while the second enters to "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses. Again, the fit just seemed right.
For the IMCA Modifieds, we've been using Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train," since it can, and often does, get a little insane out there, when these "alcohol-burning, ground-pounding" metal monsters start turning quarter-mile laps in the high 15-second range.
There's other tunes we keep handy to use during the night. You'll likely hear Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen doing "Hot Rod Lincoln," "Little Deuce Coupe" and "409" from the Beach Boys and my favorite of all, "Dirt Track Date," by a band called Southern Comfort on the Skids.
The Chicken Dance, the Macarena, Hokey Pokey, Bunny Hop ... we play 'em all, along with George Strait, Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw.
If somebody misbehaves, we have "Bad Boys" from the "Cops" TV show, plus Brooks and Dunn's "Hard Workin' Man" for guys who win and "Go Girl Go" by Hank Williams Jr. when we have a female winner.
The most fun for me is trying to get the right music on for that perfect moment. No matter what's coming out of the speakers, though, one thing stays constant, even when promoter Pat accuses me of trying to blow up the system ... the louder the better.
Hope to see you at the Racer's Banquet Nov. 21 at the Harker Heights VFW. That's when we start counting down to March 6, 2010, and opening night.
I'll have the songs ready and my fingers on the volume control.