As you’ve probably gather thus far, I’m quite big into both wine and bicycling. There is yet a third, very important passion, that I would be remiss to exclude from my writings of the summer, and that is music. My touring gear would not be complete without an mp3 player to accompany me and provide with much needed listening enjoyment along the way (only one earbud in while riding, mind you — I must keep at least one ear to the road). This begs the question, what manner of music drives me to pedal harder, better, faster, stronger.
Hmm… I may have just answered my own question. 🙂
Yes, I am most certainly a fan of house music and Daft Punk (especially their first two albums). I dig the deep, soulful house sound common to the west coast (think Dubtribe Sound System). Sometimes I find myself drawn to the harder or more jackin’ sides of house music, but less often.
I am a huge fan of jazz, especially saxophonists such as Sonny Rollins and Gerry Mulligan, but I find it difficult to cycle to jazz. It’s a very introspective form of music. Jazz inspires me to stop and think, to get lost in the music itself. It thus becomes too distracting while on a ride, but is perfectly suitable at the campsite after a long day.
Blues and blues rock drives me a lot of the way. The mp3 player in questions is loaded up with many a track from Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker and Stevie Ray Vaughan to name a few. Some 80s ska (Madness, The English Beat) for when I need to change the pace up a little bit, and a whole host of other miscellaneous tracks, artists and genres (it is, after all a 4GB mp3 player).
The artist with the biggest presence on my mp3 player, is none other than Warren Zevon. Five complete album of his (Excitable Boy, Life’ll Kill Ya, Mr Bad Example, My Ride’s Here, The Wind) are loaded up along with a several other individual tracks from other albums (tracks from albums like Transverse City, where I’m not a huge fan of the whole album, but do enjoy select nuggets). It is safe to say that Warren Zevon is my favorite artist of the moment, and more than a few songs of his will help me get through some long miles this summer.
excellent choice. “accidentally like a martyr” from that same album is one of my favorite sad songs ever.
Ooh yeah. That is a great song. The whole album, really is excellent. I thought about putting up a video for “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” but I like the intro to that live version of “Lawyers, Guns and Money” too much.