As I’ve said here before, Seattle rock-radio sucks. And not just a little bit. It could, quite literally, be the dictionary definition of “100 channels and nothing on” if there was one.
I regularly drive a rather bouncy Jeep so CD’s are out. I don’t even like to take the chance of getting irritated at skipping tunage. I also don’t like to have to strip my interior down every time I get out of the thing, so plugging a MP3 player (or if you’re a cultist, an iPod)Â into the head unit is right out as well. I also don’t want to waste precious battery time on my phone doing something so mundane as listening to music, so that too is in the “Nein” column.
I purposely purchased a Kenwood head unit that accepts USB input so that I could just stuff in a thumb/flash drive. The maximum amount of space the head unit will read is 2GB, but that is around 20 hours of music or so, so I really don’t think anyone can say I’m limiting myself.
My favored thumb was holding onto a dozen or so whole albums from bands in the “Classic Rock” genre, but I found myself skipping over half the tracks. This gave me an idea to make a folder that sounds like one of the better local FM stations, except without the crap tracks and commercials. After an hour of flipping through the folders in the harddrive, I now have a 735MB or so folder of nothing but “Classic Rock” tracks sitting in my favorite thumbdrive. That gives me six or seven days of commuting before I have to hear the same song twice.
I had to come up with some rules to keep myself from drowning the folder with just a handful of bands/artists: It had to be in the library of the local “Classic Rock” station, KZOK, but not in a “high rotation” slot. Each artist was limited to two songs. Otherwise, it would have been a Rush, Zep, Steely Dan, ZZ Top, Beatles and Stones folder with a few other artists sprinkled throughout.
Have a looksee below at the screengrabs and let me know who I left out that you think should be included. I will be bringing the thumbdrive in every weekend and switching out songs from the artists with larger libraries until I get tired of this exercise in variety.
Click to enlarge, of course
I think I’ll be making more of these genre specific folders. I’ll share those when they’re done if anyone is interested.
Cat Scratch Fever, by Ted Nugent. How did you forget the Nuge?
My favorite ZZ Top has always been Sharp Dressed Man.
And I’m sure you’ve got your quota of Zeppelin, but if you want someone else’s version of Kashmir, I’d recommend Apocalytica’s. Finnish symphonic metal, no vocals, with electric cellos.
Oh yeah…do early Metallica and/or early GNR make the KZOK list?
Pretty fair eighties list. I tend to listen to a lot of classics from the sixties, also.
Graham Parker & Rumour – Discovering Japan
No Iggy Pop?
HL, not a big fan of Uncle Ted, musically. Blasphemy, I know. But it’s true. About the only track of his I enjoy is “The whole world can kiss my ass” but that track has disappeared into the ether of my hard drive. And, sadly, no, Metallica and GNR don’t qualify.
Also, no Iggy, Steve. I do, however, have The Passenger, on the list, which is my favorite of his songs.
I hear at least a little bit of pre-black album Metallica and early GnR on classic rock radio here in San Antonio. No Megadeth, though, but a pretty good bit of Queensryche and Iron Maiden.
Good to see you have Golden Earring’s “Twilight Zone”, IMHO the best driving song ever. But Ted’s “Stranglehold” is a close second. (Otherwise, despite the fact that I went to the same high school he did, not a huge fan, music-wise.) Aqualung, check, Locomotive Breath, check. Warren Zevon, check.
No The Who?
Not sure where my original comment went…
Great list.
I’d add Guess Who, Boston, Molly Hatchet, Elvin Bishop, .38 Special.