Cruisin’ at the Speed of Sound!

Below is just a portion of the stories we cover in this episode, enjoy these seemingly random musings and more!

• Some of my all-time crusin’ songs: Megadeth – High Speed Dirt, Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now, Boston – Let Me Take You Home Tonight, AC/DC – Highway to Hell, Jay-Z – Big Pimpin’, Golden Earring – Radar Love, Cake – Going The Distance, David Bowie – Stay, Cry of Love – Highway Jones
• Cruising down the main strip in Ocean City blasting “Sunglasses at Night” with my brother and friends in the car, hitting on girls
• Playing GTA Vice City and literally spending hours riding a motorcycle and listening to the radio stations in the game. 
• Some of the best times of my life were creating playlists just to go for a drive at night and listen to them over and over again with friends and alone
• Grabbing a 6 pack of beer, driving my jeep to a secluded spot with a girl, putting on the CD and watching night sky, talking and dreaming
• Flipping through my 100 page CD book while navigating traffic on 495 searching for that perfect CD and perfect song
• I found my favorite band, Opeth, while working at a car dealership. I would wash and fuel up cars and every time I got in one I would immediately tune the radio to Liquid Metal for fun, one time I did it and “Ghost of Perdition” was one, I stopped the car, closed my eyes, and thanked the gods that music like that existed. 
• Cruising to the beach as a kid with my mom, tapping on my knee to the music 
• I got the idea of road trip playlists from my dad after helping him make one for a trip to Florida
• Camping out for concert tickets all night with the radio blasting and 100 becoming friends with 100 people instantly
• I have issues with self confidence, but when I drive or when I’m listening to music, I feel unstoppable and like I have all the confidence and self esteem in the world
• Movies like American Graffiti, Baby Driver, and The Fast and The Furious, all car-esque movies with heavy musical influences and undertones all throughout the movies
• Driving 3 hours up the road to Philly just to see a concert in a venue the size of a shoe box. And meeting for the first time a friend who would eventually be in my wedding party

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, Brake Fix.

Anyone that knows me knows I have two passions in life, cars and music, and often I find that these two passions overlap or have an indirect relationship with each other. I feel that there is a deep seated connection as both worlds can ignite feelings and emotions unlike anything else on the planet.

Today on the show, we’ll talk about that connection as well as other car and music adjacent musings and topics.

Peter Cline: Coming to you live from WGTM studio in the basements of Washington, D. C. It’s Break Fix with Brad

Crew Chief Eric: and Eric. Right you are, Pete. And please join me in welcoming back Pete Klein from Vet Motorsports, along with Donovan Lara from Garage [00:01:00] Riot, and GTM members Rob Lures and Mountain Mandan.

Crew Chief Brad: So just kind of give some, I guess, history. Into your car slash musical background. Now we’ll just go around the horn. I guess I’ll start with Rob. I know you’ve got a, a huge musical history. I think it was your uncle taking you around Boston area.

Rob Luhrs: You name it. There’s a history there. My mom was a soundboard operator at the original Woodstock.

So their album collection was completely off the hook. They’ve met everybody under the sun. My dad, they met when they went to college at Northeastern and he had a Volkswagen bus there that they would wheel all the stuff from the radio studio from Northeastern out to the cliffs over the beach and have full weekend long beach parties with the whole show.

The Northeastern radio shows from the overlook over the beach, just blasting music out for the whole time. And so. This is sort of the culture I was raised in of we always had pretty ridiculous speakers and pretty much every album you can imagine every type of music. The earliest band I ever listened to was the police.

My mom was a guitar player as well. [00:02:00] And so that started everything. I got multiple trombones, a ukulele, a banjo keyboard played with a bunch of ska bands all over the place. Where’s the

Crew Chief Eric: two timpanis and the two tubas?

Rob Luhrs: Uh, my brother’s house, which, which sounds funny, except that my brother’s wife is the town sort of district music teacher up in Massachusetts.

Literally they have a timpani and multiple tubas and euphoniums and clarinets and everything else in their house. And their car purchases were driven by what could actually fit a timpani. So early on, she got out, she got one of the like manual transmission, Honda element, because with the seats folded up, you could actually just slide a timpani in there and a two, but together at the same time and take it places.

You can fit an

Peter Cline: eight by 10 base cabinet in a Honda element.

Rob Luhrs: You can fit

Crew Chief Eric: it in a

Rob Luhrs: Honda element.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what? You can fit a

Rob Luhrs: piccolo in. You can fit it in everything.

In addition, my uncle was a record producer for hard hardcore bands, sort of [00:03:00] a few steps beyond, you know, noise bands and hardcore, et cetera. And so he would, uh, at a pretty young age in, in early high school, he was the one who would drop off mixtapes at my house for every possible excuse. He could, and then give me the list of every.

Tiny five person size club up to the big clubs and every show that was possibly going on. And so we were always at the, at the forefront of hearing all that. As you got further along in high school, there was a ton of vehicular shenanigans and getting to shows as a 16 and a half year old and out until three in the morning at some tertiary show you were at after the, you know, two shows after the first show was over.

In someone’s either basement or Newbery Comics back room or wherever it might happen to be. That’s sort of where it began, that and then into car stereos and into every possible type of music from the trombone history to a little bit of banjo playing to all sorts of stuff. You name it, I listen to it and you name it, I’ll drive it.

So it all sort of dovetails together pretty well. So let’s go with Donovan.

Donovan Lara: Always around music, uh, even when I was a kid, I mean, we were talking a minute ago about the, you know, the, [00:04:00] the hi fi speakers that were, you know, three feet tall blasting, you know, Zeppelin and whatever, you know, it’s always going by that, but became a musician really to get out of class.

I probably wasn’t the best student. And in fifth grade, they, they said, Hey, anybody that wants to play music, uh, you know, an instrument come to the band room. So me and my two hooligan buddies went to the band room and, uh, the only instruments that we thought were cool enough were drums. So we started playing and I was really the only one that stuck with it.

And, you know, at the same time, my mom had gotten remarried to a musician who was. Fairly successful in the Atlanta area and he had a studio in the house. So I was always around that, you know, moved from obviously concert percussion to drum set, started playing, played all the way through high school. I actually paid my way through college on a jazz band scholarship, which was cool.

I did that. I did basketball band and show choir, anything I could do. But I got in a band in college that, uh, was pretty successful. And I have to think now, you know, if social media had been, you know, around back then we might’ve, might’ve been something, but, uh, we played the college circuit across the Southeast, pretty big deal, I guess, you know, [00:05:00] making a lot of money in college, did that.

And then, then went on to, um, you know, continue to play. I’m still in a band twice over midnight. We’ve got a disc out, got some videos out for the previous iterations of the band. So I keep it going, but, uh, yeah, that’s kind of. In a nutshell, I guess that’s it. My ex wife was a singer, so I’ve always just always been around that.

And, you know, music is still really a important part of our household right now. There’s always music going on. You know, somebody is always singing. We got pianos all over, there’s drum sets back here. I mean, it’s just ongoing thing with us.

Peter Cline: Is that when we ask you Donovan when the reunion tour is with your ex wife, if you were in the band or is that, does that not happen?

I’m sorry. Did I speak out of turn? I apologize. Is that

Donovan Lara: if we were into the same type of music, maybe that would work out, but

Peter Cline: no reunion tour. That’s what I’m hearing right

Donovan Lara: now. Probably not.

Peter Cline: Okay. Okay. Just, I just wanted to clarify.

Rob Luhrs: I don’t know what the band was that was touring in the Southeast and such

Donovan Lara: man, the worst band name ever.

We were called cool beans. I didn’t come up with a name. But it’s funny, you know, I was just going through some stuff the other day in the basement. And I [00:06:00] found one of our flyers and like vertical horizon was on the bill with us. And, you know, we did some crazy things. One of the weirdest gigs I think we ever had.

Cause we were kind of a, like a widespread panic, grateful dead man, which wasn’t music I necessarily listened to. I was more of a three 11, you know, that kind of guy, but that was the big deal. I mean, we were getting booked a lot and we somehow got booked for, I don’t know if you guys remember the band. I think they were called all for one.

They were like a boy band. We opened up for them in a baseball field in Huntsville, Alabama. So you can imagine you’ve got 12, 13 year old girls freaking out over this band. Here we are, you know, right. We’re playing, you know, Grateful Dead and all the stuff that they’ve never even heard of. In the meantime, they set us up in the front of the stage.

So, you know, my drums were in front of the drum riser and they started testing the lights while we were playing. And I don’t know if you guys have ever been close to park hands that big, but I thought I was going to catch on fire. It was, it was just constant. Heat. So not the most cringeworthy gig I ever played.

Maybe we’ll talk about that later, but, uh, it was, it was certainly a,

Crew Chief Brad: I think we should go to Pete and then finish off with, [00:07:00] with the GT emojis.

Peter Cline: For those of you listening, this is Pete Klein. And I did the, the intro. We’re in the basement of the studios somewhere in Washington, DC. Uh, I didn’t really have the illustrious start that some of the other presenters have talked about.

My parents burned records for a living. No, I’m just kidding. They did nothing like that. So I didn’t really get into music. Until really I got into college. I mean, I grew up in Cleveland, was really into sports. I tried playing bass when I was in high school, but it really didn’t pan out that great, but I loved rock and roll and I loved music.

And so when I was in high school, I was a big metal head. I mean, and if you grew up in Cleveland, that’s kind of. I mean, it is heavy metal central to shows like the reunion tour for deep purple on the first day of iteration of, of that with Ian Gillen and, you know, Jimmy Blackmore and all that. I did the Roger Waters pros and cons of hitchhiking.

And that was his first time doing a solo work right after he left pink Floyd or Gilmore kicked him out or whatever. [00:08:00] And really didn’t pick up. Playing music until college, like I said, and then I went to Ohio state and ended up picking up bass down there and getting involved in a band. And over the course of 20 years, we had a recording contract and I would say toured with my hand quotes in the air, you know, the country and played South by Southwest and North by Northeast and North by Northwest New York city.

Um, and did some pretty cool things. We opened up for a band called dig, they were out from the LA scene, opened up for. The early version of Creed, I mean, right before they broke huge, but you know, we were more like built to spill or Neil Young. It’s an alternate kind of vibe. And I mean, Neil Young kind of like live Russ, but not an emo thing, but it was really kind of a country ask Americana kind of vibe.

You know, I did that for 20 plus years and, and I’m sure everybody here has these stories of being in bands. It’s like being in a marriage with, you know, X number of people that are, and after a Kind of burn out from it. And then I decided to go motorcycle [00:09:00] racing and went from a being challenged emotionally by four or five guys and being stuck in an econoline van with a bunch of guys that are overly flatulent to driving around in a van with a motorcycle in the back and road racing.

So, I mean, that’s more or less my background.

Crew Chief Eric: Was your pit crew overly flatulent as well?

Peter Cline: Well, pick crew is me of one. So yes, consistently overly flatulent. Yes. I am.

Crew Chief Eric: It sounds like a great band name. Overly flatulent. I like that. It’s good.

Peter Cline: Overly flatulent Donovan. What was the name of your band again?

Crew Chief Brad: Cool beans.

Peter Cline: And their album

Crew Chief Brad: overly flatulent.

Peter Cline: No, the, uh, yeah. Overly flatulent. Is that your first release?

Rob Luhrs: Might as well have been. Yeah.

Peter Cline: Sorry, Don. I was like, these guys are

Rob Luhrs: your first release overly flatulent. Well done. Well played.

Peter Cline: Oh, by the way. So Rob asked, so the, the band that I was in was called silo the Husky.

So that might be on par with cool beans. So it was S I L O. H U [00:10:00] S K I E, not Y. No, that’s still better.

Donovan Lara: In fact, I don’t even refer to that band as Cool Beans. I just call us The Beans. So when somebody says, Oh yeah, that’s back in The Beans days. So, which it really isn’t any better, but you know.

Crew Chief Brad: All right, let’s go to Mountain Man Dan.

So what’s your, do you have a musical background or are you like Eric? You just, you’re just a hobbyist.

Mountain Man Dan: My musical background started when I was a kid. My mom and stepfather used to have, Parties at the house, friends would come over and they would bring their instruments. This is back in the mid 80s.

They’d always bring their guitars and stuff like that. I always had interest in learning guitar, but My age, my hands being so small, I couldn’t stretch my fingers out far enough to hit the chords. So one of the guys decided, Hey, I’ll bring a mandolin. So I brought a mandolin. I learned my chords initially on mandolin to play a lot of like bluegrassy type stuff or like classic rock.

They showed up with a banjo one time and I just started plucking on it and having fun with it. And then from there in school, I wanted to play saxophone. But unfortunately, my family didn’t have the money [00:11:00] to afford one, which just by chance someone in the family had a clarinet, so I got stuck with a clarinet, and then wound up being in a drum corps for a little while, because my sister was in a majorette.

I got stuck with going along, and it was boring for me, so whenever a group would come through and there’s two people carrying the flag that says what the group is, that was me and my brother for a good while. Before they decided to open up, do a drum. So I started doing that and I did a little bit with Tom’s and a little bit with the, uh, bass drum and kind of got out of it by that time I was having a license, wasn’t as interested in that portion of it, but a friend of mine’s brother had a band that was doing pretty decent locally on the local scene.

So I kind of wrote it for them for a while, because it was fun to just go hang out at the clubs with them. I can see that. The cool thing is, even though I was, I wasn’t 21, I could get into the clubs because I was broody. So I’d be hanging out in the crowd underage back then in the nineties. Nobody cared.

So I also

Crew Chief Brad: had

Mountain Man Dan: that beer too.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, he’s had that since the eighties. What are you talking about? [00:12:00]

Mountain Man Dan: I

Crew Chief Eric: was

Mountain Man Dan: born with

Crew Chief Eric: it.

Mountain Man Dan: Whenever they would practice and stuff, I’d get on stage and sing their songs and stuff. At one point they asked if I wanted to sing for them, and I had too much stage fright to do it. They wanted to get another singer, and they actually almost had a record deal, and then the band broke up like shortly after they were in the talks for a record deal.

And then they wound up splitting up. So unfortunately I never went anywhere.

Crew Chief Eric: I have a feeling if I heard you sing, which I’ve never heard you sing, you would end up something along the lines of Randy Travis. So we’re just going to leave that where it is.

Crew Chief Brad: If you go to a concert with them, you’ll hear him sing.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, really? Oh, dang.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, you will. So I

Crew Chief Eric: gotta, I gotta share a little tidbit though. And this is something that I don’t even know that Brad knows. I do come from a musical family. I come from some Renaissance artists as well. No, no, Kazoos don’t count. Hey, Piccolo. All right, but, but seriously, no, my grandfather, he would build instruments from scratch, so there’s all these stories and I don’t have to share all of them, but basically, you know, guitars, violins, like all sorts of stuff.

He would make his own wood, do all [00:13:00] this crazy stuff. So at one point my grandfather decided. He was going to build accordions, a typical Italian thing to do, but in their case, he’s old school. So this is not the accordion with the keyboard, like, you know, the black and whites. This is actually the old school push button kind, right on both sides and not, not a squeeze box.

This is a full size. Okay. So, So he built one for me. He built one for, uh, my uncle, uh, my cousin, stuff like that. And so all built from scratch. And he brought it over here one year for Christmas. It’s at my mom’s house. And he proceeded to try to teach me to play over the two weeks that they were here on vacation.

And I tell you what, I am not musically inclined. And after that horrendous experience of trying to learn an accordion, which is extremely difficult, I never picked up an instrument ever again, but I have a huge appreciation. For music. I do not like Polka. I’m just going to throw that out there. And I have no affiliation with that whatsoever, but, uh, I just thought that was just fun to share.

Mountain Man Dan: I can see you in it. Like the, [00:14:00]

Crew Chief Brad: I got to, I got to ask though, another tradition is using copper pipe for like car parts and stuff. Did this accordion have copper piping anywhere?

Crew Chief Eric: It did have copper piping, but it did have copper rivets and a lot of other stuff. So it’s, it’s just, it’s just. It goes with the territory.

It’s par for the course. So anyway, Brad, you played an instrument in school. I know that. You were a band geek.

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, yeah. I started playing saxophone back in fifth grade and I played all the way through high school and some college. I had a music scholarship for saxophone and everything. And where’s your saxophone?

At the pawn shop. I sold that thing years ago. Really? Yeah. It was great. I mean, I was good. I had fun and everything, but I just, I lost interest in playing that. I always wanted to play guitar or something cool. So I tried teaching myself and I was terrible at it. I’m still terrible at it and I pick it up every once in a while.

But then I really kind of started just, I love live music. There was a time about five or six years ago, I just started going to concerts, like, like crazy, even from high school. And I was going to concerts [00:15:00] probably two to three to four a month. I did something about music. I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t have that much to say about my musical background, just that I love music and maybe ever from when I was a little child, you know, riding around in the car with my dad and my mom.

And I, when the first person, actually the only person in my family to actually play an instrument. But we all have like an appreciation for it and just making playlists and riding around on the beach and just listening to the tunes and everything and just getting in the car and going for a ride. Not no particular place to go and just listening to songs and everything.

And those are some of my fondest memories with my parents and everything. So it’s just that has stuck with me, you know, to this day. And I just,

Peter Cline: Is that like how you guys feel about music though? Is that like an escapism? I don’t mean escape from running from something, but it’s able to transport you somewhere, right?

I Brad, is that kind of what you’re thinking? Is that kind of what you’re touching?

Crew Chief Brad: It definitely transports me somewhere and it puts me in a, in

Mountain Man Dan: a different mindset. Or you were saying how [00:16:00] music can be an escape. I’ve always thought music is universal language. Cause it doesn’t matter where you are in the world.

If a song comes on that has a good beat, it doesn’t matter if you know the words to it or not, you’ll still, like, tap your foot, move your head. Boots and cats, and boots and cats, and boots

Donovan Lara: and cats. You know, that’s the one thing that nobody hates, right? I can’t think of anybody that hates music. I mean, they may hate certain disciplines or genres of music.

It’s like the one common thread across everybody.

Rob Luhrs: I use music to focus. Like someone laughed one said like, Oh, I have to write this big paper. And how do people do that with music? Like right now I’m sitting here and I can, I can hear my kids playing. Cause they’re not quite asleep. I can hear a helicopter going by.

I can hear cars going by. I hear like 75 noises when it, whereas if I need to sit and focus, I put on my serious audiophile headphones and I blast something so that my brain can only hear that music. And it cuts it down to just one thing. And by doing so my ability to focus on that second thing is, infinitely better while especially as something I know I can sit there and [00:17:00] bop along to it.

As you said, it’s that bopping along. It’s just so ingrained. It eliminates. Every other distraction from my existence, but just the music and what I’m doing. And it’s so much simpler for me at that point.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m with you on that, Rob. And you know, my wife knows that when the house and the down tempo and a lot of that stuff starts playing, I’m either writing code or I’m writing an article for, you know, the club or something like that.

So you’re right. It helps me align in a certain way and gets me focused. And for whatever reason, just having that soundtrack in the background, even if it’s something, you know, down tempo or whatever, it helps me filter out the rest of what’s going on.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, certain music can make me feel a certain way.

So if I’m, it’s an emotional release, pretty much. And so if I’m feeling a certain way, if I’m angry, I’ll go listen to something to help me kind of get that frustration or that anger out. If I’m feeling happy, I mean, you can tell by my mood, by kind of like the music that I’m listening to pretty much. But yeah, it’s, it’s kind of like an escape from the idiocy of normal life.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I [00:18:00] don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about, man, because when I I’ve ridden with you in the car for hours and hours, we even had one trip when it was completely silent. Because

Crew Chief Brad: the only station your truck got was NPR. And we were driving 13 hours from Maryland to fucking Kentucky. And we couldn’t get NPR in every state, you asshole.

So it was silence for like Yeah, but when I

Crew Chief Eric: ride with you, it’s the opposite. All I hear is So I can’t tell if you’re happy or sad or getting revved up. It all sounds like somebody’s Eating rocks, but

Crew Chief Brad: it sounds different to me. So what you hear is like someone just gargling nails. It actually does sound different to me.

I’ve developed that ear for the little nuances in the screening and the growling and you know, all that good stuff.

Peter Cline: Just, you know what, Eric, the next time you get them in the car. Get them in the car during NPR is pledged drive. And that

Crew Chief Brad: [00:19:00] not to knock on NPR because, uh, the tiny desk series on YouTube is amazing. That

Crew Chief Eric: is excellent. That’s good. All

Crew Chief Brad: right. So, so that’s our musical backgrounds, but why the hell are we on a car podcast? To make the connection between music and cars, cause we are a car podcast after all to Peter’s question about, you know, is it like,

Peter Cline: I got to stop right there.

You’re Pete, right? Not Peter, not Peter. No, no, it’s just Pete. I mean, that’s

Crew Chief Brad: to, to Mr. Klein’s question,

Peter Cline: it’s sir or overlord to you, sir.

Crew Chief Brad: His question about escapism, you know, Music can be an escape, but obviously cars and driving, that’s an escape as well. I mean, there’s the only one way to get away from something and stop in your car and drive the fuck away.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I think music and cars is like red wine and steak, right? I mean, it’s one of those pairings that just goes well together. And I think it opens the floor up to what’s that song or that album or that band that kind of gets [00:20:00] you revved up or when you’re out there on a twisty mountain road, I mean, let’s go with Donovan.

He’s on tail of the dragon on the regular. I mean, what are you playing when you’re out there on the mountain?

Donovan Lara: You know, it varies. Honestly, you know, I listen to music on the way, but when I’m on the road, it’s windows down, listen to the exhaust and sound the engine. But it’s really interesting for me, you know, early on, it was just, you know, whatever I could turn on that was loud and made a lot of noise.

And, you know, depending on where I’m going, it really, you know. It does kind of turn into a soundtrack for me. You know, like I, I go to visit my family in Florida and, you know, I’ll take the interstate as far as I can. Then I get on back roads and, you know, like out of cell phone range kind of back roads and, you know, I’ll put on whatever it is, some kind of alternative, you know, Paramore used to be a big fan of Graham’s a big, you know, I love fan of Graham, stuff like that.

And, and you’re talking about the escape part of it. And for me, it’s always like this alternative track that I haven’t heard on the radio, 1500 times, you know, that kind of thing. So. It really does kind of transcend, especially you get on a road, you know, there’s one, one [00:21:00] particular piece of this road where it’s an old logging road.

And, you know, half the time it’s all just torn down on the side and all you can see is blue sky, you know, you’ve got this amazing music soundtrack going on. So it’s been a while since I really gotten jacked up for some kind of outing like that. But I can tell you, uh, I had a buddy of mine’s, uh, Gallardo for a couple of weeks.

Fire starter, prodigy, all those spitfire that was, that was on demand in every time we got in that car, it was like crank it up and just haul ass. So,

Peter Cline: and I, I’m really trying to put some really serious thought into us, even though we’re having a great time talking about it, you know, it’s whatever mood I’m in is what’s playing on the radio.

Right. And so. You know, my motor sports background, you know, from recent motorcycles and stuff, you know, typically if I’m, if I’m at the line for autocross now, and you know, I may be cranking Queens of the stone age up until the point where, you know, I’m up next or whatever, but it just depends on what’s going on.

And I think for me, I think. Music is a soundtrack. It sets the mood and tempo for whatever I’m doing. And I think, [00:22:00] especially depending on the mindset, it amplifies and provides a lot of color to what’s happening. And I can’t really explain it any more than that. It fills my day with immense joy. It, no matter what I’m listening to.

you know, but I, I. I have my favorite songs, but I tend to pick and choose really where my mood’s at. And that’s what I’m going to listen to for a while. I don’t know if that, if that makes sense or not. But there’s,

Crew Chief Eric: there’s not one song where you, you pull the scrunchie out of your ponytail and start doing donuts in your Ivox Z.

Peter Cline: Uh, yeah, I rock Z. No, listen, I think I love a great rock anthem, right? And I think rock anthems in cars go well together. And so if you had to say, okay, babe, if you’re in the car and you’re listening, what anthem would you play? Because you’re from Cleveland and you love heavy metal, but you love Hard Rock.

What would you be listening to? So I would tell you right now, Boston, more than a feeling is like the quintessential. or Kiss Detroit Rock City up [00:23:00] to Diver Down. So any of the catalog is a great song. Love comes walking So those are the songs I But you know, boston, bos album I ever had next to with Led Zeppelin.

First So I’m going to say that

Donovan Lara: Rush claim they got their start in Cleveland. Wasn’t it the, they played the long play, what was it? Blue collar man, or whatever the song is that they

Peter Cline: played that always at midnight on Sunday on WMMS. They played that song and maggot brain. It’s an actual song. Look it up. So that’s, I, I’m sorry if I screwed up the question, but that’s kind of where my head space at when I’m listening to music in the car,

Rob Luhrs: something I miss from back in the day, late nineties.

I think for me. In this case was actually the music discovery aspect of driving. I used to frequently drive from like my parents house out to UMass, which is where I went to school. And you have [00:24:00] to climb a mountain up sort of a nice twisty road. And I had, you know, 16 valve Scirocco for a while in there.

And at the very end, you know, the different things. And I’d be driving up that road and like, I was listening to some random stations, the middle of the night. And. The first time I ever heard, and this is where it gets interesting to me is maybe it’s because of my background playing in jazz bands and big bands and sky bands and things, but there was this brand new album by Michelle Camilo, who is a Latin jazz pianist, and he had done his first ever big band album, this thing called a hothouse, like I’m driving.

And as a song built in crescendo, just the way the rhythm kept getting faster and faster, just the way it accelerated. Was on a different planet. And the song is like a seven and a half, eight minute long song. By the end of the song, the car is barely staying together with the speed. I’m going, I literally had to pull over cause I was just drenched in sweat from like the act of listening to it because something about it was just so driving.

And it was different. Like other times hard rock goes very well together with fast driving, but there’s the discovery of different styles of [00:25:00] music that can actually compel you. To do those kinds of things in a different way in a car. It was the first time I’d ever heard that I went and seeked out the album and it became this huge thing.

It, it, I was a music minor in college as well, but as everybody started to listen to this album and realize that it was one of those albums where it was never actually done live. The level of complexity was just never done in one take. It took them too many takes from all the different musicians to get it.

These were like the best studio musicians across the board and the horn sections and everything. But I can vividly remember having to pull over in the middle of the night, you know, windows were down, the sunroof was open. This was just. Blasting out of, you know, I built up the whole stereo in this thing too.

It was just exhausting at how fast I was driving and just how in sync with the music I was from something that wasn’t expected. Right. It wasn’t hard rock. It wasn’t alternative. It wasn’t any of those things. It was literally like big band Latin jazz stuff, but it was just, just amazing that sort of the way it all felt at that moment.

Donovan Lara: Would you say though, I’m thinking about the Michelle Camilo comment, amazing piano player, by the way. And if you listen to him, the thing that’s [00:26:00] really kind of enticing about it is you can hear him in the background and like, like he’s singing what he told me as he’s, it’s incredible. And it draws you in.

And it made me think about it, you know, really, is there. Two states of driving with music. I mean, I think there’s the, the escapism mode, right? Where I’m listening to music. That’s making me think of being somewhere else. And then there’s like the prodigy where I’m like, okay, I’m all jacked up. I want to feel every corner.

I want to feel the performance of this car. You know, I think they’re different, but to me that when you guys are talking about it, that sounds like the two states, you know, other than you’re just cruising to McDonald’s or something, but you know, when you’re really, you know, For me anyway, it’s either, either I’m out of my head somewhere and I’m appreciating the drive, or I’m really in the moment with the car itself, you know, trying to be, be one with it.

Crew Chief Brad: For me, like when, you know, driving around in cars and listening to music, I mean, that’s something I did from before I could even walk. I mean, my family, we were always on the move. We were going to the beach, we were going to, you know, to a trail to go bike riding or walking or whatever. And, you know, and there’s [00:27:00] always music on in the car.

I remember distinctly, I get very distinct memories. Riding to the beach to Ocean City with my mom, and we’re listening to the Moody Blues, and her favorite song comes on and, you know, she’s sitting there belting out the lyrics, you know, at the top of her lungs. And I’m just, I’m like a, a, a 2-year-old sitting in the passenger seat looking at her with all, and you know, the same thing with Michael Jackson and Elton John, just all the time.

And my dad, we’d go to Florida every year. Two to three times a year, and he would spend hours, if not days, just crafting the perfect playlist for this 18 hour trip, you know, and it’s on cassette. So we’re flipping the cassette over. Listen to the same songs like 10 times. And then I discovered my favorite bands when I was a car porter at a dealership locally here, and I had to take the cars and wash them and fill them up with gas.

And one of my favorite things to do, because all the cars came with a free subscription of Sirius XM is as soon as I got in the car, I would tune it to liquid metal and turn it up. You know, as soon as I left it that way for the customers, I [00:28:00] know they loved it. It was great for them. One time I did it. And then, uh, Opeth’s, uh, ghost reveries was on and I was like, what the fuck is this?

My mind was completely blown. I was just sitting there. I mean, you wouldn’t think that like metal music can bring you to tears, but I mean, I’m such an emotional guy anyway. Listening to some of this music, it just brings me to tears, you know, just tears of sadness, tears of joy, whatever. It’s just, and I found, you know, them and actually that’s, I was at that con, one of the concerts, I drove up to Philadelphia with a couple of our club members and we went to see them.

I’ve been in New York to see them. And it’s like, I’ve been following them around ever since. And that’s because I was working at a car dealership, moving cars around. I just happened upon them. And it was just, It was just amazing that

Crew Chief Eric: discovery. No, exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: But I want to go back to something that Pete alluded to way earlier talking about driving anthems and stuff like that.

And so I wanted to chime in on that for a second. And so for me, I think 1 of those songs and this gets to like, where I, you know, [00:29:00] like Brad talked about his favorite band and how you get into all that. It’s kind of a weird thing because I got this connection to the cruising idea of like that car anthem by the opening of Revenge of the Nerds 2, which if you’re familiar with that movie is Back to Paradise by 38 Special.

And for me, that’s one of those just Car anthem songs. Like, you know, it’s just happy. It’s it gets you in the mood to go drive in and stuff like that. But my dad was a big audio guy, right? He wasn’t musically inclined. He appreciated music and he had a ton of music. I found out, especially after he passed away, there was like, you know, a treasure trove of reel to reel and all sorts of stuff that I went through.

And so, you know, he was big into disco and all that kind of stuff, which is, you know, one of my guilty pleasures. And we’ll talk about that. But. I found, you know, as a kid, the song that got me and got me hooked on my favorite group was in the eighties when they played The Look by Roxette for the first time on the radio.

And I heard it in the car while he was driving me to school. And I [00:30:00] was like, That’s a big, you know, guitar, electric guitar, heavy song. And so that’s always gotten me. I’ve always appreciated their music and it’s absolutely fantastic. But I found though, you guys were talking about driving and it seemed to like a lot of daytime driving.

And for whatever reason, I found myself as a young driver driving at night a lot. And so for me, the connection was the songs at night, there are a lot more chill, maybe a little bit more down tempo, which got me into, you know, house music and some other stuff. So I was wondering for you guys, like, what’s your nighttime soundtrack?

Like when you’re out driving, let’s say on a long trip.

Rob Luhrs: So my first ever nighttime album. I think I was just learning how to drive. I learned how to drive on a drive from, from Massachusetts up to the Finger Lakes. Doing the night shift. The only, I think it must’ve been a tape that we had was Paul McCartney’s, Give My Regards to Broad Street.

Phenomenal album. That album became the soundtrack to my night driving because as I was driving, my dad would just flip [00:31:00] it over. Cause he didn’t want to distract me at all. Cause it was like multiple hours of like learning how to drive with this, you know. All the manual in the Volkswagen bus and everything, but that became the night music was that album for me was, was that big thing

Crew Chief Brad: for me?

I’ve got a couple albums. One is a David Bowie’s station to station because my father, when he was making his playlist, he would pick a lot of songs from that one favorite is stay. Fantastic song. And then, uh, Pink Floyd, I wish you were here. Shine on your crazy diamond, all the parts of that. And you just nice and chill and a lot of guitar and everything.

Just nice to cruise to and everything that, and, uh, the wall, you know, the wall gets, it’s got a very, uh, dynamic. It’s a lot of mood changes in that, but you know, just cruising to those at night, uh, and just regular song that just gets me going is a don’t stop me now. You know, if I, if I need to get pumped up, then I just put that on and just screaming the top of my lungs.

My wife is like giggling at me and laughing at me when I start singing that song. I mean, even in the kitchen, you know, if I’m sitting here getting ready to cook, I put that song on and it just, [00:32:00] I get all riled up.

Rob Luhrs: That’s the two different types of night song too, right? There’s the type of like, you’re fully wide awake and you’re driving and want that background music versus the like, I’m sort of half dozing, but I know I need to get there and I have an hour left.

And what am I going to crank to, as you said, to sing along to it, be in the moment. So you finished that drive.

Yeah. That second

Rob Luhrs: one for me, for me, it was always a synchronicity that album by the police phenomenal for that purpose. For me, that was my big one.

Donovan Lara: You know, nowadays my soundtrack is God, how many bugs am I hitting with this car that I’m gonna have to clean tomorrow?

Um, really like when I’m on a road trip, I think that’s when I start to go through kind of the deeper albums on my, you know, my iPod, you know, you go back to, you know, like you said, the police, or you listen to a rush or, you know, I’ve got to say that the classic driving album for me, though, is still journey’s greatest hits, right?

You put that Something like that, where you’re just kind of going back through some of the old stuff. I mean, you know, right after, you know, pit stop when you got Red Bull and stuff in it’s whatever the new stuff is, you’re cranking it up. But when you’re really kind of in [00:33:00] that zone to me, it’s stuff that I’ve heard a million times.

It’s comfortable. You know, I know it. Just kind of go through it. And it’s a lot of that stuff is a lot of the classic rock, but it’s, it’s always the full album at that point. It’s not, I’m not jumping songs. I’m listening from end to end and, um, 10 Sunder’s tales, for example, you know, something that’s really good from beginning to end, I think is really like you were saying, right.

You know, it kind of takes you on a journey and stuff and you can, you know, Valleys and you can listen to the full experience.

Crew Chief Eric: When I’m with you, when I was younger, I listened to a lot of Genesis, right? Especially at night. So that seemed to kind of keep me going. And their albums were one of those where it’s like, you know, you’re two minutes in and suddenly you’re 20 minutes in and you didn’t realize, cause it’s like, they’re just designed in such a way that you just plow through it and they’re seamless in a way.

And so I always, I appreciated Phil Collins and the whole group there, but you know, that, I think my tastes have changed since then. Now I find myself. 80s synth wave. I’m listening to stuff like The Acrylics, Isle, and a lot of, you know, the Daft Punk album, like the [00:34:00] Tron soundtrack. There’s a fantastic night cruising, uh, Martin Solveig.

A lot of the, this newer stuff that has like this retro feel, those are a lot of fun. And I find those to be relaxing too, because I don’t want to be overly amped at night either. Right.

Mountain Man Dan: And to kind of piggyback on that, the big thing about music is you feel it. It’s not just something you listen to. You actually feel it.

I get, I know guys that used to wrestle and everything, and they’d listen to like stuff to get them amped up before they went out on the mat. I think for me, like the initial connection of cars and music was when I got my license. One of the first modifications I did to my car was improve the stereo system.

That’s what you did. You put big speakers in there, put an amp in there. You could just ride around. Everybody heard your music. And of course, Get cops caught on you quite a bit. But that was part of growing up because you’re all about that base.

Rob Luhrs: Just to jump on that for a second. I wonder if there’s a connection there, right?

So everybody I knew ended up in cars, like my brothers in mechanic, everybody did, did get their start of like, I can replace the speaker. Right. And so replacing the speaker was like on day one [00:35:00] was I got to be able to take a door panel off. I got to be able to not screw up the windows, the locks, everything else.

I’m replacing speakers. I got to figure out how to run wires to amplifiers and how to not fry myself on the battery a second time or a third time as a gateway drug. Like music gets you into comfort with the fact that a car is just a machine and no matter how complex you’re doing it, at some point you can just take it apart and figure it out.

But that’s sort of like a huge gateway into. Being a car buff, right? Is, is that hands on attention that you get from that, that simplistic car stereotype stuff first.

Crew Chief Eric: And new cars have taken that away from us. As if you think about it,

Rob Luhrs: the head units, a lot have, I still, I’ve taken brand new cars, still apart to do speaker changes, but like, yeah, the degree to which I knew how to take out a head unit and take apart a dashboard and how to funnel everything around, that’s, that’s sort of gone because now they all use.

Fully integrated where you’re doing that. You got to cut all that, all that stuff was

Crew Chief Eric: connected to the clutch pedal, right? So it all went at the same time

Crew Chief Brad: and funny to your, to your point, Rob, I mean, around the club, it’s a big joke, you know, between us that Eric built my car. He’s [00:36:00] the one that does all the work on it and everything.

It’s funny because. I won’t touch my car. I mean, I will, I’m trying to learn, but it’s, it’s hard for me to get the confidence to go in and, you know, do a brake swap or your suspension swap or something like that on the car, but I will take apart a dash and I will pull out the head unit and the speakers and all the wiring and all that other bullshit and put in all brand new stuff.

Cause. I’ve done it before, you know, it’s a, it’s not just

Crew Chief Eric: funny because when we stripped the black GTI, I had Brad do all the interior work because he had a lot more experience and surprisingly with his big sausage hands, he was way more delicate than most of the other people would be. So I was very proud of him for that.

Peter Cline: Actually, I think you’ve touched upon something here. I want to, I actually want to take it one step further because the majority of people here have been. On the road with a band or touring with a band. And I think there has to be a certain amount of self reliance. If you’re in a vehicle far from home with a bunch of other people and it breaks down, you’ve got to have that ingenuity to fix it.

It’s no different than if you’re towing a car to a racetrack or [00:37:00] trying to transport yourself to VAR or mid Ohio, but it’s the same thing, except you’ve got a van full of equipment and you’ve got to figure out. If they break down, how can I get it fixed and how can I get to the next show or whatever? And I think, I don’t know if Donovan or Rob or mountain man, Dan can, I know I certainly have my stories, but I’m sure you guys have your stories as well.

Right?

Crew Chief Eric: Before you guys continue, I have this fantasy in my head that here you are, you know, let’s say 18, 20 years old and you’re in a band or whatever, and you go to a used car lot and the gentleman there, you know, older guy probably wearing tweed. And he’s like, What are you looking for, Sonny? And the first thing out of your mouth is I’m in a band and they go come right this way.

So is there like a particular part of the used car lot where you guys are, you know, absorbing these fantastic vehicles?

Donovan Lara: Oddly enough, they always came from family members. The first. Vehicle that I drove was my stepfather’s old 77 Dodge van that he used to carry all his gear in in the van. So you imagine being in high school and pulling up to a girl’s house in a [00:38:00] van, I mean, full size van, no windows on it.

That, that was, did it say free candy on the side? It was very rarely a good idea. And it was her father loved that. Yeah. A lot of times in the middle of nowhere and the backroads pre cell phone days and all that stuff too, for sure. No wiring, thankfully, but always, you know, a tire or a transmission issue or, you know, something like that constantly.

Peter Cline: Yeah. I got a story for you guys. So I wanted, so we had a show in Youngstown and we were driving back and we had an extended O’Connell line one 50 van with the inline six. And I think it was like an 89 or something like that. And we’d build a partition of wood. Between the back area to put all the equipment and then in the, like the seating area.

And it wasn’t a window van, right? It was like a workman’s van. So the one slide door on the right hand side, which is the passenger side, there was a huge window, but on the other side, it was just nothing. So like, if you wanted to look out to see where you’re going, all you could see was everything going by.

So we [00:39:00] broke down right outside of state route 57. On I 76 outside of Rittman, Ohio. And we ended up calling a tow truck cause we had triple A. And so three of us got in the front seat of the tow truck, but we didn’t tell the tow truck driver that there were other band members and they hid in the back of the van and they towed the van all the way from the exit of Rittman on I 76 back to Columbus.

And they were all drunk. They had no place to pee. You know what I mean? They were basically stuck in the back of this van for two hours.

Crew Chief Eric: I have to say something, you know, when somebody is from Ohio, because they have to tell a story by giving you all of the intersecting highways to a, to a location, it is something I’ve just noticed from my in laws, my wife’s from Ohio.

It’s the funniest thing. So I totally appreciate that.

Peter Cline: Uh, name me some towns.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s like random McNally over here. [00:40:00] Yeah,

Peter Cline: it was on the turnpike somewhere. If you, for those of you

Crew Chief Eric: listening, Walkman, Atlas, Rotary phone, they’re all in the same generation. Right. And I do appreciate that partition you guys set up because that way the flatulence could be even tighter.

Right. We

Peter Cline: compress the air. Exactly. It

Donovan Lara: doesn’t seem like anybody in any band van, cause we had the same kind of thing, ever knew anything about the exhaust because there was Always an exhaust leak in every single van we ever had. And we always fought over who sat in the cave. That’s what we called in the back in the very back.

And you always Like Cheech and

Peter Cline: Chong, except you were just getting monoxide poisoning.

Donovan Lara: We had a percussionist that carried a three foot bong in the van. So we were always like clam bake. And you know, then she got that and then the exhaust. And so it was just whoever, whoever got the short straw was screwed in the back.

Rob Luhrs: Oh. In terms of silly, I mean, there’s, there’s too many to count as the problem. Uh, I think the most fun ones were, we were out in North Hampton and I played with the, an opening band prior to the, the Boston’s playing a [00:41:00] show. And I had known all the mighty, mighty Boston’s guys for a while. I’d played with them in a few, a few gigs.

And so I wasn’t supposed to be playing with them this gig. And they decided to let me play afterwards. So I played with them and they were like, Oh, we have another show tonight at like three in the morning back in Boston. And I was like, okay. And so I figured we’re taking the big van. The van had already left cause we were all just sort of hanging out chatting.

So we all piled into their Volkswagen Fox. So this was a two door Fox with the entire band in it. Plus me, they threw me in as well. I had my, with my trombone. And I remember being on like the mass pike halfway halfway down the road and the alternator died to the headlight slowly died. The whole thing came down.

Luckily, they actually like they had a bunch of replacement parts for this thing because they broke that all the time. And none of them know how to do anything. So I distinctly remember on the side of I 90 in Massachusetts. We’re replacing the alternator in a VW Fox so that we, so that myself and the rest of the Bostonians could get to the gig, except for my turbo and everything else was already sound checked as we pulled in.

[00:42:00] But it was like seven bodies crammed into a two door Fox. And like, all of them are like on the side of the road, just making fun of me the whole time, like holding up flashlights and other crap while I’m replacing this alternator in the dark. And it’s one of those, one of those fun moments.

Peter Cline: What was the cross street?

The guy from Ohio street. I think,

Crew Chief Eric: I think every time. I

Rob Luhrs: think every

Crew Chief Eric: time Rob says a trombone, we should take a shot.

Rob Luhrs: But this podcast will be very short. You’ll be on the ground in no time.

Donovan Lara: Brad, what you really wanted to know in all this though, was what, what kind of music or what was the song that was playing when we started cruising with the windows down first cruise strip? It’s gotta be one of the, you know, you guys all know you did it.

I didn’t do it.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I, I did it. Well, let me go ahead and kick this off because I remember, I have a distinct memory of visiting my brother. So my, my brother had a job with one of the local radio stations here, DC 1 0 1. I went and visited him and a bunch of his, [00:43:00] uh, radio station friends at the beach. One year.

It was like the last day we were hanging out. A bunch of people had already left and we decided we’re gonna go get crabs. And we’re in Ocean City going down the strip and I’ve got the car. You know, and we’ve got like three or four other people with us and we crank up as loud as we can, sunglasses at night, driving down the, you know, the, the main drag and ocean city.

You know, we’re in our twenties, the song’s like 30 years old at this point. And we’re like looking at girls, screaming our lungs out, singing and everything. They’re just pointing at us and laughing and the disgust, or I don’t know, embarrassment or whatever. And that was like one of the first real times, you know, that I.

You know, I did

Crew Chief Eric: that. I got you there, bro. Picture this Annapolis, nicely Annapolis, 1990, something. Right. And my first car, I had a, I had an 87 Audi coupe, Alpine white open exhaust sounded like a screaming dragon. Every time you just wrapped on the throttle. Right. So we’re cruising down into Annapolis for whatever reason, I got guys in the car and my buddy’s like, Hey, I got an [00:44:00] idea.

And I had a cassette deck, so he throws this cassette in there and cranks the volume all the way up. So here’s four young kids in a white Audi, they’re playing German rap. So I’m like, yeah, this isn’t going to end well for any of us. So yeah, that was a big mistake cruising song right there.

Peter Cline: Oh, I got a great soundtrack story.

I’m using my soft radio voice right now. We were in college and a buddy of mine owned one of the older style FJ cruisers, and he took the top off of it and put in this really like obnoxiously loud. Stereo. And then he painted it, like, I guess you would call it now, like a, a desert Fox tan. So I had this like desert tan camo thing.

This guy, and his name was actually, he’s, he’s great guys is crazy. And he put like a skull on the door, like, you know, by the front fender. And we drove around town playing the apocalypse now soundtrack at full volume. Nice. So. All right. That didn’t go anywhere with you guys, but the whole [00:45:00] soundtrack was, um, Colonel Kurtz speaking in these very insane monologues that he did in the movie.

That was the majority of the soundtrack. So I just wanted to, it was a very weird experience

Crew Chief Brad: that reminds me of the devil’s reject soundtrack where each, every other song is a snippet from the movie. And then they played part of the song or whatever. Does anybody else? You want to, you want to chime in with their first experience of rocking the windows down with a, some embarrassing song playing in the radio.

Rob Luhrs: Definitely all through high school was the offspring. I had a buddy with an old cut list, two door with a sunroof and at full volume, come out and play was literally the only track we would ever play in that car. Oh, you didn’t have

Crew Chief Brad: a bad habit.

Rob Luhrs: Going to school, back from school, anything. And at the right moment, everybody, like, um, the dashboard was cracked because of how many times whoever was the passenger had to do the, the double hit every time it happened to that song.

And it was literally, the way you could identify us from, from miles away was just blasting the hell out of that song. The other, the more embarrassing one, I’m trying to find the name, it was [00:46:00] some Early eighties bass song. My, my first best friend had a, uh, what was it? A 50th anniversary Trans Am black and white, the anniversary edition one.

And he had built like, he still is a car stereo installer now as a 40 year old. So it gives you some idea of what he was doing back then. Built one of those car stereos that was competition ready. I remember going up to somewhere in New Hampshire. We won. He won first place. Not because when he cranked this song loud enough, his car could bounce, but because it could get the cars on either side of his to actually get off the ground, it was, you know, a realm of like eight 18s all fired differently with baffles built so they could go out the bottom.

The base was just like shaking the whole place and anything within a hundred yards, it was just starting to bounce and bounce and bounce. I remember the first time we built this system in this car, you literally were not allowed to hear the volume past two. Because the decibels would have like the windows would blow out.

Like we did it once where the windows like popped out a little bit of, uh, of their tracks when the windows were closed too much. And so the windows had to be down in order to actually go above like [00:47:00] one and a half out of 10 on the volume. And anything above two was only for competition. Really?

Crew Chief Brad: No, I want to hear Daniels.

I know it’s Charlie Daniels, man. I’m sure. Or Alabama

Crew Chief Eric: hockey talk stuff.

Mountain Man Dan: No, surprisingly. I don’t think it was embarrassing, by any means, but one of the first songs that like had that whole nice feel to it, good bass to it and everything, the guy I went to school with had an old Volkswagen Bug and all he had was one 10 inch sub in it, but because the Volkswagen Bug was sealed so tight, it had such a good sound to it, and he used to always play Sublime, Love Is What I Got, you know, and that was just a great song, and so for myself, I used to listen to a decent mix of rap and everything at that time, because That are like the base track CDs.

’cause that was a big thing back in the day. Base track CDs, . I

Crew Chief Eric: remember the bass. Bass bass . Yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: So the Friday soundtrack, oh my gosh, I used to play that a lot. And my favorite [00:48:00] song for the bass on that was on uh uh, super Ho and . It was just a comical song and it had really good bass to it.

Crew Chief Brad: I could totally close my eyes and see you rocking out to that in like a Volkswagen bug.

Mountain Man Dan: I didn’t have the bug I had square body.

In some square body. I had Toyota Corolla at that time.

Crew Chief Brad: Ah, that makes more sense. Also

Mountain Man Dan: known as the silver bullet.

Crew Chief Brad: With three different color body panels. I try not to touch my phone when I’m driving. Now it’s like, just as a principal, but when I was like 16, 17 years old, I’d be damned if I didn’t have my 150 page CD book and I’m sitting there 50 miles an hour, 70 miles an hour, flipping through trying to find a perfect CD because in my head, there’s one song that I want to listen to at this exact moment.

And I got to find that fucking CD.

Rob Luhrs: Yep. We’ve, we’ve all done it. It started with like the 16 from the, the, the, the flip the visor down and start looking through it.

Crew Chief Brad: And Rob, to the, to the visor CD holders, I used to do autocrossing with Eric [00:49:00] back just after high school. And I had one up one day and forgot to take it out of the car.

And sure enough, I’m like, wait a minute, where are my CDs go? And then like cars are spinning around the autocross track because they’re slipping on them. I lost, uh, Rock La Familia, the Jay Z album because of that. Yes, I got that memories, Brad.

Rob Luhrs: Not man. I got books of those things all over the house. I refuse to get rid of them.

I still have them. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m going to be in

Rob Luhrs: the

Crew Chief Eric: Smithsonian soon.

Rob Luhrs: Just in case.

Crew Chief Eric: So let me ask this question since we’re kind of going there and we’ve touched on it a few times, what do you guys think just stock out of the box without manipulating the system? What car had the best. Audio system or stereo system from the factory

Peter Cline: because we owned or just the car or car you

Crew Chief Eric: rental turd somebody else’s car you got in you went, wow, this is a really good stereo system for stock.

Crew Chief Brad: I think mine would be, you know, some of the Lexus systems. They were, they were pretty nice. I was about to say, I think that

Donovan Lara: was the transition when the Japanese cars started really doing it. You know, my, my mom bought a Mazda back when I was in high school [00:50:00] and it was just out of the box. It sounded pretty, I mean, you know, relative today, I’m sure we’d laugh at it, but at the time it was like, Whoa, this was a step up from, you know, Ford and everybody else.

It was kind of doing their thing. They seemed like Japanese cars kind of came out at the first.

Mountain Man Dan: I remember mid to late nineties was when they started really improving stereos in general with cars prior to that. But if you went over halfway, it was all static, being cracking, couldn’t put no bass to without blowing a speaker.

Like GM did in the mid nineties, when they released the Impala, they had a Bose stereo system, which was huge at that time, you know, because they partnered with a big stereo company and it sounded great for the few of them that I was ever around.

Rob Luhrs: No highs, no lows. It must be Bose. I mean, Bose and Harman Kardon were the two first that actually sort of jumped into that frame.

I mean, like my Miata had a Bose system.

Crew Chief Brad: I will say the, the Volkswagen Mark four is with the monsoon system. I mean, that was. For, for being just a stock system with a small, no, no, no. This is pre pre fender pre fender. Right. This is the, the monsoon system with like a stock, like a little mini amp, [00:51:00] you know, power, the four speakers or whatever, they had the separate tweeters and everything that was actually a pretty good system for, uh, you know, a 20 year old kid buying his first car.

Uh, and then I, my father. You know, used to buy vehicles back in the day you could buy without a stereo. He specifically bought the base model without the stereo so he could put his own stuff in because he knew the stuff that was coming out of the factory was complete trash. But Rob, to your point, you know, with, uh, the Bose and the, and the Harman Kardon, I mean, Alpine and Pioneer were putting stuff in cars too, but they weren’t, they weren’t labeling, they weren’t putting their name on it.

But they had contracts with some of the manufacturers.

Rob Luhrs: The first five head units I installed were all Alpine. I mean, they were sort of like the name of high quality, what you wanted to put into your, when you were replacing stock crap, you put in an Alpine head unit. Like the wiring was clearer, the damping it had when they first started putting CDs and such.

That was the brand that you swapped in first was Alpine for everything. Like my dad’s you have 87 Vanagon, whatever, which had the [00:52:00] best area we’ve ever put in it because you had all that space under the seats. We put in like two bazooka tubes and we updated the inside two tubes under the back seat, there were smaller self contained ones.

We had a separate amp running a set of Cambridge speakers, studio monitor speakers that were in the back, hanging up as well as in the doors and the dash. And so like our Vanagon had phenomenal sound, but it was the The Alpine head unit will always started all that stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: You got rid of the stock Blaupunkt that they had been using for like 30 years.

I mean, what’s wrong with you?

Rob Luhrs: So the 87 did not have the Blaupunkt. It had a different one. Up to 86, they did. The 87, uh, the GL Syncros did not use the Blaupunkt. They used a different one.

Crew Chief Eric: So I got to say, I don’t remember about yours, Brad, because it was two years older than mine, but I think the stereo in the Grand Cherokee is really good.

Because of the position of the speakers, it does a really good job of doing surround sound because just the overall shape of it. It’s center speaker too. Correct. The dash. Correct. And I think of all the cars I’ve owned and I’ve been in, I still think my [00:53:00] Jeep has got the best stereo out of everything.

Some trashy cars, though, but then again, I only, I only need so much quality for

Crew Chief Brad: NPR, right? I’m just saying it’s true. How much quality, how much base and travel and, you know, you good mid range, you need for sweaty balls,

Crew Chief Eric: sweaty balls, sweaty

Crew Chief Brad: balls.

Rob Luhrs: A lot of the, like, I mean, a lot of the more recent good speakers is just.

A factor of like the NVH being better, right? Like I had a rental six month old Jaguar and just because it was so insulated, the stereo sounded great. And the stereo wasn’t necessarily a great stereo. It’s just, you’re so isolated in that box. Volvo is one of those cars where like, when you’re at the auto show, you close the door in the Volvo and you’re no longer at the auto show, right?

You’re in your little private vault that you can hear a pin drop in. And so I feel like. The stock stereo and those things must sound pretty good. Cause you’re so isolated that you don’t need lots of volume. You don’t need big speakers. You don’t need crazy equalizers. It’s just going to sound clean coming out.

And I, so I think like, that’s what’s happening a lot more in the more recent [00:54:00] stuff, right? Like I don’t care how much money you put into stereo, your Jeep Wrangler soft top is never going to sound half as good as a cheap ass Volvo, just because that isolation piece. Now, granted, you might have a better time in the Jeep with the top down and that stupid soundbar blasting your music out in the way to the beach with the windshield folded down.

Crew Chief Brad: Daisy Dukes. You got that Daisy Dukes on, she’s got them Daisy Dukes. But in terms

Rob Luhrs: of, in terms of the quality of the sound coming out of it, I mean, it’s, it’s probably that. I mean, if, like, I haven’t been in one, but there’s a few of those. I think BMW has got a couple. I want to say Bentley does too, where they have, uh, the BMW speaker setups and those things.

Crew Chief Brad: They are putting better quality speakers in too. I mean, the, the Wolfers aren’t made of paper anymore. Yeah.

Rob Luhrs: Yeah. They’re actually hilarious now. The number of times you went to pull out a speaker and you were like this. This was the speaker in a car that I paid for it. Like from like thousands

Crew Chief Brad: of dollars for it.

Rob Luhrs: Yeah. Somebody was new and like, this was the cone. Like this is the material, the cone of their speaker. Like

Peter Cline: for [00:55:00] those listening, he was holding up a napkin. I would know for those that were listening, he was like, what was that? It was a napkin people. I just wanted to clarify that. Well, other than

Rob Luhrs: that, Rob, that was a stock speaker from a 1987 Volkswagen G L shut up

Mountain Man Dan: replacing head units. Back then it wasn’t cheap. You had to save up, especially a high school kid. You got to save up money to buy a lot of the stuff. I remember buying my first CD player at Union and I was so excited to get it, put it in the car where I live at. Isn’t the smoothest roads. So I’m driving these roads and everything.

And all of a sudden the CD starts skipping and I’m like, what the hell? That was the most disappointing, exciting purchase I ever made. I

Crew Chief Brad: will say riding around with my dad one day he did have an eight track player in his vehicle and it’s a good thing that the eight track player wasn’t secure in the car itself because we’re riding down the road listening to the eight track, you know, for about half of the song and then it stops starts eating the eight track you literally just grabs the eight track.

The [00:56:00] stereo, everything, it just tosses it out the window.

And then we just drive on to the next, I guess it was circuit city at the time or whatever. And we get a new stereo to replace it, but yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: This weird juxtaposition of car audio and stereo stuff, as Brad just brought up with circuit city, which became CarMax. Mind blown right there. Right. But we can, we can readdress that.

Let’s go back to Pete in the studio.

Peter Cline: I want to tell everybody here, first of all, I appreciate everybody’s input regarding car stereo, but I think you’re all wrong on a lot of levels and I’ll tell you what happened in 1976 Chrysler came out with the integrated CB radio, AM, FM stereo in the town and country wagon. How do I know this? Because I owned one and I’m telling you right now that put all of your so called hi fi systems.

I was using hand closed listeners hi fi systems to shame. So I think [00:57:00] that was the pinnacle of stereo design. I think we are on the downward slide of audiophile ism, if I can call it that.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, then that brings up one question. What would your CB handle?

Peter Cline: I can’t. It’s not safe.

Mountain Man Dan: It was Love Muffin.

Peter Cline: Let the record show he froze for

Crew Chief Brad: a moment there.

He almost told us people.

Peter Cline: I froze because I couldn’t get that effing CB radio to work.

Crew Chief Brad: Just talking to yourself.

Rob Luhrs: His handle was, is this fucking thing on? That was his handle.

Crew Chief Eric: So true story, I’m gonna piggyback off of this. And it wasn’t a CB. So in the early days of us going to the track, you know, blasting music, having fun trailers were caravan and where we’re going.

We, and we still do this. We take walkie talkie so we can talk to each other. So we don’t have to have an open conference call or anything like that. So I’m riding down with a buddy. We’re going to V. I. R. We got walkie talkies and we’re talking back and forth and we’re having fun. We figure we’re on a private channel, whatever.

So his truck was white. Mine was red. So I kept saying, I’m little red [00:58:00] riding hood. And he was, he was snow white or something like that. And so we’re going back and forth. And then suddenly it’s like, Hey, Hey, snow white. Can you hear me? Is this red riding hood, blah, blah, blah. And this guy goes, he comes on and he goes, it’s the big bad wolf.

Somebody completely different and we’re like, new channel, new channel.

Rob Luhrs: I like how Bradley, that story was coming. It was doubled over by the way. Halfway through that story.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. I know that story. And by the way, I hate the whole like walkie talkie thing because they’re trying to talk to me the whole time, all the way up to Watkins Glen.

And I’m just like, God damn it. I don’t want to listen to you. I’m gonna listen to my music. Leave me the fuck alone.

Peter Cline: Well, I wait, does Eric have separation anxiety?

Crew Chief Brad: I think so.

Peter Cline: I mean, is that why he needs to have the, to talk to people all the time? But

Crew Chief Brad: he does, he doesn’t actually need to talk to people.

Cause like I said, 12 hours to Kentucky, not a word was said the whole time.

Crew Chief Eric: All you heard was this V8 screaming across the continental divide for most of the trip. This

Crew Chief Brad: is a four speed automatic with [00:59:00] a six liter, 400 horsepower V8. And

Crew Chief Eric: it was awesome. And after that trip, I got rid of that truck.

Mountain Man Dan: But here’s the thing during that trip, how much road noise was there to where could you even carry it a conversation and heard, Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: no, it was fine.

It was just, it was a weird day. It was just like, we’re not listening to anything because your options at that point on the road, you couldn’t get NPR and you couldn’t even get the gospel channels. Like, you know, I was like, I’ll listen to anything at this point. And it was like, there’s just nothing. So we’re like, turn it off.

And Brad’s a quiet guy and I’m just like, well, I’m not going to talk to myself. So we just drove and drove, drove forever.

Mountain Man Dan: Little story about lack of music in cars. So while I was in the military, God station, Wichita falls. For our, uh, training school, we weren’t supposed to have vehicles while we were there.

One of the guys in my class snuck out, bought a car and kept it parked off base. So when we’d walk off base, we’d go hop in the car and drive down to town. A [01:00:00] 72 or 73 two door Nova. It didn’t have a radio. I don’t know who decided at one time, but we’re driving down into town and someone starts singing. We all live in the yellow submarine by the Beatles.

So we all just chime in, start singing it. And he like Chantel was getting pissed because he hated it. And so after that, every time we got in that car, we just start singing. We all live in the yellow submarine. It would just drive him nuts,

Crew Chief Eric: dude. That’s like singing that Sherry Lewis song, the song that never ends.

It’s like, Holy crap. That’s one of those songs that that’s one of those songs that lights me up in the wrong way. I mean, you start singing stuff like that. Ooh, that’s my kids in old town road. Yeah, right. Oh,

Rob Luhrs: my God.

Crew Chief Brad: That song for me is it’s a small world. Don’t ever go to Disney and go on that ride because it’s nonstop and you can’t get it out of your head afterwards.

So. For a week at Disney. That’s all I heard in my,

Crew Chief Eric: dude, you want to torture me, put me in a Citroen DS and then play that song. And I will go berserk. Okay. But no, it’s not

Crew Chief Brad: a violent man, but [01:01:00] you know, he’ll kill somebody in that situation. That’s like

Crew Chief Eric: a cat locked in a closet right there.

Rob Luhrs: As we’re all talking similarly, and this could be an age thing, which I’m curious.

Most of us have this memory and experience and thought pattern of albums, right? Of like, listening to the full album. And a lot of us, cause you grew up with tapes or CDs where you weren’t, you know, it’s not the Spotify generation where here’s my playlist or here’s Pandora, or here’s my iPod on shuffle, right?

It’s, it’s, I want to listen to a whole album. I think Donovan mentioned it. We’re like, It’s almost a comfort factor, right? I know what the next song is. Your brain leads you to the next song and you sort of have that anticipation of like, as this goes, I’m going to flow into this. I’m going to flow into that.

I’m going to flow into that. I wonder if we were having this conversation with a bunch of our 22 year old members or whatever. And at the younger generation, if they’re like, if that would be a detached thought to them. And it was much more of like, No, I put on, as you said, my trance station. I put on my 80s rock station.

I just see what comes on. And just that, that juxtaposition between those two aspects I’m curious about.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And to your [01:02:00] point, I think albums were also curated. And now it’s just this randomization of like, okay, one minute we’re listening to K pop next minute. It’s Iron Maiden. And the next minute it’s, you know, classic bebop from the fifties and you’re all over the map.

And I think you’re, you’re right. It’s generational because if you look at how people use technology nowadays, it’s the same, we’re jumping from app to app, we’re moving around like never, nobody ever slows down to just kind of sit and appreciate it. And I think that’s also what’s lost in driving now too, is that appreciation for the long road that we take.

That’s going, God knows where it’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey and what you make of it. And so that’s always resonated with me. And, and I think with Brad as well, and that’s what we’re really talking about here.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s something that an album does. So you’re like, like a long road and it’s a journey and everything.

And you got to enjoy that. A well put together album is a complete thought or a complete concept. Even if it’s not a concept album, like the, the musicians were in a certain headspace when they put that [01:03:00] together. And it’s when it’s produced well, and it’s put together well, and the tracks are in the right order and everything, it’s, it tells a story, whether they meant to or not, it tells a complete story or thought, which helps you get through, you know, whatever journey you’re on in the

Donovan Lara: car.

Do you think that has anything to do with, you know, so many kids now don’t really care to drive so much, where, you know, you wonder how much that is the experience in the car. For us, you know, you got in the car, you turn the music on and again, you were in a headspace, right? It wasn’t, I’m just going, you know, wherever.

And now maybe, maybe that’s part of it. Maybe it’s so sporadic that you’re not getting the emotional attachment because you know how it is. I mean, especially on old albums like that, you know, where you’re coming to song two, and maybe it makes you think about, um, That girl you dated in high school, or maybe it makes you think about the summer trip or something.

And, you know, if you’re not having that experience and you’re not in a car, there’s no association there. So maybe there’s an emotional detachment these days with

Mountain Man Dan: technology has changed that a lot. When we were younger, if we got into the car to [01:04:00] go on a long trip, we might’ve been lucky to have like a second game gear or a game boy or something, but the batteries always died within like a half hour trip.

So then you stuck with them to the radio. And like nowadays, like the technology for the batteries and stuff, so much longer kids can sit there and watch movies on their phones or tablets or stuff like that, where. The entertainment possibilities they have far exceeds anything we ever had growing up.

Peter Cline: I was so excited when I got my driver’s license because I needed to escape the house, right?

I needed to escape whatever was going on, right? To have that car provided mobility to go and do All these different things. And it touches upon, you know, the newer generation, they don’t want to drive. And maybe because technology is already providing them that certain level of escapism where they don’t need to have this very visceral, alive experience of driving.

And it’s a little bit interesting to hear about everybody’s music choices. And I’m not saying I’m the oldest guy here, but. Although I may be the oldest guy here, you know, it’s interesting to listen [01:05:00] to these music choices because when I was growing up, AM radio was being surpassed by FM radio, right? So it’s just, you know, I’ve seen this huge movement of music through different mediums.

I guess I’m not sure where this is heading, but I think we’re For me in driving, whether competitively or not, or just getting out has provided me this escapism and the music is that soundtrack to that escapism, right? And it is that soundtrack that puts me somewhere else. And we also touched upon this earlier.

There’s two phases, right? There’s the amped up phase or it’s in the filling in the void in the background. I love albums like 2112 by rush or any yes album in the background. Even the doors are a great evening. Music, right. When I’m driving out and listening to like the door’s greatest hits or LA woman or, or, you know, writers on the storm in the end, you know, those are great things to listen to, but it really just wanted to make a comment about, about escapism, right.

And what car is provided in the soundtrack [01:06:00] that music. Provides to that.

Crew Chief Eric: I think you’re right. And I think Dan touched on something too, talking about like what the driving experience was for us as a child in the car, because I’m thinking back now, as I’m listening to you guys talk about escapism in that I can’t count the number of times that I caught myself kind of staring out the window from the backseat of a Scirocco and, you know, daydreaming about something, right.

And I often wonder like my kids, like they got screens everywhere and school is all different and all these kinds of things. And I’m like, Is there a moment where they just kind of stare out the window and daydream about something or imagine something or, or you’re fantasized about it, but the music brings you there because just staring out a window, watching grass grow is, you know, super boring, let’s face it.

But the music, it just, it makes your mind start to wander and think about things and come up with ideas. And so I feel it incentivizes us to think in different ways. Right. And it’s important on, on multiple levels.

Crew Chief Brad: Part of that thought is also the music, [01:07:00] whether you’re doing it consciously or subconsciously, you’re, that music into some sort of thought in your mind that helps you either escape or fantasize or, you know, just, just wander and drift and daydream.

And the music points you into a direction, wherever your mind wants to take it, you know, you, you determine

Mountain Man Dan: that. Pete mentioned the fact that getting your license, how it like changed things for you, in my opinion, is it gave freedom. Having your license was freedom. You could go places you couldn’t before.

You didn’t have to rely on others. It gave you that independence. I don’t know if kids get that feeling today because they’re so connected through technology that there’s not that rush. Like, hey, I gotta get into the mall to cruise up and down the strip on Friday night to see everybody. I don’t think that’s a thing anymore and it’s disappointing.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll go behind a Dairy Queen and talk about our Volkswagens. What you talking about?

Crew Chief Brad: And speaking about that freedom, uh, for me, it wasn’t just freedom to get out of the house. It was freedom to get in the car and turn up on full [01:08:00] blast. The Metallica is black album for the first time without my dad and the passenger seat, tell me, turn that shit off

Crew Chief Eric: a hundred percent on that one.

A hundred percent. You had the freedom to listen to whatever you wanted to in your own private space.

Donovan Lara: Really loud too. That’s true. Yeah. You know, and it makes me think about, you know, and I don’t, I don’t think it’s just kids, right? Right. You know, my, my wife. I, I kid her about that too, about being buried in her phone or something, you know, in the car, or we’d gone to Europe for some, she’d been over there, you know, we’re, we’re traveling through, we’re driving to Paris and it’s just amazing countryside.

She’s reading the book, but I’m like, you know what, this is probably the time to just let your mind go, you know what I mean? And really just have those thoughts. And it makes me think about when I was a kid, I think the first time that I realized that my parents put me on a bus and I was heading up to West Virginia to visit some family and.

Russia’s Presto just come out and, you know, on a bus, you know, it was a seven hour trip, but on the bus, it was 16 hours or something. So, you know, I had my cassette and I’m just listening to that thing over and over and over. But I remember looking out the window and, you [01:09:00] know, taking roads that were not interstate and your, your mind just, just kind of goes, you know, just kind of, it kind of wanders, but to me, you know, it is an escape and I think it’s therapy, you know, there was about a year ago or so, maybe it was about two years ago, I was really wound up.

I mean, to the point where. You know, I don’t think I was going to have a breakdown or anything like that. It wasn’t that kind of thing, but I was just super stressed and just really just kind of, you know, tightly wound. And I told my wife, Hey, listen, I’m getting in the car. I had the E28 M5 had just gotten it.

And I said, I’m getting in the car. I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know when I’m coming back. I mean, I wasn’t going to be gone for days, but I was going to go out for a couple hours. I took off and the first thing I did is plugged in my phone, put on some, you know, some good music and took off and coincidentally found one of the mountain roads that we drive today just by just going, you know, and that kind of sense of direction of I’m going to go this way.

I’m gonna go that way. And I think the combination of the mountain roads and that music and just the escapism, you know, and that therapy was, was really good for me, you know, and it really did kind of reset my, you know, my batteries a little bit. And so I think there’s that, but again, you know, I, I, Maybe [01:10:00] it’s because we grew up that way.

You know, it was always the association of the car is freedom. And the car is, you know, it’s just us. We go anywhere. Really. You’re connected really anywhere, you know, short of the oceans and things you can go.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And you mentioned that, that therapy and you can’t really see it cause it’s cut off, but in the picture behind me, the guitar pick has a quote that says music is what feelings sound like.

I mean, I’m a quiet guy, as Eric alluded to earlier. You may not be able to tell from the podcast, but I’m a pretty quiet, reserved, shy guy. And it’s hard to express my feelings sometimes. So like using music to just help me, I guess, get my feelings out. Yeah. I’m starting to tear up now. Whatever. I see you laughing, Eric.

Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s just a way to, to feel it. It’s a way to, to express myself and how I’m feeling at that moment.

Crew Chief Eric: Brad’s a hugger. Brad’s a

Mountain Man Dan: hugger.

Crew Chief Brad: I give great bear hugs being, you know, six, four, 300 pounds.

Mountain Man Dan: So Donovan, you were saying how on your bus trip, you had your cassette, you know, your Walkman or whatever.

I remember back that [01:11:00] age that I’d have a cassette in and be listening to it for hours and I’ll send the batteries and start to die. And like if there were songs that had fast lyrics. That was the easiest way for me to learn it, because as it got slower, I could learn the lyrics that way, if they were to a really fast paced song.

Hit the stop button, wait like an hour or so, and

Peter Cline: push

Mountain Man Dan: play to listen to another five minutes of music, really slow. That was the way we got by.

Crew Chief Eric: So that slow cassette story that Dan told explains why he speaks the way he does. I get it now. It makes 100 percent sense. It also explains why he talks fast sometimes and then he

Mountain Man Dan: starts to slow down.

That’s my blood sugar. The batteries are wearing low.

Crew Chief Eric: Discharge him. Fill him with diesel. So I think we, I think we’ve, we’ve nailed this one, but I got a question to throw out there. Okay. There are certain cars. When you look at them and you go, that’s the perfect [01:12:00] music video car. What is that for? What kind of music?

It doesn’t matter. You just look at it. You go,

Mountain Man Dan: that would be perfect in a music video, whatever it is. It has to have a long hood. So the blonde can crawl across to the fan blowing on her and her whipping her hair back.

Crew Chief Brad: Can

Rob Luhrs: roll around on the hood. That’s because the hard part about answering that is the, is how different musicians have used cars in their music videos and stuff historically.

Right? Like I remember. You know, when I was first back in the days of downloading top gear episodes, you know, through whatever that website was that we all had to grab the torrents from, uh, and I remember like when they had JK on and JK was, was, it’s huge into cars and he would be like, Oh, I chose this car for this Jamiroquai video because it’s the one I had just bought.

And. It’s like every Jamiroquai video is strongly based in automotive stuff. And right. And so there’s certain cars I see that fit that vein. Right. So I’ll see a car and I’ll be like, that belongs in a Motley Crue video. That belongs in a Jamiroquai video that belongs in this video. And like, at least Clara has like a 900 horsepower [01:13:00] hot rod, you know, sort of.

thing. And I see what I like. I see his car. My brain thinks that the stuff that he’s been in. And so like, it’s hard to detach that from like seeing some 80s car and being like, Oh, there’s an 80s band that screams 80s that we belong there because every car that I see is attached to some bit of history or story in my head of when I’ve seen that, you know, beyond just, Oh, it’s grateful that it’s a Volkswagen bus or whatever it might be.

But all those different artists that, you know, uh, Especially they’ve been guests on top gears because you see them and you get to hear their whole car history. As you watch that show, you get to see exactly what they’re, what they’ve had along the way. And I begin to associate that with that, making it harder to sort of separate that knowledge, if you will, from, from answering that.

Peter Cline: Third Gen F Body is the correct answer for any music video. Third Gen, F Body.

Crew Chief Brad: I was gonna say Fiero. I I knew it. I knew it. I knew you were gonna say that. Pon

Rob Luhrs: say H

Mountain Man Dan: hr.

Rob Luhrs: I was doing a walk because we can’t drive anywhere really. I started. Walking around, listening to music, like just walking around the city doing [01:14:00] seven, eight mile walks.

And sorrowfully it was dark. I wish I could have got it a better picture of it. There was a mint Fiero parked on the side of the road on East Capitol street, like literally mint. I don’t know if I could see if I can’t, there’s no such

Crew Chief Brad: thing as a mint Fiero. They all came from the factory.

Rob Luhrs: This is like with the flash on the back of mine, but it was just.

I literally stopped in my tracks and I walked by and I turned the music off. I had to stop the music so I could focus on what I was seeing. And some person walking, the dog walked by me. They’re like, are you okay? And I was like, do you know what this is? And they’re like, you have a good night, sir. They sort of walked away from me.

I

Rob Luhrs: was floored at the fact that I was seeing this. Beautiful Fiera there. It’s kind of awesome.

Donovan Lara: Uh, you know, I’m really kind of ruined by all the rap videos, man. I automatically went to like the Bentleys and the Lambos and all that stuff. So I don’t know. I mean, you know, other than that, I think like the, you know, the hot rods and stuff back in the eighties days, what things easy top kind of thing is, is kind of where I go with that.

The big hair and the,

Crew Chief Brad: all right. [01:15:00] So switching gears,

Crew Chief Eric: there is one car though. I think we can all agree on there’s one that you look at it. And you could say, yes, that belongs in a music video, every music video. And I, and it’s not the F body by GM. And it’s not the little red Corvette. No. All right. Ready?

Lamborghini Countach.

Crew Chief Brad: I would have said Diablo. Got to go.

Crew Chief Eric: Countach is the ultimate music video car. It just screams. It doesn’t matter what kind of music you put with it. It could be in any music video. It could be in a classical music video if you wanted to be. And you know what re cemented it for me? Was when I watched, and if you guys haven’t seen it, go look it up.

Hasselhoff, True Survivor, which is the soundtrack to Kunk Fury. Dude, he’s got a kuntosh. And it’s legit. I mean, it is awesome. That’s the pinnacle. I mean, I don’t know. You know, Donovan, I think the runner up to the Countach and it really links back to you is [01:16:00] a 63 split window Corvette. That’d be a good one.

Donovan Lara: There’s lots of curves and places to sit ladies on too.

Crew Chief Brad: Switching gears here. I’ve got an interesting, what I think is an interesting question. What’s the best car decade and the best music decade? And do they overlap? I gotta lean towards the 70s on that. For both?

Mountain Man Dan: Or for one? Or for which one? If it has to be one decade that covers both sufficiently, I’d say the 70s.

At least early 70s, you still had your muscle cars, you had some good rock, so I’d say they had good cars and good music during that time.

Rob Luhrs: That’s not a bad answer. I feel like the 80s are slightly better, but again, I think that’s tainted by my age. Right. So in the eighties is where you first started getting the tester roses, the TTAs, the nine 50 nines, like that stuff started going crazy.

And the

Crew Chief Eric: hairbands and, and the,

Rob Luhrs: the hairbands. You could get metal hairbands, you could get more of the pop stuff, you could get , the Euro,

Crew Chief Eric: trash, the techno, hip

Rob Luhrs: hop. Hip hop was actually starting all like the major Snoops and everything, all that stuff was coming into, into play. So you got a pretty good range of stuff, but that could [01:17:00] easily be tainted by my age.

Right? If I asked my parents, they’d be like. What the hell are you talking about? There’s these, you know, amazing things in the sixties where a lot of these cars were just phenomenal. The music was out of this world. You know, I think with different ages, you could say different things, right? Somebody nowadays could be like, well, there’s this amazing new bands now that play almost everything and you can get a, you know, Veyrons and everything else.

I mean, like there’s different, or, you know, McLaren, large, long tails. There’s all these different options.

Crew Chief Eric: I think to your point about pre seventies though, Rob is most people would probably gravitate to a 55 to 57 Chevy if they had to pick a car for that period of music so that I don’t think there’d be like, Oh yeah.

That’s a, I don’t know, 63, blah, blah, blah. And then like, you know, Ford galaxy, like nobody’s going to pick that. You know what I mean? Versus to your point about the eighties, there’s like aces of cars that you can pick from.

Peter Cline: Eighties are over glorified though. I mean, I think, you know, Rob’s wrong. I think if you look at the shitty electronics that were out in cars, you know, and how they were trying to do.

Tune port injection [01:18:00] and do the really early versions of fuel injection and some of the harebrained ideas that came out of Chrysler back then. I mean, there were some really horrible, horrible electronics. And I think, you know, I’m going to side with mountain man, Dan on this and say that the seventies was probably.

The purest part of Detroit, at least that came out. And even to a certain degree, some of the purest Japanese imports, the JDMs, they came in right. The MX three from Mazda, the Corolla GT. I mean, those are some amazing cars during that time frame. I’m not saying Rob’s wrong. I just think that we tend to, all of us are probably going to come into this conversation a little bit with some, you know, rose colored tint glasses about what we think is the preferred era.

But Rob’s wrong, but that’s fine. I know. So I

Crew Chief Eric: guess, I guess Donovan’s the tiebreaker. We got two for the eighties and two for the seventies. I

Crew Chief Brad: think Donovan’s going to say the nineties, but I want to hear

Crew Chief Eric: he’s all grunge. He’s like, you know, green day and sublime, like all this other stuff in a Toyota Corolla.

That looks like a suppository.[01:19:00]

Donovan Lara: Back and forth. I was going to say 80s to start with, right? When you think about, I mean, what’s interesting music wise about the 80s is think where it started, right? It was still, still, there was a little bit of disco still around, but you had, you know, all of, like, the early 80s. It wouldn’t techno them, but electronic music was still getting power.

And then all the way to the end, when grunge and all that stuff was happening and the hairband stuff and the cars were amazing. You know, you think about like, of course the, you know, the GTI, right. The Mark one and all the Porsches and everything else came out, but I agree with you on the electronics. And, you know, a lot of the American stuff was garbage, but when you think about the seventies to great music, although I think.

80s probably had better music completely, but when you think about the cars, I think that’s true for the most part, except the American cars, like the early seventies, American cars. Okay. But you know, when you got into the whole oil crisis and all that, it was just garbage for a while. But you think about all the stuff that was coming out of Italy in particular, in the early seventies, just gorgeous masterpieces.

And you think about, [01:20:00] you know, like the early nine 11th, the RS and some of those other ones. I think that’s, I don’t know what the answer is. I’m going to, No,

Rob Luhrs: I

Donovan Lara: could easily. It’s your opinion. I

Rob Luhrs: could be swayed. Right. So I think like, he’s not wrong. Right. It’s a different thing. Like, so 73, 9, 11 RS would be agree.

Agree.

Crew Chief Eric: Agree. But if you had to put soundtracks with cars, let’s think about it from that perspective. Okay. It’s all

Rob Luhrs: 80s destroys everything. I’m 100

Crew Chief Eric: percent except when you talk about the Aries K car, cause I want to know what the soundtrack is for that. Right. But the

Rob Luhrs: sound of flatulence.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’ll go to Pete on that one.

But so what I’m thinking here though, is Donovan is hit on something. And I’ve, I’ve always thought this is kind of a theory. I have that cars kind of be bald. At the same time music did and he hit on something really important, especially from the seventies through the mid nineties. We talk about eighties music and I’m going to harp on that just for a second.

There’s a weird period there and [01:21:00] Pete’s right. A lot of strong, you know, great rock and roll in the early to mid seventies. And then you had the disco era come in in the late 70s that carried into the early 80s and you get the beginning of the, like the synth era, right? But the synth era only lasted from 78 to 84.

And so if you look at the cars from 78 to 84, you’re like, but then you get this transition in 85. Much to Donovan’s point, the GTIs and the nine 40 fours and all the, the, the Alpha Romes and a lot of the American cars. The new C four Corvette in 85, right? You had this transition even in the automotive world and the sound.

If you listen to songs from 84 and then go to the billboard top of 85, they sound completely different like the technology and music. Changed at the same time at the technology cars did, and that lasted into the early, almost mid nineties. Then we started to get the cab forward cars and the bubble designs and the music changed again, right?

We left that techno Euro [01:22:00] trash era that we got, you know, along with the import cars, and then we started to get these, you know, oval shaped Mobius. Marshmallows on the road, and the kind of the music went along with it, right? You had the, you know, you had that, uh, the growth of grunge and all that other kind of stuff.

So I think there’s an interesting, like, dichotomy there between the music and the cars over that, like, let’s call it 25 year span where I think they were really interlocked.

Mountain Man Dan: I can agree with you a lot on that, but I also want to throw in the fact that, for the best one, it can also depend on mood, just like music, your mood determines which music you’re in the mood to listen to, so, like, for cars as well, like, I love some of the old, like, 30s and 40s and even early 50s cars, compared to modern stuff, because the flowing lines they had on them, I agree that, like, society, music, and cars all transition kind of together.

Crew Chief Eric: It also begs the question, did the music, Influence the designers and the engineers at the time, like, is there just enough overlap there where it may have, you know, we’re talking about daydreaming and escapism. Maybe those [01:23:00] German designers, Italians, Americans are like, man, this music’s really motivating me to come up with something new, you know, and so they’ve all

Rob Luhrs: together.

There’s definitely a truth aspect to that, right? I mean, every, if you think about a car designer, right, they’re in the arts, if you will, just like music, right? So they’re coming to the same headspace, if you will, as that gets refined, it keeps, you know, it keeps pace with itself, right? With each other. By the way, I just looked up like top music from the eighties and I am floored by how good it was.

So I’m even more right than I was before. I just want to throw that out there.

Peter Cline: I want to say that if you’re from the Miami vice generation too, and watching the show and how they basically soundtracked. The show and cars and music, you know what I mean? The music in the car in Miami, but for those of you that are tuning in, Eric is in the background laughing.

So please disregard the host as we make more rational sense of this music connection, the cars, um, by the way, Miami vice. Best show ever next to Kit. I could definitely see where music and designers are influenced by each other. I think my vice comes to mind as, as a [01:24:00] great example of that, whether I’m right or wrong,

Crew Chief Eric: I, I only have one rebuttal to that Magnum Pi

Donovan Lara: although I gotta say, you know, you look back to like some of the, the fifties and sixties cars and the music that was around, and when you’re in your. V8 hot rod and the coolest music you have is some kind of Bebopping something that doesn’t align, you know what I mean? Like you listen to it now and I mean skip like the little gto and all those kind of songs Oh, you

Crew Chief Eric: had the beach boys.

You had elvis I mean you had a lot of stuff that could have been good for cruising but there was a lot of stuff that was like Reserve for the ballroom. I agree with you there.

Donovan Lara: But you think about, you may, you know, you made a point about the music and the cars you think about again, back to the GTI in the eighties, I’d consider it quirky, right.

And some of the music was popping kind of quirky in that time. And, you know, that, that did seem to kind of fit where, you know, you could probably pull up in a valet and a mark one GTI and get parked up front because it was cool, you know, it was like. Well, over here, the new hatchback that was [01:25:00] cool and cork and everybody was doing it.

Not to say that your DeLorean wouldn’t get you up front too, but

Crew Chief Brad: you heard it here first. The Mark one GTI is a cool car and it’ll get you parked up front. And Monica,

Rob Luhrs: every one of us would be happy to drive you to this. I

Crew Chief Brad: wouldn’t fit in one. So there’s that

Peter Cline: board. EXP is the answer.

Rob Luhrs: Cool. I’m

Crew Chief Eric: okay

Rob Luhrs: with

Crew Chief Eric: that.

The DeLorean has an immediate soundtrack. We all go to Huey Lewis in the news. So I think you also hit on something there, Rob, a lot of cars have. soundtracks with them. The Dukes of Hazzard with, um, Waylon Jennings, right? Or, or Knight Rider or Magnum or whatever. I mean, it’s like, they’re, it’s, they’re so intertwined, you know?

Rob Luhrs: You’re not wrong, but I, I, I’m floored. Like, I honestly forgot. Like the late 80s. I mean, it was everything from N. W. A. ‘s albums and the Joshua Tree and Master of Puppets, I didn’t realize was then too, from Metallica. Yeah, everything

Crew Chief Brad: from Metallica pre Black album was 80s.

Rob Luhrs: Was 80s, and you still have like Paul Simon’s Graceland, and you have Thriller from Michael Jackson, and you still [01:26:00] have, you know, Back in Black from ACDC.

Like, you just have this A huge pile of amazing music all through that part that I didn’t even think of as being like 80s music, right? If you go through. Then you have the Fox body Mustang.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. God.

Rob Luhrs: And a VW Fox. He’s going to cut over the audio. It’s going to Rick Roll us. That’s what’s going to happen. I will never give you.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, Brad, take us home. Let’s wrap this thing up.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, I think we’ve spent, what, two hours now waxing poetic about the, the relationship between cars and, and music. Uh, there’s no denying that there is a connection between the two. I mean, can anybody deny it? I don’t think anybody on this panel can.

Crew Chief Eric: But on that note, I think Brad struck a chord with this episode. I think there’s definitely a, you like my puns? I think there’s definitely a Linkage there between cars and music and it’s deep seated. It goes back to our parents. It’s a whole experience for all of us. So I hope that our listeners as they review this and hopefully they got some [01:27:00] laughs out of whatever, remember that it’s not about the destination.

It’s all about the journey and what you do along the way and make sure that when you take these journeys, whether they be big or small, they’re meaningful. To remember to pick up that soundtrack, whatever it is, whether you curated it yourself, or it’s an album or an eight track and Pete’s case, you know, listen to some music along the way.

It may change your life, Mr. Klein

Peter Cline: overlord.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I can’t thank you guys enough for coming on yet. Again, Pete Donovan, mountain man and Rob, you know, Brad’s always here, but, you know, thank you guys for coming on. I think this was a lot of fun and we’ll hope to see you guys again on another episode. Good

Peter Cline: times.

Had a great time. Pleasure.

I want to thank everybody for coming on tonight from WGTM in Washington, D. C. from the basement studio. Thank you for tuning in tonight. WGTM signing off.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, [01:28:00] be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Touring Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

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