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Archive for the ‘Cars’ Category

Super Moon Racing, 8/29/15

Saturday, August 29th, 2015

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Full moon mayhem at the Central Texas Speedway tonight in Kyle, Texas. Yellow flags and car parts flying all night long. No. 80, with the Confederate flag on his hood, lost control on the last lap of the street stocks race. It looked like something on Bewitched, as though someone wiggled a nose and made him crash. When they towed the car back all you could see was charred and tangled machinery where his flag used to be.

Song ID: The Beach Boys – “Breakaway” (1969)

Tuesday, August 25th, 2015

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This 1969 single written by the unlikely team of Brian Wilson and father Murry (as “Reggie Dunbar”) perhaps should have been a higher charting follow up to “Do It Again” for the Beach Boys (although it did sit rather uncomfortably as part of the 1974 Endless Summer lineup). Why didn’t “Breakaway” do better than its numerologically eye-catching #69 peak position? My theory: the “Breakaway” catchphrase had already been getting tons of airplay with Steve Karmen’s jingle for the 1969 Pontiac.

Beach Boys – “Breakaway” (1969)

Beach Boys – “Celebrate the News” (1969): This was the broody B-side, a Dennis Wilson track that gives the single the yin yang tension familiar to many a Beach Boys observer.

And here’s this:

The Steve Karmen Big Band featuring Jimmy Radcliffe (1968) – “Breakaway Parts I and II”: Side A is Jimmy Radcliffe talking and singing over a troubled, minor key arrangement of Karmen’s theme, while Side B is the major-key instrumental version more familiar from TV and radio ads.

1955 Chevy Nomad by Kinsmart

Thursday, July 23rd, 2015

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What the station wagons of the fifties do to me is tap into my adult susceptibility to vintage advertising, prompting fantasies about putting on a Pendleton, lighting up a pipe, and driving my family through the Northwest evergreens. What the station wagons of the mid-seventies do to me is remind me of real life childhood vacations before seat belt laws, when you could freely roll out sleeping bags in the back, set up a smorgasbord or play croquet.

I bought this Kinsmart brand 1955 Chevy Nomad toy after spotting it by chance at a Walgreens in Albuquerque. I looked up the company and was disappointed that they didn’t also have a 1972 Ford Country Squire family wagon, white with wood panels and a red interior.  But this will do nicely.

Johnny Mann Singers – “Cinnamint Shuffle” (1966)

Saturday, August 2nd, 2014

There’s a whole category of hit singles that charted because of their involvement in TV ads, like the Johnny Mann Singers’ “Cinnamint Shuffle,” from 1966. “Cinnamint” was a flavor of Clark’s chewing gum (along with “Teaberry”) and commercials for both of these featured consumers popping a stick of it into their mouths and dancing a two-second shuffle before carrying on with their business.

The ad campaign’s song was a familiar one: “Mexican Shuffle,” written by Sol Lake, which was a keynote track on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s South of the Border LP, a Billboard Top Ten hit in 1964 (the “Mexican Shuffle” single hit #88). The Johnny Mann Singers’ 1966 version of the song, sporting the new title of “Cinnamint Shuffle (Mexican Shuffle),” managed to squeak into Billboard‘s “bubbling under” chart, peaking at #126. (Johnny Mann was the musical director for the Joey Bishop Show, incidentally.)

Armchair carbon dating: I’m not thinking the ad in the YouTube clip above is from 1961, as listed at the beginning. That would be a full three years before Herb Alpert’s version. Also, the car at :13 is looking like a ’66 Buick Riviera and the art at :32 looks a tad countercultural.

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Johnny Mann Singers – “Cinnamint Shuffle (Mexican Shuffle)” (1966)

Bonus: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass – “Mexican Shuffle” (live)