Welcome Back! The Great Carpool Challenge Rides Again!

Why hello loyal followers!

After a wonderful summer holiday, we are pleased to once again be bringing you our carpool mixes. We've made a few changes to the format of our weekly challenge, but I'll let one of the guys explain how it works.

I, once again, had the honour of putting together the first mix of the year. We chose the collective theme of "Options Classes" (ie. the optional classes that students can select at Maples) and each picked one. I selected "Fashion":

The Fashion Mix
1. Fashion - David Bowie
2. Brand New Shoes - She & Him
3. Raspberry Beret - Prince
4. Bedouin Dress - Fleet Foxes
5. The Hardest Button to Button - The White Stripes
6. Hand in Glove - The Smiths
7. Brass in Pocket - The Pretenders
8. Short Skirt, Long Jacket - Cake
9. The Dress Looks Nice On You - Sufjan Stevens
10. Undone (The Sweater Song) - Weezer
11. Dress Up In You - Belle & Sebastian
12. Short Shorts - The Royal Teens
13. Fashion is Danger - Flight of the Conchords
14. Kurt Cobain's Cardigan - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
15. Autumn Sweater - Yo La Tengo

Get dressed here!

Weather Remix - STORM FRONT

Here is my (Gearbox's) remix of the weather theme, originally tackled by the Lifeguard. The merry month of May was "cover someone else's theme", so I chose this doozy, mainly because it could house many many 5 STAR songs in my collection. In fact, below I've put an asterix beside my 5 STAR picks:

01 TV Theme - Chico the Rainmaker*

02 The Rokes - When the Wind Arises*

03 Philamore Lincoln - The North Wind Blew South*

04 Electric Banana - Grey Skies

05 The Left Banke - There’s Gonna Be a Storm

06 Mike Vickers - Rain

07 The Kinks - Rainy Day in June

08 Linda Perhacs - Chimacum Rain*

09 Mike Vickers - Thunder and Lightning

10 Marc Bolan - Dawn Storm*

11 A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Our Change into Rain is No Change At All

12 Waskerley Way - Rain Subsides

13 Dantalian’s Chariot - Sun Came Bursting Through My Cloud*

14 The Poppy Family - Beyond the Clouds*

15 The Pastels - Windy Hill (Cornelius Remix)*

16 Roger Roger Ensemble - Running With the Wind

17 Brian Wade & Dave Cook - Windsurfer

18 Girlsareshort - Chase That Rainbow*

19 Free Design - Kites are Fun*

20 The Rolling Stones - She’s a Rainbow

21 Andy Kim - Rainbow Ride

22 The Grasshoppers - When the Sky is Clear, When the Water’s Clean

Of course, the songs without asterixes are also great...but you don't hafta take MY word for it, download it HERE.

CP Challenge: Fruits!

Funny story: 2 weekends ago my brother and I were in the garage installing a garage door opener, and I put on this mix while we worked (I occasionally force my kid brother to listen to my weird music). Needless to say, it's not really "beer & manual labour" music, but it is upbeat and fun, and this was a sunny day, so why not. Now beside the garage, there happened to be two other dudes putting in a garden bed on our lawn. When the fourth track came on, the younger of the dudes came in to the garage and said, "This is really good, what is this?" For some reason I couldn't bring myself to say that the song was called "Fruity Flutes", so I started into a long, awkward explanation/apology about how this was a mix CD about fruit, and this track was from a library record, etc. etc. When I was done he just shrugged his shoulders and said "Yeah, cool" and went back to his hammering. It was refreshing to run across another dude that was secure enough in his masculinity that he could appreciate promotional kid's music from 40 years ago...and now that I'm looking at the tracklist again, there are quite a few songs directed at kids on this mix. I guess kids and fruit just go together.

01 The Wiggles - Fruit Salad intro

02 Hawaiian Punch - Fruit Juicy

03 Freckle Face - I got 51 Freckles

04 Reg Wale - Fruity Flutes

05 Glazer & Tripp - Why are Bananas Picked Green?

06 Edd Kalehoff - The Big Banana

07 I’m a Chiquita Banana

08 Hoosier Hot Shots - I Like Bananas, Because They Have No Bones

09 Banana Splits - Doin’ the Banana Split

10 Electric Banana - Alexander

11 Legay - The Fantastic Story of the Steam Driven Banana

12 MIA - Ba-na-na Skit

13 Video Kids - Gimme That Banana

14 NES - Banana Title & Gameplay

15 Adam Green - Apples, I’m Home

16 Toby Twirl - Toffee Apple Sunday

17 The Lemon Pipers - Blueberry Blue

18 Jolly Ollie Orange - Laugh Laugh Laugh

19 Billy Hayes - Oranges, Smoranges

20 J. Trombey - Sliced Orange

21 Lefty Lemon - Why I Left Baseball

22 The Move - (Here We Go ‘Round) The Lemon Tree

23 Loudmouth Lime - Hello Hello Hello

24 Mike Sammes - Limehouse Blues

25 Harpers Bizarre - Raspberry Rug

26 Rootin’ Tootin’ Raspberry - A Cowboy Named Fauntleroy

For the cover I image searched "Carmen Miranda" and up popped this guy: http://www.graemebowman.com/

Classic.

Experience the fruity fun HERE

Spring Cleaning

As the title would suggest, the following mix was inspired by the changing of the seasons (more in theory than in practice at the time). So, for your listening pleasure, here is the Spring Cleaning Mix:

1. The Story of "The Rite of Spring" Pt. 1
2. Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most- Kat Edmonson
3. Springtime is the Season - of Montreal
4. Love Goes Home to Paris in the Spring - The Magnetic Fields
5. Spring 2008 - Architecture in Helsinki
6. The Story of "The Rite of Spring" Pt. 2
7. Month of May - Arcade Fire
8. Hummingbird - Imaginary Cities
9. The Story of "The Rite of Spring" Pt. 3
10. So Fresh, So Clean - OutKast
11. Keep It Clean - Camera Obscura
12. Coming Clean - We Are Scientists
13. Dance Yrself Clean - LCD Soundsystem

Clean up here.

Greatest Hits: The Senses

So, one morning as we were carpooling to work, we decided it might be fun to do a "greatest hits" series of carpool mixes where the pooler could pick a previous theme of their choice, and do their own version of it. So, here is my "senses" mix. As the previous pooler who worked on this mix mentioned, it was hard to find songs about the sense of smell! Anyway, from my point of view, this mix sounds like a good one. I can't put my finger on it, but if it was food, it would taste, and smell like something wonderful!

The Great Carpool Challenge Greatest Hits: The Senses
1. Pinball Wizard - The Who
2. I saw her standing there - The Beatles
3. Lookin' out my backdoor - CCR
4. Don't look back - Boston
5. Looking for a place to happen - The Tragically Hip
6. Eat my brain - Odds
7. Taste - Phish
8. That Smell - Lynyrd Skynyrd
9. Listen to the Music - The Doobie Brothers
10. (Listen to the) Flower People - Spinal Tap
11. Can't you hear me knocking - The Rolling Stones
12. Hear about it later - Van Halen
13. Oh What a Feeling - Crowbar

Listen to it here!

421: The Drug Mix

So, in honour of 420, I was given the theme "drugs". The mix was officially unveiled on April 21st (hence the name). Given that there is very little drug use in the music industry I really had to scrounge for tracks to use... Okay. So there was a literal plethora of tracks to choose from as drug use runs rampant throughout the music industry. What I enjoyed most about making this mix is that I was able to use several songs that I really like that I didn't realize were veiled (or not so veiled) drug references. In some ways I also found that kind of sad. Anyway, there are also some parody tracks thrown in for fun. After listening to this mix, I thought it was pretty good. Then I listened to it again, just to make sure. The next morning, I needed a hit of it again. Pretty soon, I couldn't start my day without listening, and I had to have a listen to end my day and before bed. Now I listen to it to relax and before heading out on the town.... I think I have a problem.

421: The Drug Mix

1. Sensimilla street
2. Because I got High - Afroman
3. I want a new drug - Huey Lewis and the News
4. Cocaine - Eric Clapton
5. Cocaine Cowgirl - Matt Mays & El Torpedo
6. One way Ticket - The Darkness
7. The Needle and the Damage done - Neil Young
8. Mr. Brownstone - Guns N' Roses
9. Hash pipe - Weezer
10. This is a call - Foo Fighters
11. I'm Waiting for the Man - The Velvet Underground
12. The Pusher - Steppenwolf
13. Casey Jones - The Grateful Dead
14. 30 Days in the Hole - Humble Pie
15. Let's go smoke some pot - Dash Rip Rock

Spark it up here

CP Challenge - Escape

Not much to say about this one...it begins with escapes from reality, then moves into more literal escapes. The two video game songs included come from games where escape is part of the back story of the game; for example, who knew when you were playing Arkanoid, you were actually trying to escape from a time-space distortion!

For a larf I also added a secret track to the CD that I played in the car, because one of the 'poolers was in a band that recorded a song called "Escape to the Cape". It's not in the zip file, but if you want to hear it, you can download their whole album HERE. And here is the tracklist for my mix:

01 Mike Sammes Singers - Heineken

02 Alan Feanch - Drunk Man Ballad

03 Cylob - What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?

04 Girlsareshort - Pinacolada

05 Beem - Don’t Bogart That Can, Man

06 Bibio - Puffer

07 Christian Fennesz - Codeine

08 Oval - Dream Over

09 Leafcutter John - Escape from the Globus Playpen

10 Martin Galway - Theme from Arkanoid

11 Rob Hubbard - Auf Wiedersehen Monty

12 Escapehawaii - Crusty Ghosts

13 Mike Vickers - Getaway Car

14 Alan Parker - The Free Life

15 Donnacha Costello - And I got Left Behind

Download and enjoy!