Sunday, January 1, 2012

Summer is here...at last.

January 1st 2012 and summer has finally arrived in Sydney Australia. (well at least for a couple of days) After what seems like an eternity of below average temperatures and rain we have warm weather and blue skies predicted for the next few days. I'm sure that by February we will have weeks of warm weather and will all be complaining about that instead but for teh moment the arrival of Summer is to be celebrated.

Summer Music, what to play ?  Summer and driving were always the domain of mix-tapes and now the playlists have taken over its time to create new playlists for this summer.

Old Favorites will always be a large part of any summer playlist for all except the youngest teens and in many ways nothing says summer more that The Beach Boys. I have never mastered either the surf or hotrods (but then again neither has Brian Wilson) Yet the songs have been played so many times in Summer tehy are now linked forever in my brain.




The "Sounds of Summer" album contains 30 Beach Boys tracks most of them remastered in 1999 or 2001. From the original classics such as  "California Girls", "I Get Around", "Surfin' USA", "Help Me Rhonda" and "Surfer Girl" To later tracks such as "Kokomo" from the soundtrack for the movie "Cocktail" this collection has them all (some in glorious mono)






After dusting off last summers playlists and discarding most of the new tracks added last year it would be time to add whatever this years Summer hit will be. A little difficult at this stage because summer has only started today and the big hits of Summer 2012 are yet to emerge. However that is one of the advantages of playlists over mix tapes. As the summer progresses you can add in and shuffle your playlists to keep them fresh.

The best summer songs often have summer in the title as with this track from 2007 by Kid Rock:-



 

As this song pays homage in a big way to the 1974 track "Sweet Home Albama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd we may as well revisit that, add both tracks to one of our playlists and marvel at the outfits and debate the significance or otherwise of the Confederate Battle Flag in the background:-





One more favourite of mine goes back even further back to 1972 and a track by The Raspberries before they broke up and launched Eric Carmen onto his solo career. The video here is not of the band themselves but a slideshow put together by another fan:-




These tracks and more beside seem to make it to my summer playlists most years.

What are your favourite Summer Tracks?


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