Not even he understands what he's saying.
Anyway, here comes the gigantic post because AOS finally posted his tail-happy snake. Please read all of it because it won't make any sense if you dont. I promise it's interesting and entertaining. It was when published. 'Sides, it took me ages to type all this trash.
Back in late 2010, almost '11, the magazine asked me to do an article about car songs; compile a list, get their lyrics, translate them, comment on it. It was a pretty freaking sweet idea so I got to work
(I even opened a thread about it here in GTP). I put together a list of 13 car songs and did exactly as asked. Then, a week and a half before closing day, I got a call: "have you thought how we're gonna illustrate all this?" Frankly, I had not, it had completely flown over my freaking mind.
So, with a week and a half to go, I started drawing. You'll notice that many of these look pretty rough compared to what I usually do with the car-toons for, say, the yearly poster, but I had a week and a half to do 13 more or less decent drawings. The inking process was done with the slimmest Sharpie I could find, which was a lot faster, and my wife helped me with solid colors, then I just did the usual highlight work in Photoshop, albeit very rushed.
In the end, the article came out pretty good. Although the drawings in themselves were nothing really extraordinary, all together for 8 straight pages looked awesome. The article was fun-paced and absolutely irreverent (as is the entire magazine, quite fun to do) and had an extraordinary response.
So of course, here are the drawings to the article. I'll not only tell you what song they represent and particulars about each one, I'll even link you to the lyrics. Click on the song name for them.
We opened the article with Jan & Dean's world-famous 1964 hit "
Dead man's Curve", not only because of the song but because this was also the best drawing. The song talks about a night street race 'tween a Stingray Vette and a Type E Jaguar that ends up with the Jag crashing in Dead Man's curve.
Read interesting facts about it in Wikipedia.
The drawing depicts the exact moment of the XKE's drop off the road. Notice the six taillights on the Vette, a very famous line of the song because it depicts a common mod of the era: to install a third taillight on each side of your Vette. Car culture, people.
We continue with a song from Mexico, from a surf band named Yucatán A-go-go, called "Alma de acero", or "Iron soul", which talks about a street racing Camaro with a nitrous-fed big block with two turbos and three carburetors that eats german cars like they were bycicles. It's in spanish so no use to link you to it. 'sides, it's 2 minutes and a half long, so I've practically sang it to you already.
Next up is "
Cadillac Ranch" by Bruce Sprinsgteen. Not his most famous car song but I HAD to depict this mythical place. This is by far the worse drawing of all of them, so let's get this done.
We continue with Janis Joplin's "
Mercedes Benz". Hardly a car song by anyone's standars... for many hardly a song, but I've always thought it said so much about the general care-free spirit of the era. I gave her a Pagoda just because. Yes thats supposed to be her. Leave me alone.
"
Little Deuce Coupe" by the Beach Boys HAD TO BE on the list, bein' me and all. Ironically, this is as far from a hot rod song as I am a Russian astronaut, but it tells the world how a hot rod should look and feel. Even if it's way poppy, it's lyrics bought it a place in my list. The drawing is a straight-forward car-toon of "Chilly" Catallo's famous car that was used in the album's cover.
I tried to have as many mexican songs as possible, so I dug in the country's vast folcloric music and found quite a large number of corridos (tell-tale songs) that talk about drug-dealing "heroes" that escape the authorities in their cars. One of the most famous was "La Camioneta Gris", sung by several north of the country artists; the song tells the tale of a drug-dealing couple that escape the Federales in their hopped-up gray pick-up carrying bags of cocaine in the rear, until a train interrupts their death race. They even jump over cop cars and such stuff. No link as it's in spanish.
From the mentioned GTP thread came this next song, thanks to Rue, "
The key to her Ferrari" by Thomas Dolby, a totally-what-I-was-looking-for song about a guy preferring the keys to the Ferrari of a smoking-hot girl. And yes the Ferrari mentioned is a 250 GTO with a pink leather interior. The song is absolutely irreverent, so discretion is advised as you read (and laugh) trough the lyrics.
War's
"Lowrider" had to make the list too. It's the most famous car song of all time, but most people don't realize it's about cars. It's also been erroneously credited to ZZ-Top. Watch the video of this, awesome portrait of street machines of the era. The car in my drawing is a 1959 Impala.
"Little GTO" by Ronnie & the Daytonas was a shoe-in courtesy of my boss, as he has a '67 GTO ragtop. Hey, there's gotta be benefits in bein' the boss. I really like the drawing for this one.
Next one up is the last mexican song, "Le compré la muerte a mi hijo", by Beto Quintanilla. You can translate it as "I bought death to my son". It's another corrido, this time about a father who buys his 15-year-old son a hopped-up Camaro to drive around and the brat kills himself because the car was too much for him. This is like the anthem for F-Body owners in Mexico and I couldn't leave it out. I modeled the car in the drawing after a friend's 615hp-car. No link as it's in spanish.
Another song that was in even before I started the list was
"Mustang Sally", of course. And what better way to depict it all than with a GT350? I really like this one too.
One of the coolest songs I found researching for this thing was Rush's "
Red Barchetta", which depicts an apocalyptic future in which cars are now massive hovering things that hunt down old cars because they are insecure and dangerous; in such a scenario, a guy decides to drive his Ferrari Barchetta just for the sake of it. The song has a much deeper background
which you can find here.
Final song for this immense post is The Rip Chord's "
Hey Little Cobra", a song about a guy that spanks everyone at the race track with his Shelby Cobra 427, to the point where he coasts to the finish line in neutral lol. The song mentions Vettes and Jags bein' left so behind the guy could not even see them. This illustration was used in the cover as the blurb for the article.
And so it goes.
^^^^
