OK, I’m a week into my disfigurement (disfingerment?) and I can see it’s gonna be a long healing process, just like the time I dislocated the thumb — which, ironically, shares a hand with the splinted middle finger and met its fate a long stone’s throw from where the birdie bit the dust, on a technical bit of trail near Lazy Land in Palmer Park.
My choice of stationary-trainer tunes has come in for some light criticism, so I’m turning to you, my small, deeply disturbed following, for your advice on a soundtrack for an extended Tour de Living Room. I did 70 minutes on the Giant Tempo yesterday and will probably be ramping that up to two hours, so I need a shitload of music and it can’t all be redneck rock, though I have some Charlie Daniels in reserve for emergencies.
Meanwhile, the wizards at VeloNews.com are still stomping bugs at the new digs. Seems IE6 doesn’t like the new site’s calendar and we have a significant number of prehistoric readers who insist on logging on via abacus, smoke signal or log drum. Christ, what’s next? “Optimized for Mosaic?”
Mad Blog Media 
Off the top of my head, where the hair use to be:
Stwabs- Benedictus (nice for a moderate climb)
Spirit – 1984
Radetzsky March
Spirit – Nature’s Way (for the cool down)
May I suggest a little Who medley? I’ve got this sequence on the workout iPod playlist: Who Are You, My Wife, You Better You Bet, Happy Jack, Won’t Get Fooled Again. Gets it all going in the right direction for me…
Here’s a starter list:
Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey – Beatles
Get Up, Stand Up Bob Marley & The Wailers Live!
Another Travelin’ Song Bright Eyes
If A Tree Falls Bruce Cockburn
The Valley Road Bruce Hornsby & The Range
Born To Run Bruce Springsteen
Eight Miles High The Byrds
So You Want to Be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star The Byrds
The End Is Not In Sight (The Cowboy Tune) Amazing Rhythm Aces
Tenth Avenue Freeze Out Bruce Springsteen
December Collective Soul
Dreams The Cranberries
Crossroads Cream
Break on Through The Doors
Soul Kitchen The Doors
Already Gone The Eagles
She Drives Me Crazy Fine Young Cannibals
Good Thing Fine Young Cannibals
Homeward Bound Fleetwood Mac
Found Out About You Gin Blossoms
Crazy Gnarls Barkley
Southtown Girls The Hold Steady
Living In The Past Jethro Tull
Fat Man Jethro Tull
Slow Turning John Hiatt
My Little Red Book Love
Can’t You See (Live) The Marshall Tucker Band
Trouble P!nk
Evenflow Pearl Jam
Rough Boys Pete Townshend
Middle Of The Road The Pretenders
The Moneymaker Rilo Kiley
Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On) Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight Rodney Crowell
Street Fighting Man The Rolling Stones
Connection The Rolling Stones
Miss Amanda Jones The Rolling Stones
Satisfaction The Rolling Stones
19th Nervous Breakdown The Rolling Stones
Oye Como Va Santana
Soul Sacrifice (from Woodstock I) Santana
No Riders Shannon Curfman
I Don’t Want To Go Home Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes
Do It Again Steely Dan
Reelin’ In The Years Steely Dan
Copperhead Road Steve Earle
Psycho Killer Talking Heads
Everybody Wants To Rule The World Tears For Fears
Runnin’ Down A Dream Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
I’lll add Rossini’s Barber of Seville to my earlier recommendation.
To add to your woes at velonews.com I can no longer log into my MySpace page unless I upgrade to a browser not supported by my 3 YO Linux distro. As the optical drive has ridden beyond the Western Gate on my computer I either have to install a new OS by WAN, or buy a new computer. So comparatively you guys have it easy making your site work with old browsers.
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum by Bob Dylan
The Heart’s Filthy Lesson – David Bowie
Freeway Jam – Jeff Beck
Trans Mania Con MC – Blue Oyster Cult
Boneyard (Dick Tracy Theme)- The Blasters
Crackin’ Up – Rolling Stones
It’s a Wild Weekend – NRBQ
Okay Pack leader w/ bum paw–music to pedal to oblivion by, ahem Father O’Blivion that is–FZ Cosmic Debris/Apostrophe & Roxy & Elsewhere, ANYTHING by the Talking Heads and solo Byrne even Tom Tom Club, The B-52s rock on the trainer too, X-Live at the Whisky-A-Go-Go, and finally the MC-5 Kick It Out!
Techno trance will get you moving. There are multiple sources for long mash-ups.
Some of my favorite tunes for the vomitron:
Ride Like Hell by Big Sugar
Mustang Sally by The Commitments
Bicycle Race by Queen
Fat Bottom Girls by Queen
Fly By Night by Rush
Let Sally Ride by Sammy Hagar
Back in the Saddle by Aerosmith
Highway to Hell by AC\DC
And now for something completely different. Go to archive.org and download oldtime radio serials. All free, damn near everything you can think of. Green Hornet, Mike Hammer, etc. Thanks go to the 16 year old for turning me on to them. Hope your finger is better soon.
Two hours on the trainer Playlist.
Anything by John Zorn.
Repeat as necessary.
Beyond that it all depends on what you are looking for, Patrick. Easy, steady, hard, aerobic, mellow or chill? I think your classical bent is a good start, but then ramp it up with some rock. Maybe a little punk/metal/crotch rock. A side of AC/DC and Metallica wouldn’t hurt. “Enter Sandman” is an awesome building tempo piece. As are “Hells Bells” and “For those about to rock.” Finish it off with some dancehall or reggae to mellow you out, and then finish with a cool down stroll with some Miles.
I’m not going to name too many specific songs because my taste in music is going to be different than yours (as evidenced by the Green Day choices earlier), but I would think for 120 minutes you could get some good tempo going with some decent discs.
Of course, if you have access to the net, there are some really decent web radio ‘stations’ out there. It all depends on what you fancy your mood for on that day.
Failing that…John Zorn. Definitely John Zorn.
Another composer you might like is John Cage. Any of his pieces should work but 4′ 33″ is probably your best bet for a nice mellow trainer session.
Ah, music to suffer to. I suggest Blue Man Group’s oeuvre to get moving, preferably the first CD, Audio. The second CD has good pieces to cool off with, but you have to load them out of order for best results.
There was a CD done by 53×11 called Roleur made specifically for training while listening.
And I hope the HTML worked.
Tool-Undertow. It’s the perfect hairshirt for the self flagellation that is the indoor trainer.
Mory Kante: “Yeke Yeke”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0eD4cm7ZpY
how about John Tesh
just kidding
Classical–go with Carmina Burana by Orff, the 4 Seasons by Vivaldi, and No Remorse by Motorhead.
I would suggest the Rolling Stones. For a shorter ride, Goat’s Head Soup. Plenty of good hard high cadence work followed by recovery melodies. For a longer ride, equally powerful is Exile on Main Street. Give them both a listen – musicality is broad on both and the experience is far from mundane!
try the Band “last waltz” a lot of different stuff and artists takes a couple of hours and the variety makes the vomit comet look good. used it when I trained for Lemond spin certification that and the whos greatest hits made sunday seem almost bearable on the revemaster
“Make a Jazz Noise Here”, the second disk with the live version of Cruising for Burgers.
Patrick, check out Porcupine Tree, an amazingly talented group with an original sound that you can easily lose yourself in whilst on the torture device we lovingly refer to as a “trainer”. OSI and Riverside are also worth a listen… IMHO.