The Summer of Our Disco Tent

Wildfires Play Havoc with Wogging

After California went through its driest Spring on record, fire season, which normally doesn’t begin until August, has already hit the state hard. Huge fires on San Bruno Mountain and in Napa and Solano Counties have turned the Bay Area atmosphere into one big haze. It got so bad that I had to curtail my wogging, as bad air pollution makes it hard for me to breathe. Yesterday I finally went out to the Berkeley Marina with woglist primed on my pod, and found that the stiff breeze coming off the coast improved the air quality considerably, enabling me to do a good brisk wog to Disco Tent, the coming Weekly Wog. Still, it’s weird seeing a wan, reddish sun struggling through the sky, almost as though it were autumn instead of the middle of high summer.

Weekly Wog: Oddly enough, one of the songs in this week’s wog is Disco Inferno (Burn Baby Burn), by the Trammps. Let’s hope the only burnin’ going on where you are is body fat!

Summer!

What better way to kick off summer than a Wog-a-Thon called “Summer!”? Which also happens to be the Weekly Wog. Yesterday I biked over to the track by King Middle School and put Summer! on my pod. I didn’t have time to wog the entire 56 minutes, but the nice thing about Wog-a-thons is that they’re made so it’s easy to skip over songs for a shorter wog. So I skipped over The Doors’ Indian Summer, Joe Satriani’s Summer Song, Don Henley’s The Boys of Summer, the Lovin’ Spoonful’s Summer in the City, and Timbuk3’s The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades—still good enough for a 37-minute workout. Summer! has a couple of excellent Skiplekkers in Seals and Crofts’ Summer Breeze and Chuck Prophet’s Summer Thing, which added to the intensity and fun of the workout. Check it all out at Podwogging.com.

Song Index now in text files: To reduce file size and unclog my website, I’ve now made the three song lists (by title, pace, and artist) downloadable, tab-delimited text files. This makes it easy to read them in word processors or spreadsheets for those who want to start using song BPMs to roll their own woglists.

Happy Solstice!

This morning I went for a wog before breakfast, an ideal time before the heat of the day can make wogging a chore. Tonight is another good time to wog–what better way to celebrate the longest day of the year? (Also, air pollution on hot days tends to be worse in the afternoons. If you have asthma or respiratory problems, wogging early or late may be your best bet.)

Be Streetwise While Wogging

The ideal place to go wogging is a track, or a hiking trail, or country road through a leafy forest. But if you live in an urban area like me, you might find yourself wogging on the streets and sidewalks of a city. In which case, certain commonsense precautions should be taken:

• Turn the volume of your earbuds down far enough so you can hear traffic sounds. I know, you listen partly because you want to drown those nasty noises out. But when crossing the street, hearing a vehicle coming your way can mean the difference between life and death.
• Be aware of other pedestrians around you. Pods can easily be snatched by muggers and thieves, and are a popular item with fences.
• Concrete is hard on the joints, so save the pulse-pounders for running tracks or other softer surfaces. Asphalt is a bit more forgiving, but make sure traffic on the street is light.

Master Songlists, Weekly Wog

Master Song Lists Now Online

All the songs in all currently posted woglists, together with artist, time, beats per minute, and pace consistency, are now available for viewing on Podwoggging.com, by clicking on Song Index in the navbar. There are actually three lists: one sorted by song name, one sorted by artist, and one sorted by pace. Thus you can use these lists, which will be updated as new woglists go online, to put together your own woglists.

Weekly Wog: Achtung, Baby!

U2 made a major move away from anthemic arena rock with this gritty, though still hook-laden, album from the early 80s. Starting with the wonderful She Moves In Mysterious Ways and ending with Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around the World, this set will give you a nice 36-minute light workout, all from this one album. Check for more single-album wogs in the future.

Weekly Wog goes to the Über Side

I needed a good, long wog to help me shake off a nasty cold, so who better to lead the way than the 60s' blues shaman, Jim Morrison? 58 minutes of intoxicating Doors' music later, I felt like a new man. This week's list is an ÜberWog, which is longer than a standard wog, but the pace is light enough to invigorate you, not deflate you. Check it out!

Coming soon to Podwogging.com: a song index, listing all the songs in every woglist I post on the site. So you'll be able to drop by and look up your favorite song, get its BPM (beats per minute), and add it to your own lists.

Pick Up Thy Pod And Wog

Welcome to your world.

You like to rock and keep fit. You have an MP3 player and find it fun to take out on the path while you walk and jog. You have some favorite songs, but you’d like more: more playlists artfully arranged, with the music you like at the beat that works for you.

You’ve come to the right place.

PODWOGGING is what I call the exercise that’s a hobby and a workout rolled into one. At my website, Podwogging.com, you’ll find all playlists of rock, pop, soul, R&B, folk—virtually every form of popular music with a beat—all designed to be used with your portable music player (POD) while you walk and jog. (A WOG is a combination of Walk and Jog.) You’ll find lists at all pace levels, from very light walks to pulse-pounding jogs, as well as very short lists (Quickies) to lists over an hour long (Wog-a-Thons). Every song in each list has a BPM (Beats Per Minute) rating, making it easy to see each song’s pace, and each list has a pace rating based on these BPMs.

I don’t sell these songs—for that you’ll either have to get them off albums, or download them from places like Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.com; nearly all the songs in these lists are available online. Chances are you already have many of them on your computer or POD, just waiting to be put into a perfect podwog playlist.

The current Weekly Wog is a 34-minute list of songs by the Cars, called Jogging in Stereo. I’ll be posting more woglists and blogging about wogging every week, too. Check it out!

Jim Webster