New Millenium Flatliner

The aughts have truly delivered some of the most exciting music since...well, since the 90s. This week I slap together a bunch of songs that cruise delightfully around 140 BPM—in my book, a perfect jogging rhythm. Like the Kings of Leon? The Posies? The Strokes? Wait ‘til you jog to them. Also the Dead 60s, Snow Patrol, Rob Thomas, and even U2 will make your heart go pitter while your feet go patter. Audioslave, Arcade Fire, and Lilys provide opening, mid-wog, and closing walks, respectively.

Podwogging.com

Happy Nü Year

Seems only fitting to ring in 2009 with U2, whose angst-drenched anthem from their 1983 album War is, fittingly, New Year’s Day. This is an ÜberWog, meaning it’s longer than usual, and it’s Very Vigorous, at that. Early U2 could rock hard—listen to Rejoice and I Will Follow. Nü Year’s Wog also features gorgeous songs from their post-War era (Desire, Three Sunrises, Red Hill Mining Town, Bad), the 90s (Daddy’s Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car, Mofo) and the new millennium (Miracle Drug, Beautiful Day). All in all, eleven songs from eleven different albums for a sublime Weekly Wog indeed. Check it out on Podwogging.com!

Dizzy Balloon: Pretty Cool

This Saturday my 14-year-old son took me to see Dizzy Balloon, a local pop group barely out of high school, along with a couple of other East Bay bands. No doubt about it, the Inflatable Ones stole the show. In addition to playing vivacious, danceable, and catchy numbers, they featured a bagpipe player and a wildly entertaining yo-yo demonstration, plus the usual cool lights, lasers, fog machines, etc. I have their CD, so I smell a Single Album Wog coming up. They’re leaving on a California tour—check their web site http://www.dizzyballoon.com/.

REGIME CHANGE

If you’re like me, this election is shaping up to be one of the most significant changes in my lifetime. Not since forever has a presidential candidate actually spoken to pressing needs, with such panache and vision. So go out and vote for Ralph Nader!

Kidding.

Seriously, assuming the right wing vampires don’t suck the blood out of every American voter, the Big O will take office in January with a huge mandate. A mandate that’s been years in the making, and has been celebrated in song since the early days of Dylan. As befits such a marathon, this week’s Wog, Regime Change, is a Wog-a-Thon*. It’s 78 minutes of songs from such sources as Crosby, Stills & Nash, Midnight Oil, Tracy Chapman, and Bob Marley. A few lesser-knowns also get into the act: Pearls Before Swine, Hothouse Flowers. Even Steve Miller (yes, that Steve Miller). Not to mention Stevie Wonder, the Animals, the Stones, U2, Rush, Karan Casey, and that old anti-war chestnut (unh!) by Edwin Starr. So what are you waiting for? Raise your fist and give Change a Shout-out on your way to the polls tomorrow.

Check it out at Podwogging.com.

*A Wog-a-Thon is split into “sub-thons,” shorter sequences if you don’t want to do the whole thing at once. Alternatively, you can skip songs in the sequence, since the pace pattern always follows a slow-medium-fast-medium-slow-medium-fast-medium, etc. pattern.

And a one, and a two, and...

New Weekly Wog: Starting with U2’s One and finishing with CCR’s Ninety-Nine and a Half, this week’s wog is one you can count on for a 47-minute vigorous workout. This one’s a mix of popsters from the 60s & 70s (Beatles, Crosby Stills & Nash, the Vogues, Creedence, Keith, Alan Parsons) and more recent fare (U2, Wallflowers, Echo & the Bunnymen, Guster, Bloc Party, School of Fish). It has two solid jogging chunks, one near the start and one near the end, and a nice relaxed middle. If you want to be in that Nümber, check it out at Podwogging.com!

Making Friends

Thanks to Dr. Bob at jogtunes.com, I now know how to make an iMix of my woglists and put it on iTunes. I wish I could make iMixes from all my woglists, but unfortunately iTunes doesn’t carry all the songs on my lists. Still, some are better than nothing. So far I have three woglists posted as iMixes: The Doors: The Über Side, U2: Achtung Baby, and Genesis: Abacab. You can listen to 30-second samples and purchase them if you wish. See my website, podwogging.com.

Another fun music exercise site is run by Dr. Bob’s friend, Peter Andersson, The 50 best songs for running ever made. These two are obviously as obsessed as I am!

See you on the trail...