Drag racing aficionados Cole Coonce and Ikky Shivers of Nitronic Research, formerly known as "the thinking man’s drag racing site" before it went offline in ’03, have returned with an album made of field recordings from the drag racing world and surf music. It wasn’t easy.
"I loaded up consoles, mics, cables and tape machines into the hatchback of a Japanese car, drove to drag strips here and yon, and ran mic cable up and down the length of the track to get these sounds," explained Coonce via e-mail. "The project was an homage to the original Capitol records series of sound effects discs from the early ’60s" (still available).
Over the course of about a year, he and Shivers combined 37 resulting recordings into an album laced with surf music classics. The whole thing is available for download on The Big Sounds of the Drags 2001 blog.
Here’s a full sample track — "Black Smoke and Orange Flame," an account of "drag racing legend ‘Big Daddy’ Don Garlits reveal[ing] the circumstances ofhis darkest — and most traumatic — moment in competition: the 1970 transmission explosion at Lion Drag Strip that severed half of hisright foot," with incidental surf music from Insect Surfers:
(Disclosure: I know Cole Coonce; once, while he driving at an extremely high velocity on the salt flats of Utah, he listened to a song I recorded years ago.)
