Asked by a reporter if he could somehow define that which set him apart from less enduring artists of the Britpop era, Liam Gallagher stumbled upon what may be the essential truth of the matter: ‘Cos I’m fookin avinit’. Well, you may say, what he lacks in grandeur, he makes up for in attitude (and Liam isn’t even the best lout in Oasis). Still, after all the years of having the champagne supernova kicked out of him by members of the paparazzi, his arrogance remains undimmed, as does that of Oasis generally, and for those reasons I’d likely include ‘Roll With It’ in a training playlist.
I mention this by way of considering David Castle’s analysis of music in the December 2008 issue of Running Fitness. In ‘The Sound of Music’, David employs the theories of Dr Costas Karageoghis of Brunel University – an expert in the science of running to music – to explain how the right beat can improve an athlete’s performance. For example, selecting songs according to the appropriate tempo, it’s suggested that we might warm up to ‘Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It’ by Will Smith; undertake some stretching to ‘Lifted’ by The Lighthouse Family; and warm down to ‘Whatta Man’ by Salt-n-Pepa. It’s easy, of course, to scoff at another’s taste in music (even easier now that Michael Bolton’s Soul Provider is safely with Oxfam); moreover, when it comes to making the case for my own selection of songs, my ready-to-wear taste in music will likely expose me in a manner that only runners’ tights know how. Still, never one to miss a cheap shot, while I can accept the fact that we’re in 2008 and therefore likely on the cusp of a nineties revival, do we have to bring back everything? ‘Funky Cold Medina’; really?
To prepare for his scenes as the psychotic Bill the Butcher in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, Daniel Day-Lewis is reputed to have screamed in synch to the albums of Eminem. But in compliance with the science of Dr Costas, it’s ‘Umbrella’ by Rihanna, featuring Jay Zee, at 89 beats per minute, that’s exemplified as a stimulant to mental preparation. When precisely were we runners made Leonardo DiCaprio? The limitation of entering into the kind of positivist séance envisaged by Running Fitness is that one’s choice may be circumscribed to that of the sailor lost at sea: despite sonorous depths all around, it’s a mouthful either of salt water or your own pee. Granted, the research allows for ‘an athlete’s taste and cultural upbringing’ – taste, culture, Rihanna; three words you wouldn’t expect to find in the same paragraph (though upbringing, maybe) – but a selection procedure that employs a metronome is hardly likely to result in a playlist with charge sufficient to pull all the current out of the mains. In fact, just as when I hear the likes of Gordon Brown claiming to be a fan of the Arctic Monkeys, it rather leaves me reaching for Enimem.
So, with no concession whatsoever for experimental design, nor blousy last-century hip-hop, let’s ratchet things up a notch.
Mental Preparation
The Rolling Stones, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. And he’ll need it. Because after a lifetime of putting the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll back into, well, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, this lot are going straight to hell. But as if to prove how indestructible they really are, Ronnie Woods waited until his fifties before giving up casual sex with groupies. Well, what could they talk about afterwards, he asked – Bon Jovi? But if at the start of a workout, you don’t feel like you’ve rolled up in a tank, wearing a general’s rank, then get thee to a Kenny G concert. Also, am I alone in thinking the Stones look a bit like seasoned hill runners these days?
Warm-up Activity
The Prodigy, ‘Firestarter‘. It’s like Sid Waddell says, under that heart of stone, beat muscles of pure flint. Keith Flint, that is. In 1997, and after only 20 weeks at the top of the album chart, the bad boys of underground, hardcore, industrial rave, breakbeat, alternative rock, big beat, postpunk nihilism were hurriedly pulled from the shelves of Wal-Mart for apparently inciting violence against women. Well, probably not a good idea to depict brutality when the gun counter’s only an aisle away. However, back in the world of, like, actual morals, The Prodigy stick it to the Man.
Stretching
REM, ‘Man on the Moon’. Mott the hoople and the game of life. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Obscurantist lyrics by depressing bunch. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Monopolise pretension for the critics and press. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Missed a number one through affected excess. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lets get limber, lets be quick. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sweat is breakin, hell you get the gist. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Strength Component
Bruce Springsteen, ‘Born in the USA’. There are two Bruce Springsteens. The darkly muttering troubadour, janitor of the foul rag and bone shop of the heart, who shacked up with the ghost of Johnny Cash to write such elegies as ‘The River’, ‘Brilliant Disguise’, and the bitter ‘Youngstown’. Then there’s the angry, hollerin, misappropriated roughneck, who carved the likes of ‘Born in the USA’ into the basalt of our imaginations with nothing more than the vein throbbing on his temple at the top of his breath. Between the release of Nebraska and Born in the USA, the album, form and content collided in a clap that could be heard on Thunder Road, as the whey-faced, hollow-chested, East Coast tyro embarked on a two year exercise regimen that would see him re-emerge as The Boss. With the muscle now to match his songs, Springsteen came out of the West like a long gone daddy in the USA. To his dismay, the Republican base of the eighties co-opted his angry anti-Vietnam classic as their own right-wing anthem; twenty-five years later, he’s still here, they’re all gone.
Warm-down Activity
David Bowie, ‘Heroes’. Picture, if you will, the scene. You’re in the home straight; you’ve run strongly, the finish line is in sight, and the crowd has risen stiffly to his feet. Against the backdrop of an honour guard of chemical toilets, the local Boys’ Brigade marching band is clearing the spit out of its trumpets as it prepares to strike up again. Sure enough, above the commentary from the Tannoy and the sound of a stray lurcher barking furiously in the car park, you hear, faintly, the opening bars to the score for Thunderbirds, before this too is overtaken, finally, blessedly, by the distinctive baritone voice of Bowie in your headphones. It no longer seems to matter that ‘Heroes’ featured in a CGU Insurance commercial, nor that you’re still awaiting the cheque to repair the damage done to your psyche when them upstairs blocked the jerry with chickenfat; for in this moment, you, and you, and you, and me, we have together shrugged off the lethargy of custom and accomplished a feat whose meaning is yet unuttered. We can steal time, just for one day.
David Bowie was inspired to write ‘Heroes’ by the sight of a couple kissing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, whose subsequent fall the song in fact predicts. This latter is an event that Keith Moon, drummer for The Who, didn’t live to see; and that’s a pity, for I think he might have enjoyed the thud. Moon is perhaps best remembered for a life of wild abandon, which included a predilection for blowing up drum sets with homemade explosives at the climax to Who performances. Memorably, on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967, having this time misjudged the volume of dynamite required, a more than normally powerful detonation left Moon in need of surgical pliers, and a city block in darkness. And while I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest that your own playlist be the cause of tinnitus, or pain enough to think that you have a cymbal embedded in your torso, if it don’t, I won’t be fookin avinit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
