Hot Rods & Custom Classics
Here's an educated guess that road tapes are thesecondmost popular type of homemade mix cassette. (One suspects that old off-road standard--the bedroom mix--would clock in at No. 1.)Hot Rods & Custom Classicsis Rhino Records' big daddy of road mixes: four discs housed in an elaborate box that includes a scrupulously assembled 66-page booklet, a catalog of hot-rod accessories, a strip of decals, and even a set of fuzzy dice for your own resto rod. Musically, this collection is all over the road, ranging from selections that seem like they were written with one foot on the accelerator (Johnny Bond's "Hot Rod Lincoln,"Chuck Berry's "Maybelline,"War's "Low Rider") to more tangential tracks that might force you to pull into a rest stop (Hank Williams's mournful "Lost Highway,"Rod Stewart's "Gasoline Alley"). Spanning multiple genres and five decades,Custom Classicsis enlivened by film and ad snippets, including a public-safety message from high-speed-crash victim James Dean on, naturally, safe highway driving.--Steven Stolder