Fun fact to know and share. The first piece of drag racing journalism I ever had published outside of the New England Dragway newspaper was a piece I wrote about pro mods for Nitronic Research. While that site is long gone, the spirit and ethos of the place still lives strong among lovers of the sport. It was a wild, raucous place where the opinions flowed freely and boy were there lots of them. The guy who created the place and the guy who tried to keep the monkeys from flinging too much dookie at each other in the cage was Cole Coonce. Undoubtedly you have read some of his writings on drag racing, land speed racing, or life in general in either his books or the myriad of magazines that have carried his stuff over the years.
Back in 2001 Coonce released an album called “Big Sounds Of the Drags 2001”. Carrying on in the great tradition of the 1960s “Big Sounds” albums that covered drag races, road races, and other events, this is a truly awesome thing to listen to. There’s lots of natural racing audio, interviews with people like Dean Skuza, and so much more we’re not going to give it all away. Coonce put a lot of work into this thing and I bought a copy when I was a junior in college. I used to annoy the hell out of my roommates and neighbors by listening to the thing on loop while doing my homework. It was awesome.
Anyway, I had totally forgotten that Coonce has released the entire 37-track album on SoundCloud and you can listen to it all, track-by-track, below at the link. Words have never done sounds justice and mine won’t do any better but I can only implore you to give it a listen because it is so cool. You’ll hear guys like Bob Fry working races, guys like Jon Lundberg working races, funny stuff, scary stuff, and it is theater of the mind to the best possible degree.
This album didn’t change my life per se but what it did do was provide an already active mind even more fodder to dream when listening to it. Thank Cole…and thanks for sharing this work freely with the world.
Click the image below and crank the speakers! Big Sounds Of The Drags 2001 style
