Send someone to fetch us, were in Sasketchewan!

Jon over at Present Tense offered up this challenge:

... on Friday, I’m going to try to put together my top ten driving albums, and if you could, I’d love it if you’d put together yours. Post your list to your blog or in the comments here on Friday, and we’ll all trade a little paint. Then, I’ll link in all the lists and we’ll see who takes the checkered flag.

Gentlemen (and ladies), start your engines ...

So, okay, why not? I'm in. This was actually a little harder than I anticipated since I realized that in the past the main tool for getting through cross-country road trips was the mix-tape (and, later, the mix-CD) but for the purposes of this list I was restricted to choosing full albums. Also, it should be noted that now when I have a lengthy trip ahead of me it's a toss-up between catching up on spoken word podcasts or just turning the reins over to tankPOD and trusting his "shuffle" choices. Anyway, enough of this hemming and hawing; here are ten albums that have helped me while away the time and shorten the perceived time spent behind the wheel.

TANKBOY'S TOP TEN DRIVING ALBUMS:

Green Day
Dookie
Perfect from start to finish and makes the time whiz by in a flurry of unbelievably produced drums and guitars.

Guns N' Roses
Appetite For Destruction
A classic sing-a-long disc with the grit flying into your teeth that makes roadtrips worthwhile in the first place. Plus, it's excellent in case you stumble into a late night party in a trailer-park populated by babes right off poster-laden walls of your local mechanic.

INXS
Listen Like Thieves
I drove to Maryland my senior year of high school to visit old friends before we all graduated and scattered, never to be seen again. I played this album over and over and over again and never got tired of listening to it.

Jesus Jones
Liquidizer
This one is best for speeding through Pennsylvania and outrunning the ridic amount of highway troopers they employ.

The Lemonheads
Come On Feel The Lemonheads
This one reminds of a particular moment in time that I find reassuring when I revisit it, plus I love singing along to it. Not a recommended selection if you need to sit next to me though.

The Police
Message In A Box
Okay, this is slightly cheating since it's made up of five full albums, but can you think of a more solid body of work to get you through a couple hours on the road?

Queens Of The Stone Age
Songs For The Deaf
This one is almost too obvious. Also, it's one of the few discs both Photogal and I can listen to, at any time, and both agree on.

Sloan
Navy Blues
This is just a perfect album.

Weezer
The Blue Album
And this is another perfect album.

The Who
Quadrophenia
This is one of those discs that I heard at just the right time when I was a teenager and it let me know salvation was possible within a song. That's a good thing to remember in the middle of a fourteen hour trip.

THE RUNNERS-UP:

Blur
Parklife
(although I almost went with The Great Escape)
I know, Blur as a runner-up ... an actual shocker! Had I been able to include the singles disc it would have been in the Top Ten, but I said no comps (The Police doesn't count as a comp, remember?) and I'm sticking to it. Album-wise, I can make it through neither of the named Blur discs without occasionally wanting to fast-forward a track here or there, so that knocked 'em out of contention.

Josie the Pussycats
Josie And The Pussycats Soundtrack
This only got knocked off because the covers tend to grate. But the originals are just the sort of punchy tunes that compliment the open road perfectly.

The Muffs
Blonder And Blonder
This serves the same purpose as the Green Day selection above, and I could only really include one or the other. But I can just about always count on Kim Shattuck's voice to urge me along and redirect the anger I'm feeling towards that woman driving an SUV while talking on her cell phone and sipping a gingerbread latte.

Tripl3FastAction
Cattlemen Don't
Another masterpiece, but sometimes I'm just not feeling the middle section, so I can't always count on it on the road.

The Wonderstuff
The Eight Legged Groove Machine
I loved how they mixed pure pop with acidic aggressiveness, and that duality lends itself well to driving.

__________
Very important news!

Today is my little brother Sean's birthday. So Sean, you should know that to celebrate your special day I did get you a stripper. Unfortunately the cake I hid her in was delivered to a convent by mistake and all I've got here are all these brownies that were meant for the parish bake sale. Sorry.

Hopefully everyone else's gifts to you don't get detoured like mine did.

Happy birthday!