Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Everybody's got a soundtrack these days. The Sopranos, video games, every movie that's released straight to video. Sometimes, as in the case of the new show The Shield, this is a great idea. In the case of a soundtrack for NASCAR, the idea, tenuous at best, fails miserably in the execution.

NASCAR and country music go together like white and rice. Someone, however, apparently got the idea that since metal music, hard-core, and the like are loud and fast, those genres, and the bands who play 'em, might have something in common with which is...say it with me children... loud, and fast. They forgot, however, that NASCAR drivers spend their lives going around in circles. As does CRANK IT UP.

I really wanted to like this CD. I happen to like hard-core, for the same reason I've listened to other forms of rock and roll for over 40 years: it's got an energy, an ugliness, a political incorrectness to it that is a nice anedote to the introspective soft-rock feminist crap that the music industry and every second radio station on the dial wants to shove down everyone's throats. Young men who have managed to escape being chemically castrated by their daily dose of Ritalin are loud and aggressive by nature; hard-core speaks to them, and to the women who love them. That doesn't mean, however, that the genre doesn't occasionally suck, even from some of it's best practitioners. And CRANK IT UP sucks.

Part of the problem is injudicious selection of cover songs. Give (hed) p.e. a gold star for even attempting "Crosstown Traffic," a Hendrix classic that nobody can touch. But..."On the Road Again"? By Buckcherry? No...I'm of course referring to the Willie Nelson composition, not the different tunes of the same name by Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, Lovin' Spoonful, or Canned Heat. Not a good move, not at all. We are subjected to a couple of the fastest leaden originals I have ever heard by nonpoint and Tantric before we get to the first good track on the CD, that being Gov't Mule's "Drivin' Rain," with Warren Haynes being helped immeasurably by the presence of James Hetfield and Les Claypool. That is followed, however, by two of the most ill-advised tracks on the disc. I couldn't f****** believe that a song like Billy Ocean's  "Get Out of My Dreams (Get Into My Car)" would be included on a project like this, but there it is, by Fenix* TX and just when you think you've reached the nadir of the creative abyss, it's followed by "Cars (MPH Mix)" (What ho!) By Fear Factory, who even took the time to dig Gary Numan up out of whatever mausoleum he was confined to in order to take a guest vocal turn.

There's an unbelievably wretched take of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Cars" (I'll avoid making jokes  about diesel fuel injection) by Darwin's Waiting Room (love the name, guys) before things finish on an upward curve. Slipknot turns in a competent "(sic) (Molt-Injected Mix)" which isn't bad for a group of guys who in their leisure time enjoy bailing out of second-story windows for grins and giggles. Then there's Slayer, who after all of this time still seem to have some fire in their bellies and cajones the size of New Jersey, by taking on the overdone and overplayed Steppenwolf classic "Born To Be Wild" and actually breathing some life, however momentary, into it. Type O Negative try and fail brilliantly to cover Deep Purple's "Highway Star"  but at least have the class and grace to apologize to Deep Purple before we get to Rob Zombie. Zombie is a caricature, from his dry-gargle vocals to his hamhanded power chords to his ass-long dreadlocks; I can also say with some authority having seen him perform a dozen or so times over the past 10 years that he never, ever disappoints, utilizing samples from old movies, Russ Mayer imagery and lots and lots of volume to aurally kick ass for a 50 mile radius from any point where he happens to be. Here he blasts out on "Demon Speeding (Dirty Black River Mix)" which is hands down the best track on the CD. It's not enough to save the project, however.

If you really want a soundtrack to NASCAR racing, dig ya's up a copy of LAMF by Johnny Thunder and the Heartbreakers, turn the sound on the TV down, turn your receiver up until the neighborhood dogs start howling and let 'er rip. By the end of "Born Too Loose" you'll know what I mean. But CRANK IT UP is one soundtrack that should have crashed and burned after one trip around the conference table.