25@25 (2001)

As "It's Oh So Quiet" explodes into brass chaos, I am taken back to Happy, Texas (1999), watching Steve Zahn coach his pageant girls and William H. Macy groan, "I've been hurt worse today," after a bullet tears through his shoulder.

After hearing "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" again in Lost & Found (1999), it worked its way into regular rotation in our house. It's impossible to play that song quietly. Neil Diamond and David Spade don't really give you that option. The whole thing feels like a revival tent packed into four minutes, and once it starts building, you either commit or you don't.

It became a road trip staple almost immediately. On the drive to Vegas we sang it loudly, dramatically, and without shame, though safely contained inside the car.

My wife's family had a couple of cassette mixtapes they played on road trips growing up, and "In The Summertime" was a staple on one of them. It carries that easy, windows-down feeling immediately. The hand claps, the jug band rhythm, even the exaggerated stereo sound effects make it impossible not to smile.

It's singable, carefree, and unapologetically road-trip ready. Years later it popped up again in Wedding Crashers (2005) during a bicycle ride through the countryside, which somehow fits perfectly. It's not a song to take literally, though. "Have a drink, have a drive" hasn't aged well, and I'm not planning to "do a ton or a ton an' twenty-five" on anything with wheels. But as a snapshot of carefree summer bravado, it works. This mix is aiming for road trip vibes, not responsibility.

My first memories of listening to music involve a giant pair of headphones plugged into my parents' hi-fi. They swallowed my head. I would sit on the floor and drop the needle onto vinyl, listening to The Mamas and the Papas as often as Snoopy Come Home. On 8-track I played Jim Croce and Willie Nelson. With those headphones on, lifting the needle and settling into the carpet, I was in a different world.

When I started college in 1994 at the University of Oregon, that same feeling came rushing back the first time I saw Pulp Fiction at The Bijou. I had already seen Reservoir Dogs and loved it, especially the way Quentin Tarantino used music in the scene, not just as background. I had no idea what Pulp Fiction was about. I just knew I wanted to be there.

The closest cinema playing Pulp Fiction was The Bijou. This was my first, but not last, time entering the place. It was still 95 percent a church and barely a cinema. I walked into an old church: musty air, dusty walls, mismatched and well-worn seats, not many of them. The audio was grainy, the film print looked rough, and there was no surround sound to smooth anything out. Just a small room, a flickering screen, and my friends.

The opening guitar notes hit hard. The movie took off. I absorbed everything. Every song in that film feels intentional. "Son of a Preacher Man" doesn't just play in the background; it builds a world. Watching Vincent Vega walk through the house for the first time, Dusty Springfield's voice feels both seductive and knowing, telling a story inside the story. The song was already vivid on its own, but that scene locked it into memory permanently. Some songs belong to a scene. This one belongs to a moment I can still see frame by frame and still feel in that old building.

Few artists have earned more than one appearance on my birthday mixes. Presidents of the United States of America only show up here, but "Peaches" had a firm grip on our house at the time. It was loud, ridiculous, and impossible not to sing along to.

Years later, after discovering Amanda Shires, I followed her admiration for John Prine and started listening to him more closely. Amanda's stripped-down performances, just fiddle and voice, carried emotional weight. When she spoke about loving Prine's songwriting, I followed her down that rabbit hole. John Prine's lyrics carry that same heart and life, and Amanda carries it beautifully too.

In "Spanish Pipedream", Prine sings about tuning out the noise of the world, moving to the country, planting a little garden, and eating a lot of peaches. I had been shouting along to the Presidents' peaches for more than a decade before I ever connected the two. Whether Presidents of the U.S.A. were nodding to Prine directly or just tapping into the same anti-establishment spirit, they took that idea, added some absurdity and distortion, and turned it into something built for car speakers and open windows.

My first introduction to They Might Be Giants came during my first year of college. I'm not sure how it took me that long to find them. Their mix of absurd humor, clever wordplay, and genuinely thoughtful lyrics wrapped inside catchy tunes is exactly what I look for in fun music.

TMBG built more than songs. Their phone hotline, where you could call in and hear new tracks, created a small, strange community around their creativity. It felt participatory before that was common.

We introduced our kids to TMBG much earlier in their lives than I discovered them. Years later, it came full circle when we attended a TMBG concert together in 2025 with several of our kids. Some music sticks around long enough to become generational.

Some of my best childhood memories are road trips. We didn't have carefully curated family mixes, but I had a Walkman, a stack of cassette tapes, and full control of the music in my seat. Growing up in Oregon meant regular drives to Eugene, Disneyland, the Oregon Coast, and a yearly trek through what felt like never-ending desert to Utah.

Watching National Lampoon's Vacation (1983) during those years felt less like a movie and more like a documentary from the backseat. The cramped car, the long stretches of highway, traffic stress, and eating too much beef jerky all felt familiar. My family quoted that movie constantly. My dad's name is even Clark. We didn't just watch that film. We were that family.

"Holiday Road" was the soundtrack to all of it.

The Beach Boys were a better band.

In 2000, a 98-minute movie arrived that felt like the soundtrack of that year. Charlie's Angels (2000) moved like a music video from start to finish, which makes sense given that its director had spent years directing dozens of them. The film barely pauses. It jumps from fight scenes to slow-motion glamour shots, stitched together by a soundtrack that pulls from the 60s, leans heavily into the 70s, dips through the late 80s, and crashes into the late 90s with electronic beats and crunching guitars.

The official soundtrack only includes a fraction of the songs used in the movie, but listening to the full lineup feels like flipping through a perfectly curated mix. The music drives entire scenes, sometimes taking center stage in a way that reminds me of Quentin Tarantino's approach, where the right track can carry the moment.

"Tangerine Speedo" was one of our favorites around the house. The song tells the story of a hotel guest complaining that the pool boy's tight speedo is attracting too much attention. It's ridiculous, high-energy, and completely self-aware. That kind of playful absurdity made it perfect for this road trip mix.

When I burned this first edition to audio CD, I was working with 80-minute blanks and a self-imposed rule: 25 tracks for my 25th birthday. That meant doing a little math and finding a few shorter songs to make everything fit.

I loved 3-2-1 Contact as a kid, so the theme made the cut as much for nostalgia as for efficiency. Sometimes a time constraint is the perfect excuse to sneak in a memory.

Apparently fast punk covers of popular tunes were all the rage in my house in 2001. This one fit the mood perfectly.

I started playing trumpet in fifth grade and stayed in band through high school, eventually joining jazz band. Concert band was fine, but it never felt exciting. Jazz band opened my ears to Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Wynton and Ellis Marsalis, and all the way back to Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Glenn Miller. We had directors who cared about us learning the history, not just hitting the notes.

"Be-Bop-A-Lula" was one of our staples at basketball games. Marching band meant gaudy uniforms, tight formations, and carefully choreographed halftime shows. Jazz band meant sitting on the sidelines in black silk shirts, playing looser charts with the occasional improvised solo. It felt cooler. It felt freer.

For years I only knew "Be-Bop-A-Lula" as a horn line. I didn't even realize there were lyrics until I heard Gene Vincent's original after high school.

It is entirely possible I am married because of Tom Petty.

My first summer at BYU I stayed in Provo to work full-time and save money. A cute girl from work was also still around that summer. Most of our friends had gone home, which meant we were each other's best, and possibly only, option for something to do on a Friday night.

At the start of the summer I moved out of the dorms, into an apartment, and bought a car. We planned a road trip to a popular local music pageant, and somewhere along the drive I slid a favorite album into the CD player. Wildflowers had been out for a few years, but it was in heavy rotation for me. As Tom Petty filled the car, the cute girl realized I might actually have decent taste in music. My reputation improved noticeably that afternoon.

We were married the next year. Tom Petty earned his place on this mixtape.

"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."

"Hit it."

Another perfectly balanced, quirky road trip song that also happened to fit into the remaining time on the CD. Sometimes practicality makes the best decisions.

"Spanish Flea" shows up in some of my favorite places. In Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), even if it's not the best film in the series, the fingerprint scene in the apartment where they hum this tune is unforgettable. It pops up again in Ocean's Eleven (2001) when Bernie Mac negotiates a great deal on a van.