I test drove an excellent 5th generation Honda Goldwing (GL1800). Among other irrational complaints, I bitched about the radio; first because it played Tom Petty and then simply because it existed.
I ran screaming from the excellent bike.
Rather than follow the path of normalcy, I purchased (for about half the cost) a weird market failure half-scooter motorcycle in disguise. It’s a Honda Pacific Coast 800 (PC800) and it’s weird and yet perfect for me. The looks are a bit funky but it duplicates the GL1800’s core touring ability with less than half the displacement and a feature that I cannot live without… it has no useless gadgets.
The GL1800 was an engineering marvel but the sea of buttons and dials and screens and software and faffing doodery broke my connection with the ride itself. The gadgets actively pissed me off.
The PC800 has not one single button that isn’t absolutely necessary. It’s a motorcycle “interface” that “gets the hell out of my way”. To my odd outlook one of the best features of the PC800 is that it doesn’t have a radio.
Thinking of music and motorcycles leads to the nest part of this story:
Physics means that a motorcycle radio has to be loud. It must blare from the handlebars, over the roar of wind, penetrate the rumble of the engine, and drive itself through a helmet. When a rider is listening to the radio, everyone else is too. On the open road this is fine. Nobody hears a bike’s radio when it’s blasting at 80 MPH on the interstate in Wyoming.
When you’re in town it’s a different story. The sound is shoved up the ass of everyone nearby! Just like the “thump thump thump” of some ghetto dweeb’s 90 watt pre-amp in an overtuned Honda Civic forces us to digest their shitty rap (and it’s always rap), so to does the stereo on a motorcycle.
I took a vacation near the home planet of the cruisers; Sturgis, South Dakota. One day a chromed out Harley Davidson colossus rumbled past a breakfast joint in the middle of a little mountain town where we had holed up. We were eating on the porch. We heard every note blaring from the radio as some geezer duckwalked past us at 20 mph.
The song? Tiny Dancer, by Elton John.
Ballerina, you must’ve seen her
Dancing in the sand
And now she’s in me, always with me
Tiny dancer in my hand
THIS IS NOT OK!
I’m not anti-radio. I’m anti-bullshit!
If you’re going to rumble your $30,000 chromed bagger through town with the radio blaring, it had better be something better than a fucking gay ass tune about a ballerina!
I’m calling bullshit! Music on motorcycles that breaks the spell of the motorcycle is just fuckin’ wrong. Goddammit people, this isn’t rocket science! Either turn off the radio or play something that matches the spirit of your ride!
I’m not trying to be negative. I’m here to help. Every type of motorcycle has it’s own “essence”. For this and two more posts, I’ll describe the broad outline of a bike or type of bike. Then I’ll put up some “sprit matching music” to go with it. I’ll do it for each of my three very different motorcycles. I’ll add a few snippets of lyrics and a link if I can find one.
I’m doing this because I want the world to be a better place!
I can only hope the Harley-geezer who forced us to endure Tiny Dancer (!!!) puts down his AARP newsletter long enough to read this. EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW THAT TINY DANCER IS NOT OK.
Example 1: Yamaha TW200.
Description: A small, chunky, slow, unstoppable, crude, workhorse meant for dirt trails and cow pastures. Designed as a cheap “farm bike” and “ATV killer” it does anything an ATV does at half the price (but not as effortlessly).
The TW200 will go anywhere and do anything, except the highway… it’s slow. TW200s in their natural habitat are alone in the middle of nowhere; maybe running fence lines, maybe checking deer blinds, sometimes on a trail, sometimes bashing through the brush, sometimes sputtering down a forest service road, sometimes on a log skidder’s path.
Mine is bristling with enough gear to go full Mad Max. All TWs were built at the molecular level to be unkillable. It’ll ramble anywhere from country roads to swamps that make the Darien Gap look like a fun hike.
The plucky TW will never win a race or get you laid. But it’s perfectly normal to ride one with an elk quarter strapped to the back.
A small contingent of fans use them as urban transport. This includes women who took the motorcycle safety foundation (MSF) class on them and liked the little bike because it’s “cute”. TWs are often pictured hauling ridiculous top-heavy loads of agricultural products on winding mountain passes in Southeast Asia.
The TW200 has been in continuous production for 36 years. It has had almost no changes since its inception. Here’s a picture of mine:
Appropriate Soundtrack: Redneck noise! A TW should be accompanied by the sounds of redneck backwoods tomfoolery; shotgun blasts and banjos. TWs are good at being goofy so think of gasoline being thrown on fires, rope swings into lakes, and beer cans crushed into foreheads. They’re also work machines so chainsaws are appropriate (many TWs have a saw mounted somewhere on them). Some people tweak with the muffler but they’re nuts. The engine sounds like a lawnmower so I don’t get the point. Do not follow a TW into the forest any more than you’d follow a grizzly into the brush… it belongs there and you probably don’t.
Country Boy Can Survive, Hank Williams Jr.:
We’re from North California and South Alabama
And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck; we can run a trotline
And a country boy can survive
Good Old Boys, Waylon Jennings:
Just’a good ol’ boys
Never meanin’ no harm
Beats all you never saw
Been in trouble with the law
Since the day they was born
Staightnin’ the curves, yeah
Flatnin’ the hills
Someday the mountain might get ’em
But the law never will
Horse With No Name, America:
I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain
Legend of Wooley Swamp, Charlie Daniels Band:
Well, if you ever go back into Wooley Swamp, well, you better not go at night
There’s things out there in the middle of them woods
That’d make a strong man die from fright
Things that crawl and things that fly
Things that creep around on the ground
Amos Moses, Jerry Reed:
Now all the folks around south Louisiana said Amos was a hell of a man
He could trap the biggest the meanest alligator and just use one hand
That’s all he got left cause the alligator bit him ha ha ha
Left arm gone clean up to the elbow
Well the sheriff got wind that Amos was in the swamp trappin’ alligator skins
So he snuck in the swamp gonna get the boy but he never come out again
Part 2 will go live soon…