Mixtape #115: Always Where I Burn To Be
A quarantine training montage
April 5th, 2020
Side A
1. Lose Yourself by Eminem
2. Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins
3. No Easy Way Out by Robert Tepper
4. Dare by Stan Bush
5. Training Montage by Vince DiCola (from Rocky IV)
Side B
6. Mighty Wings by Cheap Trick
7. Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler
8. The Touch by Stan Bush
9. War/Fanfare by Vince DiCola (from Rocky IV)
10. Top Gun Anthem by Harold Faltermeyer
Spotify
Liner notes
If you’re anything like me you struggle to leave the house when there isn’t a global pandemic, let alone when everyone is telling you to stay home. Part of the lockdown guidelines in the UK is an allowance to leave the house to exercise, for somewhere between 30-45 mins, every day. Have I been leaving the house every day? I have not.
So instead of motivate myself to leave the house, I motivated myself to make a new playlist, a workout playlist, which would then motivate me to leave the house. So far it has motivated me to dance around my living room, but I’m building up to going out.
This playlist is based on one I made for workouts in my early 20s, back when I used to hit the gym without an ounce of shame or a developed sense of irony. Innocent times.
The basic premise of the original mix was around 25 minutes of adrenaline pumping rock from my favourite 80s film soundtracks. And Eminem. This was roughly the length of my treadmill program at the time, with cooldown. I hated cardio, and that workout mix (fun fact: it was on Mini-Disc) always got me through it.
In resurrecting the playlist I used most of the original tracks, expanding it with a few I didn’t have ready access to pre-Spotify, both in order to adhere my ten song policy and pad it out to about 45 minutes, the length of a government approved workout.
This playlist is scientifically proven (test group of one) to make you want to push yourself to the limit, push the envelope, and punch Dolph Lundgren. I’d advise anyone with a heart condition to skip this one, although if you’re actively having a heart attack this playlist will work exactly like a defibrillator. It’s that good!
I was watching The Right Stuff (the proto-Top Gun, much parodied in Armageddon) the other week and there’s a scene with Sam Shepard (the man I want to be when I grow up) as Chuck Yeager, off to break the sound barrier. His wife, Barbara Hershey, kisses him goodbye, and tells him: “Punch a hole in the sky”
Goosebumps, right?
In that same spirit, here is a playlist to get you up, get you out and get you moving. Set a PB, break a PB, hell, break the goddamn sound barrier. Punch a hole in the sky.
Until next time,
Dan Dalton x
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