Kansas City Playlist: Ward Parkway Street Racing Season Starts

Tonight we consider rising Internets complaints that haven't yet found their way to mainstream local news reports. 

The basics . . .

WARD PARKWAY NOW SERVES AS KANSAS CITY'S FANCIEST ILLEGAL STREET RACING STRIP!!!

This is an interesting turn of events for a few reasons . . .

- The Ward Parkway Corridor has served as the Kansas City's old money enclave for more than 100 years and typically this community stands FIRST in demands for services and protection. Yet they seem just as powerless as everyone else when it comes to complaints about street racers. 

- Ward Parkway has always been a speed trap. It's easy to go over the limit for those who aren't paying attention and throughout the years KCPD has typically patrolled the area in order to put drivers on notice that lead-footed motorists will earn pricey penalties. 

- Rather than solve the problem with policing & enforcement there's already talk of using streetscaping to ruin one of Kansas City's most iconic pathways by crowding Ward Parkway with ugly bike lanes, ridiculous curbs popping out into the street and so many more schemes that amateur urban planners have concocted.

Here at www.TonysKansasCity.com it's not our job to devise sketchy solutions but merely report the situation given that even a cursory social media search will reveal frustrations about recent street racing throughout the Ward Parkway corridor . . .

And so we dedicate tonight's playlist as the evening's racing is nearly underway . . .

A cartoon-ish start regarding this critical situation . . . Speed Racer, also known as Mach GoGoGo is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tatsuo Yoshida. It was originally serialized in print in Shueisha's 1966 Shōnen Book. It was released in tankōbon form by Sun Wide Comics and later re-released in Japan by Fusosha.

The English rights to Mach GoGoGo were acquired by syndicator Trans-Lux and Speed Racer premiered on American television in the summer of 1967.

Tonight we start the playlist with a horrible 2008 reboot movie wherein a shout out to the old school theme song was the most memorable part of the production.

As Ward Parkway becomes something a bit faster . . . We remember this apropos 90s classic on the topic of the world's divisions . . . "Life Is a Highway" is a song by Canadian musician Tom Cochrane . . . He stated that "Life Is a Highway" was originally conceived in the 1980s as "Love is a Highway" Following a trip with his family to Eastern Africa with the World Vision famine relief organization, Cochrane revisited the song on the advice of a friend . . . Cochrane says he was trying to make sense of the poverty he witnessed on his trip, which he found "shocking and traumatic".

Let's be honest . . . It's probably hip-hop that powers the current Ward Parkway street racing trend. However, most of the current rap tunes about cars are garbage and we don't want to listen to them . . . Accordingly, we compromise and share yet another nostalgic 90s track. 

"Let Me Ride" is a song by American rapper and producer Dr. Dre, released in September 1993  . . . It experienced moderate success on the charts, until it became a massive hit when Dre won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance for the song during the Grammy Awards of 1994.

The song deserves more credit than critics might offer . . .

"Let Me Ride"'s chorus involves both a sample and an interpolation of the chorus of the 1976 Parliament song "Mothership Connection (Star Child)", which itself quotes the Negro spiritual "Swing Down Sweet Chariot". "Let Me Ride" also samples James Brown's "Funky Drummer" and Bill Withers's 1973 single "Kissing My Love". 

For the Bridge . . . "Faster" is a song by former Beatle George Harrison from his self-titled 1979 studio album. The song was inspired by Harrison's year away from music-making in 1977, during which he traveled with the Formula 1 World Championship, and by his friendship with racing drivers such as Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Niki Lauda. Although equally applicable to other professions, the lyrics address the difficulties of achieving and maintaining success in the field of motorsport, particularly Formula 1.

Finally, we were tempted to end this playlist on a melancholy note because illegal street races often conclude in tragedy of some kind. However . . . We want to keep this post hopeful given that public outcry might pause the reckless pursuit . . . And so we finish with one of our faves . . . "Running on Empty" is a song by American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne. It is the title track of his 1977 live album of the same name, recorded at a concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, on August 27, 1977. Browne wrote the song while driving to the studio each day to make The Pretender, according to Rolling Stone magazine: "I was always driving around with no gas in the car," Browne is quoted. "I just never bothered to fill up the tank because — how far was it anyway? Just a few blocks."

As always, thanks for reading this week and have a safe & fun Saturday night.