An instantly recognizable bargain-bin staple since the late '70s, thanks to their colorful comic book covers tracing the romantic life of an Everycouple named
Peg
and
Eddie
, the
Cruisin'
series of discs is built on a brilliant concept: Each disc is devoted to a single year, with hit songs, local commercials, station jingles, and news headlines, all presided over by a noted DJ from the era, for a near-perfect recreation of that year's AM radio experience. The last two or three volumes of
are the weakest of the lot. The DJ,
Harv Moore
of
WPGC
in Washington, D.C., is perfectly fine, if a little overly fond of bad puns and old gags, and the commercials and station jingles are interesting as always. However, the play list is far too dependent on oldies, with half of the ten songs being golden gassers, from
the Champs
' 1958 party
rock
classic
"Tequila"
to
the Seeds
' lysergic 1967 hit
"Pushin' Too Hard."
Surely some more of the gems from that year, like
the Fifth Dimension
's
"Workin' on a Groovy Thing"
Desmond Dekker
's early
reggae
hit,
"The Israelites,"
could have been found, but on the other hand, the classic era of AM radio was already in the past in 1969, so it's unlikely that any version of
Cruisin' 1969
could have been as thematically satisfying as the earlier entries in the series. ~ Stewart Mason