Piano floats “Cool Change.” A Top 10 hit in the U.S., Little River Band’s second single from 1979 platinum prize First Under the Wire today stands as an Aussie standard. Glenn Shorrock’s tree-hugging ode to boating (“Well, I was born in the sign of water, and it’s there that I feel my best”) sails brotherly harmonies and a swimming hole halo of strings on the LP’s Dark Side of the Moon-seamless REI rock. A long, hot walk home last month summoned it as an aural mirage, the sultry dog days of summer having run off. Highway to Hell or “Heatseeker” – a more timely commiseration from Down Under, especially since AC/DC’s “Dog Eat Dog” had escaped me on our Music staff’s last thematic riffing (revisit “Who Let the Dogs Out?,” July 17). Heat indexes merely exacerbate, though. Rather than Hot Hot Heat, crack some Ice Cube. Ice-T. “Cold as Ice” – only Foreigner also hit with “Hot Blooded.” Pat Benatar’s “Fire and Ice.” Can’t quench one without the other.

This article appears in August 28 • 2015.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.