It took only four back-to-back versions of Tainted Love to realize that my good friend Raffy was a little peeved about me trying to sell him to the kid with no teeth.

…take my tears and that’s not nearly all, tainted love… There are many great things about the mp3 music revolution, one of which being the ability to listen to your music in a car such as the Tahoe, simply by plugging in through the aux input. The key word, there, would be your music -- not to satisfy some freak's need for Tainted Love. The silence made every horrible lyric ring throughout the cabin, and for the first time ever, I wished that Chevy would make a noisy interior. Wait -- Chevy and quiet interiors haven’t exactly been like peas and carrots for some time, but this new Tahoe is indeed quiet, with virtually no road noise and, save for some windshield whistle and a few odd vibrations on the front passenger's side of the car, a very insulated ride. That was the case, even as we cruised along the Salton Sea, up toward Interstate 10 and through the daily Coachella devil winds, gusting across the Tahoe. It was, in fact, hard to notice the environmental havoc going on without looking at the bent palm trees, such was the quality of the ride and stability of the Tahoe. For a large SUV, it sliced through the air with relative ease. Surely, then, we were getting great gas mileage. I looked at the digital readout and wondered aloud, over the whine of the angst playing on the stereo: “how could we only be getting 14 miles per gallon?”