Monthly Archives: March 2009

Baseball, Inappropriate Walkup Music 2009

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: 03.21.09

santo-shea.jpgFor previous Inappropriate Walk Up Music posts, click here.

Every day until Opening Day, Scratchbomb presents three tunes that are completely, unequivocally inappropriate for use as major league walk-up
music.

These are not necessarily bad songs–although that
certainly helps. They are merely songs that don’t evoke the fear and dread one traditionally associates with the walk-up song. In fact, they evoke the exact opposite.

Imagine yourself in the on-deck circle. Bottom of the 9th. Down by one. Man on second, two out. You hear the PA system blare, The centerfielder, number 20… The crowd roars at the sound of your name. And as you stroll to the batter’s box, you are greeted with the strains of one of these songs:

Today I present the special spoken word edition. This is technically not music, but screw it. I made these rules, and I’ll bend them as I see fit. Plus, this list is comprised of spoken word pieces by musical artists. So I think it adheres to the spirit, if not the letter, of this project.

* Anything from Paul Stanley’s collection of stage banter, People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest This hit the intertubes a year or two ago, but I only recently got a chance to hear it. I shouldn’t say it’s Paul Stanley’s per se, but a collection made by a fan (or insane completist, or dedicated ironist) that compiles the KISS frontman’s best stage banter. It’s every bit as stupid as you might imagine. My favorite: this clip, in which Paul delivers outlines his battle plan for the rock n’ roll war on terror.

* Any hip hop album “comedy” track
Prince Paul has brought us much joy, but he’s also responsible for the proliferation of Hip Hop Comedy Filler Tracks in the 90s. He was the first to do it, and millions of MCs followed his lead by recording their own mini-auditions for SNL This trend allowed even the thinnest of CDs to stretch out to a respectable 37 minutes.

For ten years or so, even the best albums were interrupted by aggressively filthy bits, or outtakes of guys screwing around in the studio while extremely high. Like four minutes of garbage when you’d much rather have that precious disc space filled up by something like music. So I like the idea of a batter picking a track off of, say, The Chronic, but instead of hearing “Dre Day”, he gets one of its intensely dated, unfunny skits.

* Venom stage banter
Venom was an 80s metal band from England that dabbled in Satanic imagery. In 1986, someone thought it would be a good idea to put them and Black Flag on the same bill. Fun! Aside from providing much chuckle fodder for Henry Rollins (as detailed in Get in the Van), this tour also resulted in one of the most hilarious collections of stage banter ever.

You can get the full story (and an MP3) in WFMU’s blog here, but the short version is this: a Flag roadie (Joe Cole, probably) recorded a Venom show in New Jersey, edited out all of the music, and compiled lead singer Cronos’ cringe-inducing stage banter. Comedy gold–nay, comedy platinum!

This tape became so legendary in music nerd circles that it was even released as a single by Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label. I’d love to see a batter stroll to the plate while Cronos screams YOU WANNA HEAR SOMETHING THAT’S GONNA KICK YOUR BALLS OFF?!

Baseball

What’s In a Name? Laughs Galore!

I have no idea how this escaped my notice until now. No matter. All you need to know–if you didn’t know it before–is that MLB is hosting a Moniker Madness tournament on its minor league site. A field of 64 players toiling away in the minor leagues has been assembled to determine one thing: who has the most hilarious name in professional baseball?

MLB says, “the best name”, but obviously in this context best = most chuckle inducing. They’ve conducted this tournament for the last three years. Again, I have no clue how I missed this before. But I ain’t missing it this time.

Who will win: Chia-Chu Chen? Callix Crabbe? Lovesquiz Santana? Arquimedes Euclides Caminero? Insiders tell me the smart money’s on Sundrendy Windster.

Sports

A Sporting Oasis in the Urban Vietnam

I know I’ve said before that I’d watch the Mets in an active volcano if that’s where they played, but I have limits to what I’d risk to see my favorite team in person. For instance, if I don’t think I’d go out to Flushing if there was a chance I’d get my head cut off.

That, apparently, is the risk run by fans of the Indios, a soccer team from Ciudad Juarez, a border town where drug-related gang violence has reached Robocop-levels of insanity. A story in yesterday’s New York Times details how the city’s residents have rallied around the team, despite the insane danger they face simply by leaving the house:

But the lurid headlines, the murder of the deputy police chief and the threats to decapitate the mayor [!] have not deterred soccer fans, at least on game days.

But the players are probably insulated from the such insanities. Hey, they’re celebrities, right? Well…

Andrés Chitiva, a native of Colombia, was released in December,
partly because he played poorly, partly because he was shaken by a menacing phone call, team officials said. “He got scared,” said Francisco Ibarra Molina, the team president. “They wanted money or they would kidnap his kids.”

Needless to say, these conditions make it difficult for the team to attract star players, or get a bigger stadium built. I imagine the mayor’s got bigger issues on his mind than building a new arena, like not getting his head lopped off.

Would you go to any event in a city like this? Would you even live in such a place, if you
had any choice?

And yet, according to the article, the Indios pretty much sell out their games, and no incidents erupt during the games. Of course, once the matches end, it’s back to business as usual–which, in Juarez, means over 2000 murders in the last 14 months.

Think about that the next time you wanna complain about $15 parking fees and $7 beers.