My first review of CitiField was inconclusive and ambivalent. But I made two trips back this weekend: once for an actual Mets game (well, not actually actual, but close enough after a very long winter), and once for a Workout Day, a fun event where plan holders can watch the team stretch and run and take BP (Scratchbomb Flashback!: I chronicled the Mets’ first ever Workout Day way back in 2006).
After this weekend, I still don’t feel comfortable making conclusive assessments about everything in CitiField. But I’m pretty sure I love it.
The first exhibition against the Red Sox, which I attended, was a much better test for how the stadium will feel during a real game. There were lots of Mets fans pumped to see a game, and there were enough fans of the the other team to approximate an in-season opposition.
So even though the weather wasn’t much better than during my first visit (worse, actually, thanks to a 1+ hour rain delay), the atmosphere was decidedly livelier. There was an energy to the place lacking during the college exhibition dress rehearsal. The Red Sox games were about as close to Game Conditions as we’ll get until Opening Day, and CitiField cleaned up well in this light.
As promised yesterday, I’ve compiled a complete list of all the Inappropriate Walk Up Songs. This should prove useful to those of you who need to settle arguments in bars, or as a handy crib sheet on your next midterm exam. Enjoy!
This list is arranged in alphabetical order by artist. Why? Because that’s how you organize music, dammit. I’ve been doing it that way ever since I started buying albums, and I ain’t about to change my ways now, dagnabbit.
What did I discover while compiling this list? Not much, except that I accidentally used Johnny Cash twice, despite my declaration that I wouldn’t use any artist/band twice. Boy, is my face red!
In my defense, tell me you could resist using “Wo Ist Du Haus, Mama”. That is comedy/German gold right there.
So without further ado, the list (after the jump):
For previous Inappropriate Walk Up Music posts, click here.
This is it, folks. Today is Opening Night–an abomination in the eyes of God, if you ask me (and God). I’m not a traditionalist when it comes to most baseball matters, but the first game of the year should take place in the daytime, dammit. It should be a horrible, rainy afternoon where you can’t feel your toes and you wonder why you gave up a whole day’s pay to drink overpriced watered down Bud Lite while watching it.
In any case, that makes this the final edition of Inappropriate Walk Up Music. Shed a tear, if the mood moves you. Do I have some enormous climax for you to mark this momentous, bittersweet end?
Um, no. Just three more songs. Sorry.
But I will have a full list of all of the Inappropriate Walk Up Songs tomorrow, listed in alphabetical order by artist. Why that way? Because that’s how I’ve always organized my albums, even when I was a kid. How else would you do it, you maniacs?!
Without further ado, the end.
* “Bicycle Race”, Queen The Wife spun this tune on the House Stereo yesterday, after hearing it on a classic rock station. I know I’ve heard this song many times before, but the true weirdness of it never really struck me before. Wow, this is bizarre–even when judged against the scale of Queen’s other mock-operatic work.
I also considered “Body Language”, which is just as weird and a much worse song. But “Body Language” doesn’t have a video in which tons of naked people ride bikes.
* “Fingertips”, They Might Be Giants I may be cheating here, because this isn’t one song per se. It’s 21 separate minitracks on Apollo 18. A couple of them break the 20 second mark, and one is over a minute, butmost range between 5 and 12 seconds. Apparently, TMBG wanted you to employ the shuffle function on your CD player, so the listener would hear lots of tiny non sequiturs in between the “real” songs. But I loved to listen to “Fingertips” as one long miniature opera of weirdness. And I have a feeling most people who bought the album listened to it in the same way. And this is my stupid feature anyway. So screw it, it’s one song.
I remember listening to “Fingertips” repeatedly, at the expense of the rest of the album. Some tracks cracked me up so much that I had to hear them over and over, so I made sure I was near the CD player so I could hit the back button and not have one mini-song polluted by the sound of another (I think I’ve mentioned I’m a dork, right?).
A lot of the goofier TMBG material falls into the “I was 13 and a dork when I loved this” category, but think this holds up well. What’s great about it is that each mini-song sounds like an excerpt of a longer tune, yet you can’t imagine them being any longer. “What’s That Blue Thing Doing Here” still makes me laugh (and those are all the lyrics, right there). And “I Walk Along Darkened Corridors” is probably the best song Morrissey never wrote.
* “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory”, Johnny Thunders Good way to close out this list: Wistful and hopeless. Kinda like Johnny Thunders. Peep this video for a rare clip of Johnny singing in tune and remembering all the lyrics.
My first review of CitiField was inconclusive and ambivalent. But I made two trips back this weekend: once for an actual Mets game (well, not actually actual, but close enough after a very long winter), and once for a Workout Day, a fun event where plan holders can watch the team stretch and run and take BP (Scratchbomb Flashback!: I chronicled the Mets’ first ever Workout Day way back in 2006).