Category Archives: Sports

Inappropriate Walk Up Music 2011

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: Uncle Meat

For an intro to this series, click here. For the original series way back in 2009, click here.

There are no casual Frank Zappa fans. You don’t merely like his music; it becomes a focal point of your existence. This is due partially to the fact that he worked on developing a cult among his fanbase almost from the beginning of his career, and also because the sheer volume of stuff he put out is so staggering. It’s a devotion tailor-made for obsessives, like myself.

In high school, I had dual musical allegiances. On the one hand, straight up punk rock. On the other, modern classical stuff like Igor Stravinsky and Charles Ives and jazz like Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. I’m not sure how this happened, exactly, but here we are. Frank Zappa satisfied both sides of my musical brain at once. It had rock elements, but also had the complicated instrumentation and chops I liked from classical and jazz. It also had plenty of satirical and transgressive elements to it (sex, poop) that were exciting to High School Me.

The problem with liking Zappa is that he pushes all your other likes out to the margins. He had a concept called Conceptual Continuity, which said that everything he ever did was interrelated. The only way to truly understand it all was to listen to everything–including every live show you could get your hands on. That’s why I have not only 40-something legitimately released albums of his, but twice as many boots I downloaded in the early, bountiful days of torrenting. The time and scrutiny required to listen to all of this stuff leaves you no inclination to consume anything else.

I’d consider myself a lapsed Zappa fan at this point in my life, because I feel like I’ve pulled out as much as I can from his oeuvre. There’s also elements to some songs that are way too close to misogyny for me to excuse or dismiss. However, I still listen to the occasional track or old show. I also stand by certain incarnations of his bands, like the Roxy and Elsewhere lineup, which was pretty funky and fun (plus it had lots of marimba, which always pleases me). But my favorite remains the original Mothers, who were unlike anything assembled before or since.

Zappa basically took this band that used to play R & B and blues and got them to play rockified versions of Edgar Varese and Karlheinz Stockhausen compositions. And when they felt like it, they could also rock the fuck out. You’ll see examples of both in this video from a performance on the BBC from 1968.

The song in that video, “King Kong,” was a heavy duty workout that took up all of side 4 of Uncle Meat, the final proper album by the original Mothers lineup. (There were a few others featuring material they’d recorded, of course, since Zappa released virtually everything he ever did. This was the last one recorded as a for-real album.) I’m not the full time Zappa fan I once was, but I still stand by this as a masterpiece. There’s virtually no vocals on the entire album, and it has this strange, stilted baroque quality to it. Much of it was assembled using insane amounts of overdubbing all done on four tracks (the only kind of recorder then available) and edited with razor blades, a small engineering miracle.

The Uncle Meat liner notes came with sheet music for both “King Kong” and the title track, which I was obsessed with for a while. The notation informed me that the song’s chord structure was composed almost entirely of suspended 4ths. If that means nothing to you, just know that in traditional Western music, a fourth interval (i.e., a difference between a root and a harmonic of four full notes) sounds kind of “Eastern” or “Chinese.” This budget music theory lesson has been brought to you by a class I took junior year of high school.

Using the tiny transcription in the CD booklet, I tried to play “Uncle Meat” on the beatup piano in our basement (acquired for the cost of renting a truck when family friends gave it away), but I couldn’t play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with two hands, let alone Frank Zappa. Oh well.

While this is completely inappropriate for use as walk up music, any player who dared do so would earn my eternal love. Yes, even if it was a Marlin.

Baseball

Mets Deny Johan Santana’s Impending Death

PORT ST. LUCIE, FL–Officials from the Mets front office denied reports that pitcher Johan Santana was near death. Rumors surfaced over the weekend that the ace lefty, currently recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, had either already expired or was on death’s door.

“Every rehab is different, and discretion is preferable when trying to come back from an injury as difficult as Johan’s,” GM Sandy Alderson told reporters on Monday. “We’re not going to rush anything, but I want to stress that he has had no setbacks so far, and that he is also very much alive.”

On Saturday, unnamed sources close to the Mets’ organization told several beat writers that the team feared Santana would be lost for the season due to his impending death. “If Santana passed away, you probably wouldn’t see him this year,” the source said, “since that would delay his rehab and keep him from seeing major league action until at least September.”

Santana, appearing at the Mets’ spring training facility in corporeal form, repeated Alderson’s denials. “My shoulder’s a little sore, but they tell me that’s typical for this kind of rehab, and I should be long tossing again very soon.” To prove that he was not a ghost, Santana demonstrated his inability to walk through doors.

The team’s main concern is that the surgery Santana underwent last year is similar to that performed on Chien-Ming Wang and Mark Prior, neither of whom have pitched effectively ever since. And while Santana has yet to shuffle off this mortal coil, it would be a big hit to the team’s long-term chances were he to do so. Officials from other teams, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, suspected the Mets are not being entirely truthful, since in the grand scheme of things, each of us has one foot in the grave.

New manager Terry Collins responded to the reports by screaming something unintelligible through a bullhorn.

Inappropriate Walk Up Music 2011

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: “Lazy Mary”

For an intro to this series, click here. For the original series way back in 2009, click here.

Here’s an example of ballpark music that’s inappropriate even in the context in which it is used. “Lazy Mary,” a song made famous by professional stereotype Lou Monte (also responsible for “Dominic the Donkey”) is played right after “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at CitiField. It is as old timey Italian as a mustachioed pizza chef, and most of the verses are actually sung in “the Eye-talian language” (Lou’s pronunciation, not mine). My guess as to why it became a staple at Shea is because of the large Italian population in Queens when the team was first established, particularly in nearby Corona, and therefore among the Mets’ fanbase.

“Lazy Mary” is a bouncy, goofy tarantella, the kind of song that inspires clapping along, so it makes sense musically as a stadium song. But the lyrics are kind of filthy. Here’s the section of the song that’s sung in English:

Lazy Mary you better get up
She answered back I am not able
Lazy Mary you better get up
We need the sheets for the table
Lazy Mary you smoke in bed
There’s only one man you should marry
My advice to you would be
Is to pay attention to me
You’d better marry a fireman
He’ll come and go, go and come…

Followed by some suggestions in Italian about what else this fireman will do (think hose metaphors). Shame on you, Lou Monte! There are kids at this ballpark!

Here’s the song in action during the 7th inning stretch at the last game ever played at Shea. If you look hard, you can see me in the mezzanine in this video.*

And while we’re on the subject of inappropriate, here’s a screen cap of the first video suggestion on the same page as that video. What the holy super-fuck, YouTube?!

* No you can’t.