For 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:
* “Nothing Natural”, Lush
This choice is a not-at-all-veiled excuse for me to post the video for a song I loved once upon a time. In the early 90s, just prior to the arrival of Nirvana, 120 Minutes was chock full o’ English shoegazer bands that I liked a lot (this would be the Dave Kendall years, not the Kennedy years). Mind you, I didn’t actually have cable at this time. I basically begged my more fortunate grandparents (who lived next door) to let me monopolize their VCR, for taping both this and Mystery Science Theatre 3000. They basically weren’t watching TV when 120 Minutes or MST3K were on anyway, and they trusted me to not tape anything porn-arific.
Lush would later mutate into a much more poppy outfit. Or did they want to be poppy along and did the shoegaze thing to fit in with the 1991 music scene? In either case, I like this version better. Sheets of noise, cooing vocals–kinda like a more aesthetically pleasing My Bloody Valentine (more pleasing to me, anyway).
* “Rubber Car”, Enon
I loved this when it came out in the early Oughts. It’s like some mutant industrial Prince song. Haven’t really dug any other Enon tunes since then, but maybe that’s because this is so awesome taht everything else pales in comparison. I would love to see a stadium reverberate with RUBBA CAR!
* “Bumble Boogie”, LIberace
I’m always a little suspicious when an artist passes from complete pop acceptance to universal derision. I think it’s defense mechanism put on by people who realize that they bought into something that’s no longer popular, so they have to be extra-harsh in their denunciation so no one suspects their Dirty Secret. Like Vanilla Ice, who’s a walking joke, even though he sold more than 10 million albums. Somebody bought them CDs, people.
Earlier case in point: Liberace. He’s a punchline nowadays for a million different reasons. But in the 1950s and 60s, he was HUGE. Like, Elvis and Sinatra Huge, just for a different audience. So to me, people’s reactions to him have less to do with opinions formed by actually listening to his music (since he’s not someone you exactly hear on the radio all the time), but by the collective embarrassment of, “Jeez, we liked THAT?”
Then again, having watched this video, I can’t say I blame people for covering their tracks. There’s just so much weirdness here. Like, turning “Flight of the Bumblebee” into a Fats Waller-style piano romp. And a fey, super-white guy doing a Fats Waller-style piano romp. And the out-of-nowhere emergence of a string quartet. It contains all the aggressive weirdness of something that has no idea how weird it is. Sadly, Liberace does not mention his brother George.