SEAT LICENSE RENEWALS It's almost spring
when a young man's thoughts turn to... those expensive
seat licenses. An online cash advance can help relieve the anxiety.
John and I were only paired in our tiny East Village apartment for about eight months, and while we weren't exactly the fastest of friends, we had some common ground when it came to basketball (remind me to tell you the Reggie Miller story sometime) and more importantly, music. The largest portion of John's collection was devoted to Alex Chilton, the former lead singer of the Memphis teen soul group the Box Tops and the quintessential power pop band Big Star. The latter was the vehicle by which I knew Chilton best, having purchased the band's all-too-small catalog sometime shortly after college graduation.
John was a connoisseur of the ups and downs of Chilton's post-Big Star ride, a solo career that had redefined the term erratic. He let me comb through that fascinating collection, and long after he bailed on the apartment to take a cross-country road trip, we'd cross paths at Chilton shows at small, dingy dives like Under Acme and Coney Island High and catch up. I haven't seen John in years, but I think of him when I spin outre classics such as Bach's Bottom and Like Flies on Sherbert whose warped, gritty charms were to the John Spencer Blues Explosion what the pristine melodies of #1 Record were to R.E.M. and the Replacements a decade earlier.
Chilton died Wednesday of an apparent heart attack at the age of 59, and while I was instantly saddened upon reading the news, what amazed me was how many friends on Facebook and Twitter had something to share about it — from college pals to current colleagues, as well as the more tenuous social network acquaintances (not that there's anything wrong with them) — the vast majority of whom I'd never, ever discussed Big Star, the Box Tops or anything Chilton.
Literally, the lines in the Replacements' tribute to a man who spent most of his career confined to cult status — despite having sung on a #1 hit song as a teenage sensation for the Box Tops, penned and recorded the original version of "In the Streets," which as covered by disciples Cheap Trick became the theme song to the long-running That '70s Show, and in between made three of the most beautiful, unsettling, influential and ultimately important albums of the post-Beatles canon — had come to life:
"Children by the millions sing for Alex Chilton when he comes round / They say, "I'm in love, what's that song? / I'm in love with that song."
Having not paid much mind to the mid-Nineties reunion in which Chilton and Big Star drummer Jody Stephens were joined by two members of the band the Posies, I guess the band wound up reaching further than I'd ever imagined, as the fans of so many bands who had cited Chilton as an influence actually gave a damn and listened to the records, bothering to track down whoever it was that sang that song they loved. Imagine that. Though he retained a standoffish attitude towards his own career, and often seemed hell-bent on self-sabotaging any shot at success, at least Chilton got to feel some of the adulation that had long eluded him.
A handful of links, both for the initiated and the not:
• An Entertainment Tonight segment on "The Letter," the song which set a commercial high bar he never topped... or even tried to. Chilton notoriously avoided interviews later in life, so to see him actually playing ball is rather fascinating.
• A mid-Eighties segment of Chilton on 120 Minutes, playing fragments of his famous songs on acoustic guitar, again surprisingly willing to talk about his career relative to his later reluctance.
• Big Star's "September Gurls," my favorite track among many:
• Or maybe I meant their "Nightime," another Big Star favorite:
• Pitchfork's brief obit and a selection of videos.
• A lengthy Crawdaddy piece covering Chilton's career, with a special focus on the odd twists and turns his post-Big Star days took
One of my favorite musicians is the late, great pop genius Lee Hazlewood. As a singer he brought a wry sense of humor, world-weary view and distinctive baritone to both originals and covers. As a writer, he wrote "These Boots Are Made For Walking" and other hits which turned Nancy Sinatra into a superstar. As a producer, he was genuinely groundbreaking, the man who put the reverb Duane Eddy's guitar and impressed a young Phil Spector with his proto-Wall of Sound.
Though I already owned a handful of his reissues, a couple years ago I tracked down a bunch of his out-of-print albums via the Internet, and I now have about 24 hours worth of his music stuffed into my iTunes. For whatever reason, Hazlewood's whacked-out combination of pop, country, lounge and psychedelia has somehow become one of my soundtracks of choice when I'm under the gun, downright soothing yet delightfully weird. When I get on an airplane or a train, I calm my travel anxieties with his gentle, gorgeous 1970 album Cowboy in Sweden. When I'm stressing out while facing a deadline, I always seem to start my playlist with his 1966 album Friday's Child:
Recently the latter was given a lush re-release on the limited-edition Rhino Handmade label as part of three-albums-and-change set called Strung Out on Something New. Worth seeking out if you're hip to his sound, though probably not for novices. Anyway, that's where the title of this post came from, though it's got historical antecedents as well.
Onto the leftovers from my last post...
• On Wednesday I did a chat at Baseball Prospectus. Here's a taste:
dianagramr (Cubehenge): Good afternoon Jay ... thanks for the chat. Has the cloud of PEDs tarnished or thrown into the question the relevance of election to the HOF? (and yes, I know the exclusion of African-Americans prior to 1947 tarnished the HOF already) Jeter is a HOFer, yes? A-Rod, in the wake of his "confession"? Damon?
JJ: Hi Diana. I think the question of PEDs and the Hall of Fame is an open one that will take at least a decade to tell us anything even remotely conclusive. As hard as it may be to envision the players outed as steroid users via one means or another actually getting in, I have a much harder time envisioning the Hall's relevance without guys like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez.
As for Jeter, he's a lock; this year puts him over the line as far as JAWS is concerned, and he's got the kind of resume writers will love. Damon's going to have to get somewhere on his push for 3,000 hits to have much traction; he's got just two All-Star appearances and scores well below average on the Hall of Fame Monitor and HOF Standards metrics. A-Rod will get there eventually, I think, particularly if he keeps to this new STFU PR strategy.
jromero (seattle): Hi, Jay. I am not sure what you may have written in the past regarding Pete Rose's HOF eligibility, but can you briefly share your take on a.) his worthiness as a player; and b.) your opinion as to whether he should be allowed in (assuming his stats stack up). Thanks!
JJ: Absolutely worthy as a player even if he did overstay his welcome by a few years. His JAWS (106.7/56.2/81.5) is above average at any position in all three categories.
As to whether he should be allowed, he knowingly broke the cardinal rule that's posted in every clubhouse: DO NOT GAMBLE ON BASEBALL. He denied it for years, and when he finally fessed up, it was in the service of making a buck. I haven't seen anything out of him to suggest real remorse or reparations to the game, so really, I see absolutely no compelling reason to reinstate him.
Nick Stone (New York City): Jay, assuming you think that the AL East crown is probably settled, how do you see the wild card battle playing out? Will it be just between Boston and Texas? What are the keys to watch for, outside of Wakefield's return?
JJ: Hello, Nick! At this point in the season I'm having a hard time taking the Rays seriously as Wild Card contenders given their inconsistency on both sides of the ball, so I do think it will come down to the Rangers and Red Sox. Earlier this year I'd have said it would be difficult to imagine the Sox struggling this much for this long given their roster, and that it would be even tougher to envision the Rangers maintaining their hot start given their pitch-to-contact ways. The Sox have had a lot of injuries, not only among the players they knew were health risks to begin but also to the players representing the first line of defense against them, and while I like the deadline moves they've made, particularly Victor Martinez, right now they're a mess. The Rangers have had injury problems as well, and done a very nice job augmenting their team in-season by calling up Derek Holland and Neftali Feliz, and as minor as it is, I like their acquisition of Pudge for the stretch.
I can envision this race coming down to whose young pitching holds up best under pressure -- Buccholz or Holland/Feliz. It's bigger than that, of course, but that's what I'll be watching most closely.
GregLowder (DC): Jay, I think it's impossible to use a specific number to measure HOF worthiness...3000 hits, 500 homers, 300 wins. You can pull a "Curtis Martin" and be effective for several years just due to good health and luck. I think you have to be great for a short period of time, in baseball I put that at 6-8 years, or very good for a long period of time, 12+ years. Do you agree?
JJ: Among actual voters, by which I mean the BBWAA ones, not the VC ones, career length is a much bigger factor than you give it credit for being. With a few exceptions (Rice, Sutter, Brock, Tony Perez) guys who get elected by the writers generally have had good to great peaks AND very good long careers.
• My Toledo radio hit, which discussed the Tigers' acquisition of Aubrey Huff, the Magglio Ordoñez fiasco, waiver deals in general, and the state of various division and Wild Card races.
• My Boston radio hit, which discussed the Red Sox's relatively faded postseason hopes, Jon Papelbon's woes and the perpetual problem of their catching situation, among other things. Fun stuff.
Chicago blues icon Koko Taylor passed away on Wednesday at age 80. In my rather expansive music collection, I'm ashamed to say I've got precious little of her work, a compilation cut or two. But I do have a story.
In late September 1999, the aforementioned Nick Stone and I took a trip to the Midwest to see some baseball. The impetus was a chance to see a game at Tiger Stadium, which was in its final week of functionality. We began our trip in Cleveland, where we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and saw the Yankees beat the Indians in an 11-7 slugfest. From there we drove to Detroit, where we saw the Tribe bow to the Tigers, and then it was onto Wrigley Field for a pairbetween the Cubs and Cardinals.
Those are stories for another day, but back to the matter at hand, in looking for something to do on Saturday night, Nick and I discovered that Taylor was playing at some downtown restaurant/bar. It was a rather cheesy venue, too brightly lit, and by the look of things, so was Ms. Taylor. "Man, that's a fucked-up hair situation," I famously remarked, seeing her beaded, multi-colored wig as it shifted uneasily around her head while the 70-year-old legend belted out blues standards. Still, she had the joint shaking, no more so than when she got down to business with her most famous hit, "Wang Dang Doodle," late in the set.
Here she is, performing it circa 1965, when she originally recorded the song, a Willie Dixon number originally written for Howlin' Wolf:
It wasn't baseball she was singing about, but you gotta love these lyrics:
Tell automatic Slim To tell razor toting Jim To tell butcher knife toting Annie To tell fast-talking Fanny We're gonna pitch a ball Down to the union hall We're gonna romp and stomp till midnight We're gonna fuss and fight till daylight We're gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long
Ellis had a few big years pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, notably in 1971, when he went 19-9 with a 3.06 ERA for a team that would win the World Series. That was the only season in which he made the All-Star team or received Cy Young consideration (he finished a distant fourth behind Fergie Jenkins, Tom Seaver and Al Downing), but he was a solid, intimidating pitcher who won 138 games in the majors and a key hurler on five division winners over the course of his 12-year career. He's got a few other claims to fame:
• In the summer of 1971, Ellis was named to the NL All-Star team. With Vida Blue set to start for the AL, Ellis declared that there was no way NL manager Sparky Anderson would dare start him to create a matchup of two black pitchers. Wrote Kevin McAlester in a lengthy, worthwile profile for The Dallas Observer in 2005: "This launched the inevitable national sportswriters' debate about how racism didn't exist in 1971, and how dare he and why would he and so on and whatnot. The flap had its intended effect: Anderson, grumblingly, started Ellis, and the pitcher soon became one of the most reviled players in the league, branded a troublemaker and miscreant." Ellis received a letter of praise from Jackie Robinson following the incident.
• On September 1, 1971, Ellis took the field as the starting pitcher for the first all-black lineup in major league history. It wasn't one of Ellis' better outings; he was knocked out in the second but the Pirates came back to win 10-7.
• In 1973, following a profile in Ebony magazine on his hairstyle, Ellis took the field for a pregame workout wearing hair curlers, a move that drew the wrath of stuffed shirt Bowie Kuhn. Said curlers were donated to the Baseball Reliquary upon Ellis' induction into the iconoclastic museum's Shrine of the Eternals in 1999.
• On May 1, 1974, attempting to light a fire under his team, the Pirates, Ellis drilled the first three Reds' hitters to come to the plate. Pete Rose, the first batter, actually rolled the ball back to Ellis upon being hit. Joe Morgan got plunked, as did Dan Driessen. Tony Perez was nearly hit as well; he walked. Finally, with a 2-0 count on Johnny Bench, Ellis was pulled by manager Danny Murtaugh. Bronx Banter has an excerpt of the story behind this from Ellis' entertaining biography, Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, (written by future US Poet Laureate Donald Hall).
• In December 1975, Ellis was traded by the Pirates to the Yankees for pitcher (and real-life MD) Doc Medich. Also in the deal was a second base prospect named Willie Randolph. Ellis would go 17-8 with a 3.19 ERA during his only full season with the Yankees, helping them to their first pennant since 1964. Randolph took over the starting slot at the keystone and hit .267/.356/.328 while stealing 37 bases. The deal, engineered by Yankee GM Gabe Paul, ranks among the best in Yankees' history.
After being traded by the Yankees -- to Oakland, in a deal for Mike Torrez -- early in 1977, Ellis bounced around to Texas and the Mets before finishing his career with a few more games as a Pirate in late 1979. They would again go on to win the World Series, though he played no part in that. Drug and alcohol problems had hastened Ellis' departure from the majors -- he later said he never pitched a game without the aid of amphetamines -- but upon leaving baseball, Ellis checked into a rehab facility and cleaned up. He went on to become a drug counselor.
Back in 1993, a band called the SF Seals, led by baseball fan Barbara Manning, released a three-song EP on Matador Records (run by Can't Stop the Bleeding domo Gerard Cosloy). Two songs were covers, one devoted to Denny McLain, the other to Joe DiMaggio. The sole original "Dock Ellis," is a chugging psychedelic rock number memorializing some of the pitcher's signature moments. Rock out to Dock and spare a moment for him in your thoughts today.
• Friday night, we caught the opening of the long-awaited Simpsons Movie, and while it wasn't a gut-busting revelation, it didn't need to be. [Semi-spoiler alert; skip to next bullet]. Other than the expanded length, the movie didn't differ from the show spectacularly on a writing level. The main plot was engaging and amusing, the jokes were very funny, worth repeating even days later, the sappy moments were kept to a minimum, there were a few lines I missed due to the laughter that I'm sure will expand my appreciation upon another view. As the New York Times Anthony Scott wrote in his review, "In other words, I’d be willing to watch it only — excuse me while I crunch some numbers here — 20 or 30 more times."
The real treat was what a visual feast the movie turned out to be. The wider screen, larger color palette, shadows, and complexity of the large crowd scenes were all enough to remind you that this wasn't just another episode of the ultimate nuclear (powered) family. The common complaint among my friends was the minimal roles of secondary characters. Comic Book Guy and Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel -- two of my absolute favorites -- had prominent supporting roles, but Montgomery Burns, Smithers, Patty and Selma, Lenny and Carl, and numerous other favorites drew the short end of the script. And one of the key subplots, Homer's pet pig, went unresolved.
Still, that hardly added up to disappointment, even in the face of all the hype that's been building towards a movie that's seemed inevitable for at least the last decade and a half. I'm 37, and I've been watching the show since its inception; while I hadn't seen the Simpsons in their original guise on the Tracey Ullman Show, I was a fan of Groening's Life in Hell comic strip, and thus primed for the show's inaugural episode back in 1989. While I certainly saw a few people older than me at the theater, I was a bit surprised how young the audience ran. Kids as young as eight or nine could be heard giggling in the audience, though they probably had a leg up on their peers; one was even witty enough to offer "floor popcorn" to his fellow patrons as we exited the theater. Doubtless he'll be joining the show's writing staff in season 33.
• The Hit List had more than its usual share of Simpsons references in honor of the movie, but in retrospect it would have been far cooler if I'd thrown down the gauntlet and injected purple-goo Simpsons flavor into all 30 donuts, I mean entries. There's a brilliant article from a couple years back where each team was matched up with a Springfield character, so it's not like my idea would have been a first, but given the extent to which the column's warped humor has been influenced by the show, it would have been an appropriate homage. D'oh!
Anyway, the trading-deadline flavored Hit List found the Yankees ranked third, thanks to their feasting upon crappy Devil Rays and Royals pitching. What little baseball I saw this weekend reminded me that even as the Yanks work their way through the soft portion of the schedule, this remains an uphill climb. Eight games back in the AL East, a more reasonable four and a half back in the Wild Card, they still need to play .690 ball to get to 95 wins, a fact will temper any temptations to make a blockbuster and instead confine them to attempts to make Kyle Farnsworth an ex-Yankee, if not by burying him in the Meadowlands than by trading him to the Tigers for a bag of Gary Sheffield's hate mail and a one-legged batboy to be named later.
Trading Farnsworth might be the single biggest move to make the Yankees watchable again, particularly if highly-touted Joba Chamberlain shows up to take his spot. Regarded as the Yanks' second-best pitching prospect behind the soon-to-return Philip Hughes, Chamberlain was recently shifted to the bullpen at Triple-A Scranton in an attempt to provide the Yanks with an internal option for upgrade. As the New York Times notes:
In Chamberlain, the Yankees have a prospect with a refined repertory and, by all accounts, a solid makeup. The Yankees still view him as a starter for the future, but he has been scratched from his start Monday for Scranton and will work an inning of relief instead.
The plan is for Chamberlain to throw another inning Wednesday, but it is not a stretch to think he could be with the Yankees by then.
Asked when Chamberlain might be promoted, Manager Joe Torre said: “The only thing I know is he’s in Scranton, and that’s certainly something that’s going to be looked at. As far as what date, I don’t know.”
Promoting Chamberlain presents a health risk; it is late in his first professional season, after pitching in the Hawaiian winter league, and the innings in the majors will be intense. Chamberlain had triceps tendinitis at the University of Nebraska, an injury that caused some teams to pass on him in the 2006 draft.
Yet the benefits could be enormous. Chamberlain throws 98 miles an hour and could overpower hitters the way Francisco Rodríguez did for the Angels and Bobby Jenks did for the White Sox in their first seasons, helping their teams win the World Series. The Yankees, who are four games out of a playoff spot, do not have a shutdown bullpen. Their relievers allowed 9 runs and 16 hits over their last eight innings.
I've got tix to Wednesday's game. Perhaps I'll get to see one of the season's more anticipated debuts.
• Saturday, we went to go see Sonic Youth reprise their Daydream Nation double album in the delightful setting of Williamsburg's McCarren Park Pool, an empty 70-year-old, WPA-built public facility that's the size of three Olympic pools. Reproduced live in its entirety, Daydream Nation's soaring, interwoven guitars, chugging drums and alien melodies never sounded better -- appropriately huge given the album's landmark status. The 71-minute opus seemed to passed in about half that time even as I mentally followed along with every lyric, anticipated chord changes and shook in time to shifts in tempo that I've heard a hundred times. Meanwhile, the band careened around stage in a way that told the audience that they were enjoying the ride down this familiar road every bit as much as we were.
I've been listening to Daydream Nation since my Brown U. freshman roommate foisted it upon me by play the creepy, oddball and out-of-character track "Providence" on repeat about a dozen times in a row one afternoon in the fall of 1988. It took a bit longer for me to gain appreciation for the beauty and intensity of the band's oeuvre, but they became one of my favorites even as they broke out of the indie rock ghetto to infiltrate the incredibly boring world of early '90s mainstream rock. The handful of friends I saw at this show -- some who have been part of my life since college, others who I hadn't seen in five years or more -- evoked thoughts of even more distant friends who'd have given if not a limb then at least a couple fingers to see this particular show. Not for nothing is the album's title crucial to its following; we're all bonded together as part of a very large secret society: the daydream nation, indeed.
• In honor of the above (well, not the Yankees and certainly not Farnsworth), I present one of my favorite MP3 treasures: Sonic Youth playing the Simpsons theme from the "Homerpalooza" episode circa 1996. Enjoy!
, (written by future US Poet Laureate Donald Hall).