“79 Men on Third for the Mets” – Dick McCormack (download)
from An Amazin’ Era video
(file expires February 17th)
The baseball stories are increasing with the imminent reporting of pitchers and catchers to spring training this week. Today brings us a Times profile in which we discover that third baseman David Wright actually refers to himself as “D-Wright.” Uh, right on?
Relatedly, I spent some late night hours over the weekend revisiting An Amazin’ Era, the delightfully cheesy Mets retrospective produced just before the 1986 season. Included therein is the above song, “79 Men on Third for the Mets,” folksinger Dick McCormack’s novelty tribute to the nearly 80 players who’d covered the corner for the Mets between 1962 and 1985. (Though the video doesn’t include the ’86 season, McCormack manages to fit in the newly acquired Tim Teufel, who played one game at third later that year.) It’s super toe tappin’.
Anybody got info on this Dick McCormack dude? The infranet reveals the existence of a “We Didn’t Start the Fire”-style number he wrote summing up the 1987 season, though it looks like some lawyers nastygrammed it. Oh, bother.
“Diamond Day” – Vashti Bunyan (download) (buy)
from Just Another Diamond Day (1970)
“Spit on a Stranger” – Pavement (download) (buy)
from Terror Twilight (1999)
Vashti Bunyan, at least pre-rediscovery, seems exactly the type of obscurantist reference point tailor made for Stephen Malkmus. Whether or not he had her 1970 single “Diamond Day” anywhere near his bedheaded skull when he wrote “Spit on a Stranger,” the lead cut from 1999’s Terror Twilight, I’ve got no idea. Either way, given the autumn-burnt originality of “Stranger,” it’s not to accuse the Pavement leader of anything, except maybe getting a melody stuck in his head, and repurposing it for contemporary circulation.
1. “Vocca Rossa” – Corrado Lojacono (via WFMU’s Beware of Blog/Listener Marty)
2. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” – Them
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Run” – Gnarls Barkley
5. “Love Loves to Love Love” – Lulu (from Love Loves to Love Lulu)
6. “Casting Agents and Cowgirls” – Busdriver (from Roadkill Overcoat)
7. “Back to the Grill” – MC Serch feat. Nas and Chubb Rock
8. “Jimmy” – Of Montreal
9. “Baby Strange” – T. Rex (from The Slider)
10. “Et moi, et moi, et moi” – Jacques Dutronc
11. “The Modern Age” – Jeffrey Lewis (recorded 2002/07/31 Peel Session)
12. “Fools” – The Dodos (from Visiter)
13. “Never Learn Not To Love” – The Beach Boys (from 20/20)
14. “A Cloud In Doubt” – Flying (from Faces of the Night)
15. “Diamond Day” – Vashti Bunyan (from Just Another Diamond Day)
16. “Spit on a Stranger” – Pavement (from Terror Twilight)
17. “Red Flag on the Gondola” – Flipper’s Guitar (from Three Cheers For Our Side)
Even as I plan to vote for Barack Obama tomorrow, Will.i.am’s “Yes.We.Can.” video kinda scares the shit out me, because it lays Obama bare. I am frightened by how easily the Senator’s cadences transform into music, how easily the simple harmonies pull melodies from his speech. And all, more or less, without content. When it boils down to it, I like Barack Obama because he’s got a good beat and I can dance to it. It won’t be the first time I’ve put my money where the music is.
Thanks to MITU for turning me onto Dutch filmmaker/graphic artist Roel Wouters (aka Xelor), whose one-take Gondry-like shorts are immaculately conceived and executed. I love the human progress bar in “Grip.” Not so much into the tunes, but dizzamn.
An oncoming cold, a new millionaire pitcher to wonder idly about, and some Roger Angell to peruse. I’m going to bed, ideally to dream of “raising my mid-game gaze from the diamond to observe the gauzy look of departing rain clouds lifting from the jagged rim of some distant desert peak, and then entering that in my notebook (with the pen slipping a little in my fingers, because of the dab of Sea & Ski I have just rubbed on my nose, now that the sun is out again and cookin gus gently in the steepl little grandstand behind third base).” We all dream of dreams.
o New Murakami on the way! In July! About jogging! (Bill Hicks: “What do you jot down about jogging? ‘Left foot, right foot, blood spurts out nose.'”) Either way: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
o Like grapes becoming raisins, bureaucracy often transforms into absurdity, which — in turn — is a fine basis for proverb-soaked folklore. John Beamer on 14 “Rules and quirks” of professional baseball.
o New Yorker classical critic Alex Ross on Radio’eads’s Jonny Greenwood.
o This year’s Oscar-nominated animated shorts. Looking forward to watching these.
o Wired explores “The Life Cycle of a Blog Post.” Great concept, nice execution, but not nearly as complicated as the chart seems to represent on first glance.
