Chunklet to Go Go - Sports

“Patt McGatt, the very famous sports reporter is talking…there.” So uttered Mark E. Smith and so went the only hope you had of ever understanding soccer, in the mostly incomprehensible “Kicker Conspiracy.” It’s just way too British. It’s also way too much about sports, a subject most music snobs have a hard enough time grasping. No wonder following Manchester City is still not working out for you.

Understanding sports through music is no easy task. But let’s start in an obvious place and see what we can learn by going through a few of the major touching points sports has with the rock canon. Now, beginning with Huey Lewis and the News’s Sports you would assume would be a no brainer, a one-stop album for everything you needed to know. Unfortunately Mr. Lewis and his News don’t sing at all about any sport whatsoever throughout the entire album. And before you leave the dollar bin disappointed, their follow-up, Fore!, has nothing about golf. All right, so there’s our first setback.

Let’s see what the nerds of indie rock have to say about sports. In The Decemberists’ “The Sporting Life” doughy loser Colin Meloy sings about…well the sporting life, and fails to mention anything specific as to just what the hell sport he’s supposedly playing, and then you realize COLIN MELOY IS A LIAR! He’s just covering up for a lack of sports knowledge that may very well be greater than your own. Based on that, we can assume that the entire world of indie rock has nothing to say about sports.

Let’s try a different approach, and instead of letting our music inform our sports, let our sports inform our music. (See what we did there?) Going through a rundown of the ultimate sports songs might be helpful. There’s “Rock and Roll Part 2” in which Gary Glitter implores you to yell “Hey!” but that’s hardly what I would call an insightful commentary. “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” also yields less than promising returns. In addition to somehow not being called “Are You Ready For Some Football!” its singer Hank Williams Jr. is a fucking fat idiot. If you turn to other sports broadcast theme songs you’ll eventually hit the song for the NBA on NBC, which was composed by John Tesh. Let’s just go ahead and say that anything associated with him is an automatic dead end.

Quick bit of sports/music trivia! Did you know that Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson is enjoying a major career change as a relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants? Who could have seen that one coming! Incidentally, Christopher Meloni with a beard is probably the closest sports ever gets to a so called “alternative” figure. The dude is also a born again Christian, which means he is also very lame. In sports, even the edgy players are kind of boring.

Well, there you have it. Definitive, absolutely unquestionable proof that sports and music never mix. If Mark E. Smith, Colin Meloy, and John Tesh can’t get it right then we have no hope whatsoever. If you’re a music nerd, sporting events are for getting drunk at and not much else. So dust off that copy of Jock Jams and a $10 domestic beer and enter the world of sports as you entered the world of music, by FAKING IT and hoping no one notices.

Previously - How to Sell Records Like The Smiths

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