Greatest Song Evah 2/17/23

Monkey Gone To Heaven

The lead single from The Pixies’ first Elektra Records release, this week’s selection eased any worries that their style would change for the worse upon moving to a major label. It would not have sounded out of place on Surfer Rosa, and that is a high compliment indeed.

The members of Nirvana frequently spoke of The Pixies’ influence on their own sound, particularly their characteristic quiet verse-loud chorus song structure, of which this is a great example. And the vaguely environmentally nightmarish tone to the lyrics matches the musical track quite well before climaxing with Frank Black’s explosive wailing at the end. I don’t know if he was mocking rock star conventions or not, but I love the “rock me Joe!” admonition leading into Joey Santiago’s solo.

They weren’t quite able to match the commercial success that the bands they inspired would later achieve, but that three album run from Surfer Rosa to Doolittle to Bossanova ranks right up there with the very best consecutive album trios that any other act from their era gave us.

Possible Side Category Inductee - The Great Session Musicians

The Musical Excellence route into the Hall evolved out of the old Sideman category. As its name implies, the inductees under that designation were generally either prolific studio players or key backing musicians for major solo artists. Following the rebrand of this category, one still sees the occasional inductee that matches the older definition - Randy Rhodes for example - but not with the same frequency as in the past. As a result, there is yet another backlog of deserving candidates.

Setting aside members of the Wrecking Crew, who merit their own separate post, there are plenty of contenders that would warrant strong consideration. Just staying in Los Angeles, there are multiple musicians that have played on many of your favorite songs. That whole LA studio crew contingent of Danny Kortchmar/Russ Kunkel/Lee Sklar/Waddy Wachtel among others have built up strong resumes that deserve celebration. There are also plenty of worthy names once you exit Southern California. Like Richard Tee. Or Tony Levin. Or Ray Cooper. Or Sheila E. Or Jim Keltner. Or Bobbie Keys. Or Kenny Aronoff.

I’ve probably overlooked several other obvious choices, but you get the point. When the Hall considers candidates for the Musical Excellence prize, it would be a good and logical policy to mandate that at least one honoree each year should come from this population.

Raquel Welch

Raquel Welch was of course one of the most iconic celebrities of our lifetime, yet it’s still possible to lament the fact that her career wasn’t quite what it could have been. As has been the case for too many female celebrities she faced several unnecessary obstacles due to both her gender as well as to attitudes from her specific era.

First off, she had to bury her ethnicity. I honestly had no idea that she was Latina until the release of her 2001 indie film Tortilla Soup. (Welch was her first husband’s name.) In addition, a large number of her acting roles were eye candy types of characters. The famous One Million Years B.C. photo was used in many of her online obituaries, but don’t forget that one of her biggest movies was Mother, Jugs & Speed. Three guesses as to which of the titular characters she portrayed. First two guesses don’t count. She was a regular presence on TV through much of the 1970s, frequently appearing on variety shows, TV specials, and talk shows. A lot of that airtime was spent having to grit her teeth and act as the punchline of creepy jokes from male comics, usually at least a decade her senior, ogling over her physique. Icky.

The shame is that she clearly had the talent to rise to the level of her material. She was terrific in the Richard Lester Musketeers movies, holding her own with some heavy hitters. I can’t help but think that if a pre-fame Raquel Welch had access to a flux capacitor and traveled a few decades into the future that she could have had a more substantial career, or at the very least have been able to own her own sexuality and heritage better than she could have back then.

What’s the Point?

One of the many reasons why MLB’s All-Star Game outshines the others is that, unlike the other team sports, its gameplay resembles what you would see in the regular season. That’s actually a bit to its detriment, as we see the same parade of hard-throwers step out of the bullpen rendering hitters helpless, but that’s an issue for another day. At least it’s recognizable, whereas the other sports try to come up with all sorts of gimmicks in order to present a watchable product.

The NBA always struggles because there is a decided lack of defense in all-star games. After a quarter of two of watching spectacular individual play, it starts to get exhausting, especially if the game turns into a runaway and fourth quarter play turns even more ragged as a result. (I repeat what I’ve said in the past. It’s not that NBA players don’t concentrate on defense, it’s that the players are so good that it’s impossible to stop them. You want to see no defense, then look at an all-star game.) In recent years the NBA has made 2 big changes, one of which I like & one that I don’t. I like the Elam Ending, in which instead of a timed 4th quarter, there is a targeted final point total and whichever team hits that mark first is the winner. It ensures that the contest will end with a game-winning shot.

I’m less enamored of choosing up sides. Whether or not you root for one conference over another, the fact remains that tying a player to his conference at least helps you make sense of who’s on each team. OK, LeBron plays for the West, Giannis for the East, and so on. But in the current format, once the captains make their picks, it’s too much of a hassle to try to figure out who’s playing where. Is Joel Embiid on Team LeBron or on Team Giannis? Wait, who is Luka Doncic playing for? It makes my head hurt.

To be fair, it did give us one moment of pure comedy gold. Last year the captains were LeBron James and Kevin Durant. The sides were chosen just after James Harden forced his way out of Brooklyn and there were clearly hard feelings. Durant was doing everything possible to avoid picking Harden and LeBron was clearly having the time of his life watching Durant sweat like that as he continued to bust his chops about it.

Tim McCarver

McCarver was a textbook example of the term “baseball lifer.” Good enough to make his MLB a debut in 1959 at the age of 17, and durable enough to extend his career to 1980, he was one of the rare players to have appeared in the majors in parts of 4 decades. Closely identified with two of history’s greatest pitchers, he caught Bob Gibson in most of his greatest seasons and spent the tail end of his career as Steve Carlton’s personal catcher. He was an outstanding player at his peak, with a couple of All-Star nods and a second place MVP finish in St. Louis’s 1967 championship season.

As good of a player as he was, it was post retirement where he truly made his mark in the game. He immediately moved into the Philadelphia broadcast booth when his playing career ended, while also doing games for NBC and making a national name for himself. He soon joined the Mets broadcast team, coinciding with their mid-80s boom period. As a Mets fan I can say that he taught me so much about the game from watching his broadcasts. He was an evolutionary broadcaster, with a Nostradamus type ability to anticipate situations. He brilliantly articulated the mind game between the pitcher and the hitter. In an industry in which analysis too often fails to go much beyond “he hit the ball good” McCarver was able to give his audience a true clinic in explaining what was happening and why.

His decades in the game gave him an encyclopedic knowledge of the game’s history, and much like Vin Scully, his sense of immediate recall payed dividends. Here’s a good example. One time I was watching a Fox game of the week. I don’t recall the opponent, but Pedro Martinez was pitching for the Mets. McCarver noticed that one half inning ended with a strikeout and the opposing catcher intentionally rolled the ball back so that it stopped far enough away from the mound that Martinez would need to walk a few steps away from the mound to pick it up. He glared at the catcher and opposing team’s bench. McCarver observed that in his younger days Pedro would have plunked the lead off hitter, but since he wasn’t quite as dominant at that stage in his career he couldn’t risk having an unnecessary base runner. He then tied everything together by mentioning that rolling the ball away from the mound like that was one of Jerry Grote’s favorite tricks. Well done.

On the other hand, he had an annoying tendency to repeat himself. If I did a shot every time he said “Ralph! The outfielders are playing too deep again!” I would have been all Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

Combining his runs at ABC, CBS, and Fox he was in the booth for 24 consecutive World Series, making him a perennial October presence. He unfortunately stayed in the national booth a bit too long, as audiences really started to get tired of him towards the end. He did not adjust well to the modern statistical and analytical evolution, as he was in complete get off my lawn mode in his later seasons. But he was almost certainly the single greatest color commentator in baseball broadcast history.

Sports Illustrated

A new wave of layoffs hit Sports Illustrated earlier this week. It’s always bad when a batch of talented journalists lose their jobs, but it’s doubly bad in the case of SI as the vulture capitalists that own it had already spent years stripping it down to the point where all that’s left is the copper wiring in the walls, and that’s probably the next to go. I stopped subscribing to Sports Illustrated years ago, and I rarely visit the website much anymore, as there’s precious little content that I can’t find elsewhere. It still makes me sad to see such a legacy publication decimated. Not sure how much longer it can realistically survive.

This parallels what has been happening to the New York Daily News. After multiple series of layoffs the staff in the sports department is skeletal and the news department isn’t much better. No disrespect to the writers and reporters that are left, but it’s hard to feel much attachment to a newspaper filled with wire service reports rather than hands-on reporting from their own staff. Even worse, the paper doesn’t appear to have a copy editor. The number of errors I see over the course of an average week is embarrassing for a professionally run publication.

Don’t You Just Know It

I don’t want this newsletter to be too obituary heavy, but I can’t let the passing of an R&B great go unmentioned. There have been few periods/locales in music history that were more fertile than the New Orleans music scene of the early rock and roll era. In addition to spawning some of the first generation rock legends, the time & place also produced no shortage of major R&B figures as well as a batch of quirky performers that could only have come from Nola. Huey “Piano” Smith, who passed away this week at 89 was a prime example of the latter.

A key session musician, his piano playing can be heard on many 1950s classics, most notably Smiley Lewis’ “I Hear You Knockin’.” He eventually scored a hit on his own with the original version of “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” and my personal favorite, the absolutely wonderfully demented “Don’t You Just Know It.” He was largely out of the public eye for decades, but he established his niche in early rock & roll history.

Thank You & Good Night

As always, thanks for reading. Enjoy Presidents Day weekend. Patiently waiting for the day that a furniture store avoids the obvious choice and hires an actor dressed up as James Polk to advertise a mattress sale. Someday soon, someday soon.