Greatest Song Evah 3/15/24

Lithium

It’s easy to classify the structure of a Nirvana song with the quiet verse/loud chorus template, but it is an accurate description, especially in this case. The verses depict a man attempting to lift himself out of despair before exploding into a cathartic chorus. Not for nothing is the song named after a common treatment for manic depression. And sometimes a simple scream of “yea-ah-ah-yeah!” articulates one’s feelings perfectly.

This song is also an exceptional showcase for all 3 members of Nirvana. Dave Grohl’s drums are powerful as ever here; their quiet/loud style required a drummer with the ability to turn on a dime. Grohl knew how to modulate his tempo to service the song. Because Grohl added so much flair Krist Novoselic was rarely asked to do more than provide a solid bottom, but in this one he was given a chance to add a nice little bass solo.

But once again this was Kurt Cobain’s show. In the same way that you need a skilled drummer to make quiet/loud work that well, so too do you need a vocalist equally able to modulate his way through the opposing emotions. At different times he was contemplative, snarky, vulnerable, defiant, and joyous. There is a reason why they were a culturally transformative phenomenon.

Ballot Breakdown - Sinead O’Connor

In what appears to be a recurring theme among this year’s nominees, Sinead O’Connor was yet another artist who released her debut album when I was a senior in college. So I got to play her music on the radio and saw her gain some underground attention, with the commercial breakthrough to come later.

She immediately stood out from the pack with her first album. Her voice was magnificent and powerful. Her personality was apparent from the beginning as well. In addition to her signature shaved head, she was already prone to making provocative statements. She did not have an internal “pause” button; in a trait that would bring her considerable problems in later years she would say whatever was on her mind, consequences be damned. I’ll bet that all of us have said things when we were younger that we would like to take back; we didn’t do it in public forums like O’Connor did. Perhaps she would have been better served had she thought first and spoke later. But how could she have possibly known what she wanted when she was only 21?

As mentioned, her first album laid the foundation. Her second made her a superstar. Nothing Compares 2 U was a tour de force, both as a record and as a video. In both mediums she ran through the full gamut of emotions in only 5 minutes. The heartbreak, the confidence, and everything in between, all punctuated by the famous tears she sheds in the video.

Sadly, the fame machine took a terrible toll on her. She was hit with a boatload of criticism when she made the reasonable demand that a venue not play the Star Spangled Banner before one of her concerts. (She was a native of Ireland, in case you didn’t know.) That blowback was only a preview of what was to come.

Her third album was a real curveball. It was an album of covers, which did do a splendid job of showcasing her voice, but it was a decidedly non-commercial maneuver. As part of the promotional run, she performed on Saturday Night Live, where at the end of the second song she tore up a photo of the Pope and said “fight the real enemy” to stunned silence from the studio audience. She did it to protest the Catholic Church’s coverup of child sexual abuse, so she was eventually vindicated, but there was no stemming that tide. Shortly after that evening, she was performing at an all-star concert celebrating Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary and was booed off the stage.

For all practical purposes that ended her career in America. She didn’t exactly chase the top of the charts; she followed her own muse, but even if she had continued to record radio-friendly material, the controversy surrounding her was too much. She would get some limited airplay on alternative radio, but other than that stations would not touch her new music with a ten foot pole.

She was upfront with the mental health issues she faced over the course of her life; there was one frightening incident in which she basically cried for help on social media and then went radio silent. There was genuine concern that she had harmed herself, and it was a major relief when she was eventually found safe & sound. She passed away last year from natural causes. She was only 56.

Her candidacy is a bit complicated. Her later output had some interesting moments, but really, her worthiness is based on 2 albums. It’s not unheard of for a nominee’s resume to be tied into such a relatively sparse output, but it’s not easy. In addition, it’s terribly sad that it took her death for appreciation of her talent to be renewed. I don’t know how often her name had been brought up in previous meetings of the nominating committee, but it’s safe to say that the outpouring of affection following her passing encouraged committee members to argue more passionately on her behalf. It’s a natural human characteristic to show that level of compassion. She really was a special talent, the public did not do right by her in her life. It’s likely she would not have cared much about this honor, as deserving as it would be.

If elected, how will her induction be handled? - In one sense, it seems straightforward. Get a talented female singer to perform a powerful rendition of Nothing Compares 2 U. However, that’s exactly what this year’s Grammy ceremony did with Annie Lennox performing in her honor. I’m not sure what the producers of the Hall ceremony could do that would be much different. They’ll have to think of something that stands out & gives her the respect that she deserves.

Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hit - Nothing Compares 2 U

My Personal Favorite - The Emperor’s New Clothes, although there are several strong candidates. If you ask me the same question next week I could just as easily say Mandinka or I Want Your (Hands On Me.)

The Clark Effect

Caitlin Clark recently confirmed what had been long assumed, that she will leave Iowa after this season and enter the WNBA draft. (The NCAA had granted an extra year of eligibility for athletes whose seasons were disrupted by COVID, so she could’ve potentially returned to college for a 5th season if she so desired.) For fear of overusing the perfect storm metaphor, this is an ideal combination of player, zeitgeist, and future professional destination.

Only the most insecure cavemen can deny the fact that interest in women’s sports is on a sharp ascent. ESPN’s ratings for women’s college basketball, softball, and volleyball are all on the rise. WNBA ratings and attendance figures have similarly been going up. For the longest time the Worldwide Leader and other networks have justified their lack of attention to women’s sports by saying that the interest just isn’t there. Recent data has shown that the problem was lack of availability, not lack of interest. Or, if you broadcast it, they will come.

I have been a big fan & close follower of the WNBA since day 1, and that meant I have had to sit through all of the internet snark and bad jokes about the game. To be fair, the quality of the product was inconsistent in the league’s infancy, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. With each succeeding generation the skill level rose exponentially. And notably, many of the best players in the league have tended to be versatile. The WNBA players had introduced the concept of positionless basketball long before it became more common in the male game.

And let me talk about the years of bad internet jokes. There is a huge range of sports out there, it’s not possible for even the hardest of hardcore sports fans to pay attention to everything. It’s OK to ignore something you’re not interested in, but why the need to mock it? Did, say, MLS produce a cottage industry of dumb memes? It’s telling that a woman’s sport is the one that inspired so much over the top mockery. I can’t help but think that if Bill Simmons hadn’t spent so much time on his huge platforms making so many snide comments about the league that were frankly uncalled for, then the league would have grown more quickly than it did. But nope, the He-Man Women’s Hater Club got to make their jokes. It’s worth noting that a significant number of high profile NBA players have frequently publicly praised the league. Game recognize game.

Now that Caitlin Clark is entering the pros, you can practically hear the cash registers ringing. It’s fortunate that the Indiana Fever have the #1 pick in the draft. That franchise indicates the challenges that come with a relatively young professional league. They spent about a dozen years as a playoff perennial, with one championship and a large and passionate fan base. Once franchise icon Tamika Catchings retired, the team faded into the basement, and the stands emptied. Teams in the league haven’t yet established the sort of ingrained fandom that gets passed down from generation to generation. That’s not a criticism either, it’s easy to forget that at a similar point in its history the NBA was still fighting for relevance.

I’m not naive; the fact that Clark is white certainly doesn’t hurt. When Sabrina Ionescu entered the league there was obvious jealousy over the attention she was receiving. On the other hand, A’ja Wilson can be seen in several national ad campaigns, so Madison Avenue is clearly paying attention. This promises to be a year of tremendous growth for the league. If Clark’s presence attracts more eyeballs and introduces a larger audience to the magnificent play of the Las Vegas Aces, that would be ideal. It also won’t hurt that this is an Olympic year, with yet another likely gold medal for Team USA.

Splits Always Work Out Well

I don’t follow golf and I never did, so take any criticism that I make with a grain of salt, but when I see the damage that the PGA/LIV dispute is causing, I can’t help but think of a sport that I do love & follow closely. In the mid-90’s, a similar dispute in American open wheel racing created a rift that has never been fully repaired. That should serve as a warning to the executives that run golf. I already discern a big drop in the buzz that surrounds the sport.

A lot of the specifics are convoluted, but the short version is that the Indy 500 did not fall under the banner of CART, the governing body that ran the open wheel racing tour. The owners of the Indianapolis speedway basically allowed the CART drivers to race on their track, so the old USAC circuit was the governing body for that particular race. By the mid-90’s, NASCAR ahead already taken over as the most popular form of motorsports in the United States, so there was a feeling that open wheel racing needed to regain its mojo. This gave Indianapolis track owner Tony George an opening to make major changes.

George created a new racing circuit, the Indy Racing League. His hope was to respond to the biggest change that had taken place in CART; an increase in the number of road courses. George pledged that the new circuit would be limited to ovals only, and most crucially, that spots would be reserved in the Indy 500 for the top 28 drivers in the IRL point standings. Furthermore, the specs for the cars were different enough from CART that it would be cost prohibitive for teams to build new cars to race at Indy. They had two choices - stick with CART or move to the IRL. At least initially, none of the major teams did.

As a result, the field for the 1996 Indy 500 was largely made up of no-names. The CART circuit scheduled their own 500 mile race for the traditional Memorial Day weekend date in Michigan. In a perfect metaphor, at the Michigan race there was a major crash on the very first lap that wiped out half the field. That could not have been any more symbolic. It’s as if the racing gods decided they had no patience for this s***.

For the next few years, the competing circuits continued to battle, confusing casual fans. Over time the major CART teams began to abandon ship and move over to the IRL, which would eventually be renamed the Indy Car Series. By the early 21st century the Indy 500 was nearly back to full strength; there were still a few stragglers in CART, but the majority of the best open wheel drivers had moved on. Furthermore, over time more road and street courses were added to the schedule, so the “ovals only” mandate that led to the new league in the first place was no longer in place. What was the war all for?

Rumors would intermittently pop up that the two circuits would merge, but nothing ever came of them. CART would eventually become the Champ Car Series, but it was basically a zombie racing circuit. It was dead; but no one was willing to acknowledge it. The end finally came just before the 2009 season. Champ Car was dissolved; after 1 farewell race the remaining drivers all moved to the Indy Cat series.

But it was too late; the damage was done. In a case of awful timing, the merger took place in the middle of the Great Recession. Few major corporations were in a position to invest in the newly unified series. The Indy 500 continues to draw international attention every year, but for the remainder of the year Indy Car is little more than a niche sport. It does well enough in its little corner of the world, but its popularity lags well behind that of NASCAR & Formula One. And in a sad note, the biggest major team that stuck with Champ Car until the end was the one co-owned by Paul Newman. He died a few months before the merger; so he remained absent from Indianapolis for the last dozen years of his life.

The Indy Car story doesn’t entirely parallel golf. Golf is much more solidly engrained in the fandom infrastructure than motorsports are, but I do get the sense that the battle between the PGA & LIV tours is exhausting people. The Players Championship, what is generally known as the fifth major, is taking place this weekend. Is it resonating with casual fans the way it used to? I don’t see it, but once again, that may be due to the bubble I’m in. I’m not so arrogant to think of myself as a focus group of one. If I don’t care about something, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the population at large feels the same way. So let me throw this question out to serious golf fans. Have the events of the past couple of years harmed your interest in the game? I’m very curious about that.

TV Of the 21st Century - The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret

This show could also fall in the “streaming orphans” category because it is not currently available to view anywhere. The executive who has removed it from circulation has made a, wait for it, poor decision.

The show starred David Cross as the title character. It was more than just a cringe comedy, it was the cringiest of all. It was the type of show in which the lead character constantly finds himself in self-caused predicaments. Todd Margaret had a multitude of character flaws, the most prominent of which was that he was a pathological liar. He would dig himself into a hole due to his dishonesty, and he would compound that by coming up with another lie to cover the previous one, and so on, and so on, and so on.

The premise was that he was an office worker who was sent to England by his supervisor, portrayed by Will Arnett, to sell a new energy drink that the company was introducing to the U.K. market. He was the standard fish out of water, unable to adjust to British life. The recurring gag was that in order to break the ice he would constantly tell others that as a younger man he had spent a summer living in Leeds, but when asked for more info, he would say “Well, actually NEAR Leeds.” There was only one employee in the London office, a man who took advantage of Todd’s naïveté concerning English life & culture and constantly pranked him. (As the series progressed we learned there was a lot more to the character than that. No spoilers. That backstory also involved recurring appearances from a major American star, whom we eventually learn is not a character, but the actor portraying himself. Once again, no spoilers.) The other major character was Sharon Horgan - in the role in which I first took notice of her - as the owner of a small cafe whom Todd is infatuated with.

The show had a great framing device; each episode began with a cold open which finds Todd in a British courtroom in which he hears a litany of absurd charges brought against him. Those sequences were filled with Easter eggs, as the episodes would slowly reveal exactly what he had done to bring on those charges.

Cross has made a lot of famous friends in his career, some of whom portrayed supporting characters on this show. In addition to Arnett, TIPDOTM included the likes of Spike Jonze, Amber Tamblyn, and Russ Tamblyn. In addition, season 2 took the insanity to a whole different level. This time, the cold open was set in North Korea, with soldiers surrounding Todd as he sat at a desk with a giant red button. He is about the launch the missiles before proceeding into that episode’s doing. How and why did he wind up in North Korea? It took the season to tell that tale.

Two seasons was just about perfect for this show, that was just the right amount of time to tell the story. Plus, to be frank, the main character was an a-hole. There’s only so much time you want to spend with him. The third & final season was funny, but inessential. At its best the show was a legitimate LOL. It needs to be available somewhere. Write your congressman.

Originally aired on: IFC

Currently streaming on: Nowhere at the moment.

Closing Laughs

I’m trying to visualize what Aaron Rodgers as VP would actually look like. Would the Jets’ offensive line be replaced with a Secret Service detail? Would they tase pass rushers? I’m beginning to think that RFK Jr. didn’t fully plan out the logistics. Have a great weekend everyone, & see you again on Monday.