Greatest Song Evah 5/30/25

Fight the Power

This week’s selection is another one that has long been firmly entrenched into the Pantheon Of Great Songs. It is also one that is completely worthy of any and all accolades thrown its way. It was written to serve as the aural centerpiece to one of the greatest American movies ever made, and it is the pinnacle of Public Enemy’s career.

Indelibly connected to its usage in Do the Right Thing, it is difficult to hear this song without also picturing Rosie Perez’s dance in the opening credits along with the memories of the track playing on Radio Raheem’s boombox in an endless loop. Even removed from the context of the film it loses none of its power. Every member of Public Enemy as well as the production team were at the top of their game.

Chuck D brings his best fury into his vocal flow, and Flavor Flav’s asides add the perfect amount of, ahem, flavor. The production from The Bomb Squad also perfectly exemplifies the value of creative sampling, as opposed to Diddy-esque copying and pasting. This record is overflowing with snippets from other records, but they blend so seamlessly together that the listener can’t easily isolate any element from another. I hear the guitar scratch from James Brown’s Hot Pants, and the Funky Drummer sample is present, but there is little of the “oh yeah, I recognize that hook” stuff to be found.

Whatever sampling there is occurs in the lyrics. Chuck D quotes from a multitude of socially conscious songs, starting with the title homage to the Isley Brothers classic. That makes the song a worthy descendant of the landmark recordings from the Civil Rights and Black Power eras. (BTW, they were probably a little unfair to Elvis in the third verse. John Wayne, on the other hand, is fair game.)

The song is punctuated with a magnificent sax solo from Branford Marsalis. Public Enemy was a rare act in that at their peak they were not simply a Great Band, but an Important Band as well. This was the best reason why.

Ohh, Ohh, We’re A Third Of the Way There

Each MLB team has played at least 54 games, so the entire league is more than 1/3 of the way into the season. This milestone comes with the requisite number of surprises, both positive and negative. As far as individual players go, the two most remarkable players in the league continue to do their thang. At this point we are starting to run out of superlatives to describe Shohei Ohtani. Leading the NL in home runs and slugging percentage? Sure, why not. He is even continuing to steal bases, on pace for another 30/30 season even as he is ramping up his rehab to get back on the pitching mound. Oh yeah, that’s right. He is still one of the better pitchers in the game.

As for Aaron Judge, it’s not just that his Baseball Reference page is filled with bold print, it’s that his assorted league leading numbers are cartoonish. But let’s get this out of the way, he is not going to hit .400. There is a reason why no one has done it in 84 years, it’s hard to do. I wouldn’t get too excited unless he is still making a run at the mark in mid-September, and even then it would behoove him to be hitting around .410 to give himself a cushion in case he has a couple of hitless games down the stretch.

If the season were to end today, the AL Central would once again produce 2 wild card teams, and unlike last year it would not be produced by a result of racking up a bunch of easy wins against the White Sox. The Sox are terrible once again, but they are better than they were last year. It’s no fluke, the Central teams are in playoff position because they are clearly good, and the AL East teams are worse than perceived.

Speaking of the East, there is no team more disappointing than the Orioles; in their case aggravatingly so. For some bizarre reason they went into the offseason with the bold strategy of trying to see if a team could succeed without a pitching staff. Did it pay off, Cotton? Well, they lost ace Corbin Burnes to free agency and chose to replace him with 41 year old Charlie Morton and 35 year old Japanese import Tomoyuki Sugano. Sugano has been solid enough, but Morton has been a disaster. To make things worse the front office banked on their lineup of promising young hitters continuing to improve, but they have underachieved almost all the way across the board. What in tarnation has happened to Adley Rutschman?

One more note about a current last place team. A couple of weeks ago the Sacramento A’s were playing well enough that people had started to wonder what MLB might do if they made it into the postseason. It’s not just that playing playoff games in a minor league ballpark would be a bad look, it’s also that the park does not have the amenities to accommodate the corporate hospitality suites or the large media contingent that would be required in a playoff atmosphere. Since then the bottom has fallen out; the A’s have gone on a stretch in which they have lost 14 out of their last 15 games which has made this discussion all moot. This issue might need to be revisited if Tampa Bay makes a playoff push.

A Legacy Comes To Its End

Out of all of the lesser known 19th century Presidents, I have long had an odd interest in John Tyler. There are a handful of interesting tidbits surrounding his life that make him stand out from the likes of Millard Fillmore, beginning with the circumstances that brought him into the Oval Office in the first place.

Elected as William Henry Harrison’s veep, Tyler became the 10th President when Harrison died after only 32 days in office, thereby becoming America’s first Accidental President. He is also the answer to a trick trivia question. Who is the only American President who was not a U.S. citizen at the time of his death? Tyler was a confederate when he died. That’s not all, I have saved the best for last.

As recently as a week ago, John Tyler, who became President in 1841, still had a living grandson. Until now. Harrison Ruffin Tyler passed away over Memorial Day weekend. How was it possible that a man born in 1790 had a grandson who was still alive in 2025? The detail are in the linked article, but Tyler’s second wife was 30 years younger than he was, and she gave birth to a son in 1853 when the ex-prez was 63. That son one-upped his dad; the Tyler men had boys who could swim as Tyler’s son kept the family tradition alive by marrying a significantly younger second wife and fathering a child when he was 75. That child was Harrison Ruffin Tyler, who just passed at the age of 95. Sometimes distant history isn’t all that distant after all.

50 Years Ago - Jaws

Jaws has a special place in movie history. Not only was it briefly the all-time box office champ, but that very dominance changed the way that movies were marketed. It essentially invented the concept of the modern day summer blockbuster, for better or worse. I prefer to look at it in a different way. It’s hard to think of a better example of a filmmaker making lemonade from lemons.

In retrospect it seems insane that Steven Spielberg was entrusted to direct the movie. His legendary status has since been firmly entrenched, but at this time his résumé consisted of some TV work and 1 theatrical film. He had received much acclaim for that work and was regarded as a wunderkind, but it was still a big leap for someone with such little experience to be handed the keys to a movie with such a large budget. And his inexperience showed; the movie went way over budget and the shoot fell way behind schedule almost immediately. Even worse, the expensive mechanical shark that was built did not work. That forced him to improvise.

That improvisation succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. With only limited ability to show the shark, Spielberg instead went with implied horror. Many of the underwater scenes were shot from the shark’s point of view. Shots of a fin breaking the surface would convey the idea of how large the shark was. Most famously, John Williams’ ominous score ramped up the tension. You heard those two notes and knew someone was in deep trouble. This all led to the classic scene when Brody finally saw the shark leap out of the water as he was tossing chum into the ocean. They’re gonna need a bigger boat indeed.

As is often the case with horror movies, the primary villain isn’t necessarily the monster. The shark - which to be fair did not act precisely the way that a real shark in the wild does - was merely following its natural instinct. It needed food, and if swimmers happened to be the easiest food source, so be it. The true villain in the movie was the mayor who stubbornly refused to close the beaches, but even though his decision proved to have fatal consequences one can at least understand his reasoning. Amity was a beach community; it depended on the summer tourism season to sustain the year round residents. Closing the beaches or scaring away the tourists during the 4th of July weekend would be devastating. This also led to a funny meme that pops up on Election Day during off year elections. It points out that the mayor in Jaws is STILL the mayor in Jaws 2. Local elections matter.

Jaws is a damn near perfect movie, and not just due to the terror. The interaction among the 3 main characters made it all work: Brody, the former city cop who semi-retires to serve as sheriff in a beach community, even though he is afraid of the water, Hooper the oceanographer, and Quint the grizzled shark hunter. The second half of the movie is set on their fishing boat as they hunt the killer shark. Each in their own way gradually realize that they have, pardon the pun, bitten off more than they can chew by taking on such a daunting task with such a small crew and boat.

Of the three leads, Robert Shaw is the standout. Quint could have easily had the “we’re not so different, you & I” relationship with his crew mates. He clearly had no respect for either, he looked at Brody as a landlubber and Hooper as a pointy-headed intellectual. He more than anyone recognized that killing this shark would be a much more daunting task then they were prepared for, but his pride would not allow him to show any signs of weakness in front of the others. He eventually let his defenses drop slightly with the bonding moment that occurred when he & Hooper compared scars followed by his classic monologue in which he explained his hated of sharks by revealing that he was part of the crew of the ill fated mission of the USS Indianapolis in World War II. It was a very powerful speech.

Spielberg was just getting started, he has gone on to put together what is arguably the single greatest filmography from any American director. He was also wise enough to steer clear of the later Jaws movies. Jaws produced 3 increasingly preposterous sequels which are best left ignored. As for me, it just so happened that my family vacationed for a few days in Montauk the summer that Jaws came out. Luckily enough, I did not see Jaws until months later. One of the taglines in the movie’s promotion was “see it before you go swimming.” Had I done that, I probably would have been so scared of the ocean that no one would have been able to pry me out of the motel room.

Closing Laughs

Hey everybody, a short week means that it’s already the weekend! Thanks for tuning in, have an enjoyable time, and see you all again on Monday.