“Wake up! Don’t sleep!” Happy Wednesday morning everyone. The Australian band Real Life are best remembered for the song “Send Me An Angel” – one of the more beloved synth pop hits of the early 80s. But even though the band is generally regarded as a one-hit wonder, they did manage to hit the Top 40 a second time (just barely) with this great little song about having bad dreams: “Catch Me I’m Falling”.
Broadside Ballads
D’ya like baseball? D’ya like story songs? How about story songs about baseball? How about story songs about baseball written by a supergroup of alterna-cool elder statesmen including the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn, drummer Linda Pitmon, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows, The Minus 5 and, well, a zillion other side projects. These four got together last year and formed a band that specializes in baseball songs. They call their band – duh – The Baseball Project and they released their debut full-length album Vol. One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails in 2009. While they’re working on Volume Two (due out next year), they’ve partnered with ESPN’s The Life this summer to provide running baseball commentary in song. And those songs – six of ’em so far – are being made available for free dowload at the Baseball Project’s label home, the always awesome Yep Roc Records. No small feat: these songs have actually given me a reason to care about baseball this year.
I mean, seriously, with the exception of my sons’ little league games and the occasional excursion to Warner Park to watch the Madison Mallards play (and eat a few brats), I like stories and movies about baseball a lot more than I like baseball itself. I never miss a chance to watch Major League II when it comes on the TV. But when the guys in the Baseball Project start singing about “Lima Time”, the references are pretty much lost on me in the same way that that punchline in Modern Family about Diana Ross’s RCA period was mostly lost on the majority of the network prime time viewing audience. But it doesn’t matter that much: the band plays a handsome variety of laid back folk rock – think The Traveling Wilburys at a Miller Park tailgate party – that sounds great even when I don’t know the relevant background of the song’s lyrics.
Moreover, songs like “Phenom”, in which a 21-year-old ponders his ability to live up to his own hype – “Man of the hour, and that’s 400 percent of your 15 minutes of fame, and they say that I’m the most in the Washington Post… I just want to stick around for a while” – resonate outside of the sport they pay tribute to on an allegorial/metaphorical level. I love the relentless (and hopeless) optimism of “Cubs 2010”, the jangly, swinging, Woodie Guthie-ish singalong of “30 Doc”. And I’ve never been to or even cared about a baseball season opening day, but I can, nevertheless relate to the sense of excitement and expectation of “All Future and No Past” – Before a game is played! Before an out is made! – especially when the song sounds like They Might Be Giants fronting the Byrds on a Bob Dylan cover.
The first time I heard this song was at a listening station in at a Border’s store. I’d never heard of Allison Moorer (or of her and her sister Shelby Lynne’s startling family background) before then, and being that her music was stocked in the country section, I didn’t really think I’d like her all that much, but the Borders blurb suggested this track from her sophomore album The Hardest Partand so I gave it a listen. And for the next couple of weeks, I kept going back to that Borders just to stand like a dork at that listening station with those gigantic headphones on and listen to it again and again. It was love. I eventually broke down and bought the CD (and all her subsequent CDs – although I got skeptical when she started doing duets with Kid Rock) – after all, they had to change out those listening stations eventually. But ten years later, I can still get lost in all of this song’s epic weepy glory. And I love how she’s taken what’s essentially an archetypal Nashville tearjerker and given it just a hint of Sgt. Peppers-by-way-of-Jon-Brion atmosphere. I’d never actually seen the video until I went looking for it today, and found lots of 70s country rock facial hair and lots and lots of Las Vegas sequins in the middle of the desert.
