Remember when sports teams never had to blast AC/DC or Guns n' Roses during timeouts to excite the crowd, when the sport itself was enough to get people riled up? I don't, probably because I wasn't alive back then. Since I became an avid follower of sports, music has been something that has always seemed to go hand-in-hand with sporting events. The Patriots take the field to Ozzy's "Crazy Train", the Red Sox play Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" during the 8th inning, and it seems like every sports team in America plays either the stupid Rocky Balboa trumpet theme (whatever the hell it's actually called) or "Eye of the Tiger" during a crucial point of the game, seemingly to get the crowd "mad pumped up dood."
Lame and lamer.
Now, I think we can all agree that these are some of the cheesiest, dumbest ploys using some of the cheesiest, dumbest songs ever made. But, with that being said, I still love music, and I still love sports, and I think that music and sports have more in common than meets the naked eye.
First of all, anyone who's ever been in a band knows how much of a drag it is to make music with people who you don't see things eye-to-eye with. On occasion it does work out. You've got Axl Rose and Slash, Sting and the Police, etc. But John Densmore of the Doors once said something in his autobiography about the Doors being so successful in making good music because all four of the band members were at the same point in their lives in one way or another, that they were all on the same page. I have experience with what Densmore is saying and I completely agree. If you can't go have a beer with your bandmates and talk about something other than music then you've got to give it up, because it ain't going to happen.
Just ask the 2011 Stanly Cup Champion Boston Bruins (has a nice ring to it, don't it?). You can ask any one of those Bruins why they won, and they'll all tell you it was because of how much they wanted to win it for each other. Those dudes like being around one another inside and outside of the locker room. Do you think the Canucks' Alexandre Burrows and the Sedin Bros. spend ANY time with each other outside of the hockey rink?
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| Suck it, Vancouver! |
Also, for a team to get ready for when it really matters, their games, what do they do? They practice in order to hone their skills and execute their game plans. That way once game time rolls around they don't fuck up and lose. Well, what do you think a band does in order to get ready for concerts when it really matters for them? They rehearse in order to get better at their instruments and at playing their parts of the songs, just like each different player on a team has a different role to fill that they need to practice for. Players in sports need to perform well when it matters to guarantee their contracts in the future and stay in the league. Musicians need to perform well when it matters for the same reason, to hopefully get signed by a record company and make a living. Which segues nicely into my next point, no pun intended.
Free agency is one of the few aspects of professional sports that is a common thread among each of the major sport leagues. Probably the biggest story in the sporting world last summer was all about Lebron James and what team he was going to sign with as a free agent. Lebron was and still is a big-time athlete, and whether you like the guy or not, anyone who follows sports was dying to know where this scumbag was going to be playing basketball in 2011. There were rumblings about him going to the Knicks, possibly Chicago, and then BOOM. Almost out of nowhere the guy signs with Miami, and he forms a mega-trio with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, potentially changing the landscape of professional sports free agency as we know it. (Oh, and don't try to compare that shit to the Celtics big-three either. The Celts got KG and Ray through trades, not free agency).
Now, let's take it back to 2008 when Radiohead's record contract with EMI had just expired. Their last studio album (the underrated Hail to the Thief) had come out five long years prior in 2003 and Radiohead fans were starving for new material and maybe even a bit worried. I can remember reading something at the time about Thom Yorke saying he was "unsure" about the future of the band.
And then what do you know? Radiohead drops the hammer on the music industry by releasing their new album In Rainbows digitally with the "pay what you think it's worth" method, which basically allowed you to download the album for free, or you could pay a million bucks for the batch of songs if you really wanted to. Needless to say, I think that changed things for record companies and the music biz in general.
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| Seriously, Thom. Do something about that fucking eyelid. |
So here you've got Lebron James who, let's face it, is the best basketball player in the world, and Radiohead, who are considered to be one of, if not, the best players in the music world doing things that are completely changing the way things are done in their respective fields. Even more amazingly, they were both able to keep their plans COMPLETELY confidential which is nearly unheard of in the current age of albums leaking early on the Internet and the ravenous information-hungry sports media conglomerate getting the inside scoop on everything before it happens. The difference here was that everyone revered Radiohead for what they did while Lebron was painted as the villain of sports (and rightfully so because the guy is a self righteous asshole who hasn't won anything...still).
On a more personal level, I was a huge Pearl Jam fan back in high school and can remember being super excited about the thought of what label they were going to sign with since their contract with Epic was ending. I thought they had the potential to salvage what little they had left of their dwindling talent and make one last good record when they signed with Clive Davis' J-Records. Unfortunately for me that never happened, Eddie Vedder went from this to this , and PJ ended up making some of the shittiest records I've ever laid ears to.
I know that I may be stretching things a bit here. And I know music is more of an art than sports, but you can definitely have the few exceptional players who's games can be considered works of art; Paul Pierce's ability to get his shot, Steve Nash's style of dribbling, Ichiro's swing, Tom Brady's sixth sense-like movement in the pocket. But I don't know. Maybe I'm the only one who gets excited about what musicians are signing with what labels. All I know is that I love Radiohead and I hate Lebron James, who still hasn't ever won anything, and neither have the Vancouver Canucks for that matter.
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