Music : Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails |
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Rating:  - * Not just Baseball! ... I'm an European, and Baseball means nothing to me, at least until now. But this album's not just about Baseball, it's about great stories, social history, racial history and life. Like good literature these stories can be generalized into stories of the human condition. The song writing duties are shared between Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey, and both have contributed an almost equal amount of the albums best songs. The song writing styles are very compatible and this album has a very distinct album feel to it. Most of the tunes are very melodic and hooky (just what I needed for my running). It's like what you would get if you mixed an equal amount of Eagles and a noisy Neil Young. Half a year ago I discovered how good Steve Wynns output in this century has been. This album confirms that he's really on a roll. Rating:  - * For Baseball Fans or Music Fans or Both...Equally Smashin' Baby! ... I'm listening to track 6, "Fernando," right now as I write this and am transported to a Mexican Sonoran village where folks only speak in la espanol and baseball on a sand lot under the hot hot Sonoran sun is the El Jeffe. Young Fernando, the Mayan, or is it Incan?, legend, channels the spirit of El Toro and reaches back within himself eyes closed and blazes a screwball to the young ninos of the village and screws himself right into the legend and lore of America's past time--baseball (and music). So what is this Baseball Project thing all about? Well, its four veteran indie rockers coming together to spout off all things baseball and build upon the significant amount of history (past and fairly current) that's out there on the sport. Fans of the game will find themselves (like me) listening close to all the lyrics, "It's 1965 / Me and my Dad Mac / 50 miles to Candlestick / In a Green VW van / The giants start their pennant race / Mays and Koufax face to face / Sometimes I dream of Willie Mays / And tell him I was there / And the sun comes out and the fog lifts and he's there." This comes from track 9, "I Dream of Willie Mays," and the lyrics steeped in an obvious love bordering on obessession for the game comes through. But try to not allow yourself to be pulled into the sentimentality and nostalgia the game (and this music) produces. Try. Try as you might, I doubt you'll be able to resist. What's a real beauty about this CD (and this song) is that there's some real musical chops behind all the baseball. "I Dream of Willie Mays," is a perfect send-up of The Beach Boys summertime dreamy pop, a band who REM's Peter Buck (and his Athens Georgia 3 or 4 coherts) have been aping on shamelessly for years. And the music is solid throughout. Now I'm listening to "The Death of Big Ed Delahanty," a player previously I knew nada about. But thanks to Ex-Dream Syndicate member, Steve Wynn, and REM's own Scott McCaughy I get this great little song that sounds a little like David Lowery's Cracker and get to know all about Delahanty and his boozing and baseball-ing ways in the late 19th century. So Ruth and the boys used to live a hard living life and abuse alcohol regularly and we rail today about the demise of baseball due to steroids. Baseball players have been abusing drugs of one kind or another for a full-on century and baseball is still going strong. But these kinds of stories, of which there are plenty, in the game make it rich and make this CD a great little find. And the CD wraps up with a little tune titled, "The Closer." A perfect baseball bookend to the stereotypical personality of the closer. The pariah iconoclast seeps through in dramatic fashion as we get a do or die situation with an edgy pitcher that quickly becomes hero or goat in the matter of 3 outs when the game is on the line. "MVP / Strike 3 / My work was done again." I can't say enough good things about this little project, "The Baseball Project." I recommend you grab a shiner on a Sunday at the Ballpark in Arlington, have this crankin' on your MP3 player and have family all around you (preferably your Dad who coached you for oh 15-odd years & taught you everything you neeeded to know about the game and life) and your bro (who coulda shoulda ended up at least on some double if not triple A team) and bask in America's pasttime baby! ...mmw Rating: - * baseball history in song ... I don't typically write reviews, but I noticed only 1 review of this CD (3 now) and wondered why. I love this CD. These guys (pretty much the Venus 3 minus Robyn Hitchcock) are real baseball fans, or they just read a lot of baseball history. I love the obscure references to players such as Oscar Gamble. I think this has appeal to non-baseball fans too because a lot of the songs are catchy and let's face it, people today generally don't even know what songs are about (eg. R.E.M. song The One I Love. I remember seeing a girl say, "This is me and my boyfriend's song." Well, I guess she didn't realize it wasn't a love song, and quite the opposite). All the name dropping in the Harvey Haddux song was wonderful. Why name David Cone and David Wells multiple times? Are they Yankees fans, or fans of beer drinking, free spirits? I really enjoy listening to this CD. Rating: - * Frozen Ropes ... A wide range of musical styles applied to songs covering stories and personalities in the last 70 or so years of the great game of baseball. Entertaining for hard core baseball fans, maybe not so entertaining for those not interested in the sport. Rating: - * good music about baseball..it doesn't get much better ... I was not sure I would like this album at first, as I am an old fart, but after listening to clips on Amazon, I decided to try it. It was good enough that now, every time I get into my car, this is the CD that is playing. It is good music and brings back a lot of memories. Espeically like the songs about Curt Flood and Harvey Haddix |
DVD features
Yes, the unrated edition of The Dukes of Hazzard has nudity... but no, it's not of Jessica Simpson, but topless sorority girls. There are also two sets--"PG-13" and "unrated"--of deleted scenes and bloopers. The four minutes of unrated deleted scenes (supplementing the 25 minutes of "PG-13" deleted scenes) include more sorority girls and a menage à trois for Johnny Knoxville . The five minutes of unrated bloopers (the same amount as the "PG-13" bloopers) feature a few more girls but mostly bad language. Featurettes discuss the Daisy Duke short shorts (and show how you can make your own), car stunts, and the making of the movie (narrated by a cast member of the original TV series). --David Horiuchi
