Hmmm…maybe it was a slight misnomer to describe this list as a representation of my “favorite” sports logos. I feel like “most successful” is more apt. Because no other sports logo is simultaneously more instantly recognizable and capable of eliciting nausea from me than this one (That’s a lie; this one is equally capable of both.)
That it is soooo culturally pervasive in our country is a lot to do with Jerry Jones, the obscenely wealthy used car salesman that took over as majority owner of the team in the late 1980s. He’s a shrewd businessman that never met an endorsement deal or cross-promotional opportunity he didn’t like, and will spare no expense in making the Dallas Cowboys the “face” of pro (American) football throughout the world. That said, it also doesn’t hurt that this logo has undergone the least change since the team was formed in 1960, with only the addition of the offset blue stroke around the star being added in 1964 and remaining consistent ever since. This freaking star is basically like the insignia for the Imperial forces in Star Wars: everyone knows it, but only assholes like it.
Probably the best track off of Moz’s somewhat average 1997 Maladjusted album. That being said, there are still a lot of excellent tunes on it—it’s just that the filler tracks are reallly filler-y.
2. Britney Spears-Gimme More
It’s Britney, bitch! I don’t think Brit has put out a stone-cold solid album yet, but that’s not the sort of “artist” she is. She’s a cipher really, merely a conduit for the songs and production work of genuinely creative people. Kind of like how a steak is a really lame piece of meat without a sauce of some kind.
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs-Softshock
This latest YYY’s album was a nice surprise. Each successive album they release is more and more cohesive, and I was struck by the similarities between this one and concurrent Metric release Fantasies. It’s difficult to articulate why, but the two albums really have a Beatles vs. Stones, Blur vs. Oasis kind of vibe, not in a rivalry sense, but in how these two relatively evenly-matched groups sysnthesize their influences and interpret their chosen sub-genre’s musical conventions. The YYY’s are fuzzier, grittier, and rougher around the edges while retaining enough of a pop sensibility to get on radio and be popular with the kids (a la the Stones), and Metric is all about the gloss, even when they stretch out into more avant-garde territory in terms of song construction (a la the Beatles).
4. The Verve-The Drugs Don’t Work
The further away 1997 appears in the rear view mirror of my life, the more saccharine the production of Urban Hymns becomes. Still a nice tune, just a bit cloying if you’re not in the right frame of mind to hear it.
5. INXS-I Need You Tonight
Hahaha, OK, so, this song, for whatever reason, has become completely intertwined with the word “striptease” in my mind. There’s something very sexy about it, but in that very superficial, plastic sense that 80s sexuality possessed within the mainstream. Once grunge (and subsequently “modern rock”) entered into the equation in the early 1990’s, you had an altogether dirtier well of musical “inspiration” to draw from as a sex worker. Less Patrick Nagel, more Michael Turner. Compared contextually, ‘I Need You Tonight’ is positively oozing with innocence!
6. Speed McQueen-I’m In Love With
One drawback of the alternative boom of the early to mid 90s (there were many, but that’s a long discussion for another post) was the glut of indie labels that sprung up, were bought out my majors, and then shat out in the form of a tax write-off. A lot of promising bands couldn’t survive the constant upheaval, which is a shame, and everyone’s loss. One such group was New York’s Speed McQueen, who put out one very solid full-length before getting got by the powers-that-be. Protect ya neck, little bands that could!
7. Blur-On The Way To The Club
A stand-out cut from Blur’s underrated Think Tank, this is a weird song, because the band basically sabotage what could have been a really odd-but-beautiful single by only going through the “chorus” only twice, and then fading out into a strange dub coda. It reminds me a lot of their song “Death of a Party”, but without the sinister overtones.
8. The Jam-Every Little Bit Hurts
A nice, if lightweight, rarity from the band who built a career on mining 60s R&B and soul music and running it through a punk blender. Paul Weller’s voice isn’t quite up to the task of matching the nuance of the Brenda Holloway original, but he gets some points for feeling (he was totally closing his eyes when he recorded this.)
9. Portastatic-I Wanna Know Girls
Perfect. Pop. Song.
10. Tom Petty-You Wreck Me
Such a great driving song, off Tom’s second solo joint. So many people I’ve met over the years usually have two Tom Petty CD’s: The 1993 Greatest Hits compilation, and Wildflowers. Which stands to reason, as those are unequivocally his two strongest discs, top to bottom.
Ouch. Sorry, Bears fans. I know your NFC North rivalries run deep, what with nothing else to do during the midwest winter besides sitting around listening to or watching football. That’s what you get for having the most miserable weather in the country! Seriously, though. This one gets the nod purely because I love the colors—ever since I saw Sterling Sharpe’s 1991 Donruss card! Plus you had that dude with the wacky Polish last name under center before The MessiahGreat Betrayer Brett Favre came to town, all done up in his Lee® dungarees, running around and gunslinging like a little kid.
Really, America? Really?! Jeff Dunham=funny? Our third-most wealthy comedian is a ventriloquist? Some douchebag that can’t actually offer any hilarious insight into the human condition, so he decided to build a career on making off-color remarks through wooden proxies to obfuscate the fact that at best he is untalented and not at all creative and at worst a casual racist?
Christ, even Dane Cook tells fucking jokes.
I’m all for the laffs, especially in the current economic climate. But seriously, America. Get your shit together. Barack Obama is president! It’s the 21st century! We’re a heartbeat away from jet-packs, flaying cars and hover boards! We cannot afford to look back for our comedic forms! There is a reason ventriloquism went out with burlesque! A-N-T-I-Q-U-A-T-E-D.
"C" stands for Chi-town, that's good enough for me!
I was surprised to learn that what I’ve always thought of as the “classic” Bears logo has actually only been in use since 1974. I had always assumed that this was the “C” that started it all, spawning countless imitators from the pros on down (I remember my high school football team playing the Chantilly Chargers, who sported the same logo.) Turns out that it was actually Cincinnati’s own Reds baseball franchise that got the ball rolling all the way back in 1913!
A lot of people might disagree with this selection, or at least my ranking it fifth, saying that it’s boring or too “old-tymey”, but that’s exactly why I love it—it looks timeless. And while I’m not usually a fan of the blue-orange color combo, complementary or not, I think these specific shades of those two hues go together so well. It’s not garish and juvenile like the unis of Boise State, University of Florida, and the old Denver Broncos.
That being said, color is the primary reason this one got beat out of the number four spot on this countdown….
About five years ago, my good friend Richard displayed a flash of brilliance: what if you were in a book club, but instead of reading books, you listened to music, and instead of passively reading books, you actively contribute to the content of the CD-of-the-month.
Each month, a different club member would select a theme, and all the members would then contribute one track that fit the theme for burning onto a CD, which would then be burned and distributed via the mail. It was an inspired thought, but ultimately failed because we were all too lazy to keep up with it, and organizing and wrangling the mp3’s from members proved to be a logistical nightmare.
So I recently hit upon what I hope is a solution—every new music release day (that’s Tuesday, for you noobs), I’ll be emailing a new mp3 to a select group of friends for inclusion on an infinite iTunes playlist. No themes, no rules, just music. Any suggestions submitted will probably make the cut. If someone hates one week’s entry, they just have to wait seven days for the next one.
Entry #1 is ‘Love Athena’ by The Olivia Tremor Control.
Governor Paterson, shit just got real. Get your act together. A blind man can see (oops) that New York needs two things RIGHT NOW: Homo-sexy unions, and at least a Commodore 64 at every precinct desk!
Actually, I never really left. But my blogging definitely took a nosedive in January after I got laid off—one last parting gift courtesy of the George W. Bush era. In the intervening months, I have:
-Taken and crushed the PRAXIS II test
-Been re-hired by the company that laid me off
-Become a married man
-Become a father-figure to two new cats
-Watched A LOT of Baltimore Orioles baseball games (wait until next year!)
-Watched Daniel Snyder return to his old bank-breaking, free agent-chasing ways
-Been steadily disappointed by President Obama’s moderate-ness (sack up, man! If you’re gonna go, go big!)
In any event, I hope to start posting more frequently, if only b/c I’m going to start posting more off-the-cuff musings and try not to get too wrapped up in long, rambling posts (too late!)
