Reliving the past with The Baseball Project

2014: McCaughey (cap), Mills, Pitmon, Buck, Wynn

Major League Baseball's Opening Day is Thursday, and I am sad to report that I'm not feeling much excitement about it this time around. What with pandemics and universal designated hitters and free extra-inning baserunners and expanded playoffs and whatnot, all I have left for this sport are memories about how much fun it used to be. I'm a purist, I admit it. The game's history and its overarching storyline have captivated me for decades. But no more. It's like the pandemic and Rob Manfred and a new media age have conspired to push a reset button and everything is starting over from scratch, and I have no interest in starting anew with it.

Thankfully, though, the memories and the game's history do hold on. And for you folks who like me love what has gone before, let me introduce you to this indie-rock group of baseball superfans who celebrate the grand old sport in song. They call themselves The Baseball Project.

Doing the Pandora shuffle, 3rd edition

"OK, Google. Shuffle my Pandora."

"Ice of Phoenix," Audiomachine (Phenomena, 2014): As far as I know, this is the first time I've encountered this band. It's an ambient instrumental track dominated by synthesizer and orchestra arrangements, not particularly interesting. A quick look at Wikipedia says Audiomachine is a production company headed by two guys who make music mostly for film soundtracks. They've been around since 2005 and have been releasing commercially available albums since 2012. Next.

A deep dive into Lou Reed's catalog: A preview

2011: Reed in Kent, England, in one of his last performances

Anyone who knew me in the last quarter of the 20th century knew well that I had two real passions -- St. Louis Cardinals baseball and Lou Reed. For a few reasons, I drifted far away from the Cardinals in the mid-1990s. But I did stick around with Lou for a few more years, until I realized in the mid-2000s that he had stopped rocking and become laser-focused on legacy building.

Cannabalism, adultery and murder: The dark side of Nantucket Sleighride

 

An ode to 19th-century whaling hardly seems a topic for a 1970s hard-rock band, but Mountain made it work with their 1971 song “Nantucket Sleighride.”

The title song to the group’s second album was created by Felix Pappalardi, the band’s bass player/producer, and his wife, Gail Collins. Pappalardi came up with the idea for the song while he and Collins, who penned the lyrics, were on Nantucket Island off Massachusetts. Now a tourist mecca and summer playground for the wealthy, in the first half of the 19th century, Nantucket was at the heart of the New England whaling industry.

Doing the Pandora shuffle, 2nd edition

It's 11:20 a.m. Let's see what Pandora has in store for us. "OK, Google, shuffle my Pandora."

"Big Time," Peter Gabriel (So, 1986): Gabriel's second big hit single, after "Sledgehammer." "Big Time" reached No. 8 on the Billboard Top 100. The video employed the same stop-motion claymation that we saw in the "Sledgehammer" video. Subsequently, many folks see this as a followup to "Sledgehammer," but "Big Time" actually was written and recorded earlier. "Big Time" is where bassist Tony Levin's "funk fingers" style originated. Drummer Jerry Marotta used a drumstick to pound Levin's strings with his sticks in time with Levin's playing, creating that heavy bottom in the song. Levin loved the sound and began taping pieces of drumsticks to his fingers to play bass in concert.