Top 19 -- Living Colour: Vivid

On Facebook I was asked to list my top ten all-time albums that most influenced me. Since I can't list anything without a huge explanation, this is it. Not only that but I'm writing about my Top 19 instead of my Top 10. 

Here's what I wrote on Facebook today, "Here's another quick story: I loved this album when it came out. L-O-V-E-D this album. I know that I've said this about every single album that I've written about in the last ten day, but I must've listened to this album, bare mins, 130,000 times. I was obsessed with this album and this band. One day at my house, my friend turned on "Cult of Personality" and I started headbanging (and with the size of my noggin, you shouldn't do that) and I literally put a portion of my bed through the floor. After being blown away by the video on MTV, I remember going to the Liberty Tree Mall, marching into a Record Town and demanding "Vivid". When the clerk said he had no idea what Vivid was or who Living Colour was, I got really indignant and said, "Some day you will!" That was the type of fire that this band inspired in a meek, socially awkward 14-year-old. This band. This was MY band. I knew no one else who liked them as much as I did."

Pretty much from the first time I saw the video for "Cult of Personality", I knew that Living Colour was fucking awesome. There was something so different about this song, it rocked like crazy, but at the same time they weren't singing about looking for nothing but a good time or girls, girls, girls. This band was singing about something important? Smart? Philosophical? All that, really. And that's what hit me. I had no idea what a cult of personality was. It seemed interesting though, there are images of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and Josef Stalin and Gandhi. 

The more I found out about it, the more I was like, yes, this is smart. And listening to this song makes me feel smarter. This album must be amazing. And once I finally got it, I was right, it was fucking amazing. I loved each song. From the heart of "Open Letter to a Landlord" to the poignant "Funny Vibe" (which was my first introduction to Chuck D and Flavor Flav or Public Enemy) to the Talking Heads cover of "Broken Hearts", this was something that I wasn't used to hearing. 

I saw this band twice--once they play "Vivid" from start to finish--and they were some of the best shows that I have ever seen. I remember the first time and I couldn't believe that I was at the Paradise in Boston, so close to the band. It was like a dream come true. Really. 

The one thing that I remember about Living Colour is that on the day that the Red Sox won Game 4 in the 2004 ALCS, I was supposed to go the Pats/Seahawks game in the afternoon and then haul ass to the House of Blues across the street from Fenway to watch a Living Colour/Public Enemy show. My plan was to watch the rest of the baseball game at one of the Landsdowne Street bars before heading back to Aly's place in Brookline. 

The night before the Sox got bombed by the Yanks, 19-8 putting them in a 3-0 hole. I was so depressed I disavowed my Sox fandom,I cancelled on the Patriots game, never went to the PE/LC show (a double bill that would have broken my brain in 1990) and didn't watch the Red Sox (out of protest) until the eighth inning. After the Sox won that game, I was back on the trolley and watched them roll through New York and then St. Louis as they won their first World Series since 1918. 

I'm bummed that I didn't go to the Pats-Seahawks game but I really sad that I never saw the Public Enemy/Living Colour show. That sucked. 

There were some great things about growing up when I did, but one of the shitty things was an absence of information. With the internet, we take this for granted that if we want to read something about a thing that we like all we have to do is pull out our phones and go to Google. Boom. Instant information. And a lot of it is true!

In the 80s, you had to really search for stuff. With the other things that I was into (comics and baseball--sports in general), it was easy. There was sports new every day on TV or in the paper, plus I had subscriptions to Sports Illustrated and Sporting News. Comics were a little tougher, but there were tons of magazines devoted to comics. And since I liked Marvel Comics, it was easy to keep up with the latest news. 

But if you lived in Amesbury, MA; you weren't going to get a lot of information on your favorite band. Maybe there'd be a story in the Globe or the Herald if the band was going on tour or had just released a new album. Maybe you could find a blurb in a Rolling Stone. But that was about it. The metal magazines didn't cover Living Colour and neither did the pop mags. There were no zines anywhere I lived. 

When you look through the rose-colored glass of nostalgia, you might be tempted to say that this was "magical". You had to work for your information and it made it so much better. But that's bullshit. I like being able to check stuff out when I want, wherever I want. 

I doubt that I'd love Living Colour any more than I did when I didn't know much about them. And maybe it was cooler that there was a little mystery about Corey, Vernon, Muzz and Will; but I don't know. 

One last thing about this album, and it's very embarrassing to me, is the art work. It was obvious that this was some sort of free-flowing abstract-y kind of painting. But it didn't hit me until many, many, MANY years later that the green shape in the middle of the album cover is NOT Africa. It's a man's head.  And the black shape in the top left hand corner are not fingers. They're just weird shapes. 

My thought when looking at this picture with the red lines emanating from the green shape, was that Living Color was making a statement that all of culture comes from Africa. And that the black fingers were showing how that culture touches us all. 

I know. I know. 

Confessions of a Sports Bigamist

I was watching the Celtics play the Miami Heat on Sunday and my wife Aly asked, “Since when do you care about the Celtics?” And I didn’t have a real answer for her, I said something along the lines that I like this particular team as a whole, the personalities of the players and how well they’re playing. But I didn’t really have a strong answer. This question came about a month or so after she made the observation that “I care about football more than I think that I do.”

And it hit me, she’s right. I do care about the Celtics* (and the Bruins for that matter) and I do care more about football (especially the Patriots) than I even admitted to myself. I was a bit shocked about this realization more than I should have been, which is odd because since high school part of my identity has been one of a sports geek. I was a fair athlete (ok, maybe bad is the word), but I could talk sports with the best of them. But during the last ten years or so, that perception had changed; I considered myself a baseball fan first and foremost and the others fell into line. In fact, my mantra was: You can only have one favorite team. And for me, that favorite team was undoubtedly the Boston Red Sox.

* When I was in high school I hated the Celtics. Just hated them. I hated their style of play, I hated their boring-ass players, I thought that Larry Bird was overrated (I know, I know; the indiscretions of youth) and I hated that they were everything that the Chicago Bulls weren’t. I loved the Bulls and Michael Jordan, they were the new NBA of high flying, basketball dunking awesomeness. In a “kill your idols” sort of way, I reveled in every Celtics loss and cursed every Celtics victory. To me, Red Auerbach was an old fool that needed to go far away from the NBA.

But something happened in the almost 20 years that I graduated from good old Amesbury High School. The Celtics stunk, I mean really bottomed out and it wasn’t fun to kick a dead dog. I began to feel a bit bad about hating them so much and began to cheer a bit for the underdog. As they got a bit better and better, it became more fun to watch a Celtics game. The 2008 NBA Postseason is among the most fun I’ve had as a sports fan and last year’s was a lot of fun (until the last game).

The point that I was making is that I still believe that you can only have one favorite team, but I’ve widened my scope to believe that you can have a handful of other teams that you care about just as much. And for me those teams are the other three Boston teams.

I should have seen this coming; a few years ago, when the Pats lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl, I tried to blow it off as “not really a big deal” because New England had won three other Super Bowls and they’d get there again. I told Aly that while it sucked the Pats lost, I would be more upset if the Red Sox did something similar. But that was a brave face and the Super Bowl XLII loss gnawed at my gut the entire off-season and when Tom Brady went down with a season-ending injury just one quarter into the next season, it really hit me as to what the Patriots lost that day in Arizona.

From there it seemed like things changed. When the Patriots lost to the Jets (THE FUCKING JETS!) in January, I was as angry as I’ve been about a professional team in some time. When the Celtics lost to the Lakers in the Finals, I was really bummed out. When the Bruins choked away a three-games-to-zero lead against the Flyers, I was apocalyptic*.

* Again, this wouldn’t have been possible even five years ago because I hated the Bruins and wanted them to lose in the most excruciating, painful ways imagined. And the reason was because of their “thrifty” (read: cheap-ass) owner Jeremy Jacobs. He always seemed to be happy that the Bruins would make a couple of dollars for him and would never dump the money back into the team. One summer he opened the purse strings and signed Zedeno Charra and Mark Savard and I began to come back to the Bruins. That’s really all I wanted, just some show that he cared about the team. I know, I’m a sap.

And you know what? I feel pretty good about the outlet of emotion that I can express about the home town teams. Am I obsessed with the other teams? No, not as much as the Red Sox; but it’s good to have options and care about teams when the Sox aren’t in season.

Not a lot of Cohesion

Aside from the Patriots loss in Super Bowl XLII (more on that later) there isn't a hell of a lot of big things going on right now in sports. There are a couple of small things and I'll try to touch them all in this odds-and-ends edition of 19 Thoughts.

+ Curt Schilling is out for at least half the year, maybe more. There have been some conflicting reports as to how long Schilling is going to be sitting on the bench. Some people (including Schilling and the Red Sox) say that he'll be back right after the All-Star break, while Schilling's own doctor thinks that he might be gone for the entire year. Either way you look at it, it's a blow to the Red Sox.

It's now up to the kids (Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz specifically) to anchor the back end of the staff, which may be a bit ahead of schedule. Josh Beckett should be his normal dominant self and after a year in the Major Leagues, I'm expecting Daisuke Matsuzaka to pitch lights-out this year. I assumed that Tim Wakefield was going to miss some time and that Buchholz would make a spot start or two after spending some time in AAA. However, this is going to change, barring a trade for a starter.

How will having two young pitchers in the rotation work for the Sox? Will Lester be on a strict pitch count (it's assumed that Buchholz will be)? Does Julian Tavarez make some appearances for the Red Sox, and if so will how awkward is it for Terry Francona since Tavarez was left off last year's postseason roster?

And when is Francona going to get his contract extended?

+ Speaking of questions: what the hell is up with these trades? After months of speculation Johan Santana was sent to the New York Mets for a quartet of prospects that were decent, but not great. Erik Bedard was sent from Baltimore to the Seattle Mariners, and the Orioles got centerfield prospect Adam Jones. The preeminent Seattle Mariners blog The USS Mariner feels that their team got royally screwed.

In the NBA, the Los Angeles Lakers aquired Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies for essentially Kwame Brown and a couple of draft picks. Not to be outdone, the Phoenix Suns traded Shawn Marion and the rotting corpse of Marcus Banks to the Miami Heat for the Big Aristotle himself, Shaquille O'Neal.

Two of these trades look like outright steals for one of the teams, one looks like it could be a steal and the other doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. The Mets and the Lakers made out very well for themselves, as New York didn't have to give up their best prospect in exchange for the best American League pitcher over the last five years and they didn't have to pay him as much as was expected. Imagine being fleeced by Omar Minaya. The Lakers gave up on a stiff and two low first-round picks for a guy that will work really well with Kobe Bryant. And when Andrew Bynum comes back, watch out for Los Angeles in a tough Western Conference.

I'm not sure that I completely agree with the USS Mariner, as I think that Bedard is a special pitcher and will do well in Safeco. However, I do agree with their assertion that the Mariners were not really an 88-win team last year. According to the runs scored/runs allowed metric, the M's scored a bunch less than their opponent. This means they were lucky to have won as many games as they did and probably should have won between 82 and 85. Getting Bedard for your top prospect to augment a .500 team is not a good idea, especially if Seattle regresses. Mariners GM Bill Bavasi better hope that Jones sucks, or he's going to be the Lou Gorman of the next century. This is a toss-up, especially if the Mariners don't sign Bedard to a long-term deal.

As for the Sun/Heat deal, it's a head scratcher. Phoenix loves to push the ball up the court. Shaq can't run any more. What style is going to shake out in the end? This could either be a brilliant trade that allows Amare Stoudemire to play his more natural power forward or this could completely destroy this team during the stretch run. Like Bavasi, GM Steve Kerr has a lot riding on this trade and news out of Phoenix was that Shaq was winded during his first practice. Of course, Shaq hasn't played in Miami in awhile because he's been injured. We'll have to wait and see.

+ The Patriots lost the Super Bowl. I'm not going to write too much about this because it's done and there's nothing that can be done about it. The New York Giants upset the Pats, despite giving New England at least five chances to win it at the end. You know the old adage, “Give a good team five chances on one final drive and it will come back to bite you in the ass.”

I'm not saying that the Giants suck. They played a perfect game and controlled the tempo while the Pats played like crap. They had no answers for the Giants' defensive line, for some reason the offense never really got going until two minutes left in the final quarter and I still have no idea why Coach Bill Belichick went for it on 4th and 13 instead of kicking a 48-yard field goal.

And looking on the bright side, the Patriots went to four Super Bowls within seven years and won three of them. That's pretty awesome. Look at the Minnesota Vikings or the Buffalo Bills, they went to the Super Bowl four times and came away empty handed. You think that those fans (especially the Bills, who are on the verge of losing their team to Toronto) wouldn't trade places with New England fans?

There's a thought that New England fans were being greedy but the thing that's so disappointing about this loss was that the Patriots blew a chance to make history. They blew a chance to get rid of the 1972 Dolphins forever—the most arrogant, pretentious collection of assholes ever. Do football fans have to wait another 35 years to see a team come close to perfection? By that time I'll be 68-years-old. Jesus. I'll just about be dead. My three-month old will be older than I am now. That's so damn depressing, I think that I might go drink a bottle of Jack Daniels.

+ The Bruins. Who cares about them? 68-years-old. Gah.

+ The New York papers are claiming that the Yankees are going to keep Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen, instead of turning him into a starter. In addition there is going to be a strict 140 inning count for the entire year. That's bad news for Red Sox fans, as long as there weren't any bugs around, Chamberlain was nasty last year. I thought that the Yankees were making a big mistake by putting him in the starting rotation. Seems as if they realized their mistake early. Or perhaps they have a deal cooking for a starting pitcher? C.C. Sabathia or Joe Blanton, maybe?

+ Well at least I'm not Roger Clemens. Tomorrow the seven-time Cy Young Award winner faces his toughest opponent ever, the United States government. He's getting dragged in front of Congress to testify under oath about his involvement with steroids. His former trainer, Brian McNamee was an instrumental part of the Mitchell Report, which fingered a bunch of current and former major leaguers as steroid abusers and cheats. Clemens was one of the players in that report.

Most of those named have come clean with some sort of lame excuse like, “I was just trying to get better after an injury” or “I only did it once”. However Clemens has been steadfast in holding his ground and says that McNamee is a lying liar who lies. From his awkward interview with Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” to his press conference where he played a tape of a phone call he had with McNamee that didn't prove anything, Clemens has gone out of his way to try and prove that this is all a gigantic falsehood.

The problem is, no one is believing him. Clemens' best buddy Andy Pettitte was named in the same report and has pretty much gone along with everything that McNamee has said. McNamee has old syringes, bloody gauze pads and other evidence that he claims is from Clemens. This could get real messy for the Clemens kin as McNamee even claims that he shot the Rocket's wife up with HGH before the two posed for a swimsuit picture for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.*

* Two things, one what could be more horrible than walking to the mailbox and getting the swimsuit issue and finding out that your mom is posing in it? That's a terrible image. And does anyone really care about the swimsuit issue any more? Isn't this just a relic from a more pedestrian past? If I want to see half-naked models there are a million places I can go. And if I want to see naked chicks, there's even more places to find them. Being naked or nearly nude does not care a stigma any more. For all of the talk that America is a conservative place now, the reality is; it isn't.

Whatever happens tomorrow, and there are whispers that if Clemens screws this up he can be going to jail for perjury, the court of public opinion has already rendered its opinion on him: guilty. And while I don't have a lot of love for Roger Clemens any more (give me an hour and I'll tell you why), he was the first baseball player that I idolized. I can remember getting his poster for Christmas after he his first great year—it was one of those old Sports Illustrated ones, with the clunky white borders, the san sarif type font, an action shot and that was it. So it is with a bit of melancholy that I'm going to watch him hang himself in front of the world.

Because as he's proved time and time again, Roger Clemens can pitch; he just can't speak.