In the modern day of music, it seems like we are limited to about five genres of music and we have to shoehorn all songs now into one of those categories (you know so the Grammys won’t last for seven hours, I guess). Growing up in Spartanburg though, there is one genre of music that is very important to our history but for some reason has seemed to disappear from the music world. The disappearance of a whole genre has left me worried and left me asking one important question: whatever happened to southern rock?
Southern rock by definition is a subgenre of rock music and a genre of Americana, it was developed in the southern United States from rock and roll, country music, blues, and is focused generally on electric guitar and vocals. That definition alone is what bothers me about the shoehorning of music into general genres now days. Instead of having a genre like southern rock, a lot of these musicians are either placed in rock n’ roll or more frequently they’re placed in the country music genre. It seems now days that because of the lack of the southern rock genre existing we now have a lot of people that would normally be classified as southern rock playing “country music” and in turn forcing the disappearance of the genre that I’ve always known as country music. Now to be honest I love both genres, I just don’t want to see the lack of one kill off the other and take its place. Being from Spartanburg I grew up listening to both genres, from listening to Hank Williams sing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” to Spartanburg’s very own Marshall Tucker Band singing “Can’t You See”. I love listening to both but they’re both two different genres of music. Some country music artists that I hear now days that I believe are more southern rock are: Travis Tritt, The Zac Brown Band (who recently sang at the Grammys with one of the greatest southern rock singers of all-time Greg Allman) and Jason Aldean. I also believe some groups over the years that have had to fight their way through the rock genre over the years that should have been classified as southern rock were: Hootie and the Blowfish, Collective Soul, and Kings of Leon. By allowing a whole genre of music to disappear I believe that we are letting a lot of great music go along with it. There are a lot of great southern rock songs that will never make the list of 100 greatest rock songs or the 100 greatest country songs of all-time lists that are done by some of these music publications and because of that some of these songs and bands will start to be lost with time. The thoughts of people not knowing the songs of The Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker Band, Pure Prairie League, and the Charlie Daniels Band would be a huge tragedy for all of music. There are enough artist left out there now that are still doing the southern rock sound that it could still be a viable genre and I think it’s time for that genre to find its way back again. If I had one thing to say to the southern rock genre wherever it is currently, I would have to paraphrase some lyrics from a Marshall Tucker Band song, “Take the highway, Lord knows you’ve been gone too long.” Want to read more about the Southern Rock genre? Read the book "Rebel Yell" by Michael Buffalo Smith
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I was sitting at the house this past weekend looking for something to watch on television, when I came across AMC showing the movie “The Natural” with Robert Redford. It only had about thirty minutes left in the movie and for anyone that has ever watched the movie you know that is the best part. Not to spoil the movie if you’ve never seen it, but in the end he knocks the cover off the ball hitting a homerun to win the game, sorry if that spoiled the movie for you but seriously the movie was made in 1984, it’s over thirty years old, it was bound to happen.
Anyways, as I watching the movie it reminded me of a conversation that I had with my brother a few years ago where we debated who would be on your team if you were to make a baseball team out of movie characters from baseball movies. One of the stipulations though was that the players you picked couldn’t be real baseball players or my whole list would have come straight out of “Pride of the Yankess”, “61*”, “Eight Men Out”, and “Field of Dreams”. I mean those movies contained Hall of Famers, it would be hard not to just pick all of those guys. I also tried to limit myself to only using a max of three players from a certain movie or movie franchise (aka Major League). With all of that in mind, this was my team that I put together: Catcher – Crash Davis, Durham Bulls, from the movie Bull Durham I mean when you start looking at your options of catcher it really comes down to three; Crash, Jake Taylor and Dottie Henson. I decided to go with Crash because he brings a sense of leadership to the team, he proved in Bull Durham that he was good at helping a young pitcher learn how to pitch in the big leagues. Also, Crash was the all-time leading home run hitter in the minor leagues, you may look at him spending his whole career in the minors (except for those 21 days he spent in the majors) as a negative on him but I look at it as a negative on the MLB scouts, you’re telling me the California Angels were so good back then they couldn’t have taken a chance on him? First Baseman – Lou Collins, Minnesota Twins, from Little Big League When choosing my first baseman it was between Lou Collins and Jack Elliot from Mr. Baseball. After I compared their situations in the movies, it wasn’t hard to decide, Lou was a MLB All-Star and Jack Elliot was having a hard time getting hits in the Japanese Baseball League at one point in the movie. While Lou was benched at one point during the season it was mainly because he was dating the manager’s mom (never a good idea) and really had nothing to do with his on-the-field performance. Second Baseman – Marla Hooch, Rockford Peaches, from A League of Their Own I’m going to be upfront and honest about this selection, when you watch a lot of baseball movies, there isn’t a lot of stories about the middle infielders, they are usually just some goofy, quirky person and you barely get to know anything more than their first name. Anyways back to my pick, I know there are some drawbacks to picking Marla (like she quit in the middle of the season to get married) but the positives far outweigh the negatives. In the movie she shows there is a lot of power with the bat, a quality you don’t find a lot in the second base position and a skill that her dad believed would have had him talking to the Yankees if she was a guy. My only other consideration for this position was Miguel Agilar from the original Bad News Bears as he wasn’t the best player but his short stature made it tough for pitchers to throw strikes which would lead to a very good on-base percentage. Shortstop – Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez, Los Angeles Dodgers, from The Sandlot My whole rant from earlier about middle infielders in movies also applies here but the fact that The Jet not only can play shortstop but also the facts that he outran The Beast and stole home in a major league game makes him a clear choice as my starting shortstop. They say that the jet has lost a step but he’s still got enough talent to start on my baseball movie team. Third Baseman – Roger Dorn, Cleveland Indians, from Major League I know I complained about the middle infielders but the talent pool in movies for third basemen isn’t much better. I know what you’re saying, with Dorn you may have to deal some of that Ole’ Bullmess, but we’ll make sure that he is aware early on that he will be traded away for a worse player at the end of the season or to make sure Jake has a talk with him at some point, either way we expect to get the All-Star level Dorn, not that Ole’…..well you know. Left Field – Kelly Leak, Bad News Bears, from The Bad News Bears When you start getting to the outfield position in movies, there seems to be a lot more of a talent pool to pull from, it’s like movie directors only know about outfielders and pitchers. It must be a Hollywood thing, I’ll tell Travis to talk his sister Lynly (she works there in Hollywood) into making more baseball movies about infielders to make this a little easier next time. Anyways, you can’t turn down a player like Kelly Leak, he’s a natural team leader (just his presence made the Bad News Bears better) and he’s a true clutch hitter. The only flaw to having him on our team is he that he is known my some locals to be and I quote “a little punk”. We don’t trust the lady that told us that though, she seemed to be a little biased in her rooting interests in that final game. Center Field – Willie Mays Hayes, Cleveland Indians, from Major League First of all, he plays like Mays and runs like Hayes, those are some pretty good comparisons if I do say so myself. If that isn’t enough to hook your interest though, what if I told you that in Spring Training he not only caught but passed two other players in a 40-yard dash in his pajamas after giving them a ten yard head start. It’s like the old saying says, speed kills and Willie Mays Hayes has more than enough to be our center fielder and leadoff hitter. Right Field – Roy Hobbs, New York Knights, from The Natural I know that if have you read this far it seems like a long time ago since I first started talking about this movie but the man hit a homerun that knocked the cover off the baseball. If that’s not enough, he hit it into the stadium lights that caused them to short circuit, when was the last time you have seen anyone do that? He’s a little old in his thirties to be a rookie but the power that he shows at the plate is second to none. As an owner I will ask him to try and keep the short circuiting of the light system to a minimum but if it’s to win a pennant then we can make exceptions I guess. Pitcher – Henry Rowengartner, Chicago Cubs, from Rookie of the Year Ever since that surgery, he seems to have great control of that 100 mph fastball that he can suddenly throw. While the fastball is the key pitch it’s the other intangibles that made me pick him as our starting pitcher. First of all, his off-speed pitch is pretty good too, I mean it nearly made the feared Mets’ hitter spin himself into the ground trying to hit it. We will probably need to work on the delivery though as the ‘float it’ pitch will become evident to major league hitters when you keep throwing It from a slow pitch softball stance. The other thing we really like is that he has good smarts for a young pitcher, at the age of 12 he was able to trick a major league runner into trying to steal second base while he was still holding the baseball, who needs a good pickoff move when you can do that? Closer – Rick Vaughn, Cleveland Indians, from Major League I mean did you really think it was going to be anyone else? Rick single handedly started making it cool for major league pitchers to enter the game with theme music, which “Wild Thing” is still one of the coolest entrance songs there is. In the movies, Rick was often a starting pitcher who struggled but would often flourish when put into the closer’s role in big game situations, which leads me to question how good of a manager Lou really was, why not just let him be the best closer in the game and quit trying to make him a starter!! Manager – Morris Buttermaker, Bad News Bears, from The Bad News Bears Is there a better manager for a team with some decent talent? He didn’t lose but one game once he got Amanda pitching and Kelly Leak playing left field. I debated between Lou Brown (which I disclosed my worries about him in the last entry) and Jimmy Dugan (has been known to have a drinking problem which effected his managing) also but in the end neither had anything on Buttermaker. So there you have it, my starting nine from baseball movies (plus the closer) and the manger to guide that team. The best thing about a blog like this is that it opens up a fun debate you can have with your friends, family, and co-workers. Travis and I even discussed who our team announcers would be with Harry Doyle winning out just barely over the announcer from Bull Durham. What did you think of my team and how would your team be different? |
JamesBoiling Springs native, lover of sports and food. 15x SC Press Association Award Winner. I do some sports writing and radio every now and then. Archives
April 2020
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