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THE
FOOTBALL ALBUMS More song synopses from back in the day:
BILLS When I got back into football after not having paid attention through my ’80s adolescence, I decided to root for the Buffalo Bills, because I had friends who lived in nearby Olean, New York, and because I remembered them having an image so unglamorous not even OJ could make them interesting. Then they started going to Super Bowls and losing them, and then my friends in Olean—who spent their summers cleaning dorms at nearby Alfred University where the Bills had their training camp—started telling me nasty stories about players scamming on skanky underage girls and having to clean up the messes they made together. Yech. BACK TO TOP JETS Whatever you wanna say about Parcells, it cannot be denied that the man is single-handedly responsible for the best thing to happen to football in the last two decades, namely, bringing back the Jets old uniforms. What a precedent. BACK TO TOP DOLPHINS Okay, look at the Dolphins’ helmet logo. The dolphin is wearing a helmet. What then should be on the dolphin’s helmet? A dolphin, right? Wearing a helmet with another dolphin, who’s wearing another helmet with yet another dolphin, and so forth. BACK TO TOP COLTS The statute of limitations on the Colts’ ignoble desertion of Baltimore ran out the moment Robert Irsay’s life did. Which is good, because I’m prepared to forgive them: I always did like Jim Harbaugh, especially during the period when the Colts were experimenting with the no-offensive-line-whatsoever formation, and Harbaugh was getting his teeth shoved down his throat on every down, and dude just kept getting back up. And then he punched out that big jake, Jim Kelly! Awesome! BACK TO TOP PATRIOTS When the young Drew Bledsoe put his signing bonus in the bank, he called up his bank’s 1-800 number over and over, listening to the automated voice reciting his suddenly very large balance, and giggling himself sick. Nothing to do with the song, but that’s why I like the Patriots still. My folks are from Sharon, and Bob Fay bought his drums there. BACK TO TOP JAGUARS Does anyone else remember this? I’m only guessing that it was the Steelers they were playing, but there was definitely some game in Jacksonville during their first or second season where they’d painted a big Santa Claus in the center of the field where the team insignia usually goes. BACK TO TOP RAVENS There was a brief—very brief—period after the end of the 1997–98 season during which Jim Kelly was considering coming out of retirement to play for Baltimore. This song was written during that period, and imagines the delightful scenario that would have awaited him there. Instead we have to settle for Scott Mitchell, which is almost as good. BACK TO TOP OILERS Probably the worst thing DiskothiQ’s ever done, which is kind of saying a lot. BACK TO TOP BENGALS I’m actually an apologist for the Bengals’ uniforms, if only because of the fact that their helmet design is one of only two in professional football that utilizes the helmet as three-dimensional object, rather than just a billboard for a logo (the Rams’ is the other, if you’re wondering). But I do miss the old seventies ones: there was something uncannily right about the proportions of the typeface, a look at once unassuming, rugged, and elegant. Parcells’ next rescue project? BACK TO TOP STEELERS Verses tossed together at the last minute, inspired by an H.L. Mencken essay portraying Pittsburgh as the most abysmally, hideously, unspeakably ugly place man has ever created. Mencken was a pretty funny guy, but you get the feeling that hanging out with him would’ve been like hanging out with a stand-up comic who’s always trying out his new material on whoever’s around, and after a while it would’ve stopped being funny. BACK TO TOP BROWNS The Browns! Reincarnated as the true America’s Team—now owned by MBNA chairman Al Lerner, and me and you and everyone else in this country with revolving credit helped pay for them. And you’ll not find a better non-sequitur in all of sports than the Browns’ plain orange helmet. BACK TO TOP RAIDERS Written driving home alone in the rain from seeing Lou Barlow play a most disquieting show in West L.A., his first after moving out here. One of those “more than we really needed to know, thanks” shows. A fucking blood-bath, basically. But nothing, nothing next to the glory of the Raiders, I tell you. God bless ’em. BACK TO TOP CHARGERS I can hear y’all now: where’s the Cryin’ Leaf references?!? You mean you’re unimpressed by the “San Diego/hate L.A. go” rhyme? BACK TO TOP SEAHAWKS I’m always bummed when teams ditch their logos in favor of new, more fashionable ones, because the only way the great, timeless logos got that way was through decades of permeating the culture at large and the years worth of associations they’ve accumulated. I mean, the Broncos’ old D-with-prancing-horse logo was hardly a classic from a purely design perspective, but it was well on its way to achieving icon status just because it’d been in use for so long; think how much more resonance Elway’s first Super Bowl non-choke would’ve had if he’d been wearing the same uniform as before. All that said, I’ve been looking at the Seahawks’ helmets for more than twenty years now, and they still look just plain weird. BACK TO TOP CHIEFS Early on in the going John Darnielle enthused, “The great thing about this is that if I were doing it, I would say okay, I’m gonna write a bunch of songs about football, but then after two songs I’d just be writing about people in failing relationships sitting in the stands—but you guys are gonna do it for real!” Well, kinda. I’d already decided that for this to be at all tolerable, we’d have to approach the songs from as many different angles as we could think of. So this is the song John would have written. BACK TO TOP
BRONCOS Lame
teams deserve lame songs.
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