(Yes, this is a re-post, you aren’t crazy.)
While this may be a bit of a controversial statement these days, I love Against Me! If you’ve been following the United States punk scene (or, lets face it, if you’ve been reading Punknews) for the past give or take six years you’ve heard of these guys. It’s a pretty typical story of “band starts out performing in basements, becomes noticed and signed to an established independent label for a few years before moving to a subsidiary of Warner Brothers and alienating half of their fans in the process.” Given the current state of the music industry, stuff like this happens pretty often. What was once the unforgivable sin of “selling your soul” and signing to a major label isn’t as taboo as it was when Henry Rollins didn’t have gray hair. However, bands still take shit for it (from the fans who ostensibly gave them their career in the first place since all majors are looking for bands that come with a built in audience these days), but few took it as badly as Against Me! did (though some HAVE gotten worse.) Mind you, this is probably due to the song titles like “Baby I’m an Anarchist” and lyrics like “we want a band who plays loud and hard every night and doesn’t care how many people come in at the door; they would drive a hundred million miles and ask for nothing but a plate of food and a place to rest” along with a general dislike for the establishment that they based their early career on. However, from a strictly musical standpoint, they’re still making some of the best rock music out there (their latest effort (and Sire Records debut) New Wave is easily one of the best records of any genre of the last five years…although, calling it a punk record might be a little bit of a stretch) and I would personally rather see them getting attention than whatever emo band that formed last year is popular on MySpace this week. While I still see the validity of the scorned anarchist arguments against the band, I personally don’t see it as enough of a reason to stop listening since I generally don’t have problems with musicians making decisions that make it easier for them to be musicians as long as the music itself continues progressing logically (and remains entertaining.) To each his (or her) own I suppose.
Yeah, I know I haven’t updated in a while, and yeah I know this was supposed to be a music and pop culture blog and this is now my SECOND rant about baseball, but whatever.
Like most people who live in the Greater Boston Area, I’ve been pretty engrossed in the scandal that resulted in former Red Sox Left Fielder Manny Ramirez being traded, earlier this week, to the Los Angeles Dodgers after being a member of the Red Sox clubhouse for the past eight years and becoming a bit of a public darling around these parts.
While there have been a few isolated incidents throughout the season (Manny not showing up to spring training for one, his public bitch slapping of first baseman Kevin Youkilis earlier this summer for another), the drama came to a head last Sunday when Manny declared in a public interview, among other things, that “They’re (The Red Sox AND Boston, apparently) sick of me and I’m sick of them…I’ll accept any trade…I’ll even play in Iraq.” Despite being on the starting line-up for the the Sox/Yankees game later that night (and playing relatively well), the public flaming continued through the following series against the Los Angeles Angels until last Thursday when, just hours six hours before the trade deadline, he was gone. As it happens, the Sox took a major hit in order to not deal with him for another two months: not only did we also lose Craig Hanson and Brandon Moss in the deal, we’re also paying the rest of Manny’s paycheck for the season (somewhere in the range of 7 million bucks.) However, we did grab a new Left Fielder in the form of Jason Bay who has thus far been playing a lot better than Manny has in a long time and it appears that with him gone, team moral has improved. So in the long run, this might not be such a bad situation.
However, one thing really stuck out to me throughtout the whole proceedings. After being in LA for two days, Manny came out in favor of his new City and let this little nugget slip:
“I want peace,” Ramirez said. “After the game [Friday night], I went out to dinner and nobody bothers you. In Boston, you go from the stadium straight home. That’s what I’m talking about. Some people recognized me, said congratulations, that’s it. I could go to the movies with my family. I’ve got nothing against Boston, but this is what I’m looking for. The game is supposed to be fun.”
In other words, he got tired of being a professional athlete. Now, I’m not exactly famous, but I have enough forsight to know that when you put yourself in the kind of spotlight he put himself in you need to expect the consequences. He had no problem becoming a cultural icon before now, and lord knows he deserves it (what with 500+ homeruns under his belt), but to say that he wanted out of Boston because he was “too popular” is just a low blow. What? Does he plan to play like shit and be less of a spotlight hog in LA? Does he plan to retire next year before he stops being “the new guy” to the Dodgers fans? This statement makes so little sense it might as well be a new Mars Volta record (see? there’s an indie rock reference to shut up you purists.)I think Manny’s real issue is the fact that he doesn’t know how to choose his words and is listening to his retard manager just a little too much.
Ah well, fuck ‘im.
