Card Show, Post 2: Atypical

When I asked for musical recommendations on Saturday, the very first responses I got came from Crackin' Wax and Zippy Zappy. Crackin' Wax a/k/a Chris f/k/a Topher jumped in immediately with his personal favorite band from 10 years ago, and Zippy Zappy chimed in with his favorite music from 1000 years ago.  Huh?

Yeah, really. 

ZZ is rocking the medieval, while Crackin' Wax is all over Mutemath. Considering that this post is really just a way to show off the rest of my non-Topps Brewers purchases from a card show six weeks ago, all the retro feels appropriate. 

Starting things off: Vox Vulgaris - Cantiga 166

Be sure to listen to at least the 3:30 mark, where there's a drum solo that would make Dave Grohl jealous. No, seriously, there's actually a pretty decent drum break in the middle of the song. To be fair, this song is a good representation of medieval music in many respects. There are a lot of folks who really dig this music. 

To me, well, I have to admit: it's a bit of a yawner. Granted, I didn't expect to start dancing in my chair as if it were a medieval version of Lil Jon or something, but this one was quite subdued.

Subdued is an appropriate way to feel when the Donruss reboot brand shows up. If only Panini could figure out the fact that the damn D doesn't need to take up a quarter of the card, they might have a decent design. Panini is just so frustrating. Maybe if they had logos. Maybe if they had a better designer. Maybe if they stopped making baseball cards.

ZZ must have been in a very quiet, pensive mood when I caught him on Saturday. This medieval waltz is slightly more upbeat, but man...

Medieval music is less engaging to modern ears not because it is medieval. It is because of technology and musical evolution. Musicians did not start using polyphony -- playing intervals of the same chord rather than playing in unison -- until the last half of the ninth century. It took quite some time for that to spread. 

Further, written music did not evolve until later in the Middle Ages. Church music was learned by singing along with the group and listening to match pitch -- no one read music, and harmonizing just did not happen in the Church until the 10th or 11th century.

Finally, the instruments of the Middle Ages tended not to have great range in dynamics -- in how loudly and softly they could play. For instance, the harpsichord was probably invented in the Middle Ages, and it could only play either loud or soft -- not in between. 

While there are certainly going to be outliers from these general points, I'm going out on a limb and saying that orchestral music today is better now than it was in 1400.

There was a rich vein of Diamond King cards in the dime boxes I was going through. I have to admit that I really liked the cards too -- in hand, they feel special...almost like canvas. Perhaps Panini should use that to their advantage and make the set more about forgotten players of the 1910s through the 1950s more than about current players. 

Give me a card of George "High Pockets" Kelly (a Hall of Famer, by the way, and perhaps one of the worst decisions of the Veterans Committee of the 1970s, but still...) or Dolf Luque or Carl Furillo rather than yet another card for Babe Ruth. I know -- could be more difficult to get permission and all -- but wouldn't a unique set be worth it?

Okay, time to switch gears.

MuteMath came out of the New Orleans music scene in the early part of the 2000s. I recall this song best from them -- it's one that would get stuck in my head constantly about 10 years ago. 

Excitingly, MuteMath will be coming to Atlanta to play the Shaky Beats Festival in early May. Joining them on the bill are The Chainsmokers, Kaskade, Griz, and one of Dayf's recommendations -- Bonobo. 

You know, I miss going to shows sometimes. I haven't been to one in quite a while, but I find that the music I like tends not to draw 45-year-old men. I look a bit out of place, to say the least.

Speaking of "out of place," finding these Score Dugout Collection cards from 1996 in a dime box was a bit out of place to me. I don't believe I have ever seen these before, so finding what appeared to be a complete set threw me off. I knew immediately that I did not have these, so into my stack they went.

When Chris recommended MuteMath to me, he thought initially that the band was from Atlanta. We quickly figured out that was wrong and that they are New Orleanians. Whenever I think of New Orleans bands, there are a number of bands I think of, but the one of recent vintage that really grabbed me was Cowboy Mouth. 

Cowboy Mouth was really big around here about 20 or so years ago. They had a really big hit with "Jenny Says" in 1997. Okay, "really big" is relative -- the song hit number 26 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and Number 33 on the Modern Rock chart. It was huge here. The lead singer, Fred LeBlanc, is also their drummer, and he played in a band called Dash Rip Rock for a while in the late 1980s as well.

Rally caps might be some of the dumbest things I have ever seen on a baseball card. Even dumber than Jay Johnstone with the Budweiser umbrella hat. That's just ghastly.

On the other hand, the Ben Oglivie card in the Ted Williams set is downright beautiful. Benji was always a favorite thanks to his flailing swings at the plate, his high-energy warm-up cuts between pitches, and his real love for the game that always showed itself when he played. He is also a very smart man, too.

Okay, can't quit that soon -- so let's hear that "big hit" by Cowboy Mouth:

Thanks for stopping by tonight. 

Depressed Twins Fans and Brewers Fans Have to Stick Together

For people who have never spent any significant time in the Midwest, there are several truths about the good people in our nation's upper midsection -- particularly people from Minnesota and Wisconsin -- that most people do not know. 

First, people from Wisconsin are super nice people -- nicer even than Southerners. Thing is, they are also incredibly blunt and have a little less tact than most folks do, so they'll tell you to your face what a moron you are for doing something stupid, but then they'll laugh about it with you and buy you a beer, a shot of Jager, and a brandy old-fashioned sweet. 

Similarly, Minnesota people are incredibly nice people. They are so preternaturally nice that they even mock themselves for it -- calling it "Minnesota Nice." Minnesota Nice means something close to this: let's say it's 10 below zero outside in Minnesota -- you know, October. If they see your freezing butt walking around without gloves, they'll hand you their gloves, tell you it's no big deal, and continue to tell you that they are good even as you watch their hands turn purple and fall off from frostbite. It's Minnesota Nice -- niceness to the point of craziness.

The other thing, though, is that there is truly a major divide at the Mississippi River, the St. Croix River, and that straight line north to Lake Superior when it comes to sports. Sure, there are a fair number of Packers/Brewers fans that live west of that line and there are a few Vikings/Twins fans that live east of that line, but it is a lot fewer than you would expect. Within that divide is a major, hateful rivalry that makes the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry appear tame. It is certainly more on the NFL side and many folks will tell you that the Vikings fans hate the Packers fans much, much more than the other way around (like this ESPN article that claims that Packers fans pay more attention and save more bile for the Bears than for the Vikings).

That's partially because Chicago is closer to the major metropolitan areas in Wisconsin (Milwaukee) and partially because the Vikings haven't won a Super Bowl. Ever. Despite 4 tries.

I will add that the Twin Cities have plenty of gorgeous, tall blond women like these two. It's all that Nordic ancestry. In fact, Travel + Leisure magazine ranked the Twin Cities in the Top 10 for attractive, athletic, likable people -- at number 6, ahead of #7 Nashville, #8 Atlanta, #9 Honolulu, and #10 Tampa. By the way, Detroit had the least attractive people in the country. So, the two women above should not be seen as outliers.

It's to the point that there are plenty of Minnesota Twins fans -- many from the upper Midwest outside of Minnesota in particular -- who eschew cheering for the Vikings and choose, instead, to cheer for other NFL teams. My Twitter pal @Brud4merica -- a/k/a Depressed Twins Fan -- is one of those. Even though he got sucked into being a Twins fan by Kirby Puckett, Brad Radke, and Jacque Jones, among others, he declares himself to be a Patriots fan. Of course, he's an Iowan (there's no other reason on God's green earth to be an Iowa Hawkeyes fan other than being from Iowa, so that's my logical deduction there).

He's also served our country as a soldier and now finds himself stuck outside of Augusta, Georgia. As good looking as Atlanta people are, that's how ugly Augusta is. I dislike Augusta with a fire of a 1000 suns. The best week of the year in Augusta is Masters week, and that's because all the people who normally populate Augusta leave town and allow outsiders to take over. 

That's a long introduction to get to the fact that Brud sent me a nice little PWE of some great cards for my Brewers collection. 

With the focus in Milwaukee on the future, I've been spending a lot of time getting my Bowman cards organized. I'm starting to put all the parallels and inserts into binders -- anything serial numbered to 100 or more goes into the binders, with anything else that I have being a bonus. I'm into 2007, so it's been slow going, but I'm getting there. Hopefully soon I'll have caught up entirely so I'll know how many of these Monte Harrison cards I have. I think it's more than one, but I don't know for sure.

A little unlogoed love here. I needed the Lucroy for my Donruss-Lite collection from this year. I'm not sure about the Yount yet -- getting the Panini parallels and inserts into binders is low on the priority list; finishing off the oddballs is after Bowman, followed by all the Topps parallels and inserts. So, when I finish that sometime in the middle of 2018, I'll get around to the Panini parallels.

These Panini cards helped protect the card that was the focus of the PWE:

I miss Upper Deck. Sure, they did all the crazy parallels that Topps now feels obligated to try to recreate. But Upper Deck cards just were (shhhhh....don't say it too loudly) BETTER than Topps's efforts for the same years. Seriously. Upper Deck Masterpieces did the whole "artsy card" that Topps started with Gallery a lot better, frankly, than Gallery did it. This 2008 UD Masterpieces "Captured on Canvas" is excellent -- the texture of the card, in particular, feels like it is actual canvas that artists use for oil painting. I know it's probably not, but it feels like it.

My thanks go out to Brud both for the service to our country and for the cards. I'm putting together a responsive envelope for you soon.