Work has been kicking my butt this week. It didn't help that I had to drive over 5 hours yesterday -- leave at 7 AM, get home at 8:40 PM -- for a meeting in Birmingham, Alabama that took longer than I expected and gave a result that could have been better. Sometimes, that is what is required. I don't think I ever saw business travel on L.A. Law like that. Still, I'm pretty well paid. I have a good life. To complain about work (rather than Topps Now) would just be petty. But, seeing as P-Town Tom sent me two great cards in a PWE recently, I think I'll use this as an excuse to play a couple of songs about work since that's what is on my brain right now.
The Johnny Paycheck classic from 1977, "Take This Job & Shove It", was actually written by David Allan Coe. To be fair, there is another version that really gives more of the feel of how this week has gone:
Dead Kennedys covered the song in 1986 on the album Bedtime for Democracy. That album actually hit number 1 on the UK Indie Chart in 1986. That album didn't have the songs that all the punk kids really liked, such as "Nazi Punks F**k Off" or "Terminal Preppie" from their earlier albums. Nor did it sell as many copies as the 1987 compilation/B-sides album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death with its anthems "Too Drunk to F**k", "California Über Alles," "Holiday in Cambodia," and "Night of the Living Rednecks," among others. That one went gold -- not bad for a nihilist hardcore punk band who had broken up by the time the album was released.
Apropos of a nihilist hardcore punk band is this Upper Deck hologram of Robin Yount. This is the card that led to this PWE from Tom, since I needed a copy of it for my collection. Once you get to the point that a card is more than 2/3 made of a cheap plastic mirror, you've crossed into nihilist territory. Nothing has meaning any more. Nothing.
Once I crossed into punk and started talking about work, it was almost a guarantee that this Joe Strummer/Mick Jones collaboration would make an appearance. There's a line in this song that says, "I won't open letter bombs for you" which is actually a job that Mick Jones had -- opening mail for the government to make sure that the IRA or some other organization hadn't decided to send a little surprise.
Speaking of a little surprise, Tom found this 2007 Topps Update card of Prince Fielder with a buyback stamp on it in some packs he was opening. To be honest, I'm disappointed -- this is my first copy of this card, and it has the extraneous marring on the card. I know some of you just file these away with their original series, but the pedantic in me (remember, please, that I am a professional pedant by being a lawyer) says, "Nope, this is a different card."
I wish I could be laissez faire about this, but I"m a true stickler when it comes to my collection. This is different from a regular issue 2007 Topps Update card number UH207, so, despite all the other accoutrements, it's a 2016 buyback version.
Out of the blue last week, an envelope from Robért of $30 A Week Habit arrived at my house carrying a multitude of great cards. If you know something about Robért, you know about his Serial Insanity Frankenset. As best I can tell, he is still four cards away, maybe three (there's some cognitive dissonance going on there) from completing that set. His love of counting and numbers and such gave the inspiration for me to go for a numerically themed music post. That's right -- these songs all have numbers in their title to honor Robért's insanity. "Song 2" -- Blur
Woo-hoo, indeed. This song comes straight from the "Creep" by Radiohead book of songs that sound nearly nothing like most of the rest of the band's catalog. I wonder if it came about in the same way as "Creep" -- that is, that someone heard a guitar lick and created a song around it.
Of course, "Song 2" got sampled and played at nearly every NBA game from 1999 through about 2012 to destroy the hearing of every patron in the building, all in an effort to create fake excitement midway through the third quarter of a game between the 2006 Bucks and the 2016 76ers.
NBA Fever: Catch It!
Of course, I like "Song 2" and only wish it hadn't turned into a stadium cheer. I like these Triple Threads base cards too. I just wish Topps would give up on the charade of base cards mattering in a set like Triple Threads and just go to the Dynasty plan of all relics all the time. That way, I could ignore it.
This way, though, I have to try to pick up two of each of these cards (still need one more Braun!) to satisfy my player collection and my team collection.
"Four Horsemen" -- The Clash
I've liked The Clash since 1982 when, as a 10-year-old, I fell in love with the song "Rock the Casbah" off Combat Rock. I sort of forgot about them during the rest of the 1980s as I noodled through any number of different genres of music -- everything from Oingo Boingo to the Psychedelic Furs to Soul II Soul and Metallica and Anthrax.
I got to college in 1990, and a guy who lived in my dorm whom I hung out with a fair amount got me back into The Clash. I gave him a tape, and he dubbed London Calling onto it for me. I wore that tape nearly out. The guy ended up being my roommate my senior year and, later, through his wife, I got my start in construction law through him.
So, in a way, The Clash made me what I am today.
I guess, in many ways, the same can be said about 1982 and the Milwaukee Brewers. I was a fan before 1982 -- definitely. We watched games on TV when we could get them; that meant usually about 15 to 20 away games a year on a UHF station in those days. I never went to a Brewers game that I can remember, though, until baseball cards led me there in 1982.
Thanks to Brewers Police Card day in May of 1982, my love for the Brewers and baseball cards was cemented. That wild ride through that magical season -- and getting to see the Brewers' last home game in 1982 in Game 5 of the World Series -- was spearheaded by the MVP and Molly.
"Three Little Birds" -- Bob Marley and The Wailers
While many people hear "The Clash" and think "punk," the reality is that Joe Strummer (in particular) and the rest of the band were influenced a great deal by reggae. That's particularly obvious on The Clash's first self-titled album in their cover of "Police and Thieves."
So, following The Clash with Bob Marley makes complete sense.
In fact, those two together make much more sense than some of the tribute sets that have come out over the years. Did we need a clear Pinnacle insert? Probably not, though they look pretty good. Did we need short-printed Goudey photos in 2008? Almost certainly not. Did we need blue-bordered Heritage in 2014? No, but for the Brewers I'd argue that the blue-border is a definite improvement on the original.
"Six Underground" -- Sneaker Pimps
I've always been a sucker for British bands. I've always been a sucker for bands with female lead singers whose voices are strangely sweet sounding, like Kelli Ali of Sneaker Pimps in this song. It's sort of like Mazzy Star, though Mazzy Star was more like "hey let's get high and put on a CD and listen to the whole thing on repeat and 7 hours will pass and we won't even notice because every single song sounds nearly the same and the music is just ethereal and where the hell are we now?" You know? I don't, but Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star was pretty hot in that video 22 years ago when she was 28 and I was 22. I'm now officially rambling. Minis from Gypsy Queen kind of strike me as being a good idea in a Mazzy Star sort of way rather than in a trip-hop Sneaker Pimps sort of way. Sure, I needed the Lucroy for my player collection and all, and the Jungmann -- well, there's no need to feel down, Taylor. But they just seem like they would have been a better idea when I was 22. "One Hundred Punks" -- Generation X
This song came out in 1978 from a band named for a sociology book from 1965. If that lead singer's voice sounds familiar, well, it should -- it's Billy Idol. I first heard that song on a compilation album of punk songs called Punk You! Songs for the Discerning Slacker Punk that also featured such awesome songs as "Oh Bondage (Up Yours)" by X-Ray Spex and "Alternative Ulster" by Stiff Little Fingers. If you like punk music at all and haven't heard of those songs, you need to check them out. I could have sworn that I had this Eddie Mathews already. It's a Gypsy Queen insert this year, I think, but it marks approximately the 79th straight year that Topps has used this same photo on one of its cards for Mathews. Okay, that's an exaggeration. But, it's got to be close to at least 15 years running that that photo has appeared on a Mathews card. Heck, it even appeared on a TCMA card in the mid-1980s. Maybe instead of a rainbow, I should do a "Mathbow" of as many cards as possible with that photo. Naw. I'd go broke. The other Braun insert looks suspiciously like a mugshot. Maybe that is what some unlicensed card issuer should do -- issue a set of baseball mugshots. But, then again, Braun was never convicted of a crime. Just of steroid use. Thanks for the great cards, Robért!
Over the weekend on Netflix, I watched most of the CNN series called "The Seventies." I remember about one-third of the 1970s -- the last third, of course, being born in 1971. The first episode covered television. After that, it was the momentous events of the decade. I finished the last show in the series tonight. They saved the best for last, of course -- covering the music of the 1970s in the final episode. Chris Connelly -- the ESPN guy who took over Grantland when Bill Simmons left the nest -- made a bold statement to the effect that every kind of rock music ever was done best in the 1970s. I think that is hyperbole, to be fair. Rap was definitely not done best in the 1970s, even with "Rapper's Delight."
As the series points out, this very song gave "Hip-Hop" its name. That said, it's still pretty primordial and hasn't hit its stride quite yet.
Still, that statement bugged me because I tried to come up with better music from another time. Hard Rock? Nope -- 1980s hair metal in all its glory couldn't match up with Black Sabbath.
Punk was in its full pomp in the 1970s too -- far better than the Green Day revival that took place in the 1980s. I mean, no other decade had The Clash at its very finest. After all, Rolling Stone had to go to the 1970s for its album of the decade, "London Calling."
How about country music? Arguably, the 1970s were not as good as, say, the 1960s or 1950s. Then, you see Loretta Lynn (Coal Miner's Daughter), Dolly Parton (I Will Always Love You), Kenny Rogers (The Gambler), and the perfect country and western song, written by Steve Goodman:
David Allan Coe is a notoriously temperamental performer who might show up and play for four hours or who might not like the looks of the front row of a crowd and just storm off the stage. He did this a couple of times in Athens at the Georgia Theater, I was told. I had heard the stories and just avoided the shows.
But still -- the more I think about it, the more Chris Connelly has a point. Sometimes, the Good Old Days actually WERE that good.
In some respects, I sometimes feel like baseball cards in the 1960s and 1970s were better than what we have today. What do we have that is good today?
Well, we get autographs in packs. We get pieces of cloth embedded in cards. We get 20 different versions of the same card, with some even serial numbered. We even have the Topps Now cards, so Topps can issue cards immediately (your shipping time may vary).
What did the 1960s and 1970s have?
Those decades had cards issued in series for well over half the time in question. Then, there might be coins inserted in cards. Sometimes, there would be oddballs issued by Topps. There would be oddballs issued by cereal companies, confectioneries, bakeries, insurance companies, fast-food joints, convenience stories, hot dog makers, and with potato chips.
Speaking of which, here's an oddball Topps card that I got for a $5 bill (including shipping) on eBay recently:
By that alone, the good old days win in a landslide.
Thanks for stopping by tonight. I'll be in Nashville all week after this for an American Bar Association meeting, so I'll see y'all on Saturday!
How else can you explain why Julie from A Cracked Bat would be sending out so many cards to so many people? She must have some kind of "connections" that are allowing her to put such great envelopes of cards together for people.
I have traded with Julie a couple of times already. In fact, my last trade post (called imaginatively "Julie: A Trade Post") is one of my most viewed posts ever (with over 1150 hits). It might be the American Girl part of the post that draws random hits to the post, but it's more likely that the world wants more "Cracked Bat"!
This time around, Julie sent me several very recent cards from a couple of the higher end sets:
Now that's a lot of Lucroy right there -- two of the Museum Collection base card parallels, the Topps Triple Threads base of both Luc and Gomez, the Lucroy Green parallel, and the Red prism card from Panini that reminds me of a Picasso painting for some reason.
Maybe.
Anyway, Julie also treated me to some relics and autographs too.
Coooooooooooooop! Dave Parker was a Brewer for just one year, but apparently the Brewers kept every one of his old uniforms to let Upper Deck cut them up into little squares. Finally, there's Carlos Villanueva, who was last seen in the bullpen for Baseball's Best Fans (who really seem to believe that Jason Heyward should have felt more kinship to St. Louis after 1 season than he would show for any other team in baseball).
Finally, Julie hooked me up with a few random cards for a couple of my other player collections:
Each of these great cards -- including the Gallardo Chrome Heritage up top -- were ones I knew that I needed for my player collections.
This last one, though, was not. I mean, I'm not a Scott Fletcher collector, except for his cards with the Brewers, of course...
...well played, Julie! Well played.
Thanks again for the great cards you've sent this time. And, guess what? I've been collecting up cards to send your way soon!
This season has been something of a lost year for the Brewers. The team sucked immediately out of the gate. Despite this, the team rallied some and, despite being 19 games under .500 as of August 24 with a 53-72 record, they are unlikely to get the first overall pick in the draft. In fact, even though the Brewers are worse than every American League team (the closest one to them is Oakland, who are a game ahead of the Brewers at 54-71, despite having scored 11 more runs than they have allowed), they are better than four other National League teams: the Rockies (49-73), the Phillies (50-74), the Marlins (50-74) and the Reds (51-71). Just a half game better than the Brewers are the Atlanta Braves at 53-71. It's been a depressing season in that regard. Little attention is paid to wins and losses at this point. I rarely pay that much attention to whether they win or lose. It's made collecting cards a little tough too -- with little interest in the current team, I find it difficult to get enthused about going out and buying cards of Houston Astro Carlos Gomez, or St. Louis Cardinal Jonathan Broxton, or Minnesota Twin Neal Cotts. Thankfully, that's where the Brewers being fairly ignored by Topps comes in handy. Another unfortunate side effect for me with the Brewers being so bad is that I really haven't paid that much attention to trading. I owe cards to a number of people -- again...just like last fall. Just like last fall, I went through a period of uncertainty in June and July, as I was trying to scrounge up business half the day and trying to bill a little bit of time so that I could pay my bills. It was extremely stressful, and it taught me several lessons for whenever I might think about doing the solo practice thing again in the future. Now, though, it's the other way in life. I'm now buried in work, I'm getting home later, and I'm much more tired than before. It's a good thing to have a steady income, and it's a good firm for me to build a future -- but man it's a lot of work. That's a long way toward saying that I've been on a bit of a cold streak in terms of trading. I sent out a bunch of packages about 6 weeks ago, but many of those were returns. Recently, though, I stuffed an envelope full of toploaders and shipped them to Portland. Gavin was kind enough to send me a bunch of great cards back that he picked up at a card show. Like, lots of Bowman, for example:
Thanks to the year 1999 being spent for me working and drinking rather than working and collecting, all of these were new to me. Oh, and the Kiefer? I was in college then. It was an experimental time for me.
Not that Radiohead counts as being too experimental... Anyway, Gavin also sent me three Ryan Brauns that I needed for my player collection:
Oddly, I had the Prizm parallel but not the base Prizm card for that 2013 Braun on the Milwaukee Baseball Club and dressed in black like he listens to the Cure.
Yes, I liked Better Than Ezra. They were definitely better than that guy Ezra. Actually, I saw them play in 1996 at the 40 Watt in Athens, and they put on a fantastic show. Sort of like how Prince Fielder always put on a big show in batting practice -- even as a kid like that one card from 2010 said:
Those Princes...there's more than two there, but that tie is what comes to mind.
I could have seen the Spin Doctors for free when I was in college, but I couldn't be bothered to walk across campus to see them. Then, the next summer, that "Two Princes" song got huge. Oops. Gavin found a two relics and an autograph that I needed in my collection as well. One is a Sheets, and the other two are guys who never made it...
In Ball Four, Jim Bouton referred to guys getting sent down to the minors as guys "dying." Well, this one's for Chad Green and Jeff Deardorff then.
Saving the best for last, Gavin sent me three Milwaukee Braves cards!
The great thing about that Mound Magicians card is that it goes into my Burdette collection. Now, I only need one more for my Braves team collection.
The Chairman of the Board said he did it his way. But, I can't close it out there. Gavin didn't send a note with these cards, but he e-mailed me to say what he would have said in the note. His P.S. is especially poignant. "P.S. The Clash Rules!" Yes. Yes they do.
Gavin, many thanks for the great cards! I still owe you some Reggies....
