The Hall of Fame game in Canton is coming up this Sunday. Saints vs. Cards. After that, regular season will be here and before you damned well know it the rest of your Sundays will be spent in a justifiable stupor while your Mondays get filled with a backlog of regret. I love the fall.
To get ready? Just watch this video. Watch it, and I won't have to say anything else. When you're done watching this short clip where Sweetness makes it to #5 on the all time NFL greatest list, track down a copy of his feature on A Football Life.
P.S. Drag and drop, right click, control-save, or whatever... the image above is 1440x900px so it'll fit your desktop for the entire 2012/13 season and the rest of your football loving life.
Sam Cooke & Summer Soul
Sam Cooke did about as much for race relations and pop music as Hemingway did for booze and prose. Unfortunately all we have to show for it today is Katy Perry and TMZ.
In 1957 You Send Me became the first African American written and performed song to rank Numero Uno on both R&B and Pop charts. After that, You Send Me sold over a million copies and went gold along with the rest of Sam Cooke's career, including the posthumously released, unofficial song for the Civil Rights movement, A Change is Gonna Come.
Before being shot to death at age 32 in 1964 in a seedy motel amidst suspicious, drunken prostitute circumstances, our golden boy of gospel and pop mentored the likes of Aretha Franklin and launched the career of greats like Otis Redding through his own record label.
Every day of your life is a good day to put on some Sam Cooke, but summer even more so. Nothing sounds better while enjoying a barbecue and beer on your upper middle class patio than the sounds of civil rights and soul (eeeeeh.... while I can't say it's possible to empathize, I revere and applaud the effort and accomplishment). But hey, if you enjoy the boy, you should learn a bit about his contributions to civil rights and pop music before it eventually mutated into LOL txts, teenagers, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.
I feel sorry for house music and the youth of today. Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.
While I just can't figure the house music liking ways of the youth today, maybe I'm out of the loop... but if I were to spend an enjoyable day manning the barbecue with friends, I'd want to be able to look back later on it in my twilight years, thinking, Ah yes, this sounds like the best of times. It warms my senior citizen, diabetic heart to think of better days.
As opposed to, Is it just this house music or am I having a seizure? I'm having a seizure! Maybe the audio device built into my futuristic senior ear drums is broken. It could be a stroke. I'm almost positive I'm having a stroke!
Daughter, The Wild Youth
I don't really have much to say, just check out a few songs by Daughter, then go paint your face like some kind of carnival tiger for a gold sticker Fun Session, whatever that is.
Trolls on Tour
A good old friend of mine, Kel Griffith is touring around Europe. She's started a Tumblr blog to photo document the trip titled, Euro Trolls.
On top of being one of my favourite people, Kel is a real class act. If I still had the photo of her face down, blacked out in a backyard I would have posted that. You're going to have to settle for these instead.
Update: I don't need to dig up the old photo of Kel passed out in the yard, I have this new one of a power nap at 5am in San Sebastian...
DIIV, Oshin
About a month ago DIIV (formerly Dive), a Brooklyn based Joy Divisiony type band released their latest album Oshin. Listen to this banger here titled Follow.
You can buy the album on iTunes or if you're super hip, get the vinyl through Captured Tracks. Me? I've just been listening to it with my Rdio account.
For whatever reason, while they may not even sound that similar, every time I hear the intro to the track Follow, I think of this old gem from Ferris Bueller...