Gory Glory Days
When I worked in a college athletics department, I was always amazed that after victories, we would play Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" in celebration over the PA system. That song might be catchy, but it ain't much of a celebratory song. Let's examine the lyrics.
"I had a friend, was a big baseball player / back in high school / He could throw that speedball by you / Make you look like a fool, boy..."
(To begin with, I'm fairly sure Bruce means a "fastball." A fastball is a baseball pitch, a "speedball" is what killed John Belushi.)
"...Saw him the other night at this roadside bar / I was walking in, he was walking out / We went back inside, sat down, had a few drinks / but all he kept talking about was..."
I was walking into this bar, and an old friend was coming out already drunk. He had absolutely nothing else to do, so he went back inside to drink more with me and talk about when he was so cool, he didn't have to drink himself comatose in a bar on the side of the road.
"Glory days well they'll pass you by / Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye / Glory days, glory days"
Good times, such as this victory our team just won, are fleeting and only remembered later through the melancholy use of alcohol.
"Well there's a girl that lives up the block / back in school she could turn all the boy's heads / Sometimes on a Friday, I'll stop by and have a few drinks / after she put her kids to bed / Her and her husband Bobby, well, they split up / I guess it's two years gone by now / We just sit around talking about the old times, she says when she feels like crying / she starts laughing thinking about..."
I know this girl that was hot back in high school, but now she's divorced with kids, and she doesn't even get asked out on dates anymore. Some weekends when I don't have anything to do either, I'll go over to her house after her kids are asleep and we'll sit around and get drunk. She likes to talk about how good things used to be, back when she was the Prom Queen and didn't have to let losers from high school into her house on a Friday night to try and get her drunk in hopes that she'd give them a hand job on the couch after Letterman's over.
Yeah, it really seems like a happy song, doesn't it? The kind of life-affirming anthem that makes you want to kill yourself.
6 Comments:
It is strange the songs that somehow become sports anthems.
WHo let the dogs out?
Shouldn't they play this at the Westminster dog show? Or even better ... at a really low class strip joint.
Although this didn't occur to me, the Boss does have quite a developed sense of irony, doesn't he?
That isn't the only misued song at the ballpark though.
What about "Boys of Summer" by Don Henley? Other than the term, I'm not sure how it relates to baseball. Yet I haven't been to a game since Building the Perfect Beast came out in the mid to late eighties when it wasn't played at some point.
Jim Morrison is frequently labeled the "American Poet". I still think Springsteen and Henley beat him hands down. But that's just me . . .
-- P
Uhm, gross. A hand job while watching David Letterman? Really? Ewww. Could one even manage that? LOLOLOL!
Sports anthems . . . Gotta love "Rock-n-Rock Part II" by Gary Glitter. Nothing is as macho as a glam rocker with a penchant for kiddie porn. Go Team!
Can't forget "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions" by Queen or "YMCA" by the Village People. What's next? Stadium PA's playing Liza Manelli? Eric Cartman would say "dude, that's gay." "Not that there's anything wrong with that," said George Costanza.
Make that "Rock and Roll Part II." I can't type and think at the same time.
Heh. Good job on the other anthems, you guys. Trav, you're right, the songs don't have to make sense.
Penelope, I've always thought of Jim Morrison as more of an "American Mumbling High-As-Hell Guy," and not so much of a poet. Springsteen takes that current honor.
Pretzel, I think you're right, you'd have to wait until afterwards. Not possible before.
And I've always thought of the Gary Glitter irony too, Todd. GG was more of a locker room guy than an on-field celebrator, I think.
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