by Greazy Tony
When Inky was working for a minor league baseball team, one of the things she had to do was arrange for the National Anthem to be performed live before each game. To that end, she put an add in the paper and auditioned people to make sure they weren't total douche bags who only thought they could sing. (this was pre-American Idol) She told the singers that they should make sure to know all the words, and that the Anthem should never take more than 90 seconds to sing.
That was the minors however, they do things a bit different at the major league level. Ever since Whitney Houston back in '91 people have been dragging out their "soulful" versions of the Anthem to well over two and a half minutes. But, at least Whitney got the words right.
At the MLB All Star game in San Fransisco last night the geniuses in charge called on Chris Isaak to sing the Anthem. Why? I guess because he's a San Fran native, and that's all the thinking they put in to these things now-a-days. Isaak was joined buy his whole band... no, wait... that's just one really fat member of his band: Kenny Dale Johnson. I'm guessing he's not from SF, but a southern state instead.
It's not that I don't like Chris Isaak, I just hate people who cock-up the Star Spangled Banner. Here is how the words go:
O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight. O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air. Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave. O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Isaac and Billy Bob sang "Through the perilous night" and "Gave proof through the fight." What the fuck? We've all heard this song for nearly all our lives and if the words haven't sunk in, then can I suggest Sylvan Learning Center. Because you're a retard. For get rehabilitation, we just need to start taking people who sing the anthem wrong and kick them out of the country. And don't give me this 'it's on TV. People fuck up because they're nervous.' Sure, maybe an 18 year old who won Ms. Apple Pie Festival would be nervous when she realized she was on TV with millions of people watching, but you'd think Chris Isaak would be a bit cooler under pressure.
Plus, it's not like anyone actually cares about the Mid-Summer Classic anymore, so I'm sure the viewing audience was small.
1 comment:
Actually, I am among apparently a great many people who learned it, from age 6 on, as "through the perilous night". It may have been a regional thing, I don't know. But it's been driving me crazy hearing people sing "through the perilous fight"; I'm sure I never heard it that way as a youngster or as a younger man. Now I realize that different people learned it two different ways. I tried to find out for sure which is correct, but it's not clear -- neither of those phrases was used in Francis Scott Keys's original poem.
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