Thursday, May 10, 2007

THE HOLD STEADY AND BASEBALL.

The Portland Mercury interviews Craig Finn of the Hold Steady about baseball and the Minnesota Twins. (Seriously, there’s not one music question in the thing.)

Here’s the best part (well, at least for me):

Are there a lot of people in the Minnesota music scene that are Twins fans?

Definitely. Especially the older crowd, like the Jayhawks and Golden Smog. I was at Twins’ spring training this year and I saw Paul Westerberg at the game.

What? [MG note: that was about my reaction, too, when I read this.]

I went down to Fort Meyers, Florida, for two games, and had a lot of fun. I was talking to this guy Jim Walsh, who is doing the Replacements oral history [MG again: WHAT?]and he told me Paul would be down there. I kind of had my eye out looking for him, and sure enough, he was there with his son. I’ve never met him before, so it didn’t seem like the right time to go bother him. It’s funny because even before we did “Take Me out to the Ball Game” for the Twins, I was at the Metrodome last year and noticed how great the music was during the games. They played a lot of the Replacements.

Okay. So the Metrodome plays the Replacements, and had the Hold Steady record “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” for them, and the Great American Ballpark plays the Afghan Whigs. Not only do I appreciate the hometown nod to the hometown band, I appreciate the little thing called RELEVANCY.

And we, at Shea, are being serenaded with freaking “Sweet Caroline” (he’s from BROOKLYN, don’t start).

What do we have to do to get some New York songs by New York bands played?  I mean, I appreciate that Yo La Tengo isn’t exactly going to get the crowd pumped up, but they can certainly make more of an effort. Do we not have the ability to branch out beyond classic rock?