Today is our home opener for our Boys Varsity Basketball team. We play at 6:30 pm, and there are a lot of things I am looking forward to tonight. I am so proud of this particular group of senior basketball players and their coaches. Most of the line-up is back from last year's state final run and, although I know it will be tough to repeat that achievement, I guarantee you this will be a memorable year.
One thing I do not look forward to tonight is when a member of the team comes up to me and hands me a CD and says "don't worry Mr. McHugh, it's clean." Sadly the warm-up CD has become so much trickier than it used to be.
During my Junior and Senior years in High School, as I got more serious about running, winter became a lighter season for me. I used to work many of my High School's Varsity Basketball games to support my friends. I did the scoreboard and learned how to do the scorebook. Sometimes my job was to put the record on the record player (dating me now) that our team liked to warm-up to. It was "Chameleon" by Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters. You can listen to it by clicking the video below. I think we thought we were pretty with-it to be playing some jazz funk in the late 1970's
If you want a real laugh, you will listen to the pump-up song we used on the best team I was ever on -- my college cross country team -- which was nationally ranked in 1983. It was the Gap Bands "You Dropped a Bomb on Me Baby."We carried a large boom box around with us to every meet just to play that song. We would all sing the chorus and then commit ourselves to dropping a bomb (metaphorically, of course) on our competition. So I know personally how important music is to athletes to get them ready to compete.
It was the mid-80's -- a few years after the Gap Bands's hit -- when I started to realize that song lyrics were not just words. (I know, you would think that fact would have hit me a little earlier. But it took an embarrassing incident.) My Aunt Suzanne was a long time school teacher and administrator and for 60 + years has worked at Canobie Lake Amusement Park in Salem, New Hampshire. She is great with people and especially any aged kids. In the late 1980's, she owned a recording studio at the Park that -- for a price -- allowed kids to sing and record their favorite song. As a test of the new machine, I sang "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" to my Aunt. I had never read all the lyrics to the song and before I knew it I was singing lyrics to Suzanne that included: "you were in motion, felt like lotion, you were the girl for me. You were the first explosion, turned out to be corrosion, you were the first for me." As the song progressed Suzanne was rolling her eyes, and we were both blushing.
It was either 1996 or 1997 when I walked into the gym of one of the most prestigious high schools in Chicago for a basketball game when I noticed the warm-up music had gone far beyond the Gap Bands lyrics. I can only imagine that the school must have been caught off guard by the change in the mid-90's to Gangsta Rap. Every other lyric seemed to include a word I would never dare use around my family let alone in a school setting. The characterization of women as sexual objects in the songs was especially disconcerting.
As we all know the Gap Band lyrics are tame (and would be considered clean) today compared to much of what is on popular charts. Making a clean warm-up CD is tricky when even song lyrics from the 1980's can make one blush in front of a family member. I am sure most kids are just like I was. They are not really listening to the lyrics carefully. They just want to get pumped up for their game. Probably some do not even see what the big deal is when I answer their statement "don't worry Mr. McHugh. It's clean" with my question "are you sure?"
People who read this blog I hope know that I love music. I have been a cellist since I was 8 years old, I minored in music in college. I regularly try to listen to two different music podcasts to stay up with what music is being released. I put together a yearly Mixtape CD of my favorite songs of the year for friends, colleagues, and athletes I coach. I think my taste is pretty open minded. I will listen to any genre. That being said I work at a school and a basketball game is a public performance.
These are my expectations for warm-up music lyrics.
1) No obscene language
2) No use of the N word
3) No lyrics referring to women in derogatory ways
I will be holding that increasingly tricky line tonight, and I will be worrying:) See you at the game.
POSTSCRIPT -- Long time coaching friend and blog reader Tim Beach sent me this Blind Blake song after reading this post. Charley Jordan suggests soap and water to keep it clean! Enjoy!
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