Athlete-Musicians and the line that defines them
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by user JCantRoot
Bronson Arroyo has a new album out and I think that’s great. The fact that Arroyo is talented enough to be a professional baseball player and make quality music good enough for distribution in a public market is definitely impressive.
Arroyo titled his album, Covering the Bases
That is horrible.
I don’t know if this is a case of Bronson Arroyo not being able to separate Bronson Arroyo the pitcher from Bronson Arroyo the guitar player or the fault of some publicist telling him to throw a baseball term in his album title to increase sales, but it's not clever, it's not funny.
Now, I’m not saying Bronson Arroyo or any other athlete should not be bale to pursue a musical career. I said earlier in this article good for Bronson Arroyo. I have a great passion for music and love it almost as much if not more than sports; which may be why it seems so tragic when athletes do this crossover thing and can't help making sports references in their song and album titles.
Can a professional athlete please make an album without dorky references to their sport coming up in song and or album titles.
I'll make an exception for say the '85 Bears and their Super Bowl Shuffle because that was a song about the Super Bowl. Koko B. Ware's epic release Piledriver for that WWF album in 1980-whatever is also OK. Wrestlers cannot possible be asked to separate themselves from their wrestling persona.
But athletes, who want to release on a major label should get with the program.
Horrible Examples
Shaquille O’Neal
Shaq Diesel is available new and used for 10 cents on amazon.com and it contains the infamous What’s Up Doc? (Can We Rock?) track. Unfortunately it also contains the somewhat more infamous Shoot Pass Slam and (I Know I Got) Skillz. I’m going to assume the latter is about basketball without ever having heard the song.
Wayman Tisdale has released at least 8 jazz albums including the following unfortiunately named efforts:
Way Up
Hang Time
In the Zone with tracks Watch me Play and Pro Interlude
Power Forward with unfortunately named tracks After The Game (Intro), After The Game, Power Forward and Inside Stuff
Roy Jones Jr. launched his musical career in 2002 with Round One which included the grammatically baffling Who Want to Get Knocked Out? His follow-up album of similar verb disagreement was named Who Run This
Guys that do it right
There are exceptions to the rule like Deion Sanders musical efforts (remember: Hey! Must Be the Money?).
Former Bengal Mike Reid has written songs for several legitimate artists and as far as I can tell, Bernie Williams album had nothing to do with baseball.
Jack McDowell also had a musical career with an alternative band that released several albums without baseball references.
Unfortunately, the negatives seem to far out-weigh the positives in my opinion.
Date
Sat 08/19/06, 12:54 pm EST
