Hot Summer Car Jamz: Super Nostalgia Edition!

I think the beginning of summer makes me nostalgic; I totally had the urge to listen to Liz Phair today. I always get a little sad too, realizing that the days will get shorter for the next six months. Whip-Smart got thousands of plays in my car's tape deck, back in the day. Before the mp3 revolution, people had that connection to music; you'd buy something, and that would be it, you better like it, cause it's gonna be a week before you have disposable income again. You looked for reasons to like it. There were plenty of albums I didn't really dig, but I committed to giving them 3 or 4 listens, because dammit, I bought it! And you know what? Sometimes, you'd catch something on that third listen and the album would end up in permanent rotation. Nowadays, it's the opposite, you look for a reason to hit the skip button; to go ahead and find the next thing. It's hard, cause a lot of the music I love didn't instantly grab me. I really think that most people will like an album if A. they culturally identify with it, and B. they are familiar with it. These days, I need to actively decide to get into something and then see how it plays out. It works for me, but it's not the same.

One thing that kinda sucks about living in NYC is that you don't spend any time in people's cars. I know it sounds weird, but there's an intimacy factor; it's probably as close as you get to someone until you get into their bedroom, if you ever get that far. A lot of the music that really sticks with me, and would guess most of you too, has a strong person/place/time connection. In a car, you instantly had person/place association. Whenever I hear "Only in Dreams," I'm baked out of my mind in the back of Chet's police issued Crown Vic with four other kids, parked down by a lake where no one would bother us. Whenever I hear "Mayonnaise," I'm cruising around with Meg in the middle of the night, feeling lost and hopeless, but also feeling like we belonged; if not to the world as a whole, but at least to each other. Whenever I hear "Marquee Moon," I know it's exactly as long as it took me to drive from the giant Victorian house I split with six other people across from the JCA in Amherst, to Rachel's two bedroom apartment on Randolph Place in Northampton, provided it was late at night and there was no traffic on Route 9.

HBR AMERICA SPECIAL REPORT: If NL teams were guitars.

Hey everyone, here's part two, the NATIONAL LEAGUE!

NL EAST

Atlanta, Fender Telecaster: Basically, the South's team get country music's favorite solid-body guitar. The Braves are a classic team, sometimes embraced by the whole nation (NL East fans aside). Tele's are kinda similar; they've always kinda been there.

Washington, Fender Squire '51: Traditionally, expansion teams come prepackaged with kid friendly colors, a big goofy mascot, and a ton of crazy marketing gimmicks. The idea is that, hey, we can't compete right now anyway, and the adults probably aren't going to give up on the team they've been rooting for their whole lives, so let's go after the kids, grow with them, and in a decade, we'll have a generation of fans to support us when we're finally ready to compete. Most adults hate expansion teams for this very reason. The Nats are different (not really an expansion team, I know they came from Montreal, but still, they basically started from scratch), they branded themselves right off the bat (intentional pun) as a continuation of D.C.'s baseball heritage. That what the '51 reissue is, a new-old guitar.  

Miami, Fernandes Vertigo: They pushed these guitars pretty hard in the late 90's. It seems like the stopped manufacturing them in bright colors, which it's kinda a shame because I though they looked awesome (except for the headstock) and the price was decent. They might have blown their load a couple years too early with the marketing campaign. Anyhow, the pastel Vertigos scream "South Beach" louder than any other guitar I could think of.

NY Mets, Fender Squire Stratocaster: Oh the Mets. They are specifically the Strat from the Strat starter pack. They are the expansion team that kinda started that whole "get the kids hooked" thing. Mr. Met, the home run apple; shit the Yankees would never consider... Squire Strats were really cool for a heartbeat in the 80's (neat colors, oversized headstock, a little more attention to consistency on the part of Fender), as were the Mets (though the coke parties and booze binges quickly took their toll).

Philadelphia, BC Rich Warlock: You have to have, like, aggressively poor taste to play one of these guitars, or just be so deep into metal that you cannot clearly see the world around you. Playing one of these is just like being a Phillies fan. I get it, it's cool, you feed off the hatred. Just please try not to vomit on children.

HBR AMERICA SPECIAL REPORT: If AL teams were guitars.

Happy Independence Day everyone! I wanted to do something super American, so I'm doing a three-parter on baseball and guitars. Part one, published below, is a list of all the teams in the American League, and what guitars they'd be if they were guitars instead of baseball teams. Part two will be the National League, and part three will be what position famous guitarist would play if they were on a baseball team.

Here we go! (teams ordered by standing on 7/4/14)

AL EAST


Baltimore, Guild Starfire: A respectable guitar that produced a lot of hits, and has been in and out of style since the 60's.

Toronto, Gibson Firebird: John Gibbons is Canada's team's manager, so I figured they should be a Gibson. The Firebird would be the #1 guitar if it were made by most other companies. Over the course of the last 15 years, there's a couple of Jay's teams that could have finished first in most other divisions.

NY Yankees, Gibson Les Paul: Yup, I'm a Yankees hater AND a Gibson hater. It's the kinda guitar that rich dicks would have, and it's a team full of rich dicks. That being said, both are incredibly popular for a reason. I don't know if you can debate the fact that they have the most consistent quality of any guitar/team in history.

Boston, Fender Jazzmaster: A classic second tier/second rate guitar that became nauseatingly popular in the 00's. I'm a Sox fan and a Jazzmaster owner, but that first sentence wasn't at all difficult to write. I'm amazed at the price that people will pay to A. own a Jmaster, and B. go to a game at Fenway. In 1980, you literally couldn't give those things away. However, there is a certain coolness to Fenway, and the Jazzmaster's design that make both the guitar and the team deserving of a large chunk of their fandom.

Tampa Bay, Danelectro U2: I feel like the Rays rebranding (dropping the "Devil," changing the uniforms) is cosmically similar to Danelectros re-emergence in the market. Pastel colors and a cheap price tag, BUT surprisingly good (at times). Really, you could choose any Dano, but I picked the U2 because I feel it was the first reissue they really pushed.