Reply To: A Talk with JoCo, Part 4 (The Present)
I can’t justify my love of sports, besides the fact that I grew up in Dallas, where church ends early when the Cowboys have a noon game. Many of my favorite memories are of sports games; Thanksgiving wouldn’t be the same without football on. But it’s not just nostalgia, it’s actually fun for me — I can’t help it, I like American football. (I’ll even watch Canadian.) What can I say? I don’t have a great number of interests, but they’re fairly diverse. The geekiest thing about me is that I’ve obsessed over them all.
[I don’t mind, either, if people don’t like sports, as long as they have some argument besides, “(Sport) is really stupid — all it is is a bunch of grown (generally) men (generally) (x)-ing a ball around!” C’mon, there aren’t many things that can’t be reduced to, “You mean you like (activity)? That’s nothing but (repetitive task described in most stultifying way possible)!”]
I haven’t come up with a point prize, although I’m willing to entertain suggestions (no promises, I may behave like it but I’m not entirely free from other commitments). I’d give you a lot of partial credit for your answer, CoolJammer, but you could be more specific.
(Storm told me the same thing about why they were prepared to harmonize on “Mandelbrot Set” — I get the feeling he had to answer that question a lot that night. He didn’t seem at all impatient about having to answer it again, though. Oh, and in our brief conversation, we talked about Da Vinci’s Notebook’s cover of Blondie’s “Call Me”, which he said was one of his first arrangements — that discussion inspired the question in part 1 about what vocal arranging JoCo had done in college.)
Speaking of covers, I didn’t say earlier that three08 makes a good point — I don’t know the other originals so well, but JoCo’s cover of “I Will,” much as I adore it, doesn’t feel all that different to me from the one on the White Album. (Although it’s really interesting how stark “We Will Rock You” sounds when stripped down the way it is.)