But The Future Refused To Ball

Fives on Friday 6/21/2024

Happy Friday! This opening section is about professional basketball. If that’s not your speed, feel free to jump down to the music sections. I don’t mind, as long as you promise to never say the words “sports ball” in my presence.

The NBA Finals concluded on Monday night to the joy of some and the sadness of many others. I always tell my friends that the NBA season ends in tragedy for 29 teams. Defeat is the rule, victory the exception. This year felt extra tragic. Despite the best efforts of four challengers of varying righteousness, the worst has come to pass. The Boston Celtics are NBA champions for the 18th time, putting them ahead of the only mildly less despicable Los Angeles Lakers as the team with the most titles in NBA history. Woe. Woe upon us all.

If the 2023-2024 NBA season was a story, what was that story about? As I wrote when I used the playoffs as an excuse to talk about the Drake vs Kendrick beef, one recuring theme was the old being eclipsed by the new. The millennials that ruled the league when I first started seriously watching basketball were all quickly disposed of in the first round of the playoffs, leaving a void for a new generation of players to get their time in the spotlight. By the conference finals it was clear that no matter the outcome at least one of the league’s fresher faced stars would walk away with their first ring. And yet now that the confetti has settled it feels like the old emerged victorious over the new. The oldest, crustiest, most 20th-century-ass brand in basketball stomped out the new money Dallas Mavericks in five games. The Mavs themselves are not unfamiliar with the Finals rodeo, having won the whole thing back in 2011. As it so happens, the late 00s and early 2010s were also the last time that the Celtics were serious contenders. This has given the whole series the air of a revival of a show you didn’t realize people were already nostalgic for. At best this aura inspired me to dig up some hilariously dated Mavs fan content from the era. At worst, I have to watch Jayson Tatum do a watered down Kevin Garnet impression on the anniversary of the last Celtics championship win.

These particular Celtics are for the most part earning their first chip, but by the standards of the league they are familiar characters. Tatum and his Finals MVP co-star Jaylen Brown have been fixtures in the playoffs since their rookie years. Their supporting cast aren’t the kind of players non-fans would know by name, but if you subscribe to more than one NBA themed podcast you probably know them better than some of your grade school classmates. As nice as it is to see old dogs like Al Horford finally have their day, it is Tatum and Brown that have defined the Celtics identity for the last decade. It’s their success after so many near misses that “matters” here. Their omnipresence in spring basketball over the last seven years speaks to the long-term planning that got the Celtics where they are now. In 2013 the Celtics Captain Ginyu’d their championship team in exchange for draft picks from the soon-to-be awful Brooklyn Nets. They stayed just competitive enough that when those draft picks paid off in the form of their current tag-team, they could drop their young talent directly into meaningful games. While LeBron James and Steph Curry split the 2010s between themselves, the Celtics bided their time. They tinkered with the lineup until they had the right players at the right time to play with a historically effective offense and a sturdy enough defense to make up for their stars’ hero-ball theatrics. The moment came, and they cut straight through the whole league.

I would like very badly to just view this moment as a culmination, as the conclusion of a long-game well played. I can’t shake the feeling however that this is just the beginning. I fear that I am likely to be just as sick of Tatum & Brown in five years as I was five years ago.

Luckily, there’s more to basketball than just the NBA. One need only turn their attention to the WNBA, already deep into its regular season. You wouldn’t be the only one to make the jump either. The WNBA is in the midst of a major inflection point. The arrival of Caitlin Clark (and to a lesser but resonant extent Angel Reese and Cameron Brink) has brought with it a ton of new fans, importing both longtime college fans and (according to my anecdotal experience) people who are new to basketball period. With increased audiences comes increased media attention, and with it all of the old arguments so finely honed over hundreds and thousands of wasted hours “analyzing” the NBA, ready to rehashed on fresh subjects.

Because my hipster instincts are finely tuned, I wisely got on board with the WNBA a few seasons ago, roughly corresponding to the New York Liberty drafting the Kobe-approved Sabrina Ionescu. My good timing was first rewarded by the Liberty assembling the a Finals worthy super team, staring Brianna Stewart whose college career is even more decorated than Clark’s, and then by giving me the minimum about of time necessary to say I was there before the crowds showed up.

While I find some of the hubbub around Clark annoyingly reminiscent of pop fandom (she’s gonna get fouled bro, it’s sports), her presence is undoubtably a rising tide situation. It’s elevated the profile of the rest of her draft class, and it’s bound to elevate the status of her rivals once the Indiana Fever are good enough to play games with real stakes. Think about how Jordan’s gravity conferred importance upon his greatest opponents (Barkley, Ewing, Malone, Drexler, Payton, etc). If you don’t like Clark, you can choose the rising star that better suites your disposition. You can go with her immediate midwest rivals in Angel Reese and the Chicago Skye, whose emphasis on rebounding and defense make them the perfect foil to Clark’s long range offense. If you experience basketball mostly through Instagram you can go with the Sparks and Cameron Brink, a player who perfectly synthesizes the Los Angeles traditions of glamorous blondes and dominant centers. Or you can go with Ionescu, already embodying the New York values of talking wild shit and backing it up, and whose presence in the greatest city in the world puts her at the front lines of the greatest battles in the W as the Liberty take on the Connecticut Sun, Minnesota Lynx, and the dreaded Las Vegas Aces.

More than anything what makes the WNBA so appealing to me now is the sense that its history remains unwritten. It has no Lavos hoarding energy beneath the surface, nothing to drag it back into the past. Onward and upward toward the future.

# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #

Laughing Stock are throwing a BBQ on June 29th! Where? Can’t say! You know how this works. If live in NYC and want to see us play, along with the homies in Nail Biter, Can’t Read & A Sword, hit me up privately!

That’s not the only cool gig coming up this summer. This August Bellows are joining our good buddy Terror Pigeon for a quick tour of the east coast. Check out the dates below, more details coming soon!

8/4 - TBD in Washington, DC

8/6 - The Meadow in Philadelphia, PA

8/7 - O’Briens in Boston, MA

8/8 - TBD in NJ

8/9 - Purgatory in Brooklyn, NY

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a Spotify playlist with all of this year’s tracks here. New songs added every Monday through Friday

“Meshuggah Zone” by Headshock Productions (2010)

Over the last few years there’s been a trend of people “arranging” full albums in the “style” of old video game soundtracks to YouTube. I’m using scare quotes because typically the people making these videos just feed a midi transcription into a VGM sound font and call it a day. Rarely do you hear something that sounds, well, arranged. You can really tell when someone actually makes the effort to make the music work for its new instruments, like this video that reworks two different Meshuggah songs into a medley for the Sega Megadrive. Major points for the extra counter-melodies that make the tune seem more “video gamey” and for using a sound font that works better with metal articulation than say, Super Mairo 64. This track is all the more impressive because it came out over a decade before the current trend got rolling, making this the Meshuggah of Meshuggah fan content.

“Freak on a Lease” by Babe Report (Did You Get Better, 2024)

Babe Report are a new Chicago rock band featuring former Lamniformes drummer and friend of the blog Peter Reale. Always great to hear new tunes from Peter! I like the stop-start bit near the end.

“Broken Vessels” by The Hope Conspiracy (Tools of Oppression / Rule By Deception, 2024)

Few words in the English language sound better screamed, yelled, or growled than “broken”. Something about going from the “bro” sound to “kEEEEEEH” just captures the spirit of hardcore in two syllables. It’s good to see Hope Con back at it. While this album isn’t as wall-to-wall great as their previously final album, it will hit the spot if you’ve been craving some high quality hardcore.

“Nearly Daffodils” by English Teacher (This Could Be Texas, 2024)

The modern British rock scene has demolished the line between post-punk and progressive rock, which I appreciate both as a music theorist (“Toward Progmatism” the essay, coming soon!) and as a listener. I mean, just listen to that bass line! And that sweet pattern in six on the keys that interjects into the tune during the bridge! I’ve seen some younger internet users say that this band suffers from copying too much from Black Country, New Roads, but honestly I don’t hear that at all.

“Don’t Hang Up Those Dancing Shoes” by Terence Boylan (Terence Boylan, 1977)

Erstwhile Lamniformes graphic designer and Altamira Records co-founder Alex Van Dorp put me onto a 46 hour long Yacht Rock playlist after I asked for some 10cc recs, which is kind of like giving someone the land rights to the state of Florida after they ask for a glass of orange juice. Any playlist that long is more about establishing a vibe than strict quality control, but every now and then a real heater will jump out of the pack. I don’t have a robust theory here, but I find it interesting how often Yacht Rock songs bring up other genres of music or use musical metaphor. Something about the sentimental relics of Boomer culture taking on poetic significance overtime. I don’t know. Who cares, hit the pool and crank this.

\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /

Here are five micro reviews from my high school and college CD collection. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.

Option Paralysis by The Dillinger Escape Plan (2010) - Metalcore

Their first album with Billy Rymer on drums, who has as much claim to being the definitive Dillinger drummer as Chris Penne imo. This is my favorite Dillinger album. It strikes the perfect balance between their totally bonkers mathcore side and their alt rock melodic side, often in the same song. From what I understand this opinion makes me a bit of an outlier in their audience.

Atrophy by Baring Teeth (2011) - Death Metal

Part of a wave of super dissonant “skronky” death metal that arrived in the early 2010s. Perfect timing for me, since I was learning about some pretty out there 20th century classical music in school at the time with a lot of the same appeal. It’s a cool album, might run a tad longer then it should, but the playing is terrific and very inventive. Great if you want very tense and skin crawling music.

Hazardous Mutation by Municipal Waste (2005) - Thrash Metal

Even though they predated and outlasted it, this band was thought of as the biggest name in the “re-thrash” wave. In the late ‘00s a bunch of young bands started LARPing as ‘80s thrash acts, wearing high tops, cut off denim, hats with the brim bent back and yelling about skateboarding, pizza, and toxic sludge. It was like the whole metal scene got overrun by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is really fun, more of a crossover album than straight up thrash. Zips by. You’ll miss entire tracks if you get momentarily distracted. Low stakes, high effectiveness.

Coyote by Kayo Dot (2010) - Art Rock

A band that came highly recommended by music forum weirdos on sites like Sputnik Music. This came out after their metal period and before their current 80s-inspired synth period [Editor’s Note: I’ve totally lost track of this band and no longer know if they are playing 80s-inspired synthy art rock]. Weird as hell, Lots of really cool mixes of instruments, horns in particular. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to crack the code on this record, but I think I have to admit defeat.

Remission by Skinny Puppy (1984) - Industrial

An early Skinny Puppy EP fleshed out with bonus tracks from the same era. Much more straightforward than the really caustic stuff they’d release in the late 80s/early 90s. All the basic ingredients are here (drum machines, analog synths, samplers, Ogre being a total weirdo) but they are still just that: basic. The band would improve significantly from here. This kind of electronic music has been demystified for me in recent years as I’ve gained a more technical understanding of how its made.