The Shaggs

Sparky and I are around the same age, and we both like music. So it's only natural that certain pop culture and rock and roll references frequently find their way into our conversations when we're out on the road for ski races.  I bet if we really put in the effort, we could damn near speak in code, forming paragraphs out of references to various rock bands, TV shows, movies and events from the 1980's that none of the athletes on our team would understand. (And undoubtedly, the same would work in reverse.) Sparky's got the whole alpine team doing "Cornholio" drills on the slalom hill, and I bet there's not an athlete on that team who knows who Cornholio is. And why would they?

Geographically speaking, though, Sparky and I grew up on opposite sides of the country, and surrounded by very different musical cultures.  While I grew up in the land of boredom, and of banjos and accordians played on back porches, Sparky grew up in the thick of it in the San Francisco Bay.  San Francisco is the home of Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Metallica, The Grateful Dead, Journey, The Dead Kennedys, Primus... the list goes on and on and on. Meanwhile, where I grew up in rural New Hampshire, we had The Shaggs.  They grew up about fifteen minutes down the road from me. While it's true that Frank Zappa (also from California) once called The Shaggs "better than The Beatles", and Curt Cobain (another West Coast guy) called them one of his favorite bands, you need only listen to My Pal Foot-Foot a few times to understand that seeing the Shaggs play on a Saturday afternoon down at the Fremont Town Hall was not at all the same thing as going to a Santana concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. 

The Shaggs. Our local band.

...Anyway, I know there was something that reminded me of The Shaggs, but now, for the life of me, I just can't remember what it was!  This is so frustrating, when I try to write a blog post and then get off track with a trip down memory lane, and then I can't remember what it was that made me start thinking about The Shaggs again after so many years. 

Anyway...  On a completely different topic, we are still trying to reach our goal of $314K in pledges so that we can keep our UAA Ski Team intact.  And in order to get the word out, the team put together a little Christmas video that I think is going to be a real hit.  I've had it on "repeat" for the past week and I just can't get enough of this song! I think it's way better than anything The Beatles ever did!

Note:  as with most of these blog posts, this one is not entirely accurate. I should mention, in the interest of full disclosure, that the band Aerosmith is also from about 15 minutes away from where I grew up - but in the opposite direction.