Who Moved My Cheese Metal?

Keeping with the sports angle for a while longer how can you not like Boxing? I used to spend the big bucks for the HBO pay per view matches back in the eighties. I would invite all my friends over for beers and hot dogs and make quite the night of it. That is until Mike Tyson and Michael Spinks duked it out in 1988. 

91 seconds… Well, they did show the complete match over and over for the next two hours.

What does this have to do with Rock? Not much. I’m still feeling ripped off all these years later and just had to say something.

So there you go. Tyson in the day was a great boxer. How about Rocky Balboa? That would have been fun, seeing Sylvester Stallone face down Iron Mike. Something tells me that Sly’s insurance company might have had a few words to say about this. It would be fun though?

Now this is a great sports song.

The opening horns beat you up right from the start. When the bass and drums jump in and run away with it, your hooked. The kind of song that graps you and pulls you along with it. The connection of the music with “Rocky” training for his big match is compelling and very addictive. “Gonna Fly Now”became a number 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1977 it was impossible not to hear “Gonna Fly Now” several times a day. And why not? It’s a truly uplifting song.

Bill Conti was a little known Juillard School of Music graduate when he was chosen to compose the music for an equally little known United Artists movie actor named Sylvester Stallone. A first for both men that turned into a long partnership extending over most of the Rocky franchise and for Conti, into a career composing music for numerous major motion pictures.

“Gonna Fly Now” is twice as long as the Tyson/Spinks fight.

I got my money’s worth from Stallone and Conti…

One sports song leads to another:

(Only audio of the album track I could find, and it is postage-stamped because the video portion is a tribute to somebody’s grandkids, which is nice but really neither here nor there.)

This was the title track of John Fogerty’s only post-Creedence album to get much attention outside Americana circles, and that was largely on the strength of throwback top 10 single  “Old Man Down the Road” and its startling video.

But “Centerfield” is a charmer, with handclaps and a bouncy surf-music guitar setting a great summer mood and an exuberant vocal. The album’s third single, this wasn’t a big  hit in ’85 (peaked at 44) but it’s become a ballpark staple for obvious and excellent reasons.

Rounding third and headed for home
Is a brown-eyed handsome man (And isn’t that a vintage Fogerty lyric?)
Anyone can understand the way I feel
Put me in, coach
I’m ready to play today!

It’s all about enjoying success after a long road, hope and happiness and the anticipation of a thoroughly good time — this song  just feels like opening day.

Sometimes a song comes along at exactly the right time, and it just can’t be stopped from becoming a hit. Occasionally, these are actually good songs, but usually they’re thrown together to latch on to the latest fad on TV or in the news.

When you have a good song and perfect timing, you get Carl Douglas.

I’ll be the first to admit that this song is really silly. That’s part of its charm. It’s so seventies!

Written by Jamaican singer Carl Douglas in 1974, “Kung Fu Fighting” became an international hit, topping both the U.K. and American charts. It has been covered by wide selection of artists and has been used in movies and television shows for decades.

Why? Well, because it’s so much fun. It’s got a really great hook to it and how can you beat the “hoo!” and “hah!” in the chorus?

Musically, this is a perfect example of disco music in 1974, and when you add the subject matter, the Kung Fu television series having become a hit a year or two before as well as Bruce Lee  and ”chopsocky” movies, and you have created musical gold.

Carl Douglas never really had another hit but has been remained active in the entertainment industry.

“Kung Fu Fighting” was listed as #100 on VH-1′s 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders, but in this case the one hit wonder lable may not really apply. Carl’s song has been a hit over and over again, just not by him.

Here’s my favorite cover version.

Any song that can become a hit in Finnish has got to have something going for it.