Workout Megamix Liner Notes - Part III

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language and crude humor.

Update

Hear my entire Megamix (200+ songs) on Spotify - click here!

Introduction

My last couple of posts (here and here) have provided “liner notes” for (i.e., comments on) my Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix.  I got as far as M before you ran out of patience (which I sensed ahead of time).  In this post I cover songs beginning with N thru S because you’re here, so you’re ready for more … right?  It’s a long winter and you need more music recommendations for those boring indoor trainer rides!

(It just occurred to me to wonder if I’m using the term “megamix” correctly.  After looking this word up on Wikipedia I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t care.  I use this term to mean “mix tape that isn’t on tape.”)

Liner notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix Part III

No Love - Lil Wayne/Eminem

       Okay, this song is just frickin’ epic, as my teenager would say.  It starts off with a whole section by Lil Wayne (which threw my wife off at first—she was like, “What’s wrong with Eminem’s voice?  He sounds so weird!”).  This passage has some awesome lyrics, plus Lil Wayne just sounds great—he does a better “uh” than anybody, and that’s saying a lot, because rappers are, in general, really good at going “uh.”  The “h” almost makes a consonant sound.  Anyway, then Eminem cuts in with the chorus, which is good enough, and then the next verse is Eminem’s, and he’s so brilliant, and so fast, it just has me laughing every time, not just because it’s funny (it’s less comic than a lot of his stuff) but because it’s just so right and everything fits together like clockwork.  It would be very hard to slack off on your pedaling while hearing something so good.  Dang.

Not Going Back - Nas

Nothing Else Matters - Metallica

Offend In Every Way - The White Stripes

       This is a good, hard-rocking track, with a nice buzzing guitar.  Getting back to that other song, “No Love,” I forgot to mention something:  when Lil Wayne says “I’m rollin’ Sweets,” he’s talking about putting weed into a Swisher Sweet (the epitome of the cheap cigar).  My brothers and friends and I used to smoke Swisher Sweets occasionally (without anything added to them, I hasten to add, and without inhaling).  Mainly this was to get the garlic off our breath because we used to go to Café Gondolier for their all-u-can-eat pasta and like 3 of our 6 plates (each) would be the “oil & gar,” which was just pasta with olive oil and all this crushed garlic on top.  Nothing would get that garlic taste and stench out of our mouths.  We tried mint gum, clove gum, every kind of oral hygiene, whatever.  We’d be sweating garlic the next day.  The Swisher Sweet cigars didn’t really mask the stench, but did morph it into a gnarly hybrid cigar/gar.  One time we went over to our friend’s car, cracked a window, and (from outside the car) blew all the smoke from a whole Swisher Sweet (each) through the window, then quickly rolled the window back up. You couldn’t see across the car from one window through the next, for all the smoke.  The car reeked for more than a week.  Offend in every way, indeed.

On the Other Side - The Strokes

       One of my favorite Strokes songs.  It’s just so misanthropic, I love it:  “I hate them all, I hate them all/ I hate myself for hating them/ So I'll drink some more, I'll love them all, I'll drink even more/ I'll hate them even more than I did before.”  I’m not a misanthrope, myself—not exactly—but as I’ve said before, an angry mindset is perfect for pedaling hard indoors.  (And I’m never angry when I climb off.)

One Mic - Nas

       Listen for the background sound of a fiend dropping his Heineken.  This is a cool song because it keeps building up, hitting the chorus, relaxing, and then building up again.  I’ve used this song’s progression for doing intervals on the trainer.

One Time 4 Your Mind - Nas

Outshined - Soundgarden

       My favorite lines:  “I just looked in the mirror/ And things aren’t lookin’ so good/ I’m looking California/ And feeling Minnesota.”  Don’t overthink it, because looking California is probably better than looking Minnesota (i.e., he feels worse than he looks) and yet he says “things aren’t looking so good.”  Actually, overthinking things is good for the trainer, as long as you don’t forget to hammer.

       In 2008 I was hit by a car while riding, and separated my shoulder.  It was a long time before I could use my right arm well enough to shave, so I went ahead and grew a beard.  While I was at it, I let my hair grow for a good while.  Being thus unkempt, I relaxed my standards for attire as well.  One day I went into work wearing a shirt that was pushing the edge of the envelope for business casual; it was just shy of a Hawaiian flower shirt.  For some reason the LAN ports in my office weren’t working (this was before we had WiFi at the office) and I was leading a net conference, so I had to set up in one of the cubicles.  This cubicle ended up having a broken chair.  So after the call I took advantage of the broken chair back and fully reclined for a few minutes … you know, just maxin’ and relaxin’ and chillin’ my will.  Well, at that very moment this sales manager from the Phoenix office came through, trailing his little entourage, all of them in suits and ties.  I’d only ever encountered this guy at customer meetings where I was in a suit and tie myself (with a haircut and close shave to match), so he did a double take when he saw me all sprawled out in my flower shirt and beard and long hair.  “Wow, Dana, you’re … lookin’ California!” he said.  I figured there was no point trying to explain myself, and replied, “Feelin’ California, Paul!”

Overfloater - Soundgarden

Paint It Black - The Rolling Stones

       An oldie but goodie.  I used to enjoy singing this to my kids when they were babies and I was rocking them in my arms.

Paper Planes - M.I.A.

       If you’re not familiar with M.I.A. and would like to hear her most charismatic, crowd-pleasing song, this is probably the one.  There’s a cash register sound in the chorus, and if you’re sure you’re alone in the bat cave during your indoor workout, you can pantomime hitting the “Sale” key on the cash register, like Davis Phinney used to do after winning a prime in a criterium.  It’s okay, I give you permission.  (My daughter, reading over my shoulder, rescinds this permission, or tries to, lacking any authority.)

Personal - Ice-T

       Another great trainer track.  My favorite line:  “Bury you deep, creep, no one’ll weep, ‘cause the next night with your bitch I sleep.”  Here, Ice-T is obviously alluding to Shakespeare’s historical play Richard III, in which Richard of Gloucester famously wooed Lady Anne Neville despite having just murdered her husband.  These rappers, despite their coarse utterances, are far more erudite than many listeners realize.

Pump Your Fist - Kool Moe Dee

R.A.K.I.M. - Rakim

       I hope my recommending this song doesn’t get me in trouble with Homeland Security.  The “A” in the R.A.K.I.M. acronym conceit fits into the chorus thus:  “R: rugged & rough, that’s how I do it/  A:  Allah who I praise to the fullest.”  Let me just say this:  I myself am not Muslim, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy this song.  I’m glad to take this opportunity to clear things up, since the NSA has surely spotted this song on my hard drive already.  So I’ma give a shout-out to our NSA friends:  thanks for keeping us safe!  And please understand, I have a little fun with this song, but at the end of the day I’m a patriotic American, born American, and these colors don’t run!  USA #1 LET’S ROLL!

Rabbit Run - Eminem

Radio Suckers - Ice-T

Rap God - Eminem

       So you know that song I mentioned earlier, “Outshined” by Soundgarden?  It’s just over 5 minutes long and has 163 words.  R.A.K.I.M. is just shy of 4½ minutes and has 543 words.  “Rap God” is just over 6 minutes and has 1,551 words!  Eminem goes so fricking fast on this one, it’s amazing, and the lyrics are laced with double-, triple-, probably quadruple-entendres, and they’re funny.  If it bothers you that he calls himself a rap god, consider that a) let’s face it, he kind of is, and b) he tempers this boast with some perspective (calling himself “Dale Earnhardt of the trailer park, the White Trash God”) and also by being self-effacing (“Only Hall of Fame I'll be inducted in is the alcohol of fame/ On the wall of shame”).  By the way, I should point out here that I firmly believe those who enjoy quality (in their booze) enjoy it responsibly.  Don’t let this line from Rap God (or that line from “On the Other Side”) mislead you.

Rewind - Nas

Rhinosaur - Soundgarden

Richard - Obie Trice

       Did you think only one rapper (Ice-T, as described above) paid tribute to Richard III?  Well think again!  I’m talking about the line, “A ho’!  A ho’!  My kingdom for a ho’!”  (Okay, I’m kidding. That’s not an actual line from this song, and as far as I know, this song isn’t about that Richard.  But then, I haven’t read the play in a long time.  Maybe this whole track is some kind of extended Shakespearean allegory.)

Roughnecks - Obie Trice

Santeria - Sublime

Searching With My Good Eye Closed - Soundgarden

       This is a good song for the trainer, but with one reservation:  it gets off to a really slow start, as the narrator (yes, it seems to have a narrator) runs through a strange monologue involving animal sounds:  “Do you hear a cow?  [Moooo.]  A rooster says…  [Croooowwww.].  Here is a pig:  [Oink oink oink.]  The devil says….”  All very amusing, but it’s like 80 seconds before you get any drums and guitars and whatnot.  Is it worth it?  Sure!  Besides, you could use the downtime to wipe sweat off your face, or adjust your shoes or something.

Seduction - Eminem

       Perhaps a rapper can’t really call himself a rapper if he doesn’t do at least one song that recalls Richard III.  No, Eminem’s rival isn’t a king … just a fellow rapper.  But, same diff, you know?  And sure, this song isn’t about actually murdering anybody, but there are plenty of metaphors along these lines (“You think you killing them syllables … quit playing” and “it’s psychological warfare” and “your entire arsenal is not enough to fuck with one round.”)  And the other center idea, of stealing your foe’s mate, is expounded upon at length:  “There's a seven disc CD changer in her car, and I'm in every single slot, and you're not. Aww.”  (Shakespeare, being fairly ribald himself, would have like the double-entendre of “slot” here.)  And, “I am awesome and you are just awe struck. She's love stricken. She's got her jaw stuck, from…” Okay, maybe that’s enough.

Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes

Sexodus - M.I.A.

Shoot Me Down -Lil Wayne

       I just love this song, and I can’t really say why.  I don’t have any idea what the hell he’s singing about.  I mean, there’s obviously some stuff about shooting, but all kinds of other wacky nonsensical stuff too, like “My picture should be in the dictionary next to the definition of definition” (could he be talking about well-defined muscles? I doubt it…) and “But your bullets don't reach Mars, haws, claws because I'm a beast I'm a dawg, I’ll get you.”  There’s one line that’s oddly fitting for riding the bike trainer:  “And I would die for ours, ride for hours, supply the flowers.”

Shooter - Lil Wayne

Sick Of You – Cake

       This song, like many Cake has made, is humorously dark and darkly humorous.  If John McCrea were a cyclist, he’d add a line or two about being sick of riding indoors.  He gave some background on this song to Spin magazine:  “It’s about how when you hate things, the circle of hate starts rather broadly.  You hate the President or a big movie star, someone you’ll probably never meet. Gradually though, the circle tightens and the objects of hate get closer and closer to the hater. Now it’s your uncle or your mother, now it’s your close friend, and finally it’s you. Bummer.”

Sing For the Moment - Eminem

Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana

So Human - Lady Sovereign

       This song is a good case study in basically stealing somebody else’s music and making it better (or at least more appropriate for dancing or working out to).  Kind of like Robin Hood, really.  This song samples pretty much the entirety of The Cure’s “Close To Me,” but turns it from a sad, frankly rather emo affair into something irreverent and saucy that you can hammer to.  Go, S.O.V.!

Spoonman - Soundgarden

       Okay, I have absolutely zero idea what this song is going on about.  “Feel the rhythm with your hands/ Steal the rhythm while you can, spoonman.”  A man, a plan, a canal, panama!  Maybe it’s about making spoonbread.  That would jibe with the line “all my friends are Indians” since Native Americans made spoonbread.  And I can imagine palpating spoonbread in my hands, perhaps rhythmically. But what grunge band sings about palpating spoonbread?  I’ve also thought this song could be about spooning.  I visited a little museum in LaCrosse, Kansas that had an old journal from a Civil War soldier in it, which visitors were free to thumb through, and I read a passage the soldier wrote about his battalion being crammed so tightly into a tent, they had to spoon.  One guy would be up all night (standing guard, I guess) and would periodically tell everybody to roll over:  “Spoon left!” or “Spoon right!”  But I doubt Soundgarden ever read that journal.  Anyway, it’s a great song.  I’ve never been much preoccupied about lyrics.

Stan - Eminem

       This song is depressing, according to my daughter.  (What?!  I let her listen to Eminem?  Yeah, I guess so.  But only certain tracks.)  Anyway, as I just explained to Alexa, when something is creatively or artistically brilliant, it doesn’t matter how depressing its subject matter is, because we’re uplifted by knowing humans can be capable of such brilliance.

       I won’t describe the song in great detail—there’s no time, no room, and anyway you can hear it for yourself—but there’s something particularly interesting I want to point out.  The song tells its tale in the “epistolary” manner (which is a fancy English-major way of saying “letters back and forth”), but with a twist:  we get all the letters, but not quite in the right sequence.  We get Stan’s three letters, in chronological order, and then we get Eminem’s reply, but this fourth letter is out of sequence.  Eminem has only received the first two of Stan’s letters, and is responding to the second one, which was written when Stan was frustrated but not yet heartbroken.  We know how this sad saga ends (having heard the third of Stan’s letters), but Eminem doesn’t—yet.  The real climax of the song, arguably, isn’t when the car goes off the bridge, but when Eminem delivers the penultimate word of the song—that is, when he realizes he’s at the heart of the tragedy he was too late to prevent.

Suck My Kiss - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Sunshowers - M.I.A.

Superunknown - Soundgarden

Survival - Eminem

Sympathy For the Devil - The Rolling Stones

Click here for Part IV, the Final Liner!

More reading

Here are links to the rest of my series of Workout Megamix liner notes:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI
• Entire playlist on Spotify

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Workout Megamix Liner Notes - Part II

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language and coarse humor.

Update

Hear my entire Megamix (200+ songs) on Spotify - click here!

Introduction

In my last post I described my decades-long project of creating the best collection of rock & rap songs to listen to while riding my indoor bike trainer or rollers.  Not all music is suitable for hammering away all winter, and music is a bare necessity for this activity.  (Note the inconspicuous, but all-important, headphone cord in this photo.)

I’m aware that some people watch movies or cycling videos while riding indoors.  I suppose this could be somewhat diverting—but that’s kind of the problem.  You can’t be diverted from the suffering at hand, if you’re going to do this right.  You need music with a driving beat, and it never hurts if it has some attitude, so you can find the proper frame of mind (which is somewhere between excitement and rage).  Oh, and the music has to be sophisticated enough that you don’t get sick of it after repeated listening.  There are pop songs I was already sick of before I’d finished hearing them the first time.

As I mentioned before, my Ultimate Workout Megamix has 165 tracks, which is about 11 hours of music, all in alphabetical order by track.  In my last post I was able to cover A thru G.  Tonight I provide the list—replete with liner notes on selected songs—for H thru M.

Liner notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix Part II

Happiness is a Warm Gun - The Breeders

            Perhaps you’re familiar with the original Beatles version of this.  That wouldn’t be lively enough for the trainer.  The Breeders add a snarling guitar to it and it works great.  A college roommate of mine expressed astonishment that this was an all-female band despite the low voice of one of the singers.  Turns out my roommate was fooled by some photo where the guy was in drag.  That’s about all I know about the Breeders other than it was started by Kim Deal, formerly of the Pixies.

Head Down – Soundgarden

            This song helpfully reminds you to put your head down, which is useful while hammering, at least on the indoor trainer.  As the grammar coach of the UC Berkeley road team, I explained to everybody that “head down” is a figure of speech; while racing you really need to watch the road.  A former teammate of mine was once time trialing with his head down and rode right into the back of a parked car.  DAAAAAAAAAMN!

Heart In a Cage - The Strokes

            Good, fast tempo, the relentless driving beat so characteristic of the Strokes (it’s called a “triplet” according to my daughter, who knows something about music), and even some grumbling about how “I’m stuck in a city but I belong in a field” which captures that trapped feeling you get riding indoors for the third month in a row … this song has it all!  This is from “First Impressions of Earth,” an underrated Strokes album (all their others are overrated).

Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana

            Like “Black Hole Sun,” this song had quite the video.  It creeped me out big time when I first saw it.  At that time I was living in a literally flea-ridden apartment with a roommate who got baked like five times a day and had all the cable channels.  Just now I checked the video out again and probably the creepiest part is Kurt Cobain’s artificially blue eyes.  I once had an office job where the copier broke down constantly and I got to know the repairman, who had these dazzling blue contact lenses and a huge Swatch watch selection.  Nobody photocopies anymore … I wonder what that guy’s up to.  Maybe he’s in a band.

Heartbeat - Ice-T

            One of the best workout songs ever, as it reminds you to keep your heart rate up.  Plus it’s just a jammin’ song anyway.  “Listen to my heartbeat, it’s beatin’ like a wild man/ But that’s natural, ‘cause you know that I am/ No punk, no chump, no fool, no toy/ Try to get ill and I’ll serve you, boy!”  I sing along until I’m gasping for breath.

Hustlers - Nas
            This guy started rapping when he was just a pup, and was basically brilliant right out of the gate.  His quality control takes a bit of a hit because he produces albums almost constantly.  He’s kind of the Woody Allen of rap in that regard:  prolific but oddly willing to put out mediocre stuff now and then.  (He released two albums in one year, 1999; one went double platinum and the other fizzled.) This track is from “Hip Hop Is Dead,” which is my favorite of his albums.  An odd fact about Nas:  though he’s gotta be pretty wealthy, having sold over 15 million records in the U.S. alone, he also owns a shoe store.  I guess he just really likes shoes.

Hypnotize - The White Stripes

I Am A God - Kanye West

            Again, I cannot quite describe how I feel about Kanye West.  Actually, if I paraphrase the writer Adam Gopnik, maybe I can:  I don’t like Kanye West, but I like to listen to him.  (Gopnik was quoting his 6-year old talking about Barney, the purple dinosaur.)  This song is the epitome of braggadocio, but it’s got a good, weird, dark atmosphere and some great lines:  “I am a god/ So hurry up with my damn massage/ In a French-ass restaurant/ Hurry up with my damn croissants.”

I Am Not a Human Being - Lil Wayne

            What a great segue, from “I Am a God” right into “I Am Not a Human Being.”  This is one of my favorite Lil Wayne songs.  It has more effective guitar than any other rap song I can think of except maybe “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” by Ice-T or “Sing For the Moment” by Eminem.  I challenge you to listen to this on the trainer without starting to pedal harder.  I’m playing it right now to help with this commentary, and damn it, where’s my bike?!  LET’S ROLL, YOU AND ME, RIGHT NOW MUTHAFUCKA!

I Could Have Lied - Red Hot Chili Peppers

I Go To Work - Kool Moe Dee

            This is the rare nap song you can sing to your kids.  Did I really just type “nap song”?  Elton John would be a nap song.  I meant to say, this is the rare rap song you can sing to your kids.  There’s no profanity at all.  I was surprised the other day when my older daughter suddenly busted out with the whole first verse (which is a lot—237 words).  I started rapping this at my mom’s house at Thanksgiving recently, pleasantly camouflaged against the chatter of a bunch of kids, nieces and nephews, but suddenly they all went silent so they could hear.  It was a little scary, like suddenly being on stage.

I'm Back - Eminem

            Good, solid stuff.  I don’t know what this guy has against Christopher Reeves.  Maybe he’s just reminding us listeners that he’s the most tasteless rapper alive.  But good!

I'm Your Pusher - Ice-T

If I Had - Eminem

            My favorite line?  “If I had one wish, I would ask for a big enough ass for the whole world to kiss.”  This is funny all by itself, but even funnier for people my age who remember that corny Coke ad he’s mocking, from 1971:  “I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love.”

It Takes a Muscle - M.I.A.

Jack My Dick - Obie Trice

            This song might not work for your trainer ride the first few times you hear it because you’ll be laughing so hard your legs might turn to jelly.  Here, Obie presents the only convincing case for abstinence I’ve ever heard.  Not that this is the kind of song the Religious Right would ever embrace, and I can’t see it being put into service as a Public Service Announcement.

Jesus Christ Pose - Soundgarden

Just Lose It – Eminem

            Another song from the least of Eminem’s albums, “Encore,” but good for the trainer.  I think this is supposed to be a dance track.  It’s got a good beat, I could dance to it (if I could dance, but I can’t, so I ride rollers instead) … I give it a 7!

Killing Lies - The Strokes

Knives Out – Radiohead

            “If you’d been a dog they would have drowned you at birth.”  Nuff said.

Know It Ain't Right - M.I.A.

Last Nite - The Strokes

Legacy - Eminem

Like Suicide – Soundgarden

            Look, I know I have a lot of Soundgarden on this list.  I can’t help it.  I’m not saying they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread (and I’m not actually even that fond of sliced bread), but the drumming in this song, particularly toward the end, makes me want to ride to death.

Little Acorns - The White Stripes

Loco-Motive - Nas

Lollipop - Lil Wayne

            Some critic got all hot and bothered because this or that masterpiece of songcraft lost out to “Lollipop” for the Grammy in 2009.  The reader was expected to share this outrage, and I must say, “Lollipop” is just a bunch of gutter talk, very sophomoric, absolutely the kind of music you only listen to via headphones.  But none of this matters.  If you listen to this during exercise, you will get a better workout.

Longview - Green Day

Look In My Eyes - Obie Trice

Lose Yourself - Eminem

Love Me - 50 Cent

            I guess this is technically an Eminem song, but for some reason I think of it as 50 Cent.  I know nothing about 50 Cent.  My favorite line on this song is actually by Obie Trice.  It goes like this:  “Show me love … bitch.”  That just cracks me up every time.  I mean, it’s pretty bad when you have to tell your woman to love you.  I mean, you’re already on the wrong foot there, like people can just love on command.  But to make matters worse (perhaps out of reflex?) the speaker shows emphasis by calling her “bitch.” Yeah, dude, that will win her over.  It’s just funny.  Perhaps a feminist wouldn’t find this funny at all.  But think about it:  the funny part is how lame the guy is.  Feminists should use this as a case study for one of the many things wrong with men!  Who knows, maybe they do.

Love Me or Hate Me - Lady Sovereign

            Really, really great song, and I think this genre—grime—is generally a very good one for the trainer.  It’s fast, lots of wacky sounds, plenty to hook your bored brain on.  And the chorus here is good advice for the kind of person who tries so hard to be reasonable and likable, she just can’t cut herself any slack.  (Or he/himself … whatever.)  That advice is, “If you like me then thank you/ If you hate me, than fuck you.”  I sometimes play this one on speakers (rather than headphones), and whenever the f-word comes around I cough really loudly to drown it out, for the kids’ sake.  Today I finally let Alexa (age 14) hear the whole thing.  “I’d been wondering why this song always made you cough so much,” she said.

Love the Way You Lie - Eminem

Matangi - M.I.A.

Mockingbird - Eminem

Money Over Bullsh*t - Nas

Mother - Pink Floyd

            Okay, this isn’t actually ideal trainer music, but it’s just such a great song.  And actually, the guitar solo is pretty rousing.  If you’re into the movie “Pink Floyd The Wall,” you should check out my exegesis, in which I put forth this song as the key to understanding the entire movie.  Click here.

Mr. Carter - Lil Wayne

Mrs. Officer - Bobby Valentino/Lil Wayne

My Dad's Gone Crazy - Eminem

My England - Lady Sovereign

            One of my favorites.  If I understand this one right, it’s making fun of Anglophiles who think they know something about England because they read Bridget Jones’ Diary or saw the movie.  Meanwhile, Lady Sovereign both celebrates and denigrates her homeland in a way that never fails to amuse me.  Check it out!

My Mom - Eminem
            This is the best workout song I know of concerning Munchausen syndrome by proxy.  If you’re aware of other rousing rap or rock songs on this topic, please let me know.  If I gather enough of these, perhaps I’ll create a Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy Workout Megamix.  Actually, that might end up being kind of depressing, but it would still beat going to the gym.

My Name Is - Eminem

My Wave - Soundgarden

Stay tuned

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve focused on a relatively small number of bands/singers in this list.  Well duh, that’s to help you!  Not everybody consumes music by buying one MP3 at a time.  You could actually buy a few CDs, perhaps used, to take a gamble on this music.  Or just keep listening to that Sting album you bought back in college … see if I care.

Tune in next time for the penultimate installment (probably N thru S).  Click here for Part III, and enjoy your turbo-training!

More reading

Here are links to the rest of my series of Workout Megamix liner notes:

• Part I
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI
• Entire playlist on Spotify

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Workout Megamix Liner Notes - Part I

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Update

Hear my entire Megamix (200+ songs) on Spotify - click here!

Introduction

A couple friends asked me for recommendations for music to listen to while riding the stationary bike or indoor trainer.  I’ve been crafting the all-time #1 ultimate Workout Megamix for about two decades.  My quest began back in the mid-‘90s when I tried to ride the trainer while listening to The Cranberries.  Nothing against them, but it wasn’t helping me get that heart rate up.

Around this time I e-mailed all my friends for recommendations and was shocked at the dearth of fast, hard, rockin’ good stuff.  People were suggesting albums like “Buena Vista Social Club” and Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue.”  As you can see, I really needed to find some cool friends, but that’s hard to do, so I started experimenting with different music and I think that’s gone pretty well.

So in compiling my Workout Megamix, I thought to myself, Why stop at a mere list when I could be describing the song and/or the band and/or the reason I think it belongs in the list?  And so my Liner Notes idea was born.  Because this is a lot of work, I’m extending the distribution of these notes from 2 persons to 3.17 billion (the number of souls on this planet with Internet access).

The full list comprises 165 tracks, which at roughly 4 minutes per track gives about 11 hours of music, which should last for about 15 indoor workouts.  If you do 3 workouts a week this will last you 5 weeks before you get your first rerun.  That ain’t so bad.  These tracks are in alphabetical order by title because that’s the order they play on my MP3 player.  This post covers A-G and I’ll get to the rest in subsequent posts.

Before I begin, a quick caveat:  I’m not saying I know anything about music.  Whenever I find myself in the position of expounding in detail on a thorny subject (i.e., most of the time), I find myself winging it.  I hope that’s good enough for you.

One last thing:  particularly if your trainer is on the loud side (or even your rollers—mine have aluminum drums that tend to “sing” at high speed), please do yourself a favor and spring for noise-canceling headphones.  Indoor cycling is supposed to be good for you—don’t slowly deafen yourself in the process!

Liner Notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix

'Till I Collapse – Eminem

            This is a perfect one for the trainer, thematically.  It even talks about your legs getting tired:  “Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out, Till my legs give out, can’t shut my mouth.”  And you can’t ride the trainer with your mouth shut, either.  How true that is.

8 Miles & Runnin' - Freeway/Jay-Z

            This is from the soundtrack to “8 Mile,” which was the movie that got me back into rap after more than a decade of nothing … the wilderness years, if you will.  “The New Yorker” gave “8 Mile”  a good review, which I hadn’t expected.  When that movie came out I knew almost nothing about Eminem, other than what I’d gleaned from an outraged editorial quoting some of his crude lyrics.  I remember thinking, “Man, this guy is really foul ... for him to be popular, he must have talent or something.”  The movie convinced me.  Go see it if you haven’t, or even if you have.

911 Is a Joke - Public Enemy

            Public Enemy was one of the first rap groups I ever got into.  I kind of burned out on them eventually, but that’s not their fault.  Chuck D is the main guy, with Flavor Flav kind of his court jester.  Nice combo.

A Punchup at a Wedding – Radiohead

            This is the only song I know of that’s about a fistfight breaking out at a wedding.  Fortunately, my wedding was free of fisticuffs, though I did consider beating down an attendee.  It was an outdoor wedding in an amphitheater, and some douchebag college kid took the liberty of sitting down to watch.  It would be one thing if it were a giant wedding, but I only had like 12 or 13 guests—plus him.  Meanwhile, the guy’s dog was getting a bit too close to the wedding cake.  Lucky for him I didn’t want to fight while wearing my nice suit.

A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T - The Hives

            The Hives is a band I discovered through the music review section of “The New Yorker.”  They hail from the Swedish industrial city of Fagersta.  As the magazine described it, “The Hives quickly became huge in Sweden, which is sort of like being the strongest person in your house.”  They have a fast, angry sound perfect for the indoor trainer.

Adrenaline Rush - Obie Trice

            I was introduced to Obie Trice by the “8 Mile” soundtrack.  Like Eminem, he’s from Detroit.  Here’s a crazy biographical detail:  he was shot in the head back in 2005 and is still carrying around the bullet in his skull.  This doesn’t seem to affect his brain—his rap is kickass.  “Adrenaline Rush” is not actually one of his best songs, but it’s a good one for the trainer.  I call it as “the motherfucka song” because he says “motherfucka” about 3 dozen times.  It’ll grow on you, trust me.

Airbag – Radiohead

            This song was inspired by a British insurance company magazine (like what you might get from AAA here) and the headline, “An airbag saved my life.”  The lead singer gave this commentary on the song:  “Has an airbag saved my life? Nah…but I tell you something, every time you have a near accident, instead of just sighing and carrying on, you should pull over, get out of the car and run down the street screaming, ‘I’m BACK! I’m ALIVE! My life has started again today!’  In fact, you should do that every time you get out of a car.”  Awesome guitar on this track.  Actually I think it’s two dueling guitars, but as I said I’m not very knowledgeable about music.

Ass Like That – Eminem

            This song has an unfortunate chorus:  “I ain't never seen an ass like that/ The way you move it, you make my pee pee go / Doing, doing, doing.”  (The “doing” rhymes with “boing,” not with the gerund form of “to do.”  I have just realized this is a heteronym I never noticed before ... but I digress.)  This song is from the weakest of Eminem’s albums, “Encore,” and I really had to ask myself, “Can I listen to, much less enjoy, a song that includes “make my pee pee go doing, doing, doing?”  After much deliberation, the answer is yes, I can and do.  If you can get past this bit, it’s really a great track ... very funny.  It has held up well.  Listen for Eminem’s impersonation of Triumph, the puppet dog, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Average Man - Obie Trice

            This one is badass.  Lots of gun-related sounds, which can so often be embarrassing, like in action flicks where cocking the gun is almost as loud as shooting it.  But Obie Trice pulls it off. 

Bad Girls - M.I.A.

            I stumbled on M.I.A. quite by accident.  M.I.A. stands for “Missing In Acton” (not “Action” as Wikipedia erroneously reports).  Acton is a part of London I know about from taking the Underground.  M.I.A. (full name Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam) is British/Sri Lankan and I’d say her genre is a hybrid of dance, grime, hip-hop, and world music.  I first learned of her through a magazine I randomly started getting in the mail called “Complex.”  I never did gather whether this was COM-plex, like the psychological conflict, or com-PLEX, as in complicated.  (Another heteronym!)  It was a weird magazine.  Not quite white, not quite black, not quite about music, just a hodgepodge.  I kind of liked it because it was so random, and featured babes.  “Complex” did a profile of M.I.A., and I bought a disc on a whim, and it turns out she’s tot’ly wicked.  This song has become one of my favorites, though I didn’t much like it at first.  Be sure to check out the YouTube video too.

Bad Guy – Eminem

            This song is fricking brilliant.  But you have to listen to “Stan” first or it won’t make much sense.  If Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be a rapper, and he’d envy Eminem.  I know that sounds crazy but trust me on this ... I was an English major.

Be Somebody - Kings of Leon

            Way back in like 2002, a friend randomly sent me a Kings of Leon a disc in the hope that I’d like it.  I did, and do.  I like their newer stuff better; originally the lead singer kind of mumbled because he was afraid his mom would hear the lyrics and be offended.  Nowadays I hear Kings of Leon on the radio, which makes me think I’m cool because I knew [of] them back in the day, man.

Beautiful – Eminem

            This song, though quite good, is admittedly just a little cheesy.  But, as the father of daughters, I can’t help but admire it, and hope that if anybody ever insults my daughter’s looks, she can remember this song and say, “You can go get f*cked.”

Beautiful Pain - Eminem w/ Sia

            This song follows what’s becoming a pretty established motif for Eminem:  he does the rapping, but the chorus is sung by some popular female singer with a great voice.  I guess there are purists who don’t like the obvious commercial motivation behind this format, but why the hell would I care?  Is it really a problem if Eminem or someone like him has more money than some robber baron or advertising exec?  I think the snarling rapper and great singer go well together.

Best Rapper Alive - Lil Wayne

            I’m not very familiar with all the hip-hop acts out there, much less pop, but at some point I became vaguely aware there was a rapper called Lil Wayne, so on a lark I bought a CD of his at Target.  Turns out he’s rather good and occasionally brilliant.  This isn’t his best song but it’s got the driving beat, and sometimes you gotta bulk out the megamix or those crème-de-la-crème tracks will get old.

Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden

            I thought the video for this was mind-blowing back in 1994.  I watched it more recently and it hasn’t aged well.  The song, though, is still great.  These guys are from Seattle which means they probably drink a lot of coffee and like to take the elevator up inside the Space Needle.  (Can you tell I did extensive research for these liner notes?)

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos - Public Enemy

            One of the best PE tracks they is.  Sing along!  Perform it for your kids!

Blow Up the Outside World – Soundgarden

            This is the best song Soundgarden ever recorded.  I’ll confess it seemed pointless at first, but at some point its brilliance dawned on me, and I’ve now adopted it as my credo, my mantra, and my mission statement.  If you’re riding hard enough on the trainer or the rollers, and the music is doing its job, you’ll feel something kind of like excitement, kind of like fight-or-flight, and kind of like anger, as you thrash away, ensconced in your headphones and your private pain cave.  In this state it seems completely reasonable to blow up the outside world.

Born Free - M.I.A

            A workout megamix needs to include either this song or the John Barry song  written for the 1966 movie, about lions, called “Born Free.”  In the end this one won out, because a) the other one sucks, and b) if I get the other one in my head, I always substitute my brother’s lyrics, which went, “Born dead/ The baby had no head.”

Brain Stew - Green Day

            I saw these guys in concert at one of those music festivals in Golden Gate Park (WOMAD, I think) and didn’t think they were that good.  Over the next two decades my wife kept asking me to get her an album by these guys and finally I relented.  Turns out plenty of the songs I’d enjoyed on our local alternative (i.e., mainstream) rock station are by Green Day.  (I didn’t realize this because modern deejays are far too cool to ever provide the name of a song or whom it’s by, and they never use the word “whom” either.)  Green Day is not a great band—one song sounds too much like another IMHO—but the two guys who started it are from Rodeo, a godforsaken little cow town I have to ride through on some bike rides, and I applaud them for transcending such humble roots.  Plus they got their start playing at a little punk club that’s walking distance from my house (though I’m not cool enough to go there).  “Brain Stew” has a very simple but thrashable guitar line.  Can I say “guitar line”?  Does that even mean anything?

Bucky Done Gun - M.I.A.

            “Done” and “Gun” don’t look like they should rhyme, but they do.  I don’t really know what (if anything) this song is “about,” and I don’t care.

Burden in My Hand – Soundgarden

            “Burden in my hand” is just one of those phrases that sound cool.  Don’t overthink it.  That’s my advice for lots of this music.  Riding the trainer isn’t like going to a poetry reading, okay?

Cash Money Millionaires - Lil Wayne

            This song is pretty dumb, in the best possible way.  Go Weezy!

Cha Ching (Cheq 1-2 Remix) - Lady Sovereign

            This is off “Run the Road,” a grime compilation.  Grime is kind of like hip-hop, but British, and maybe a bit faster.  Lady Sovereign is a very short person and has one of those ponytails that sticks out of the side of her head like the girl in “Napoleon Dynamite.”  I wish Lady Sovereign would come to a party at my house.  If she turned out to be a smoker, I’d even let her smoke in the house—that’s how cool she is.  I hope she doesn’t smoke, though.  It’s gross and bad for you.

Charmer - Kings of Leon

            Everyone I know hates this song.  What’s wrong with everybody?  If you hate it, I don’t want to hear about it.  I like it.  Obviously.

Cheers - Obie Trice

            This is a great track.  I sometimes sing along, though that gets awkward because he uses the n-word.  He’s allowed to, of course.  It’s okay because I’m usually too out of breath to sing anyway.

Closer - Kings of Leon

            You know how with some bands all the songs sound alike?  Not so with Kings of Leon.  This one is way cool and a good track to hammer to as you fight to become a King of Lean.

Come As You Are – Nirvana

            I’m not actually sure Nirvana is a good band for working out to … the tempo might be a bit wrong.  But you can set your brakes to drag and stand up.  I kind of feel like supporting this band since as everybody knows their lead singer killed himself.  It would be such a shame if he were forgotten, like Men At Work.  At least those guys are still alive and kicking, as far as I know.

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

            Clearly this song needs no introduction.  By the way, I’m sick of people saying “Dark Side of the Moon” is Pink Floyd’s best album.  Of course that’s a great album but “The Wall” is better.  This Roman Meal bakery thought you’d like to know.

Cool Cats - Obie Trice

            My favorite part?  When Obie says “blaow!”

Creep – Radiohead

            Of course you heard this on the radio all the time back in the ‘90s.  This isn’t quite as strong as the other stuff on this list, but you might as well re-familiarize yourself with it so you can sing it in the shower.

Cry Now - Obie Trice

Desperation - Eminem

Diamonds From Sierra Leone - Kanye West

            I don’t know what to make of Kanye West.  On the one hand, several of his songs, such as this one, seem pretty cool.  On the other hand, somebody showed me the video of “Bound 2” and I almost vomited into my soup.  And I wasn’t even eating soup!  That video would be a crime against humanity even without Kim Kardashian in it.  But I liked “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” before I saw the “Bound 2” video; why should that change?  

Don't Shoot (I'm a Man) - Devo

            It was a little frightening buying Devo’s first album in two decades.  I really liked Devo back in the day and didn’t want to hear them embarrass themselves.  But this album, “Something for Everybody,” is great!  As is this song!

Drive Slow - Kanye West

I like this song a lot.  More than it deserves, probably.  It always reminds me of a “New Yorker” story from July 10, 2000 called “The Saturday Morning Car Wash Club” by James Ellis Thomas.  Somehow I get the pleasure of that story just by hearing this song … all while training indoors!  It’s like alchemy or something!

Déjà Vu – Eminem deja

            This song is about overdosing in front of your kids.  Pretty heavy.  But it’s a kickass song and the only rap song I know with two different French accent marks in its title.

Easy to Crash – Cake

            Cake is from Sacramento and used to play the coffeehouse circuit there.  Did you know Sacramento had a coffeehouse circuit?   Me neither.  This song is not about crashing while riding rollers, but I did do that the other day.  I was riding out of the saddle and made the mistake of shifting up and accelerating.  I rode right off the front of the rollers, hit the carpet, went flying (surfing my bike at this point), hit the fan, knocked it ass-over-teakettle right into my main road bike (which was leaning against the wall), tipping it over.  I managed to dismount my rain bike and catch my other bike by the handlebar just before it would have hit the floor.  Alexa saw the whole thing and was duly impressed.

Enter Sandman – Metallica

            I became aware of Metallica all the way back in high school when this stoner kid used to talk about them.  He had super long fluffy white hair and puffy red eyes and was oddly chummy with me.  “Dude, it’s my birthday and my dad’s throwin’ me a party.  I’m not talkin’ no birthday cake and candles either … we’re gonna get drunk!”  This dialogue didn’t involve Metallica per se, but I always associated them with that kid.  Anyhow, fast forward a few decades to when I watched “Some Kind of Monster,” a documentary about Metallica hiring a consultant to help them get along while cutting an album.  Fascinated, and dimly aware that Metallica had made music with the SF symphony, I bought their eponymous album and guess what?  It R4WKs!  It’s kind of silly as well, I have to say.  These guys are a bit on the earnest side, but heavy metal shouldn’t be tongue in cheek or ironic.  Just roll with it.  Belt out “We’re off to never never land” in front of your kids and watch them cringe.

Fell In Love With a Girl - The White Stripes

            I didn’t expect to like the White Stripes because so many people bagged on them.  But oddly, the biggest complaint I heard was that they’re overrated.  How can they be overrated when everybody bags on them?  And anyway, who cares?  They’re quite good, if a bit sloppy.  This song has a video with cats playing guitars, which I showed to my kids when they were tiny, and to this day they love this song.  Since I love them, it’s just a big love-in whenever I hear this.

Fell On Black Days - Soundgarden

Fight the Power - Public Enemy

Follow My Life - Obie Trice

Fresh - Devo

Galang - M.I.A.

Girls LGBNAF - Ice-T

            You absolutely mustn’t play this song on the hi-fi when your kids are around.  The lyrics are filthy, at least by ‘80s standards.  Also, don’t play it on your boom box out in the driveway unless you’re ready to silence it very quickly.  I was working on my bike, playing this, and a famous writer/illustrator of children’s books came walking down the sidewalk with her dog.  I had to scramble to prevent an embarrassing episode!  Ice-T is from L.A. and was one of my early favorites.  He’s held up well!

Give It Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers

            Another band from L.A.  One of my college roommates, a rich kid with over 400 CDs in his collection (yes, I counted them once) used to play this song almost constantly, along with “Down In It” by Nine Inch Nails.  They were the only two songs I ever heard him play.  I didn’t realize I liked this song (and band) until years later when I’d recovered from that roommate.  A colleague of mine once encountered this band’s bass player, Flea, on an airplane.  They were both flying first class to Europe.  Flea seemed to be on drugs and decided to climb up into the overhead bin to sleep.  (He’s not a very big guy.)  This caused a major altercation with the flight attendant.

Got Hungry - Obie Trice

             Obie hit a long dry spell (from 2006 to 2012) between his second and third studio albums.  I started anticipating his third album in 2008 and was getting mighty impatient when in 2009 he decided, probably just to pay the bills, to release a compilation of old stuff, which he called “Special Reserve.”  It was kind of unpolished, but full of highly energetic stuff like this song.  Perfect with a lactic acid chaser!

Stay tuned

Obviously I still have H thru Z to go.  I hope you like this topic because it'll be the next 4 or 5 posts at this rate. Click here for Part II.

More reading

Here are links to the rest of my series of Workout Megamix liner notes:

• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI
• Entire playlist on Spotify

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Lance & Eminem

NOTE: This post is rated R for prevalent drug references and pervasive strong language.

Introduction

The latest doping accusations against Lance Armstrong are obviously big news. If you google “lance armstrong doping” you get 440,000 hits (as of today), but googling “Arnold Schwarzenegger steroids” gets you only 118,000 hits. Odd, isn’t it? Lance hasn’t been convicted of anything, and yet Arnold has confessed to past steroid use as a bodybuilder. As governor of California, Schwarzenegger is in charge of the eighth largest economy in the world, so his moral character ought to be front and center. Why the disparity in public interest?

Of course, Lance’s case is huge because of the seriousness of the allegations, their timeliness, and Lance’s profile as one of the greatest cyclists in the world. If he were found guilty, this would be one of the greatest scandals in the history of sports. Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, used steroids decades ago—in a time, and a sport, where steroids were practically a given for all serious competitors.

But couldn’t the same thing practically be said of modern cycling? Let’s look at the doping record of the riders Lance beat during his seven-year Tour de France winning spree. Here is a list, by year, of every top-five contender who “tested positive or was sanctioned or sacked at some point in their career, either prior or subsequently.” (Source: Cycling Weekly.)

Dopers among Lance’s Tour de France competitors:

1999 – The second, fourth, and fifth placed riders (Zulle, Dufaux, and Casero respectively)

2000 – Second through fifth (Ullrich, Beloki, Moreau, Heras)

2001 – Second, third, and fifth (Ullrich, Beloki, Gonzalez)

2002 – Second through fifth (Beloki, Rumsas, Botero, Gonzalez)

2003 – Second through fourth (Ullrich, Vinokourov, Hamilton)

2004 – Third and fourth (Basso and Ullrich)*

2005 – Second through fifth (Basso, Ullrich, Mancebo, Vinokourov)

(The asterisk for 2004 is for Andreas Klöden, who has never been sanctioned but paid a €25,000 fine to a German district court in return for dropping their investigation into eyewitness accounts of him blood doping in the 2006 Tour de France. Such a payment is not considered an admission of guilt under German law, but I think it deserves an asterisk.)

Given all this, it’s tempting to ask, “So what if Lance doped?” What are sports for, after all, but entertainment? If Lance was cleaner, or at least no dirtier, than the racers he was up against, and he put on a great show, isn’t that enough?

Of course not. Sports heroes are, well, heroes. Their fans—especially kids—look up to them as role models. How can we keep our kids flying straight when their favorite sports celebrities are setting such a bad example?

Ah, but the thoughtful albertnet reader has now latched onto something else: what about other celebrities that set a terrible example and go scot-free? Do a Google search on “Eminem drugs” and you get 2.38 million hits. And yet he’s never been arrested for drugs, nor has his drug use ever mired him in a public scandal. Meanwhile, he raps not only about personal drug abuse but about all kinds of violent acts, and consistently uses the most profane language he can think of. Why is it okay for this celebrity entertainer to do all this? Shouldn’t we hold him up to the same standard as Lance Armstrong?

In this post I examine these questions using Lance and Eminem as my case studies. Of course I’ll end up with a number of parts left over on the garage floor, but I hope to provide a useful perspective on the matter. (I hope I do better with this essay than with the pictures at the top. That’s the best photo I’ve personally taken of Lance, and with no pictures at all of Eminem I had to draw one.)

Why these two guys?

Certainly I could tackle this topic using different celebrities for my case studies. Why not choose a cycling icon like Jan Ullrich who was actually found guilty? And how about an entertainer like Lenny Bruce, who did get in legal trouble for his foul mouth, and died of a drug overdose? I chose Lance and Eminem because for many years they’ve almost blurred together in my mind. Both have achieved incredible success at the highest level as relative interlopers in their fields. Lance, as an American in a largely European sport, has won more Tours de France than any other rider in history. Eminem, a white musician in a black-dominated rap music scene, has had six consecutive number one albums, and has sold more than 80 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musical artists in the world. Lance and Eminem also had similarities in their upbringings: neither of them knew his father, and each had a stepfather with whom he didn’t get along. Moreover, they are both very bold, brash characters, perfectly willing to rail against the status quo. Heck, they even look similar. I have often thought that if Lance rapped instead of rode, he’d be Eminem, and if Eminem had athletic instead of musical talent, he’d be Lance. It just seems like a natural pairing for this essay.

Caveat

I will make no attempt in this post to establish whether or not Lance ever doped. I don’t know the man, and I don’t know any of the riders who raced the Tour de France as his teammate. I have no special insight into the question of his guilt vs. innocence, and would be an idiot if I thought mere intuition mattered one iota here. I will stick with only know is widely known: 1) Lance has been repeatedly accused of doping; and 2) Lance has never tested positive, nor has he been convicted of sporting fraud of any kind. I will not confuse allegations with established fact. The point here is to explore the issue of drug use by celebrities and why it matters.

Role model

The accusations against Lance Armstrong have a special sting for the public specifically because his story is so heroic. He didn’t just win the Tour de France—he did it after almost dying of cancer. To look at a photo of him bald and sick, and then consider that he fought back and went on to win the greatest race on earth: of course it’s inspirational. And to believe won clean, against opponents who weren’t, is like a triumph of good over evil. It tells us that doping is just a shortcut to success for the lazy, and that real determination, careful planning, and perfect training (when combined with huge talent) really can carry the day. It’s the greatest evidence possible for the notion that you don’t have to cheat to win.

Lance’s case, then, becomes a battle between idealism and cynicism. Consider the following quotes:

Lance (in Nike commercial): “Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike, bustin’ my ass, six hours a day. What are you on?”

Wall Street Journal interview: “[Landis had] heard that the elite cyclists at the most grueling races used exotic and prohibited blood additives and synthetic drugs. Far from being repelled by this, he said, he had come to assume doping was part of the sport and, if he joined a top team, would be part of his job.”

Cynicism

For aspiring bike racers, the question of whether you can win without doping is obviously hugely important: the conclusion a young racer comes to on this may decide whether he continues riding clean, decides to dope, or quits the sport entirely. But the matter extends well beyond bike racing, since sport is so often used as a metaphor for all human endeavor.

In 2006, not long after Landis had appeared to win the Tour de France (but before his positive drug test), my daughter Alexa was upset over her team’s loss in a soccer game, and I had a talk with her. My thesis: most people, even champions, lose much of the time. I used cycling as my example. “Who won the Tour this year?” I asked Alexa. She replied, “Floyd Landis.” (We’d watched the race together on TV.) I said, “Good. But did he win on Alpe d’Huez?” She said, “Um, no.” Right, I told her: he had a terrible day there, lost the yellow jersey, and seemed to be totally out of the running—but he never lost hope, and went on to win the general classification. Inspirational! (In case you think kids don’t listen to such lectures, consider that when I followed up by asking who did win the Alpe d’Huez stage, Lindsay—three years old at the time—piped up, “Fränk Schleck!”)

Of course, my Landis lecture only made its point because we thought he was clean. It wouldn’t do to say to my daughter, “Did Floyd give up after Alpe d’Huez? No! He lubed himself up with a transfusion of EPO-enriched blood, slapped some testosterone patches on his balls, and crushed everybody in the next stage. Then, in the final time trial, still coked to the gills, he bested Pereiro to take the GC victory!”

It’s not hard for people, especially young and idealistic ones, to extrapolate from sports to the rest of life. A scene in “Breaking Away” depicts this wonderfully. The young hero, Dave, has argued with his father Ray, who refused to honor a verbal guarantee he’d given to a customer of his used car lot. Ray has suffered a heart attack from the altercation. Subsequently, Dave has been deliberately crashed in a bike race by one of his heroes, an Italian on the Cinzano team. Now, welcoming his father home from the hospital, Dave embraces him and apologizes, sobbing, “Everybody cheats. I just didn’t know.” His prickly father awkwardly pats his son’s back and says, “Well … now you know.” Ray looks over to his wife, her eyes shiny with tears, and says, “Well? Talk to him, Evelyn!” It is the most touching moment in all of cinema. Fortunately for the viewers, Dave doesn’t take the cynical lesson to heart, and goes on to win the Little Indy 500 bike race. The joy in his victory salute signals redemption. Thus, the movie is inspirational instead of nihilistic, a triumph of idealism over cynicism.

Obviously Lance is only one racer, and cycling is only one sport, so this doesn’t all rest on his shoulders. But given the transgressions of other sports figures, we’re starting to run out of heroes. With the most recent Tour de France winner, Alberto Contador, now mired in a doping scandal, the matter of Lance’s innocence may represent the difference between a slightly vs. wholly corrupted sport. Were eight of the last twelve Tours won clean, or only one?

The entertainer

Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, doesn’t have a cancer research foundation; isn’t a magnet for product endorsements; isn’t anybody we talk to our grade-school kids about. Nobody expects Eminem to follow any rules or be a good role model for anybody. Nobody wakes him up in the morning to give him a drug test. He raps about whatever he feels like: sex, drugs, violence, whatever strikes his fancy. His net worth, a quick Google search tells me, is about $115 million, somewhat similar to Lance Armstrong’s. So: where does Eminem get off? Should we be outraged with this guy, who raps about all kinds of antisocial acts while acknowledging that his music “is for the kids’ amusement”?

I would argue, actually, that Eminem and other entertainers should be held to an entirely different standard from that of pro athletes. With any artist—musical, painting, literary—there is a divide between life and art. We appreciate the work (or not), whether or not we approve of the artist’s conduct in the rest of his life. How an athlete treats his body has everything to do with his performance, whereas for the artist an unhealthy lifestyle might simply be an unfortunate distraction.

Good art can be about anything and doesn’t have to be wholesome; after all, Shakespeare wrote plays about murder, suicide, war, and promiscuity. William Blake’s paintings were dark and often unnerving but no art critic would say Thomas Kincade’s Disney-esque works are in any way superior. You might well look at a painting, or hear a song on the radio, and have no idea—nor any interest—in who created it.

In the case of Marshall Mathers, the creator is even further removed. He has an alter ego—Slim Shady—nested inside another alter ego, Eminem. The narrative voice in his music is like a set of Russian dolls. We can ignore the true identity of the musician, while appreciating the music on its own merit. With an athlete, on the other hand, he and his work are one and the same.

No role model

As a young cyclist, I dreamed of following in the footsteps of cycling heroes like Greg LeMond and Andy Hampsten. Creating for myself a simulacrum of their gaunt physique, even down to the shaved legs, was a given. Watching Andy eat a big bowl of granola, fruit, and plain yogurt for dinner made me wonder if I could stand to do that myself.

I don’t think it’s the same with the fans of other entertainers and artists. The budding painter might well admire the works of Van Gogh, but he wouldn’t want to be Van Gogh; Van Gogh was depressed for years and eventually killed himself. Unlike with sport, it’s not even tempting to believe that emulating an artist’s behavior will help the struggling newcomer to achieve the master’s success. Nobody ever cut his ear off in hopes of painting like Van Gogh.

But in the case of Eminem, might not our impressionable teens be tempted to emulate his bad living, just because he’s so cool? Well, Eminem himself mocks any fan who would try to mimic his misbehaviors; an entire song, “Role Model,” is devoted to this mockery: “I got genital warts and it burns when I pee/ Don’t you wanna grow up to be just like me? I tie a rope around my penis and jump from a tree/ You probably wanna grow up to be just like me!” Another song, “Stan,” paints a picture of an obsessed fan who carries out numerous self-destructive acts that Eminem has rapped about. Eminem responds to Stan, “And what’s this shit about/ You like to cut your wrist too?/ I say that shit just clownin’ dawg/ C’mon, how fucked up is you?”

Of course, a dumb teen could ignore all the lyrics and see Eminem as an example of how you can use drugs and still be successful. A high-achieving drug abuser certainly does set a bad example; a high school friend of mine greatly admired a stoner named Paul who—though perpetually high—still got straight As. Paul was an unfortunate influence on my friend’s behavior; my friend got the drug part down without managing the good grades. (A couple of years after college, I ran into Paul in a Kinko’s, where he was working. He will be a cautionary tale for my daughters when the time comes.) Should we be down on Eminem for conveying the idea that some winners do use drugs?

No, because—predictably enough—Eminem got his comeuppance for his substance-abuse recklessness. In an early song he suggested, with little apparent concern, that drugs would one day get the better of him: “But in the long run/ These drugs are probably going to catch up sooner or later/ But fuck it, I’m on one/ So let’s enjoy/ Let the X destroy your spinal cord/ So it’s not a straight line no more.” This song, of course, would rightfully have teens’ parents fuming.

Sure enough, the drugs do catch up with Eminem in the long run, which he candidly admits in a song. This time he isn’t so breezy: “So I take a Vicodin, splash, it hits my stomach and ah/ A couple weeks go by it ain’t even like I'm getting high/ Now I need it just not to feel sick, like I’m getting by … Just to be able to function throughout the day. Let’s see/ That's an Ambien each nap, how many Valium, three?/ And that will average out to about one good hour’s sleep/ OK, so now you see the reason how come he/ Has taken four years just too put out an album beat/ See you and me, we almost had the same outcome, Heath.” The song starts out with a creepy skit of an EMT radioing ahead to the ER: “We have a mid-30s male found down, unresponsive, possible overdose, substance unknown ... he’s intubated and we’re bagging him now .. we’ll update en route, ETA 10 minutes.”

(Aside from his slippery, flippant Slim Shady and Eminem personas, Mathers the man corroborates his drug problems, candidly telling a reporter, “I overdosed and almost died.”)

I bother with all this detail to make a point: plenty of cyclists have been suspended for doping, but how many of them have spoken candidly about the real dangers involved? We’ve heard some remorse, sure, and some predictable fluff about turning over a new leaf, etc., but where are the tales of how scary it is getting a blood transfusion in a motel room, or injecting something you bought from a stranger on the Internet? Where’s the lurid tale, equivalent to Eminem’s, to scare our junior cyclists away from doping? Eminem’s carte blanche to rap about whatever he feels like gives him, in this case, the opportunity to give us a visceral sense of the danger of illicit drugs. Where Eminem is brutally honest, doping cyclists—even convicted ones—often continue being as secretive as possible.

The key difference

Doping bike racers may also get their comeuppance, as Landis has shown. The key difference is that when the missteps of an entertainer are made public (either voluntarily or not), a happy ending is possible. After his four unproductive years of drug addiction, Eminem got clean, and subsequently came out with two albums less than a year apart, each of them better than the one before it. His fans can take some heart in the whole sordid affair—on his new album, he often sounds jubilant. Far from being made more cynical by his story, we may develop more empathy for people with substance abuse problems, and Eminem’s recovery is a message of hope. At a minimum, his fans can go on enjoying his music—everything he ever recorded, no asterisks required.

The story of an athlete caught doping, on the other hand, cannot have a happy ending. Our past admiration for the athlete is shattered, and even after he returns from suspension his future exploits cannot be thoroughly enjoyed. Either he goes on to race poorly, highlighting the extent to which his prior success was dope-fueled, or he races well, raising our suspicions that he’s back on the lube. Above all, when a doping athlete is exposed, his fans feel like they’ve been duped, like he’s insulted their intelligence, played them and everybody else for suckers.

An artist (whatever type) who behaves irresponsibly doesn’t do it in the service of his art, and his work can be judged separately from his deeds. His output isn’t improved by the bad behavior; you can’t say, “Sure, that was a good album, but it doesn’t count—he was on drugs!” (The exception would be plagiarism, yellow journalism or deliberate falsification of one’s past in a supposedly straightforward autobiography. At this point, Lance’s autobiography looks like a larger target for accusations of falsehood than Eminem’s, whether such accusations are valid or not.)

With sport, the star who takes dope isn’t really a star. His success is false; his entire oeuvre as stamped out by his lie. I can’t imagine going back and re-watching Landis “winning” Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France; the spectacle would just make me angry.

It’s especially awful when the doper denies wrongdoing and drags the public through a long legal process; Floyd Landis—before finally admitting guilt—even created a legal defense fund that raised about a million dollars from well-meaning fans sending in contributions. Everyone who believed in him is a victim of his deceit: fans, teammates, managers, sponsors, companies he endorsed ... the list goes on and on.

Also victimized are all the clean racers deprived of glory by dopers stealing it. Cadel Evans, who lost the 2007 Tour de France to Contador by a mere 23 seconds, must be particularly interested in, and infuriated by, Contador’s recent positive drug test. He may assume, as I do, that a rider is either fundamentally clean or fundamentally not; I’d say if Contador cheated in this year’s Tour, he likely cheated the other times he “won” it as well.

The collateral damage with Eminem’s drug addiction was, I would guess, largely limited to his close friends and family.

The Lance Factor

In the long history of the Tour de France, only one rider—Landis—has been stripped of his victory due to a failed doping test. For Contador, a three-time winner, to be convicted would be a much bigger deal. But Lance? Seven victories, eight podium finishes! His legacy casts a long shadow over everyone else’s in the modern sport. His autobiography was a #1 New York Times bestseller. His foundation has sold over 70 million Livestrong bracelets. Livestrong Day, last Saturday, comprised more than 1,100 events in 64 different countries. Lance offers a message of hope to 28 million cancer survivors. Surely his bravery in the face of cancer, and his dedication to his sport, would be impressive whether he’s clean or not. But so much hinges on his innocence.

A bike riding friend of mine told me, “I was talking to a colleague, who’s not a cyclist, and when the subject of Lance came up she said, ‘Don’t you dare say anything to me about Lance and doping. I don’t want to hear it. I couldn’t take it if he were a cheater.’” Far beyond the reaches of sport—and how many Americans follow cycling, anyway?—there is a societal need for Lance to be innocent, for him to have been telling the truth all along.

As for Eminem, he has nothing to lie about: his entire approach to his music is to share absolutely everything about himself, the more wretched the better. About the worst scandal I can imagine for him would be if it turned out he came from a comfortable middle-class home and was raised by two loving parents. Outside of this Beaver Cleaver scenario, he’s safe: his legend can handle any amount of debauchery.

That, I think, is why sports heroes must hold to a higher standard than other entertainers. With widespread idealism vs. cynicism at stake, we have to hope that sports heroes like Lance are racing clean.

Final note

I’ve struggled with this post. It’s a complicated subject matter and my own opinion has morphed repeatedly over the years, months, and weeks. I’ve tried to do the topic justice, but am well aware I’ve left the door wide open to disagreement and criticism; I hope at least that I’ve avoided offending anybody. (In 2004 I wrote an article about doping for the Daily Peloton that really offended some guy. He posted numerous diatribes against my story on the dp bulletin board, even asking the editor to yank the story. She eventually had to tell him to stop. I suppose I wouldn't mind offending a guy like that, actually.)

Back in college a teacher gave me a bad grade on a paper and summoned me to her office to discuss it. After pointing out the paper's many flaws, she concluded, “I’m glad you wrote this paper. I like to see you getting outside your comfort zone.” In that spirit, I’m going to post this Lance/Eminem essay now, though my temptation is to tinker with it some more, sleep on it, and forever postpone deciding it’s really done.

I welcome your feedback. Post your comments below, and/or click here to e-mail me.

dana albert blog