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April 11, 2005
What's Up With Dante, 1 for 8?
It's been exactly one whole week since Carolina beat Illinois for the NCAA Championship, but I'm still not quite ready to get off the cloud, so to speak. As a ball bearing salesman named Stan once said, "We're just floating over here". Mr. Rawls just tipped me to an entertaining Carolina basketball-themed interview that fakejazz.com recently did with longtime UNC fan and stringed instrument enthusiast Dave Brylawski (Polvo, Idyll Swords, Black Taj).
As Polvo fans surely remember, Brylawski was often quite vocal in his support for UNC hoops during shows, sometimes going so far as to dedicate songs to various players and the like. My favorite story about Brylawski's Carolina fervor dates back to February 5th, 1992. #1 Duke was playing #9 UNC at the Dean Dome on the exact same night that Polvo (Chapel Hill's top-ranked band at the time, at least in my poll) was returning the home/away favor by playing an "away" show over at Under The Street in Durham. While watching the extremely close game at Under The Street, Brylawski proclaimed to everybody that Polvo wasn't going to play if Carolina lost. Luckily, this threat never had to be acted upon. UNC beat the defending/future national champs 75-73 and the rock show went on. I imagine that it was probably a really great Polvo set, but I can't say for sure, since I opted to stay at home and watch the basketball game instead. I'm sure Dave would've understood such truancy, especially since I never missed another local Polvo show after that one.
Really glad to see Fake Jazz writer Jim Steed dig deep and mention the basketball-themed track that Brylawski recorded for the Cognitive Mapping Volume II compilation that my Friction Media cohorts and I put together a whole decade ago. The CD is long out of print, so below is an MP3 of a song that references both Dante Calabria's poor shooting in the 1995 Final Four (actually 1 for 10, even worse than 1 for 8!) and the early exits that Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace made for the NBA after that same season.
Dave Brylawski - "Fairweather Fan" [1.89 MB]
As one of my friends pointed out, UNC's blistering second half during the Michigan State game nine days ago helped vanquish many of those Final Four Saturday demons that consistently plagued UNC from 1995 through 2000. Demons that come up in the Brylawski interview. Now that the Heels have finally won it all again, maybe Brylawski will be inspired to pen some basketball-themed lyrics for a triumphant rock anthem instead of sad words for a melancholy Oriental-tinged folk song. I plan on finding out on Saturday June 4th, when Black Taj comes back from what seemed like a grave to play Local 506. If you live in NYC, you can actually find out much sooner - the Taj is playing with The Fucking Champs at The Knitting Factory on April 22nd. The F'n Champs (now featuring Phil Manley of Trans Am fame) will also be rocking Kings in Raleigh on Tuesday April 19th. It's a little hard to pass up an Out Hud/Hella show at 506 on that same night, but I don't think The Champs have come through NC since 2002. And that band name is just sounding especially appropriate right now.
Posted by Tim at April 11, 2005 11:51 PM
Comments
That was the bloody Montross game, coincidentally my first ever Carolina game at the Dean Dome... My first Polvo show followed soon thereafter.
Posted by: Jay at April 12, 2005 11:20 AM
i think the 1-8 reference is to dante's 3 point numbers that night, not shooting overall.
Posted by: todd at April 12, 2005 11:34 AM
Thanks for referencing my interview. I thought the song went "1-for-8" but checked the Charlie Board site and Dante was 1-for-10 and 0-for-7 from 3s (http://www.sportsstats.com/bball/boxlines/UNC/1995). I didn't want to wait to get home to check the CD, so I purposefully avoided the quote!
Posted by: jim steed ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tubafrenzy.org/weblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 14, 2005 05:32 PM
Thanks for the stats link. I seem to have purged the details of that game from my memory but unless Dante actually missed his first 8 shots, he was probably 1-8 at some point in the latter stages of the 2nd half. And yeah, what was up with that?
8 rhymes with fate, too.
Posted by: Tim R at April 14, 2005 05:44 PM
That album was wonderful. I've listened to it often over the years, and it really was a good piece of work.
Posted by: Chap at December 13, 2005 12:23 AM