#397: Atom & His Package, "If You Own the Washington Redskins, You're a Cock" (2001)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgwx_hBqxzo

To avoid redundancy, I'll get this song's politics out of the way quickly. Adam (Atom) Goren doesn't think "Redskins" is an appropriate name for a sports team. I agree. In case you're not sure you do, I recently argued in detail that it matters how we represent people of different races in stories, even if there's no immediate and direct harm done. Sports is all about the stories that unfold. "Redskins" is widely perceived as a racist name, racism is bad, and there's no equally good competing reason to use the racist name. "Political Correctness" is only an attempt to rename "Trying Not to Be a Dickhead" so it sounds scary.

The above paragraph is not one of the 425 best songs of all time. Yes, yes, I also recently argued that there's no such thing as objective rankings of music. The above paragraph is still not one of the 425 best songs of all time. So let's talk about Atom, his synthesizer (or "package"), his guitar, and his songwriting.

First neat thing about "If You Own the Washington Redskins, You're a Cock": the title is both funny, and highly relevant to the lyrics. This is frequently true of Atom & His Package songs: "Lord, It's Hard to be Happy When You're Not Using the Metric System", "I'm Downright Amazed at What I Can Destroy with Just a Hammer", and "Mission 1: Avoid Working with Assholes", e.g., are all intelligent songs about their implied topic.

Second and third neat things: the tone is chatty and personal, and Goren's sense of meter is charmingly unique. Witness the opening quatrain:

"I like sports. So there are things
I force myself to miss.
Like I never met an athlete I like,
or hockey in Texas."

There is no way to make this scan flawlessly, but Atom exaggerates its awkwardness as showily as possible: "I like sports!" is forceful and staccato, followed by a clear pause, while the third line is breathlessly rushed, then another clear pause is inserted before line four. It's also a straightforward explanation of the song's attitude: pointlessly offensive sports team names are embarrassing to him, because he's already supposed to resent jocks too much to enjoy their performances, and instead he's a fan. A great Winnipeg punk band called Propagandhi have their own song on this dilemma, "Dear Coach's Corner" (the video displays the excellent lyrics, after the 25-second opening sample). It's a little easier for me because I only like baseball, and there's at least a minor scattering of baseball stars (Joey Votto, Zack Greinke, Andrew McCutchen) with whom I almost certainly could have a good conversation if for some reason we were stuck together. But I was a terrible athlete growing up, and felt the effects of the imbalanced culture clash; most of my friends have no idea why I care about baseball either. (My athletic skills are solidly average, now that I'm in 38th grade and nobody cares.)

Fourth: Oh yeah. There's music! Atom identifies as a punk rocker too. He's got the D.I.Y. attitude and the fast, chugging power chords on guitar. But he's also got more a folk-rock approach in parts, and the guitar parts comes and go. Sometimes a chord dies away over soft, steady cymbals. Sometimes there's nothing but his voice and drums. There's a bit of keyboard choir. The song doesn't last two minutes, but it's got all the variety and dynamics to support his singing -- which is high, reedy, boyish, potentially embarrassing for all those reasons (he doesn't care), articulate, and tuneful. Punk should be catchy. Atom & His Package songs are usually catchy. Some of them don't even use guitars (just synthesizers). They're catchy too.

And then, at the end, after organizing his lyrics into a sarcastic but logical debate case, the final couplet is "What's your take on the Washington Redskins? What's your take on the Cleveland Indians?". For one thing, it's a tribute by paraphrase to another synth-punk band he likes, Le Tigre, which you might or might not recognize -- I didn't -- so he tells you so right on the lyric sheet. And for another, it's an open-ended question. Adam Goren is opinionated. He is smart enough to depend his opinions. But he's a geeky, idiosyncratic twerp who (like all of us) arrives at those opinions by his own circuitous life paths. The point of sharing the opinions, then, is only partly conversion, and at least as much the hope of starting a dialogue.