FOMM: Fore for the Flounders

When I started occasionally posting song on this blog, I wanted to provide exposure to songs that people weren't familiar with. These songs definitely satisfy that criteria!

This is Masters week, so here are a few tunes by Jake Trout and the Flounders. This was a one-off CD by a band of PGA tour players: Peter Jacobsen (Jake), Mark Lye, and (the late) Payne Stewart. Jake and the Flounders played golf-inflected takeoffs of classic rock songs, mostly songs written by pro-am buddies like Alice Cooper ("I'm On 18"), Glenn Frey ("Strugglers Blues"), and Stephen Stills & Graham Nash ("Love The One You Whiff"). Jacobsen said they were about "14-handicap" musicians, but their songs don't sound any worse than any other middle-aged white guys in Hawaiian shirts playing at the local Black Angus fun bar. If that band photo was in color, I'm sure it would give ugly shirt Friday a whole new meaning!

Two of the best songs on the Flounders album are takeoffs of songs by musicians who aren't usually associated with golf, Neil Young and Randy Newman. "Gary McCord" is their salute to a CBS golf announcer who was banned by the Masters committee using "bikini wax" as a metaphor for fast greens during the telecast of the 1994 tournament (back story here). It's set to the music from "Cinnamon Girl", and sounds like something Neil Young and Crazy Horse would have played in the mid-90s. "I Love To Play" (the title track from the CD, based on Randy Newman's "I Love L.A.") was their theme song, and the title of the Rutles-like Jake Trout & the Flounders mockumentary.

Jake Trout & the Flounders
(from I Love To Play)

Gary McCord

I'm on 18

I Love To Play

And for some real rock & roll to clear the palate, another golf-themed song of sorts as a bonus track: "There She Goes" by the Beat (this Beat, not that Beat). It's from the soundtrack to Caddyshack, and I've always wondered how this cool tune ended up hanging out on the same movie soundtrack as Kenny Loggins and Journey. Caddyshack is, of course, the greatest golf movie ever! My favorite scene is the one where Carl Spackler (the greenskeeper played by Bill Murray) imagines winning the Masters while swinging at dandelions with his rake.

What an incredible Cinderella story, this unknown comes outta no where to lead the pack, at Augusta. He's on his final hole, he's about 455 yards away - he's gonna hit about a two-iron I think. Oh he got all of that one! He's gotta be pleased with that, the crowd is just on its feet here, uh - He's the Cinderella boy, outta no where, a former greenskeeper now - about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac - It's in the Hole!

The Beat -There She Goes (from the Caddyshack soundtrack)