Anime Music

Here are a few things I don’t really keep private, even if I haven’t mentioned them yet on this blog: I played soccer in high school, and occasionally I listen to music my parents not-so-affectionately refer to as “Techno-Bluegrass.”

That’s fine, though. That’s the stereotype. Parents aren’t supposed to like their children’s music. And Eurobeat -- the actual name for Techno-Bluegrass -- certainly leans more towards the “acquired taste” side of things. It’s certainly aggressive at times, and, to my mother’s chagrin, occasionally uses the banjo as part of its melody. But through various media, from cartoons to Sonic the Hedgehog, Eurobeat has become its own little niche of “pump-up” music best used for anything from workouts to simply staying awake in the car.

This is why, whenever I got the opportunity to run the booth during Junior Varsity’s pregame warmups, I went straight to it. I didn’t get to too many times, mind you, but I did take the opportunities I got.

This story takes place in senior year of high school. Our previous soccer coach had decided to retire after just having won us our league’s championship, leaving us with high spirits, but maybe more than a little tentative energy meeting our new coach. At one point early in the season, after a particularly disjointed practice, this new coach declared that we needed to write a one-page paper on teamwork. I half-assed it like any senior would.

I apparently made him cry.

We were coming in on the final games of the season, and this was perhaps my third or fourth time in the booth. Dave Simon’s Speed Man had just wrapped up, and I was going to pick another song when the head coach entered the booth.

“Let me play a song,” he said.

He played Jason Aldean’s The Only Way I Know. Which I would be fine with. I’m not the biggest fan of where country music has gone in the past few years (even if typing that sentence makes me the biggest snob on the planet), but its lyrics were relevant to the situation. It’s a song about winning. So yes, I would have been fine with it.

If he hadn’t also said, “Enough of this anime crap.”

I get it. I get how each generation hates every other generation’s music. I’ve had discussions on the merits of a brostep creator versus a symphony. I’ve internally tried to keep track of what my friends are listening to so I can avoid playing anything we disagree on aloud. But I’m not sure what’s accomplished by, when leading a team already falling apart at the seams, already ready to get the season over with, that specific comment needed to be made.

-F