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Sharks Gameday: We Gave You Country Music and You Turned It Into The Eagles

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Stace is still missing, so here's JR Lind!

jcbrandon on Flickr

[Editor's note: This post was written entirely by JR, but for some reason SBNation wouldn't let me credit him as the sole author in the byline. -- Jer]

I'm J.R. Lind. I write very rarely about #ConferenceIII at III Communication. I write more regularly about sports for the Nashville Scene and even more regularly I make puns about Hall & Oates for Nashville's business class at the Nashville Post. I am beloved in Detroit and Columbus and I also am the first person to ever tweet the phrase "Light A Mup." Seriously.

I am here because Stace would rather get married than write a Nashville/San Jose game preview.
Here's the thing, despite Ronny & The DaytonasArea Code 615Jason & The Scorchers and Diarrhea Planet, Nashville's chief musical export remains of the behatted and bebooted variety.

Real Nashvillians will tell you that real Nashvillians don't listen to country music except the old stuff.

I don't listen to country music except the old stuff.

So, in the spirit of hospitality (the most Southern of virtues), here's five country songs about California that are awesome. Please don't take them and turn them into "Take It To The Limit":

"Sin City" by The Flying Burrito Brothers


Cold-ass lyric: On the thirty-first floor a gold-plated door/Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain

"California Blues (Blue Yodel No. 4)" by Jimmie Rodgers



Cold-ass lyric: I may rob you blind, I ain't got not railroad fare.

"Folsom Prison Blues" and "San Quentin" by Johnny Cash



I used to see Johnny Cash (may he rest in peace) at Kroger and Walmart and the convenience store I worked at. Everyone in Hendersonville has a million stories like this. 

"All The Gold In California" by The Gatlin Brothers


The Gatlin Brothers performed this at a Preds game like two months ago. Seriously.

Anyhow, the game:

This one is the rubber match of the regular-season series, each team having won at home. The Sharks took a 2-0 win a furious goaltending battle between Antii Niemi and Pekka Rinne back in December that could have gone either way until Joe Thornton scored an empty-netter late.

I guess the Sharks…



…had more Finnish.

Last month in a Bridgestone Arena featuring a crowd of 8,000 or so who braved a crusty ice storm that proved more annoyingly loathe to disappear than Douglas Murray, the Preds gave up the first goal to something called a Matt Irwin, starting a streak of 11 games in which they'd handicap themselves thus (to clarify: Matt Irwin was only involved in that first one). Pekka Rinne made 43 saves — including three in five seconds on one Sharks power play — the Preds scored five and I learned that Barclay Goodrow was not, as I believed, the Secretary of State for India in Benjamin Disraeli's second cabinet.

That game was one of maybe two or three really solid games the Preds played between Presidents Day and…uh…Brent Burns' and Chingy's Birthday. Monday's 2-1 overtime winner against Arizona wasn't exactly Sri Lanka over England at Dambulla in 2003, but it was a fine effort and a well-deserved two points…and the team's first win in six games, sorely needed before this little California peregrination.

Gameday Info


This one kicks off at 9:30 in God's Time Zone and in northern California, I'm sure it'll be aired on Pravda or whatever.

Prediction

I don't pace my High Lifes very well and wake up at 2 AM with the TV still on, except Fox is showing three hours of that weird trampoline dodgeball show that has the same music guy as fin de siècle Digital Playground. I don't find out the Preds won 3-2 until my dad calls and asks me if Shane Webber scored.