You might have heard it mentioned in Rolling Stone‘s recent “Ultimate Guide” to the 2015 installment of Record Store Day. If not, there’s no better time than now to dive into the music of Furious Hoops Vol. 1, a uniquely curated Record Store day release that brings together the worlds of independent music and ’90s basketball. You can stream the eclectic compilation in its entirety below here at PopMatters.
The LP was put together by the Savannah, Georgia label Furious Hooves, who had a creative vision for this project, a nice break from the often default nature of many Record Store Day releases. Co-founder Ryan McCardle tells PopMatters quite a bit about what went into the compilation: “In 2011, TJ Hatcher and I founded Furious Hooves with a simple idea: to create an outlet for the music and art of friends past, present, and future… while somehow tying in our love for ’90s basketball.
“We got our first song for the compilation in 2012 — Sauna Heat’s ‘The Palace’ — and three years later, Furious Hoops had its first volume complete. 500 orange vinyl records with 11 basketball-themed songs were all meticulously hand-stamped, numbered, and packaged with 44-pages of ’90s hoops artwork, a sticker based off of a Bigfoot basketball player, and a mint NBA Trading Card from — you guessed it — the ’90s. This bizarre idea was something that I particularly held near to me, but to have so many talented human beings contribute, collaborate, and connect with one another on said bizarre idea was just mind-boggling. It was a slam dunk of great proportions. The alley-oop to Steve McQueen on a motorcycle in The Great Escape from Larry ‘Grandmama’ Johnson. (Hint: someone please draw this for Vol. 02.)
“The compilation features a slew of current (and former) Savannah musicians, including Blackrune (entrance music — a la dynasty Bulls — with a Southern Gothic charm), Sauna Heat (a song about losing a girlfriend at a Detroit Pistons game), Heavy Boots (Rachael Perisho’s love letter to Charles Barkley), Hawaiin Boi (Adam of Triathalon–dreams about how badass he would’ve been if he had played Varsity ball), Hallucinex (Taylor Noll on a botched half-court shot causing an existential crisis), and Gnaw Rains (a song about Jason ‘White Chocolate’ Williams’ coming into his rookie year as a badass baller).
“As for the non-Savannah folks, well, they killed it too. St Louis one-man band 1,000 Pieces (a song about Pippen refusing to get off the bench during a game in 1994). Old Season features Jeff Haley (Wild Nothing, Hoop Dreams) and John Walsh singing about all the greats and their greatness. Nevin Kight (formerly of Wild Nothing) sings about the mock-games he and his brother would play as the Hornets or the Bulls in their backyard growing up. Roswell, GA rapper Michael Myerz gives a play-by-play for Space Jam. Homeshake (formerly of Mac DeMarco’s band) sings the greatest R&B ballad ever written about [the video game] NBA Jam.
“All of these songs were mastered by our lovelies at Dollhouse Productions here in Savannah, GA.”
Furious Hoops Vol. 1 is out tomorrow on 18 April, Record Store Day, via Furious Hooves.