NBA Playoffs Preview: New Orleans Hornets

Ten Boy Summer - Food Not Bombs Benefit Compilation (1994)

The New Orleans Hornets are a team of castoffs. Marco Belinelli has started much of the season after riding the pine for the Warriors. Emeka Okafor, the original franchise player for the Bobcats, was sent away by MJ after a disappointing start in Charlotte. Trevor Ariza couldn't hack it as the go-to guy on the Rockets. Willie Green was an erratic scorer on the Sixers who was known to frustrate fans with his bad shot selection. Jarett Jack was... on the Raptors. Yet somehow this scrappy bunch have rallied around a hobbled Chris Paul and clinched a third playoff berth in four years for the downtrodden franchise.

This is a lovely story but who really cares? We all know they will lose in five games in the 1st round. So lets talk about how they are the team that finally gave Patrick Ewing Jr. his first NBA minutes. The last few years have been a struggle for Pat Jr. trying to live up to his dad's Hall of Fame career. Originally drafted in the 2nd round by the Sacramento Kings, he was traded to the Rockets and then the Knicks decided to finally step in and give him a shot, trading for him in exchange for valuable rotation player Frederic Weis. A valuable rotation player on Spanish pro team Bilbao Berri, but that's a minor detail. The Knicks obviously thought highly of Pat Jr. to give up a former 1st round pick for him. A first round pick from 1999 who never played a minute for the Knicks, but lets not split hairs. Stop me if I'm turning the New Orleans Hornets playoff preview into a bitter Knicks rant.

Anyway, Pat Jr. never made the Knicks roster and spent the next few years bumming around the D-league with teams like the Reno Bighorns and Sioux Falls Skyforce before finally getting the call up from the Hornets when David West got injured. In 4 games, he has played a total of 6 minutes, has grabbed 1 rebound, and has yet to attempt a field goal. You're in the books Pat Jr. Nobody can take that Basketball Reference page away from you!

In the same vein, the band Ten Boy Summer's entire catalog in the mid-90s consisted of a single song on the Food Not Bombs benefit LP from 1994, a compilation that featured some of the more influential emo bands of the time, like Indian Summer, Swing Kids, Current, and Fingerprint. When I first heard this compilation, the Ten Boy Summer track with the concise title "The History Of Blank Pages And The Conscious Decision To Discontinue The Tradition Our Gender Has Been Plagued With" stood out among the rest of the songs. The urgency of the vocals really captured my late teenage angst and I was saddened to learn that this song was their only proper release.

After doing some digging, I found someone on a record trading board who had their demo and he agreed to send me a copy. Feeling like I was doing a service to the emo community, I ripped the tape onto my laptop in the most primitive way possible, by playing the tape and using the laptop microphone to externally record it. It was a dub of an obscure demo so recording quality wasn't a priority, I just wanted to get the thing out there for others to appreciate. Somehow, the recording is still up on my old college website and will most likely be there until Web 3.0 turns internet sites into clouds or whatever the fuck will happen. As you can tell by this paragraph, I'm not the most technically savvy person.

The point of that tangent was to illustrate that this band had 1 song that was actually heard by more than by five people before I spread their gospel across the emo file-sharing world, but it left a lasting impression. The band maintains a Last.fm site and guitarist Davey von Bohlen went on to play in Cap'n Jazz and The Promise Ring. The remaining members can always say they were on a compilation with spock rock legend and published author Justin Pearson. Patrick Ewing Jr. may not get to play another minute or ever attempt a shot but he can always tell Patrick Ewing III that he was an NBA player just like his dad.

Sorry, there's no youtube of this song available. Click on one of the above links if you want to hear it. Or enjoy this Hornets team rap by Desmond Mason back when they were the NOOCH.



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