first round
(7) Franz Ferdinand, “Take Me Out”
took out
(10) Darude, “Sandstorm”
326-164
and will play in the second round
Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the song/essay with the most votes at the end of the game. If there is a tie, we will play a one-hour overtime (and repeat until we have a winner). Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/9/24.
Susannah Clark matt on “take me out”
Franz Ferdinand (disambiguation)
Franz Ferdinand (band)
The members of the Scottish band Franz Ferdinand get asked about their name a lot. They’ve provided multiple explanations for it, but it’s decidedly not a tribute. "I like the idea that, if we become popular, maybe the words Franz Ferdinand will make people think of the band instead of the historical figure,” original drummer Paul Thomson said in an early interview.
It’s hard to say which Franz Ferdinand I heard of first. The band released their debut album in 2004, the same year I took AP Modern European History as a sophomore in high school. I would have read about the Archduke in our unit on World War I, toward the end of the school year. I can hear my 14-year-old voice: “Like the band?”
Franz Ferdinard (racehorse)
If you want to get technical, the band is named after a horse. Archduke Ferdinand won the Northumberland Plate in Great Britain in 2001, and the boys in Glasgow liked the sound of it, not immediately recognizing its historical namesake.
But they ended up not minding the association with the other Franz Ferdinand. Thomson said: "He was an incredible figure as well. His life, or at least the ending of it, was the catalyst for the complete transformation of the world and that is what we want our music to be.”
Franz Ferdinand (Archduke of Austria-Hungary)
I can picture a multiple choice question on the AP Modern Euro exam: “The assassination of which historical figure is considered to be the most immediate cause of the First World War?”
“Franz Ferdinand” is shorthand here. The public murder of the presumptive heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne was only one domino—the Wikipedia page for “Causes of World War I” is more than 20,000 words, delving into the overall arms race and the rise of Imperial Germany. But being able to pin such a seismic shift in history down to just one guy, one moment, was especially convenient for a high schooler only in it for the grade inflation. I memorized that fact like a song lyric.
Franz Ferdinand (album)
“I don't want to over-intellectualise the name thing. Basically a name should just sound good ... like music,” lead singer Alex Kapranos has said. The allure of alliteration, nothing more.
“Seems gauche to name a rock band after a man who was assassinated,” I remember my father, a history buff, noting at the time. I believe I rolled my eyes, telling him he just didn’t get it, something along the lines of “why do I need to care about something that happened 100 years ago.”
Replaying this conversation now, I don’t think my father was discouraging me from liking the band. He just wanted me to give me context, a nudge to look outside myself (much needed for a 14 year old).
Franz Ferdinand (warship)
I failed the AP Modern Euro exam. Before writing this essay, I read up on the Archduke and the beginning of World War I, realizing how little I absorbed in that history class. But 20 years after its release I still know every word to “Take Me Out.”
Take Me Out (disambiguation)
Take Me Out (song)
See also: Take me out to the ballgame (song)
“Take Me Out” got me out of a dancing rut. Deep in pubescent self-seriousness, I had been on a strict sadsack musical diet of Death Cab for Cutie and Iron & Wine, maybe sneaking some top 40 for dessert every now and then, but not without shame. I knew I was being pandered to when I first heard the opening line: “So if you’re lonely…” but the rocklicking guitar riff threw my brooding off track. For the first time in months, I surrendered to a beat.
But I could thrash easy: “Take Me Out” was a bona fide hit on alternative radio. This kind of dancing had been cleared with the cool kids.
I only recently picked up on the dual meaning of the titular line, invoking both dating and assasssination—another nod to the Archduke. Now I can’t unhear it; the historical context appears in my mind like a pop-up ad, a hyperlink down the rabbit hole.
Take Me Out (British game show)
After being shot in the neck by a 20-year-old Serbian nationalist, Archduke Franz Ferdinand reportedly turned to his wounded wife and said: “Sophie dear! Don't die! Stay alive for our children!" When his aide asked him about the pain, Franz responded with “It is nothing,” repeated over and over to become his very last words.
I’m reading these grizzly accounts less than two months after watching my father die. He wasn’t taken out by an assassin, but I’ve villainized the rare neurological disease that shut down his brain in a matter of weeks.
My dad was a local historian: he wrote articles and books about my hometown, highlighting undersung people and events that rippled nationwide. I don’t particularly admire the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an aspiring autocrat. But my father would want me to acknowledge him as a human being instead of just a reference in a pop song. He would want me to read on.
Ragtime (disambiguation)
Ragtime (musical genre)
When the United States entered the first world war in 1917, ragtime music was at peak popularity. Distinguished by its syncopated rhythms, or “ragged time,” the genre was pioneered by Black Americans toward the end of the 19th century, infusing the blues with the pomp of a Sousa march. Ragtime begat jazz, which begat rock ‘n roll, which begat post-punk-revival dance rock.
Ragtime brought forth its own wacky dance fads: the Horse Trot, Kangaroo Hop, Duck Waddle, Squirrel, Chicken Scratch, Turkey Trot, Grizzly Bear etc. I imagine Americans found solace in dance halls during the war, prancing around like animals, pretending to be anything but human.
Ragtime (novel)
In his 1975 novel, E.L. Doctrow uses ragtime music as an extended metaphor illustrating rapid change and boiling racial tensions in the first two decades of the 20th century. He hoped that readers would draw parallels to contemporary political unrest in the mid-70s, and again 20 years later when the novel was adapted as a Broadway musical in 1998.
Ragtime (musical)
Starting when I was a sullen teenager, every year my father would treat the whole family to a live theater production around Christmastime. This year I decided to take over the tradition, thinking we could use the cheer in the aftermath of his death.
Based solely on its name and branding, I picked Ragtime expecting something upbeat, with swinging choreography. Needless to say, we weren’t prepared for ballad after ballad bemoaning injustice and strife. A moving production, but maybe not the best choice for a family already in mourning.
The musical ends with the various characters hearing news from the other side of the world: The Archduke Franz Ferdinand has been shot. We must face this new era.
Ragtime (code name)
I set a Google alert to keep track of the many obituaries and tributes posted in honor of my father. I soon learned that he shares a name with a loquacious mayor of a small town in Saskatchewan. By now, the alerts are pretty much exclusively related to local Canadian politics, but something’s stopped me from turning them off. I don’t mind reading about the other Charlie Clark. These days, I’m only seeking more context.
Susannah Clark Matt is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in Inside Higher Ed, 68to05, the Brevity blog, and elsewhere. Her essay “Signs (2002)” was listed as a notable selection in 2016’s Best American Essays.
13 Ways of Looking through the Sandstorm: J. Andrew Briseño on darude
1
The Thing About Dancing
You are eleven, at a cousin’s wedding. Grandpa Lino needs a break so Grandma Ruth eyes her grandchildren, settles on you, pulls you up. “You need to learn, Mijo,” she says. “You’re almost old enough for girls.”
You remember how strange it was to hold her in this way, closer than you’ve ever been without discipline between you. The wedding was fairly old school, but the DJ mixes in country with the Tejano, Garth Brooks and Vicente Fernandez, the wedding party all in bolo ties and Stetsons. You imagine everyone’s looking at you—no one is looking at you. She shows you where to put your hands and says “Dance, Mijo.” And you freeze. You have no idea why your chest is closing in from the sides and you feel like you’re about to cry.
2
You’re 20 and you’re paying a beautiful boy in beer to watch your snowcone stand. He tells you he’s having a fancy dance party, he tells you to come. You’re the only person there you know besides the boy, who has smart eyes and has read Vonnegut and is more than that so confident and casually cool that you would seriously consider smelling the inside of his shoes. You can talk this way about him now, but then you found it easy to ignore certain things because you were after all, for sure, attracted to girls (too). Then you just knew you wanted to “hang out” with (let’s call him) Josh any chance you could get.
So you put on your fancy dance outfit and you go. Everyone else is dancing, not in pairs, just as a clump in the middle of the living room. You’re not dancing, you’re leaning against the wall, trying to look skinny. You’re hoping no one is looking at you. Josh is looking at you. He grabs you by the arm. “Everybody needs to dance.”
Real talk it might have been anything: 80s New Wave or 70s disco; it could have been Modest Mouse or Nine Inch Nails or ABBA or Men Without Hats, but it was the summer of 2004 and so in your memory forever, Josh smiles at you (and then turns back to his girlfriend) and then it’s “Sandstorm.” The beat swells up and then the synth kicks in, and then you dance. You hear the music, but it’s less about the sound then and more about the way it feels to stop, even for one second, caring what everyone sees.
3
You’re 15 and you thought then that you couldn’t be Autistic, just that you didn’t get along well with the kids at your last school, or the one before that, or the one before that. You’ve never heard the word ‘masking,’ but when your parents sent you to children’s group therapy—you realized that talking to people was just another puzzle to solve. Lots of variables, plenty of randomness, but social interactions are a system like anything else. Systems can be broken down, contemplated, understood, reacted to. Eye contact. Smile. When you’re not sure what to say, make a joke, something topical is best. It’s not perfect, but by the time you leave kid’s group therapy, you are A Brand New Boy, and your parents are ready to let you try again, this time at “Catholic Preparatory Boarding School for Boys.”
When the other boys offer you liquor, you say yes. Normal is good, and having friends is normal. Saying yes leads to further friendship. Doing and saying things you wouldn’t normally do or say in order to stay friends is normal. D.A.R.E. was clearly lying to you.
Three sips of Fruitopia Strawberry Passion Awareness spiked with Heaven Hill vodka, and you’re having a good time—you’re certain of it. You walk around the lobby of the Auditorium. You nod at several people, though you had not planned on nodding at them. But they all nod back, and you realize you did it right without trying. You feel infinitely powerful. You talk to a girl, even. Nobody else is dancing so you don’t dance either—but you were ready.
You’ll have a drink every chance you get from then on. It leads to more friends and more social opportunities and less stress. You don’t stop at all until you do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life. Then you don’t stop for good until your doctor begs you.
You almost never miss a school dance after that. Even when there’s no liquor (rare), there’s always a feeling that something great is about to happen. You piece together an official dance outfit, which you wear every time until someone makes fun of you for it and then not again until years after high school.
4
“Sandstorm” was released in the U.S., sometime in 2000, it’s hard to say just when. When Darude made the track, he was all but unheard of, not even a major part of the Happy Hardcore scene in his native Finland, never mind of music on a global scale. He uploaded the demo to MP3.com (if you’re young, think soundcloud). It went viral before viral was really a word. It spread everywhere.
Sandstorm has been synonymous with baseball closers, with football comebacks, with high stakes video game tournaments; Sandstorm has become a meme, a Christmas lights display, a soundtrack, an April Fool’s joke. For some it means SEC football. For others it means Twitch chat. Whether it’s the quintessential jock jam, the quintessential trance track, or the quintessential hype song, the constant here is quintessence, necessity, ever-presence, je ne sais quoi. That indescribable oomph this song has.
5.
What’s Darude’s Favorite Fruit?
Ba na na na na na
6.
You’re at an outdoor rave somewhere in the Arkansas woods. Brandon, who is smarter than anyone you’ve ever met and has warm eyes and a soft voice, has helped you score mushrooms and now you’re in his tent smoking pot and cracking Whip-its. The little cannisters meant to charge whip cream foamers in coffeeshops are filled with nitrous oxide, and when Brandon shows you how to inflate a balloon with that gas and inhale it, you find suddenly that the world is made of exploding stars and also that breathing has suddenly become fully optional, entirely a choice. You ride out to the edge of a blackout and when you come back to, everything is spinning and glowing and melting and the only thing left to do is stop giggling and join the night.
You follow the glorious din, the wild chaotic breath of the stage. The sound looks so pretty. Electronic music always felt off to you before—you’re never sure if you’re not getting it or it’s beneath your sensibilities. But now of course everything makes perfect sense. You are on the designated dance floor, the clearing in front of the DJ and you feel the music come through the ground and radiate out of your eyes. You used to wonder why these songs don’t have words—but now you know, you’ve always known, some things are well beyond the scope of dumb baby toys like words. Afterwards you wonder if “Sandstorm” was even played that night, or if your mind just put it there, your quintessential song for dancing in the past.
7.
The video for the song, almost as iconic as its melody, features a beautiful woman carrying a mysterious briefcase running from two beautiful cops through the streets of Helsinki, all while Darude watches like a guardian angel. At the end, one cop double crosses her partner, hugs the woman she’s been chasing, and they both escape on a speed boat with Darude at the wheel. There’s a dog, and some amazing early 00s eyewear, and a few fun camera tricks.
It makes the song seem like good clean fun, and you understand that. You know that reading about other people doing drugs made you want to do drugs, even if that was the last thing they ever intended—that no amount of ‘please don’ts’ can shout down a single ‘I did and it was kind of a wild ride.’ You know also that dance music has been dismissed as drug music from the start, even if most of its fans don’t take anything stronger than aspirin.
But you also think maybe the only way out is through, wonder if the only real way into the Sandstorm is one last acid drop, one last filthy sweet tart—a final loosening of the reins.
Even thinking it makes you wonder if you picked a song you remembered from a rave just so you could take a rave drug. You’re aware that drugs, as a rule, have never made anything better, never solved a problem. You’re well aware that you could live without it. So you don’t call the guy.
He calls you. Call it serendipity. Call it destiny. You almost call it at 1:30 on a Tuesday in what passes for winter here.
8.
But if you really want to get the music, you’ll need to hear the track on vinyl. So, you hold off and wait the week it takes for the record to arrive. By the time you have the record, you forgot what made it seem like dropping acid was a smart idea. Instead, you turn the record on loud enough to feel your skeleton buzz. So loud the base makes the needle hop and you have to set a nickel on the cartridge.This is the long cut, more than seven minutes, and it has a pitch fade you’ve never heard before. It feels like an invisible finger is pressing down the record, slowing it just a touch. Thirty three rotations per minute, thirty two, thirty one. The space between the high-hat taps opens up. You understand something.
9.
Advice to my Daughter if the Sugar Gets Me: An Excerpt
Never trust a person who doesn’t dance. You need a friend who loves to dance, and a friend you have to make dance, but if no kind of music tempts your hips to swivel, I fear I might not have much to teach you. You need a friend who dances good and a friend who dances awful, but you don’t need a friend who won’t dance.
10.
It’s 1988. Left Side. I am 4 years old. Right side. My mother’s jewelry box is on her dresser, in her bedroom. Her pearl necklace. Left side. It’s beautiful in a way I didn’t know the word for then (the part of me that was All American in Quiz Bowl shouts ‘irridescent’) Right side. I reach inside, hold it in my hand. Left side. I try it on. I wonder if I look pretty like Mama. Right side. Myself in the mirror for just one second. And then dancing. Until Dad finds me. Left side. I just wanted to be pretty. Right Side.
The therapist asks you what you’re feeling. He tells you to go with that. Tells you you’re making great progress. Ask you what you think it means that your child part uses she/her pronouns.
11.
You know you sound like a Pitchfork comment section, but you really need a nice stereo or you’re not hearing all of it. Music is recorded on two tracks, left and right. Originally two microphones in the same room recorded a live performance. The differences in space between performers becomes preserved as distances in the time between when each microphone records a given sound. That difference is measured in thousandths of a second, but the ear can pick it up and the brain can process it to tell you, on some subliminal level, where the musicians were standing and what the room was like, what was left and was right.
Contemporary musicians willfully exploit this, pushing and pulling sounds from one side of the illusory stage to the other, creating and distorting the illusion of sonic space. On the long cut Darude slides a high hat part back and forth across the mix at the very start, teaching you to listen, rewarding you for standing just where the sounds from the two channels first overlap. Occasionally crash cymbals roll through on just one side, begging you to bop your head, that way that time. And just as you notice that, you feel the main theme rushing from the back of the room like a wrestler who wasn’t on the card. You can’t help but to lean from one side to the other, trying to hear more than you’re meant to. Left side. Ride side.
12.
I have him speed up the machine, as fast as it’ll go.
It's 1988. Left side. I am 40 years old. Right side. The therapist isn’t sure if this will work but he lets me try it. I see the jewelry box. Left side. I see the little girl who is me, wondering if she’d look pretty. Left side. I see my father in the corner, and I stand up and watch him fade away. Little me asks if I’m an angel. Right side. I smile and say she’s safe now. And Gorgeous. And loved. She says my necklace is pretty. I clutch the pearls I bought myself. They’re yours baby. Left side. These are for you. And then I give myself a hug, and then because there’s nothing else to do, we dance to the song I brought with me, the one you already know.
13.
You tell your students. You can write about anything in any way you want. You don’t have to put the vulnerable parts of yourself on display to the world. You do not owe the world your trauma. You also tell them that they have to be honest with themselves first. You tell them the messiness of life is almost always more interesting than any imaginary conclusion.
Still, you’ve always loved it at the end of the movie when they tell the future of the gang. ‘Josh’ faded out of your life as soon as he faded into it, and other than a story you tell occasionally about gutter punk home surgery, he all but never crosses your mind. You don’t talk much to anyone from high school. Google tells you the children’s group therapy center is no longer in operation. Facebook says the girl you talked to at the 10th grade dance is doing well.
Brandon died from a drug overdose when he was 28, leaving behind a partner and a child.
You dance every day now with your daughter, who will turn two this very March. At least once every day she takes you by the hand to the empty space in front of the television and says, with a dire seriousness in her voice, “Dance, Daddy.” And we do.
J. Andrew Briseño is the author of Down and Out (Gold Wake Press). His short stories can be found in Smokelong Quarterly, Waxwing, Acentos Review, Cobra Milk, and others. He lives in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He wishes he were getting a tattoo right now.