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In This Issue

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Love-Hate Mail

Teenage Rebellion Blaine Larsen tackles class and success on his latest

The Pitchfork Effect How a small staff in Chicago makes bands

Fast and Furious Be Your Own Pet grow up on their new record

The Only Band With Dish Pan Hands Hurra Torpedo bring Norwegian stovetop rock to Nashville

Brown Paper Bag Test Artist explores the politics of race identity and skin shade

The House That Cash Built John Carter Cash, the only son of one of America’s most famous couples, manages both his late parents legacy and a career of his own

One Person’s Trash… Three new country archival releases offer a bounty of once-discarded treasures

 

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Soccer has a hard way to go in the United States as a paying sport. While pretty much the rest of the world is going crazy for the World Cup of the sport they call “football,” getting up a ticket-buying crowd for a regular season minor league soccer game in a typical American city—say, Nashville—has been a tough promotional nut to crack.

So maybe the Nashville Metros, the local franchise of the United Soccer Leagues, are onto a counterprogramming stroke of genius with its upcoming “Satan Night,” to be held June 10 when the team plays the appropriately named Augusta Fireball.

“The Sounds have the whole Faith Night thing locked up, so we decided to go in another direction,” Metros general manager Ken Renner says.

For the past two or three years, the Sounds have reliably pumped up the turnstile count by giving discounts to church groups, playing Christian music over the loudspeakers, and giving away bobbleheads of biblical figures such as Moses, Jesus and Abel, whose bobblehead features a simulated fatal blow from his brother Cain.

The Sounds have announced other Faith Night giveaways, including an adults-only nude Adam and Eve bobblehead set, and the Seven-Headed Beast from Revelation, all seven of whose heads bobble. Faced with that kind of promotional juggernaut, the Metros’ plans for Satan Night look almost quaint.

“We’re going to play Black Sabbath before the game, and our players will wear devil horns on their heads,” Renner says. “We’re also going to give away Satan bobbleheads to the first 100 fans through the gate, and some of the coaches will hold a flashlight under their chins during the game.

“And, of course, we want to give the other team hell.”