A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.
What: CD, “I Love to Play”
Who: Jake Trout and the Flounders
Peter Jacobsen, Payne Stewart and Mark Lye know what it takes to succeed in golf. Jacobsen and Stewart are still making good money on the PGA Tour, and Lye had moderate success until a couple of years ago. Whether their swings hold up in the recording studio is another matter.
They are Jake Trout and the Flounders, a musical group that often entertains at tournaments by doing parodies of rock hits, replacing the lyrics with golfing themes.
“I Love to Play,” a takeoff of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” is the title track on their upcoming CD, threatened for release April 21.
Jacobsen, the lyricist and inspiration behind the group, is Jake; Stewart and Lye are the Flounders and those who buy the CD are the fish.
It’s a very slick production, and sounds darn good if you’re not listening too closely. But the lyrics are so insipid that even a tune as catchy as Newman’s anthem can’t carry it. Jacobsen’s impersonations are a staple of the tour, and they’re funny. He’s got a great shtick on the practice tee. But a CD full of songs about . . . golf?
A sampling of the lyrics: “Look at that guy in front of me. That bum, he can’t even get it past the ladies tees.” It’s enough to make you long for ABBA.
The group recorded a self-released parody album in 1989 that sold more than 25,000 copies at golf events. Which only goes to show, one man’s flounder is another man’s carp. As musical artists, Jake and the boys are very good golfers.
