Backtracks takes a look at songs that were a meaningful part of los grillos past and have recently come back to los grillos in whatever random ways such things happen–in a movie, in a bar, in a dream, or just in the head for no apparent reason.

As a high school soccer player, I wasn’t particularly good. However, the team I played for, the Unicorns (that’s right, my high school mascot was a mythical beast, motherfucker! What was yours? Something real and painfully boring? A bear, maybe?), weren’t too bad, and we managed to win a game or two despite having me as a left fullback and a coach who kept a soccer rule book in his back pocket that he consulted regularly during games. What our coach lacked in knowledge of the game he made up for by being, in my opinion, a pretty cool guy. He caught shit for being too uninformed about the game and a bit too square, as well as for doing this nervous little dance during tense situations (dubbed the “Snyder Shuffle”), but I liked the guy. He had a habit of saying things like “Crap, son, this ain’t Sunday” when a player wasn’t working hard enough, which is pretty hilarious, and he won major points by allowing the team to create our own pre-game mix tape that we played over the stadium’s speaker system while preparing to kick some ass.

Putting together a mix tape for a bunch of opinionated, smart-assed soccer players that satisfies everyone is no easy task, and to the credit of my friend (and starting halfback) Mark, who took on the challenge, he didn’t try too hard to be all that democratic about the process. There was really no need to–most of the team was made up of juniors and sophomores, and Mark was a senior which gave him a certain amount of authority. Also, it was generally accepted that Mark had better taste in music than most everyone else on the team. And if that wasn’t enough, the younger players were intimidated by the fact that Mark’s girlfriend was better looking than any girl they could even hope to talk to, much less hook up with after a game, and that seemed to buy him endless amounts of respect.

Anyway, the mix tape included a lot of the “alternative” music that we were listening to at the time–my favorite was “Sometime To Return” by Soul Asylum (from Hang Time, pre-commercial breakthrough with Grave Dancers Union). But between the lesser-known (at least to most of the team) songs, Mark did include at least one song by a band that is as democratic as it gets when it comes to teenage boys–the band, of course, was AC/DC.

AC/DC really got everyone pumped for the game. Phillip, a German foreign exchange student, got particularly fired up when their song started pumping through the loud speakers. He used to line up behind me as we ran our warm up exercises and, as the drums pounded in synch with the lyric, “THUNDER”, he would pound his fists on my shoulders and shout, “What the fuck and the shit, we’re going to kick their asses, man!” And that always made me laugh, but it also got me, and the rest of the team, fired up.

So this one’s for team USA, who kick off against Slovenia in less than an hour. Kick their asses, man! Leave ‘em “Thunderstruck”!