Dear listeners,
The World Series is in full swing! Battling it out this year are two teams that have never won it before — the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays — which means we’re guaranteed a first-time M.L.B. champion. The Brewers certainly look like they have the edge; they’ve won the first three games of the best-of-seven series, and tonight they’re going for the sweep.
But which city has the edge musically? Today’s playlist will help determine that.
Below, you’ll hear five songs from Milwaukee artists, alternating with five songs from Tampa artists. As you’ll see, both cities have rich and eclectic musical traditions. Among the musicians who hail from Milwaukee are the alt-rock eccentrics Violent Femmes and the jazz-pop vocalist Al Jarreau, while Tampa, Fla., can claim, for starters, the imaginative rapper Doechii and the accomplished alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley.
Even if you’re not rooting for either of these teams, or (gasp!) a baseball fan at all, this playlist still has something for everyone: country, emo, hip-hop and even some death metal. It also contains what I believe is the single most jarring transition in the history of all Amplifier playlists, between tracks 9 and 10. Listen … if you dare.
And if this playlist isn’t spooky enough for your late-October needs, check out some of our previous Halloween-themed Amplifier playlists here and here.
Well I ain’t superstitious,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. Violent Femmes: “Blister in the Sun”
Let’s begin with a song that is not only by an artist from Milwaukee — the alt-rock stalwarts Violent Femmes formed there in 1980 — but is also a certified baseball stadium staple: “Blister in the Sun.” (I hope neither team’s pitchers have to deal with one of those during the series.) This one was certainly on the set list on Friday evening, when Violent Femmes played a pregame concert inside the Brewers’ ballpark before Game 1.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Doechii: “Denial Is a River”
Doechii, one of the most original and dynamic rappers to emerge in the last few years, was born and raised in Tampa. The self-described “Swamp Princess” often references her hometown’s distinct climate and wildlife in her music; she even titled her 2024 debut mixtape “Alligator Bites Never Heal.” Here’s the breakout single from that release, an animated, nimbly rapped narrative in which Doechii recounts her recent troubles and also, humorously, plays her own fictionalized therapist.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Steve Miller Band: “Rock’n Me”
The rocker Steve Miller spent the first six years of his life in Milwaukee, where his jazz-loving parents gave him an early musical education. (Miller is also the godson of another notable, guitar-wielding Wisconsinite: Les Paul, who was a close family friend.) Though the Millers moved to Dallas in 1950, Steve returned to his home state about a decade later when he enrolled in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Accordingly, the Brewers used as a soundtrack to a postseason hype video this 1976 classic rock staple, which, incidentally, also inspired one of the all-time great baseball-related Onion articles: “Player’s Career Arc Exactly Mirrors Second Verse of Steve Miller’s ‘Rock’n Me.’”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Tampa Red: “Green and Lucky Blues”
The pioneering slide guitarist Hudson Whittaker is usually associated with the blues scene of his adopted hometown, Chicago, but he was raised — as his stage name Tampa Red proudly asserts — on Florida’s Gulf Coast. An emotive guitar player, impassioned vocalist and prolific songwriter, Tampa Red’s swaggering 1928 lament “Green and Lucky Blues” remains one of his most enduring compositions.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. The Promise Ring: “Why Did We Ever Meet”
An influential emo band that played a crucial role in my adolescence, the Promise Ring formed in Milwaukee in 1995 and released the cult-classic album “Nothing Feels Good” (on heavy rotation in my first car’s CD player) two years later. This infectious tune — which the Promise Ring frontman Davey von Bohlen would later reference when he was featured on Jimmy Eat World’s 2001 song “A Praise Chorus” — showcases the band’s flair for catchy hooks, jangly chords and power-pop panache.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Mel Tillis: “Mental Revenge”
The Tampa-born singer-songwriter Mel Tillis was best known as a relatively wholesome Countrypolitan crooner, but he showed an outlaw’s edge in 1966 when he released this almost cartoonishly spiteful song addressed to an unfaithful lover. “Mental Revenge” was an early hit for Waylon Jennings, and it was later covered by Linda Ronstadt and then Jamey Johnson, but it’s fun to hear Tillis lean into his darker side on his own rendition.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. BoDeans: “Closer to Free”
The long-running roots rock band BoDeans formed in the Milwaukee area (Waukesha, Wis., to be exact) in 1983, but they broke into the cultural mainstream in the mid-90s, when this catchy and inescapable tune was used as the theme song for the TV drama “Party of Five.” BoDeans proudly rep the Brew Crew (the team’s nickname for its fans), and the band’s frontman, Kurt Neumann, even threw out the first pitch before a Brewers preseason game this spring.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Cannonball Adderley Quintet: “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (Live)”
Born in Tampa, the alto saxophonist Julian Edwin “Cannonball” Adderley made a name for himself around the Central Florida jazz scene before relocating to New York City in 1955, where he eventually found a place in Miles Davis’s legendary sextet. Davis was a featured player on Adderley’s best-known album, the satisfyingly loose “Something Else,” from 1958. Adderley also had an unexpected crossover hit — peaking at No. 11 on the Hot 100 — with this Wurlitzer-driven 1967 recording, from his Grammy-winning album “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at ‘The Club.’”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Al Jarreau: “Milwaukee”
Five years before he released his hit 1981 album “Breakin’ Away,” Milwaukee’s own Lincoln High School graduate Al Jarreau wrote and recorded this slick and funky ode to his hometown, which was featured on his second solo album, “Glow.” Though Jarreau isn’t around anymore to see this Milwaukee Brewers run, he did sing the national anthem before Game 5 of the team’s only other World Series appearance, in 1982.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. Cannibal Corpse: “Hammer Smashed Face”
And now, for something a little more abrasive, let’s go out with a nod to Tampa’s long-thriving metal scene. Though the notorious Cannibal Corpse formed in Buffalo, N.Y., in the early 1990s, the band relocated to the death-metal mecca of Tampa and has been based there ever since. Cannibal Corpse played this pummeling song (which boasts, astonishingly, one of the band’s least offensive titles) when it made a brief but memorable cameo in a classic work of the Florida cinematic cannon: “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“Milwaukee vs. Tampa: a World Series Playlist” track list Track 1: Violent Femmes, “Blister in the Sun” Track 2: Doechii, “Denial Is a River” Track 3: Steve Miller Band, “Rock’n Me” Track 4: Tampa Red, “Green and Lucky Blues” Track 5: The Promise Ring, “Why Did We Ever Meet” Track 6: Mel Tillis, “Mental Revenge” Track 7: BoDeans, “Closer to Free” Track 8: Cannonball Adderley Quintet, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (Live)” Track 9: Al Jarreau, “Milwaukee” Track 10: Cannibal Corpse, “Hammer Smashed Face”
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The post Milwaukee vs. Tampa: A World Series Playlist appeared first on New York Times.
