Archie Eversole (ft. Bubba Sparxxx) – "We Ready" (2002)

We ready

We ready

We ready

For y’all

If you watched any NFL playoff games last weekend, you no doubt saw this commercial for the NFL:

It’s a great commercial – I put it in the same class as some of the great Nike TV spots of the past.

You probably also saw another commercial a number of times while watching the playoffs.  The “Anthem” spot – which advertised GMC’s fancy-schmancy new MultiPro six-function pickup tailgate:

The spot for the NFL features the chorus from Atlanta rapper Archie Eversole’s 2002 hit, “We Ready.”

The GMC commercial uses “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” a 1969 single by Steam, one of my favorite all-time one-hit wonders.

Watch both commercials and you’ll notice something: the basic riff of “We Ready” is exactly the same as the basic riff of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”

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Archie Eversole was born in Germany in 1984 – both his parents were active-duty military at the time – but grew up in Atlanta. 

Eversole was something of a rap wunderkind – he was only 17 when his 2002 album, Ride Wit Me Dirty South Style, was released.  (The album would have been released even earlier if Eversole hadn’t been convicted of assault and sentenced to eight months in the poke.) 

I’m not sure what happened to Eversole after that, but he never released another album.  

However, in 2018 he wrote “United We Conquer,” which Atlanta’s professional soccer team (Atlanta United FC) has made its official team anthem.

It’s OK for an American soccer anthem, but it’s no “We Ready” – which has apparently become de rigger for high school football teams who want to psych themselves up before taking the field for a game.

Click here for “We Ready.”

And click below to order the song from Amazon:

Bananarama – "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" (1983)

Na na na na

Na na na na

Hey hey hey

Goodbye

Yes, yes . . . I do realize that I featured “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” on 2 or 3 lines just last month.

I do occasionally forget that I’ve featured a particular song and and write about it a second time.  In fact, I just discovered today – completely by accident – that another one of the songs I wrote about in July had already been featured in 2 or 3 lines.  But that song had originally been featured in 2010 – which was a l-o-o-o-n-g time ago.  (I’ve written about well over 1200 songs since giving birth to 2 or 3 lines in 2009.  If you expect me to remember each and every one of them, you are going to be sadly disappointed!) 

But my decision to feature “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” a second time so soon about writing about the first time was not the result of forgetfulness.  Keep reading and you’ll see why I decided to double-dip on this song.

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I wonder how many Americans could identify Roger B. Taney?  Five per cent is probably an optimistic guesstimate – two per cent may be more like it.

And I doubt that more than a handful could pronounce Taney’s name correctly.  (It’s “TAW-ney,” not “TAY-ney.”)

Taney was the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1836 until he died in 1864.  That makes him the highest-ranking government official ever who hailed from Maryland.  

Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, Taney had served as Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of War and his Attorney General.  Jackson nominated him to be his Secretary of the Treasury as well, but the Senate voted his nomination down because Taney had helped Jackson kill the Second Bank of the United States.  (Would you like to hear more about the controversy over the Second Bank of the United States?  I didn’t think so.)

Because Taney was kind of a big deal, his home state commissioned a life-size bronze statue of him, which has stood on the grounds of the Maryland State House since 1872.

Until last week, that is, when it was lifted on to a flatbed truck in the dead of night and driven to an undisclosed storage facility.

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Unlike Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis and the other historical figures whose statues are being hidden away faster than you can say “Jack Robinson,” Roger Taney was never a general in the Confederate Army, and he never held office in the Confederate government.  

Taney was loyal to the United States until his dying day.  In fact, he was still the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when he died in 1864, when he was 87 years old.

So why did the sovereign state of Maryland decided to remove the statue of Taney that graced the State House grounds for over 140 years?

The Taney statue in Annapolis is no more

We’ll get to the bottom of that in a future 2 or 3 lines.  But I’ve promised to explain why “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” has been featured on my wildly popular little blog twice in as many months.  And explain that I shall.

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The Washington Post described how the Taney statue was disappeared in the dead of night:

Workers came to the Maryland State House grounds after midnight on Friday [August 18] to dismantle a controversial statue of . . . Roger B. Taney.

Thursday night, police blocked off the streets around the State House complex. Soon, a crane and two flatbed trucks arrived.

More than two dozen bystanders looked on as a crew began removing the memorial from its base.

Say goodbye to Roger Taney

As the crane’s arm extended toward the monument shortly after 1 a.m., sprinklers were activated on the State House lawn, briefly disrupting the effort. After work resumed, the crane lifted the statue and maneuvered it to a flatbed truck, where it was wrapped in a tarp and driven away around 2:20 a.m.

The onlookers, who had been largely quiet, chanted “Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”  

Just imagine the scene.  A few loons who have nothing better to do show up in the wee hours to cheer on the contractors hired to lift the statue on to a truck and drive it away – a lengthy and undramatic operation that was about as exciting as watching paint dry.

As the truck carrying the uprooted statue skulks away, the onlookers start to sing a sixties pop song that is routinely sung to taunt visiting sports teams.

Quelle absurdité!

Or in the words of Yakov Smirnoff,

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Instead of featuring the original 1969 recording of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” again, I’ve decided to feature Bananarama’s 1983 cover of the song.  

That Bananarama cover became a #5 single in the UK, but sank like a stone in this country – it failed to crack the Billboard “Hot 100.”

Here’s the official music video of Bananarama’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”  Check out the clothing, the hairstyles, and the choreography . . . all of which are simply ridiculous.

Which makes it the perfect song to accompany a story about the removal of Roger Taney’s statue.

Click here to watch the “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” video.

Click below if you’d like to buy the Bananarama cover from Amazon:

Steam – "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" (1969)

He might be thrillin' baby, but a-my love

So dog-gone willin', so kiss him

Go on and kiss him goodbye

(From the Genius.com annotation for this song:  “Not all pop rock songs have [lyrics with] very deep meaning.”  No sh*t, Sherlock.)

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In 1977, Chicago White Sox stadium organist Nancy Faust started playing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” whenever White Sox hitters knocked an opposing pitcher out of the game:



Pretty soon, other stadium organists began to play the song to serenade departing hurlers.

The song is still a staple at all kinds of sporting events.  It has also been sung by politicians from both parties to taunt their opponents.

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Nancy Faust wasn’t the first person to use Steam’s song to heckle visiting teams.  That honor goes to me and several of my Parkwood High School friends, who got the bright idea of playing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” on our kazoos in the waning minutes of basketball games when our school’s team led by a safe margin.

We called ourselves the “Kazoo Krew,” and were quite taken with ourselves.  Fortunately, we had a really good basketball team that season, so we had plenty of opportunities to gloat by playing the Steam hit and otherwise acting like the obnoxious little smart-asses that we were.

Here’s a picture of the kazoo that each of us wore on a ribbon around our necks at games that year:

A kazoo is played by humming into the larger end of the instrument.  It makes a nice little buzzy sound, although it doesn’t produce a lot of volume.  

The Kazoo Krew made enough noise to be quite annoying – especially to the many girls in the Pep Club and their advisors, who seems to think they had a monopoly of cheering for the home team.  (Get over yourselves, b*tches!)

I wish I still had my kazoo, but I'm sure my mother threw it away years ago.  THANKS A LOT, MOM!

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In 1968, a singer named Gary DeCarlo recorded four songs for Mercury Records.  His friend Paul Leka produced the four tracks, which impressed the folks at Mercury Records enough that they decided to  issue all four as singles.  

Singles need B-sides, of course.  For one of the B-sides, DeCarlo and Leka decided to use a song called “Kiss Him Goodbye” that they had written in the early 1960s when they were members of an obscure Connecticut doo-wop group.

The late Gary DeCarlo in 2014

Leka thought the song was too short, and needed a chorus.  “I started writing while I was sitting at the piano going ‘Na, na, na, na . . . na, na, na, na,’” he told an interviewer years later.  “Everything was ‘Na na’ when you didn't have a lyric.”  DeCarlo came up with the “Hey, hey,” and the rest is history.

B-sides are usually ignored by DJs.  But DJs started playing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” and it reached #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart in December 1969.  

Guess what record it displaced in the top spot?  “Something”/“Come Together” by the Beatles.  (Hooray!) 

The record was attributed to a group called Steam, but there was no such group.  With Leka’s help, Mercury put together a group of musicians to record an album and go on tour to exploit the single’s popularity.

DeCarlo didn’t hit the road with that group.  Leka said that DeCarlo was embarrassed by the record, and didn’t want to perform it in concert.  But DeCarlo says he was squeezed out of Steam by Leka and Mercury.

Gary DeCarlo died earlier this week of lung cancer.  He was 75 years old.  

Here’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” which is one of my favorite all-time one-hit wonders:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: