No. 224 – (Don’t Fear) The Reaper

Performer: Blue Oyster Cult

Songwriter: Donald Roeser

Original Release: Agents of Fortune

Year: 1976

Definitive Version: The studio version.

I always liked this song, although I can’t say I really was a Cultamaniac. (In retrospect, and in all honesty, Godzilla probably also should have made this here list.) And it was used brilliantly in one of my favorite episodes of Six Feet Under.

But let’s face it, I can think of only one thing when I hear this song, and I would suspect it’s the same thing everyone else thinks of when they hear this song: “Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription is more cowbell!!” Luckily, I have a story that relates to that famous Saturday Night Live skit.

Columbus has been known as a cowtown for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid and didn’t know any better, Columbus pretty much was despite being the seat of state government and the location of Ohio State University. It seemed until I was in my 30s that they DID roll up the sidewalks downtown at 5 o’clock.

A faction that lived there embraced that image, which is why I would suspect that when the Clippers started in 1977, they embraced the idea of the cowbell. Fans at Clippers games—and for the first decade, the Clippers drew the likes of which hadn’t been seen in minor league baseball in decades—rang cowbells when the Clippers did something. So the team commissioned a couple of fight songs, one of which was called Ring Your Bell.

Ring Your Bell was as cheesy as you might imagine such a song to be, but it was embraced in all its cheesiness wholeheartedly by the fans—including this here fan. It simply wasn’t a Clippers game unless they played Ring Your Bell.

When I started scoring in 2004, the tradition remained, although it wasn’t as strong as it had been. They’d play either Ring Your Bell or Hometown Heroes once per game but rarely both. To the neophyte, they sound the same, but to any true Clippers fan, there was no way to confuse the two even though, well … they DO sound exactly the same.

Anyway, one day in 2004, Mark brought in a tape of the SNL bit and played it to much amusement in the pressbox when I arrived before the game. I mean, who can’t get enough of Will Ferrell bogeying around the studio with the cowbell, making the rest of the cast crack up while Christopher Walken walks off with the whole skit as Bruce Dickinson … yes, THE Bruce Dickinson?

Now, maybe I missed a conversation that took place before I arrived or maybe it went without saying, but I was the one who said it that day when the idea formed instantly: You ought to play the “Only prescription” line on the scoreboard before you play Ring Your Bell to rally the crowd. Everyone thought that was a great idea, but it didn’t happen that night or the next day.

Well, the next year, guess what? The Clippers decided they had a fever and the only prescription was playing Walken saying those magic words just before Ring Your Bell in the seventh inning. And they played that scene more or less the whole year.

I don’t know if I can take credit for putting that brilliant idea into the minds of the Clippers promotional folks, but, well, why not? I did say it, and I can’t help it if I put my pants on just like the rest of you—one leg at a time—but once my pants are on, I pass out genius promotional ideas.