Newly-minted Twins slugger Byung Ho Park was such a huge star during his time playing in the KBO, the professional baseball league of his native Korea, that he had his own theme song.
Now, the Minneapolis-based rock’n’roll outfit Nato Coles & The Blue Diamond Band have recorded their own, Twins-themed version of the song so that Minnesota fans can get in on the fun.
First, the original, complete with instructions for the songs’ accompanying dance:
While we all wait for news, here's how to properly sing and dance to Park Byung-ho's cheering song pic.twitter.com/W8TBAVqRAR
— Dan Kurtz (@MyKBO) November 9, 2015
Second, the new version:
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Coles and his group are avid baseball fans, and the songwriter told BringMetheNews that he found out about Park’s song via one of the many “offbeat” baseball blogs that he follows.
“The song just jumped out at us. I mean, it sounds like a big rock’n’roll anthem, right?” Coles told us, via email, “We play those!”
“At practice, we learned it in about as long as it takes to play it, and we liked how it sounded so we thought ‘Hey, let’s try recording it, maybe the Twins will have us play the Budweiser Party Deck’.” The singer continued, “Maybe they’ll play it every time he hits a home run? It sure would sound good booming through the North Loop when the fireworks go off at Target Field.”
Coles says that the band had some difficulty altering the song from it’s original, heavily-accented context, and that he actually reached out to MyKBO, a Korean baseball fan website, for help.
“There was some discussion of how to change it to fit the Minnesota Twins,” Coles explains, “The original lyrics reference his team in Korea. We had to change that, although we did an alternate take with the original lyrics. Also, in Korea, names are the reverse of how they are in European/American society – the family name comes first.”
While Coles refused to name names, he said that his band is made up of a Cardinals fan, a Twins fan, a baseball agnostic and two Brewers fans who also support the Twins.
You can find more music from Nato Coles & The Blue Diamond Band at their Bandcamp page and on their website.
