News flash! Giants lose 7-2 to Detroit, behind a stellar two inning, five run/five hit/four walk effort from good ol’ Barry Zito. $500,000 grand well earned today!

This year has been great as far as bad contracts are concerned in the major leagues. With Andruw Jones, Miguel Cabrerra, Eric Gagne, the crown jewel of all bad contracts Barry fucking Zito, and now Dontrelle Willis all complete flops, GM’s around the league have to be even more wary of spending the big dollars on extensions for younger players and those big free agent fish.

It was announced today that Willis, or “the human earned run” as I like to call him since he was traded to Detroit (note the 10.32 ERA), has been sent down to Single A. I’m sure it’s just to “work things out” or whatever, but the truth is his numbers had declined steadily for the two seasons previous to Detroit acquiring him during the off season due to the fact that he can’t seem to mix in a strike every once in a while.

Detroit as a team fucking sucks this year after many predicted them to be world series contender, and after putting Jeremy Bonderman on the DL earlier in the day things don’t appear to be looking up any time soon. They have one of the highest payrolls in the bigs, and I looked forward to seeing that lineup come together on the field, but such is the way of baseball. After all, who would have predicted Tampa Bay to be 38-26 at this point in the season?

This is a bit atypical of the bands that we generally choose for Synthesis Band of the Day. No horn-rimmed glasses, waifish broads with ugly indie-rock haircuts, ‘roid-bicep hardcore meatheads, striped sweater wussies or epic Dungeons & Dragons progressive metalheads. No, Phredley brings the funk-rock.

In my fledgling college days, back when tie-dye wasn’t as vomitous and my roommate’s constant Phish-Grateful Dead-Phish musical rotation didn’t drive me completely bonkers, I would have broken my left leg to check out a band like Phredley. Now bad photoshop effects kinda irk me, patchouli oil makes me want to hurl and hippie funk in general just pisses me off. But not Phredley. They’s alright.

Based around a brother-sister duo (Phred Brown on Vocals, Guitar & Horns; Alesha Brown on Keys & Vocals) and a rhythm section (Paul Loos, Drums & Vocals; Samuel Tobias Winn, Bass & Vocals) Phredley lays down funk that is far closer to the heart of nearby Detroit than that of longhair revivalists in Colorado or Vermont. And when they stray toward the pop side of the spectrum, it comes across more as radio-friendly than looking for a parking lot miracle. More importantly (for me at least), their lyrics hold water. With the aforementioned hippie-funk enthusiasts, it’s most often the lyrics that drive me to enraged hysterics; Phredley uses some clever (or nearly clever) turns of phrase. No, Phred’s not Leonard Cohen by any means, but in a sometimes poppy, sometimes rocky funk quartet, it works. Their track “The Truth About Capricorns” also has some pretty, Beatelesque, tonally complex passages. If you’re a big fan of Ben Harper/Jack Johnson/Maroon 5, or your ’70s R&B records don’t have much dust on them, do yourself a favor and look into Phredley.