Mark Mazzu

“Stephen he was shunned, Stephen he was stoned, Stephen preached a sermon, Stephen stood alone… Paul, he worked the cloakroom at Stephen’s execution, he ended up a saint, what a revolution…. It’s how you finish, not where you start, not where you fall down, not where you chart… You cook your numbers, you spin your yarn, it’s how you finish… It’s how you finish… The Tower of Siloam, it fell on eighteen folks, it wasn’t pushed by Satan or The Holy Ghost… It rains upon the just, it rains upon the masses, it falls upon the meek and the upper classes… It’s how you finish, not where you start, not where you fall down, not where you chart… You cook your numbers, you spin your yarn, it’s how you finish… It’s how you finish.” - Mark Mazzu - from “It’s How You Finish” (Painting is The Stoning of Saint Stephen by Dutch artist Rembrandt)

Saint Paul said that a precious memory triggers another. In the summer of 1970 my family spent a few weeks in California. It was a working vacation as my father was invited to speak in several cities on the west coast. I reference the journey in my lyric, “Traveled cross the country in the family’s Oldsmobile,” from the song “Texas City.” One of the many milestones of that excursion was my discovery of baseball, trading cards, Willie Mays, the San Fransisco Giants, and my indoctrination into the national pastime. Freshly arrived back in the states from years growing up in France, I was an absorbing sponge to all things Americana. A year later as the song sings, “I signed up for little league,” and was playing second base with my new blue colored Macgregor Willie Mays Edition baseball glove. I followed the entire 1971 Giants season through daily box scores in the newspaper and updates on the “Game Of The Week” on NBC. That year Mays, McCovey, Bonds, et al, captured the Western Division but fell to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League Championship. I experienced my first baseball sadness, a childish thing yes, but then I was a child. Thirty nine years later those wonderful cerebral film clips in my mind are triggered again, and I am pulling for San Fransisco in  The World Series, and enjoying those good and “giant” memories of childhood.