House of Pain, "Jump Around"

This last weekend shall be known as The Lost Weekend. College football enjoyage was near a minimum, but I am cool with that. The Hawkeye bye week presented the perfect storm of autumn and Oktotoberfest, and both made up for my lack of college football lovin’. On Saturday I played beer nerd and “journalist” at Iowa City’s annual Brew Fest; later, I hit Oktoberfest in Amana with Sweet Meat and Zaza. Yesterday I drove to Pikes Peak State Park and McGregor. Though the foliage in the Driftless Area has yet to peak, it is still beautiful, especially on the Iowa side.

On the trip north I saw a van decked out in Cornhusker decals, and there were many Wisconsin shirts in Iowa City on Saturday (which was very odd). So in honor of Wisconsin welcoming Nebraska in to the Big Ten, I thought I would post the video for House of Pain’s famous “Jump Around.” Here is the direct link.

Everyone has heard the song, and national networks are apt to make a big deal about the traditional “Jump Around” at Camp Randall, but has anyone seen the video? I never had until a few weeks ago, when it appeared in the related video strip on YouTube. Curious, I clicked and was impressed by how raw it was. It is an early-nineties gem complete with ethnic Irish angst. I will never listen to the song the same way again.

Speaking of Wisconsin’s “Jump Around,” how cool are the game day traditions at Camp Randall? The Fifth Quarter, the slow motion wave, the vulgar call-and-response chants, and “Jump Around.” Iowa has the Victory Polka, the I-O-W-A chant after scores, a few section specific chants (the fans in our northwest corner have a chant battle between stands), but nothing as nationally prominent as “Jump Around.” I suppose I am fine with that. They do their thing, we do ours.