BK dad Doug Berns turns Knicks game recaps into viral musical parodies: ‘It's mind blowing'
Brooklyn-based audio engineer and musician Doug Berns is making waves in the Knicks fandom this season with bizarre musical recaps of each game — which he writes, shoots and uploads with a lightning-speed turn-around of less than a day.
5 Musician Doug Berns, 37, at his Prospect Lefferts Gardens home.
Stephen Yang
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'Knick fans are a family at the end of the day,' said Berns, 37, a lifelong fan who grew up on the Upper West Side and now lives in Prospect Lefferts Gardens with his wife and two daughters. 'The emotional roller coaster of investing in this team is really, really intense. My songs tell the stories of those roller coasters, I hope.'
While Berns started the project with the goal of writing one original metal song inspired by a Knicks game, he found that musical parodies of '90s rock and hip hop tunes resonated deeply with audiences – and his videos have since drawn over 15,000 Instagram followers and millions of views since he began the series on Nov. 13 after a win against the Philadelphia 76ers.
5 Berns writes, shoots and uploads all of his musical Knicks game parodies in less than a day.
Stephen Yang
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'My wheelhouse is music that I grew up listening to, and a lot of my millennial contemporaries are Knick fans that grew up in the last golden age of Knicks basketball,' Berns told The Post. 'Most of [the parodies] are songs that swirl around in our emotional hearts and minds.'
In the months since Berns launched the endeavor, he's found fans in filmmaker Spike Lee, as well as Knicks players Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart — who showcased one of Berns' songs on their podcast Roommates Show.
'The Internet is so wild, I could never have conceived of this,' Berns said. 'When [90s R&B song] 'Return of the Mack' came out and I'm 5 or 7 years old, the idea that I'd be able to parody it and have two Knicks players with a platform where they're watching me perform and reacting to it, it's mind blowing,' Berns said, referencing his Feb. 28 game parody.
5 Berns estimates he's garnered between 3 and 4 million views since November.
Instagram/@duglust
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The Manhattan-born musician also plays in Cafe Wha? house bands in Greenwich Village, a jazz project with 'Bobs Burgers' star H. Jon Benjamin, wedding bands and teaches a 'rock band' music class at an Upper East Side high school.
He said he started the project because he felt he 'could always do something with my Knicks knowledge.'
'I was more excited this time,' he said. 'The last four seasons built to this season, with the way the roster was shaping up. I was like, 'I'm excited, I'm inspired, I want to do something.'
'I want to get better at producing songs and recording and playing different instruments. And this is how I do it,' he added.
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5 'The last four seasons built to this season, with the way the roster was shaping up. I was like, 'I'm excited, I'm inspired, I want to do something,' Berns said.
Stephen Yang
Berns said he's already laid down the instrumentals for Wednesday's Eastern Conference Finals game one parody — and teased the tune would be a '90s rock classic.'
His musical process usually begins the morning of a game when he'll pick out and lay down the instrumentals for a song. Parodies include Alanis Morissette's 'You Oughta Know' redone for a game afainst the Toronto Raptors and a take on the Beastie Boys' '(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!).'
Other picks simply pay tribute to his home team: 'When I go towards a hip-hop direction they love it. It's synonymous with New York, a part of Knicks culture is hip hop.'
The musician will then take notes during the game at night — watching for stand-out events and hot topics – and then will get to work right after the team wraps. The entire process takes about six hours, he said.
5 Berns isn't always a one-man band, and will sometimes feature guest artists, like TGIFLY (left), on his musical parodies.
Instagram/@duglust
'I'll watch a game and be like, 'how am I going to do it?' But I have to, and then my creative juices kick in,' Berns said. 'It has to do with the pressure, the fact that people are counting on this as part of their game consumption ritual.'
The Brooklyn musician is now planning to release a 'greatest hits' record on Spotify – and is already working out the copyright kinks. He's also hoping to turn his musical parodies into a 'live show' starting this fall.
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'I feel like I've been searching for a way to express my talent and fandom and personality for a long time, and I found it with this thing,' he added. 'My goal is to continue giving fans this thing that makes them happy: win or lose.
'It's a little microcosm of [the team's] successes and failures and triumphs and rejection,' he added. 'Music is a way of telling stories of people's lives, and I think doing both is a meta way to look at all of that.'
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