Football and Music

Whilst we are waiting for the kick off, for your viewing pleasure a clip from those muddy funsters Adam & Joe.

The Footie Song:

After some time in the doldrums, Scotland’s 3rd favourite sport after Curling, Golf and Fishing… *pauses*

…Their 4th favourite sport after curling, golf, fishing.     And tossing the caber.

I’ll start again.

Scottish football has been flourishing as of late. With Celtic and Rangers beating some decent competition in the Champions League and DaveC would like to remind us of the mighty Aberdeen doing alright in the Mickey Mouse UEFA Cup too.

The national team are on the run in the Euro 2008 qualifiers and at the moment are sitting pretty at the top Group B after beating France. Twice.

Now they go into Saturday and Wednesday full of confidence and I hope that they do make it to the finals. No I do really.

A warning on the musical side though - I hope they don’t end up with some Scottish ‘contemporary’ artists as they did in a previous major tournament finals they qualified for - The 1998 World Cup, which funnily enough took place in France.

There can’t have been anybody available at that time, so they got lumbered with the only charting Scotia act - Del Amitri.

But the track they recorded to accompany the squad in the Finals cursed them. Entitling the song: “Don’t Come Home Too Soon” tempted fate too much and after a loss, a draw and then a result that took them to a new low that they didn’t experienced again until Berti Vogts.

So here’s a reminder to whoever at the Scotia FA that chooses a current ‘contemporary’ artist to record a song for next summer. Choose very carefully, don’t fall into that trap again.*

* Unfortunately they did, but that’s another story for another day…

» Del Amitri - Don’t Come Home Too Soon

Together with yesterday’s entry, further proof (as if it was needed) that apart from Radiohead & Nirvana, the ’90’s was a sh it pointless decade.
Still don’t believe me ? Have a look at the top 20 charts for the 1998 World Cup year.

Sidenote: The title of this post was inspired by this article.

Today is Radiohead day but I can’t find a tenuous link to footie with any of their tracks, so this one is about a single released in 1996 from another ‘contemporary’ artist…

I say contemporary but looking back on it now “something they did whilst ripped off their tits” is probably a better description.

At the time the shambolic mess that was the Happy Mondays had imploded. In 1992 they had successfully seen to the end of Factory Records by deciding to record the album Yes Please! in Barbados, but spent more of their time (and the budget) ingesting every hardcore drug they could get their hands on.

A summary of the album from the Wikipedia entry:

It is reasoned by many that one of the reasons for the album’s failure was the change of producer between 1990s Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches and this one. Paul Oakenfold, that album’s producer was unavailable to produce Yes Please! The new production team, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, drastically changed the band’s sound from that of the previous album. Whilst before the Happy Mondays sound had been grounded in a fusion of Rock and Acid House music, here it was changed to a rather more out-of-date style of ’80s Synth Pop combined with Caribbean influences. With grunge-rock becoming more mainstream at the time, parcicularly through Nirvana, the Mondays sound was seen as becoming increasingly out of date.

While the band had previously enjoyed almost universal critical approval for their music, the change of sound on this album garnered a huge critical backlash against the band. One reviewer writes of the album: “In the hands of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, the group’s music loses much of its distinctive, thuggish edginess, as well as its reliance on current dance trends, becoming faceless, undistinguished dance-pop sludge.” Even more cruelly, the now-defunct UK music paper Melody Maker gave the album a two-word review, namely: “No thanks.”

After this disaster the band split up and Shaun Rider took his mate Bez and a backing singer called ‘Kermit’ and together they formed Black Grape.

Notable memory: Shaun and Black Grape appeared on TFI Friday and sang a cover of the Sex Pistols’ ‘Pretty Vacant’.
Before this ITC had warned Channel 4 because of previous guests using the F word on live television before the watershed. Ryder dropped a couple of them during the song and as a result was actually named in a Channel 4 compliance manual banning him from appearing live on the channel ever again.

Their first album was very well received and went straight to number 1. A year later, in time for Euro ‘96 they recorded and released the track below, which got to number 6.

Another notable and something I forgot about : Joe Strummer and Keith Allen appeared on the single too.

The track actually has nearly everything for that perfect storm of a footie song. But listening to it again and looking at the lyrics though, in my opin this is something that should be put in Room 101.

» Black Grape - England’s Irie

Next up - More ‘contemporary’ artist, this time for Scotland.

October 11th is the next John Peel Day.

This post is to commemorate a man who was as passionate about his football as he was about his music.

Peely was a hardcore Liverpool fan but in his later years and because of where he lived, John wandered down to Portman Road and watched them play too. (Don’t know why, must have been punishing himself for something).

There will be the Third Annual John Peel Memorial Football Tournament and Concert taking place at the Liverpool Football Club Academy and later on at the new Picket.

List of links that you should go and explore even more:

» Radio 1 - John Peel Day

» Right Time, Right Place, Wrong Speed. The life of John Robert Parker Ravenscroft

»John Peel Everyday (an excellent blog with loads of related items and links to other John Peel blogs, some of them which post entire Peel Sessions)

My contribution to the Peel Sessions is by a band that came from Liverpool that were football mad. In 1986 whilst on tour in the USA they all watched England play in the World Cup in a hotel room on a Spanish language channel. Apparently the room was packed and the American road crew were puzzled at these guys going mental watching some weird foreign language sport on the TV.

Two of the band were actually born in Yorkshire and the lead singer still follows dirtyLeeds. The drummer (his brother), even though he was from Beverley and then lived in Liverpool, for some reason which still escapes me to this day, supports Spurs.
The lead guitarist was a born and bred Evertonian. The bass player weirdly for a Scouser, didn’t like football. But this was probably done on purpose to irritate the others because they did.

Peel Session recorded on 6th of May 1981, broadcast on the 12th:

» Messages From The Rings Of Saturn

» Talking (It’s Not Me Talking)

» I Ran

» Committed

I was planning to post this and a sequel to it to coincide with some future predictions, but news of Willie Donachie getting his cards have changed that.

I’ve been pondering for a while about what to do about certain songs I’ve found, certain teams and things associated with them. What I want to do with F & M is to post items which give a positive view of football, about the teams and their fans. My policy is to try and find any footie-musical items that sing about the love of a certain team and about the game itself. I am not and I will not post anything that ones set have fans have composed about another set or an opposing side. I’ve found already quite a few done by Man USA fans, some by Rangers fans which are not good natured ribbing but border on hateful.

As mentioned there are teams which when you hear or read their name you immediately know of their reputation. This particular team which gives me a pisspoor excuse to post today’s track is Millwall.

See. You’ve already thought it.

When you hear about them it is nearly always about their fans and about violence.

Side story: In the mid-90's I was in this hotel and one of the guests was somebody sent there by his company for some training thing/seminar or something. He wasn't a suited and booted bloke, but somebody who worked elsewhere in that company, again I don't know where, but obviously not in the offices. What made this obvious was the skinheaded haircut, the tattoo's and the cut-off denim jacket he always wore with Millwall FC patches all over it.
This bloke... I say bloke but he was only a youngish kid really, wasn't the stereotypical footie hooligan. In fact when we talked to him he was the friendliest, nicest guy you could meet. But he wasn't exactly the brightest.

When the hotel bar closed our boy wanted to keep drinking and the only place still open at that time in the early hours of the morning was a dodgy bar not far away. Even though it was obvious he'd get into a bit of bother with the locals he still wanted to go and went he did.

Didn't stay there very long obviously. He sat there quietly and had a few drinks but a few in the bar didn't care for his presence and after slapping him around (nothing serious) they chucked him out. The kid came back to the hotel and told us this story and yes... he was puzzled as to why they objected to his being there. He genuinely didn't or couldn't understand.

So it doesn’t matter if you are a pacifist. If you decide to dress to look like a skinhead to fit in with your culture or surroundings you have to accept the consequences.

I’ve wandered off from my main point… Oh yes, the sort of songs posted here.

I found a band who have recorded a couple of footie-related songs, but this band’s type of music is associated with Oi!
Because there is a possibility that this band is neo-nazi, but so far I haven’t found any solid evidence of such, I’ve been asking myself if I should post their song or not. I need a 2nd opinion on this, so if anyone wants to volunteer and read about what I’ve found then please contact me.

Finally we are back to the beginning subject and the team associated with the song.
I am posting this one because despite their public image of them, this song isn’t about any form of hatred against anybody. It sings about the pride in their team and about being a Londoner.

Despite all this though… when I went searching for more info about the track I found via Google’s new book search excerpts from two books : One is The Changing Face of Football: Racism, Multiculturalism and Identity in the English Game and the other is: No One Likes Us, We Don’t Care: The Myth and Reality of Millwall Fandom. Both which quote the lyrics to this song to demonstrate (as far as I can tell) that Millwall are not as biased as you think.
That saying though there always going to be that hooligan element associated with the club. Unfortunately it will never go away.

» Roy Green - Let ‘Em Come

A sequel to this will be posted next week