Football and Music

Anthony H. Wilson Esq - 20th Feb 1950 - 10th August 2007
Tributes to the twat here and here and here and here.

[YouTube] ‘That Tony Wilson’ Granada TV, 2002

The build up to the start of the EPL (and the lower minnow leagues) starts here.

The First Post’s In Off The Post has an Prem League preview:

OVER AT THE BEEB:

» Lawro Predicts: Draw, Home, Away, Home, Draw, Home, Away, Home, Home, Home.

» Also the Preston born ex-Irish international has his own premiership guide.

» Another link of interest: The managerial sack race. My shiny shillings are on Hutchings at Wigan, Billy Davis at Derby or Sanchez at Fulham.

IN THE GUARDIAN:

» James Richardson and chums are back with the Guardian Football Podcast. They’ve expanded the ‘casts and will be on twice weekly from now on. There is a preview pod on Thursday and then a post game one the following Monday. Crikey.

» Plus James gave a plug in the first podcast for a prediction league that The Guardian is running. How dare they !
If you can’t wait for our Prediction League on Sept 1st and want to get predicting now, then join up:

A note though - the Guardian’s version doesn’t have a prize for winning, whereas (when the players donate) ours will. But there is an interesting bit on theirs: You will be up against the Guardian’s football correspondent and other sports writers. An interesting challenge.
I’ve signed up for curiosity purposes. Don’t know if I’ll keep doing it (got enough to do over here !) but I want to see what the SP is there. You can find me under the usual username of Webbie.

As all football historiaficionado’s know, El Tel and KK both had a crack at the singing, which was just as much of a success as their management careers… But what about any of the current footballers ?
Are there, for example, any Chelski players who have stepped up and not been afraid (unlike last Sunday in the Charity/Community Shield) to approach to the mic ?

The Guardian’s The Knowledge was asked this question by a reader and this is what they found »

Which footballers have released a record?
James Dart and Paolo Bandini/ Wednesday August 8, 2007 / Guardian Unlimited

“Last week we investigated whether or not Roque Santa Cruz really rocks: he, er, does. However, we then decided to widen our search to find the players that have appeared in music videos, and it appears the line between football and music is a little more blurred than you might think …

First up, there is the new Man USA signing Carlos Tevez, who is also the front man in a band called Piola Vago, who play cumbia villera, a form of Argentinian shantytown/urban music. “Here it’s all hip-hop, all in English, so they don’t understand a thing,” Tevez told the Times of his old West Ham colleagues. “They want to hear it, they ask me but I say no to them. If they don’t understand, what’s the point of making them listen to it?” Interestingly, Piola Vago managed to hit the charts in Argentina with their song Lose Your Control, a jaunty little number which, according to the scummy Sun, has Carlitos “singing about whipping a girl and begging her for sex”.

A little less raunchy is the former Derby, West Ham and Hajduk Split defender Igor Stimac, who cut a record in Croatia as part of the Bohems just prior to the 1998 World Cup. “The country went mad about it,” recalled Stimac. “We were the Bohems and the record was called Mary and Katie - it was just picked out of nowhere really. It was only me and a group of friends but the song ended up No1 for four months! I think the sales were really down to Croatia doing well in the tournament rather than my voice! I sang on the record and played guitar.” Many thanks to Ed Gilbert for this clip of the Bohems in action.”

The article continues on with a few more examples » Click here to read it

Footnote about this post title - you've heard/read it somewhere before haven't you ? It is from those famous and long suffering Barcodes supporters Ant & Dec. Under their Byker Grove persona - PJ and Duncan, I took a line from one of their assaults on the charts:
[link to video] - See the efforts to hide his forehead ! Look at Dec’s curtain haircut !
[Link to the lyrics] - Shakespeare had nothing on these kids !

Latest scouting report about the website and the predicts:

Hello to any punter who has either been forced directed or just stumbled upon this place when you were looking for something else. You clicked the link ?! Well what else were you expecting !

Football and Music does as it says on the tin - it is a website that will cover the beautiful game and throw in some musical interludes while we are waiting for the next matches.

Why football and music ?
There will be a longer version posted on the About page soon, but a quick explanation:

For some reason football and music, two branches of, if you come down to it - two branches of “entertainment” seem to end up getting together. It is an odd pairing but it does happen.
When you see a singer, such as David Bowie for instance acting in a film there is no real surprise there because both of them drink in the same pub. But when you see Kevin Keegan up at the bar with Pete Waterman you do a double take.

But the football and music thing is not where this website and idea started. It actually started with the Predictions and the sending out of the email reminder to the players to get them to enter in their predictions before kick off every week. Also mentioned in the mailout was links or items to provide distractions when there wasn’t a match on. Every week there would also be a song of the week added to the Jukebox which had a tenuous or sometimes a very esoteric link to footie.

The idea of creating an entire website and not just do the prediction league by itself came from one of my mailouts when I put an appeal out looking for any Cup Final video’s on YouTube.
I didn’t want just the audio, I was thinking that, if for some unknown reason these music masterpieces made the charts, which against all odds they always seemed to do, they couldn’t appear on Top Of The Pops every time, so there would have been a video made to accompany the Final team’s weak attempt at singing (Ossie’s Dream anybody ?)

So far my search for these video (apart from the Anfield Rap) has turned up nowt. So I am putting out an appeal here and now - If you see any video clips of any footie team’s FA Cup Final songs then please Contact me here.

That quick intro turned into a long one…

Anyhoddles. The website is as you can see up and running. There will be tweaks, fiddles and extra additions, keep a watch out for that. The Prediction League is still being worked on (got the same blokes who did the new Wembley in, they promise it will be ready soon. Honest.) but it will be up and running in a few weeks.

A few weeks ?! Our regular prediction players are saying right now.
Yes in a couple of weeks the S&GFPL 2007-2008 season will be out of the blocks.
As you will know from previous years the footie season is a long one and doing your predictions week in, week out for around 40 weeks takes it out of you. So this season, like we did with the last will start after a few of the EPL games have played.
By watching the Premier League for a couple of weeks we’ll be able to see how the teams are playing and how all these new signings are fitting in.

Then we will be ready…

But until then hang around here and I’ll be posting more guff to waste the time away.

» $ky Sports vs Setanta - who revealed their secret weapon for next season: Des Lynam

» A human rights group is questioning whether that ex-Thai PM is a fit and proper person to be owning a footie club.
(The Beeb are going all artsy fartsy with their sports pages now, look at those tabs)