Showing some love to our Gallic cousins across the water with some French football and music…

In 1998 the Gauls were kings on the world. But that was thirteen years ago. Patrick Viera, the last member of that team hung up his boots at the end of last season.

A new generation has emerged but as we witness in the 2010 World Cup, they can’t seem to play as a team. They have great individual talent and many of them are key members of top teams all over Europe, but whether they can achieve the heights they scaled in ’98 and Euro 2000 is uncertain. After their very public meltdown it is going to take some time for Lauren Blanc and co to rebuild confidence – and reputation of their national team.

What about the French football league ? There are many teams we are all familiar with.. Lyon, Marseilles, Paris Saint-Germain… but for some reason this league and those teams don’t get as much attention (in my perception anyway) as the Spanish and Italian leagues get. I’ve checked and neither $ky or ESPN UK have the broadcast rights to Ligue 1. A terrible transgression.

As I’ve mentioned this edition of the F&M podcasts is showing some love to French football with featured music from Ligue 1 teams and excepts from they previous World Cup campaigns too. So sit back and enjoy… FootieAndMusic Podcast – French France:

Tracklisting:

[See post to listen to audio] » D/load [pod is 58 mins/File size is 53MB] - or » D/load & embed the file on your own site.

Additional Notes:

It is great thanks to our Football and Music Consultant* Fredorarrci who pointed me to this French football and music website over a year ago, but it’s taken me until now to finally do something.
*I've given you a title now but I'm not paying for your services.
Austerity measures and all that. Go and have a riot about it. See if I care.

The majority of songs featured in this edition of the pod were randomly selected from a collection freely available via the following url’s and I encourage you to explore further:

• Les Stars
• Les Bleus
• Les Hymnes du Championnat
• Les Hymnes de Coupe du Monde

» Another plug for our old friends, the French language site: THE VINTAGE FOOTBALL CLUB.
Who are now also on Twitter @vintagefootclub. They are football and music & always worth a visit.

Extra Time:

- There is one more that Fredorarrci recommended a listen but I didn’t manage to include in the above pod. It’s from the former goalkeeper Joël Bats, who is now the goalkeeping coach at Lyon.
In his attempt at singing he didn’t do something about football, nah that’s too obvious. He did it about a snail:

[See post to listen to audio] » Joël Bats – L’Escargot [See post to listen to audio] » Joël Bats – Fantaisie Dune Plume (Fancy Pen)

…and lucky for us there’s a live performance too:

“On turf, we slide
Caressed by the evening breeze
By the horns, we stand
Light heart, full of hope”

» Link

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

I have just spent the last few hours wandering through the French language site: The Vintage Football Club, which like F&M does as it says on the tin.

With the amount of content they have it’s easy to get lost but you end up discovering many new treasures…

At first glance you would think that it’s only about football in France in the 70′s and 80′s, with the Panini pics and scans of old League 1 teams… But no there’s more, much much more once you take a trip.

- You will find such delights as the Arsenal double from 70-71, as well as the 1977 FA Cup Final.
- There’s a detailed look at Euro ’84 (which France won). There are vintage pics of some stadiums, also have a look at West Ham from 77-78 and the Man United centenary.

- Not just those though, there are other curiosities like an entire section on Retro WAGs if that’s your thing. Plus a section on what fashionable footballers were wearing back then, including (Sir) Bobby Moore as the lonesome cowboy :

The Vintage Football Club is also a kindred spirit to Football and Music because they too celebrate the meeting of the two worlds…

Their Rock Action section has an image of Queen (the band that is) with Diego Maradona. They’ve got Didier Six with a gramophone.
- and they also have the following…

The Shoes are a couple of musicians (who also remix and DJ) from Reims, which is a medium sized town about 90 miles east of Paris.

I don’t really know much more than that so I’ll do a sort of google translated summary of what The Vintage Football Club wrote about one of their releases from last year, in which the band entitled an EP in honour of their local football club, Stade de Reims, currently playing in Ligue 2.

“When two musicians (from Reims) pay homage to their illustrious elders from the 70s – not the best decade for Champagne – it gives The Shoes, a sparkling electro duo who immortalized the team on the cover of their mini-lp: “Stade de Reims 1978“.

“A real success with the music as opposed to sport since the Stade de Reims, then, slowly but surely sliding towards the bottom of the championship of France. (At the time of this release Reims were in the 3rd division) but are now back in the 2nd). But like the great teams that never die, The Shoes rekindled the flame…”

I can’t really understand/translate the rest of that properly, go and have a look for yourself.

I can’t find the reason about anywhere, why they picked 1978 Stade de Riems, that period, apart from winning the Coppa delle Alpi in 1977, wasn’t particularly a notable one.

» Here’s a couple of remixed tracks from that EP. Here for a limited time.

[See post to listen to audio] » The Shoes – America (Brodinski Remix) [See post to listen to audio] » The Shoes – Keep That Control (Yuksek Remix)

Extra time:

- A bonus track and a remix by The Shoes of a track by Hard Fi:

You can find more about The Shoes on Blogger, MySpace and Twitter.

- Don’t forget to bookmark and visit The Vintage Football Club often.

As they say – cheaters don’t prosper (well there was that one time… and then there’s that other..) but usually they get their comeuppance.

In France’s case it was themselves who got the fork in the eye with a very public tête à tête on the training ground. This was after Le Sulk said a few choice words to the French coach after he was subbed at half time during their match against Mexico and was subsequently sent home.

All was not right in the France camp even before they set off for South Africa, in a pre-flight friendly in Parish the fans where chanting for Domminech to resign.

And now they are one step away from following Anelka to their airport for a quick return home.

Because of the other results in their group there is still an outside chance of France qualifying for the next round, but they’ll have to win and score a quite a few before that will happen.

But despite what will happen in their game against South Africa, I can bet you that even if France get a pile of injuries and run out of strikers – Henry will still be sitting there on the bench. He is that far down the pecking order that Dommench will put on the reserve ‘keeper before him.

I think that France will actually pull together and get a win, but it will be too little, too late.

So before Thierry goes off into semi-retirement in MLS, he will witness this indignity first hand.

Music: This is from an Englishman who’s been living in France for the last 16 years. Alistair D. Price usually records as Dynamoes, but this is a side job looking at… well you know…

He writes…

“Guest vocalists on the song are the commentary team from TF1, who approach the task with their usual Gallic bluster.

It’s inspired by the uproar surrounding the handball by Thierry Henri during the World cup qualifier against Ireland, which led to the goal that took Les Bleus into the Finals. It’s also a tribute to the fine game of Subbuteo, which is another version of football that relies on using your hands.”

What’s the French word for irony…?

Apart from Siphiwe Tshabalala’s stunning strike and subsequent celebration, it’s not going to be a match that people will be talking about in years to come. Pity that Mexico got an equalizer, would have been nice for the hosts to get a win. I can’t see either of these teams getting very far if they don’t up their game though. Uruguay to steal runners up spot ?
We’ll only find that out after we watch them next against…

Although he will probably spend at least 80 minutes on the bench I’m sure that there will be multiple cuts to him during the game.

» Found a good French football&music tune thanks to the Requiem pour un twister blog. They posted a track from Tahihi 80, a band based in Rouen. This track from them is about the World Cup (natch) and is sung in English:

» Tahiti 80 – World Cup

- Find out more about the track – one of four being released – by going here.
(If you use Google Chrome it will automatically translate the page for you.)

Yes we all know what he did and I’ll get to it in a minute, but before that it is with thanks once again to Eric who I’ve mentioned on here once before…can’t find it now but I’m sure… e-rawk. That was it !

e-rawk (as he shall be known and as you should address him if you ever meet him) is the one who always gives me a nod to some legit bands and a link with their music to football. Last time it was Bell and Sebastian, The Decemberists & The Lucksmiths and he’s done it again with a couple more bands:

“…Just heard this track on the radio. New Gotan Project song called La Gloria. You probably already have it but just in case…

It reminded me of a song by Zero 7 called “Everything Up (Zizou)” from their album Yeah Ghost last year.

Evidently the “Zizou” tag came when they were recording it. They thought it needed a quick turn a la Zizou to work. I don’t think the song has anything other than that to do with football.”

The two aforementioned songs:

	[See post to listen to audio] » Gotan Project – La Gloria
	[See post to listen to audio] » Zero 7 – Everything Up (Zizou)

Eri… e-rawk’s message gives me a perfect excuse to post some other stuff about Zidane:

Now I don’t know if you saw that incident during the 2006 World Cup Final, in fact not even the referee saw it and it was because of a television replay that got Zinedine his marching orders. There was a fourth official who told the ref about the event, but he himself didn’t see it directly but via a monitor near the dug outs.
Said monitors have been banned from because apart from spotting things that the officials didn’t see, the team bosses were using them to see things that they usually don’t see. Thus bringing us back to the status quo: “Arsene – did you see that tackle on…?” “No, no I didn’t see it”. Believable deniability.

I’ve wandered off the subject there… back to Materazzi versus Zidane and le coup de boule.

This moment was reported around the world – even the local news station in my part of the woods aired the footage. No mention about the actual match and results, but repeated showing and discussion of the incident.
Not long after hundreds of animated gifs were created [some here] and the day after the final a couple of brothers created a song about that moment in time:

[Via Wikipedia]   “Coup de Boule” (French for “headbutt”) is a French song performed by brothers Sébastien and Emmanuel Lipszyc, who run a firm called La Plage that produces television jingles. The track was written and recorded in half an hour the day after the World Cup Final. The soca-style song is about the France national football team’s appearance at the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final, especially Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt on Marco Materazzi.

The Lipszyc brothers, with co-writer Franck Lascombes distributed the song as a joke to about 50 friends over the web and within hours it was playlisted by Skyrock – one of France’s largest independent radio stations. By July 12th Warner Music won the bidding war to licence the song. It was released as a one-song CD on July 20th and reached number one in the French charts.

[See post to listen to audio] » La Plage – Coup de Boule Video – Click to watch: - Link to video

- Lyrics – including an English translation.

Their song was actually a parody of a parody – I’ll let Wikipedia explain:

“Zidane y va marquer” is a song recorded by the French TV and radio host Sébastien Cauet and broadcast on radio from May 2006. Based on the music of Salif Keita and Martin Solveig’s hit single “Madân”, this parody evokes different players on the team of France Football committed during World 2006, including Zinédine Zidane.

Background and writing
From May 2006, the song featured on the radio program hosted by Cauet every morning. The tone is humorous and refers to Zidane as a providential savior. The lyrics also mentioned the non-selection of Jérôme Rothen and Nicolas Anelka and the unexpected selection of Pascal Chimbonda. In the original version, Zidane was injured leaving the place to Claude Makélélé, but after the France v China match, the lyrics were changed to reflect Djibril Cisse’s real life injury.

… The song gained in popularity after the victories of the French team at the World Cup. It was being sung in the streets during and after the games in celebrations. Cauet decided to record the song and release it as a single.

[See post to listen to audio] » Cauet – Zidane y va Marquet

His song got to No.1 in August that year, but was supplanted by the La Plage tune soon after.

Again it is with grateful thanks to e-rawk (I told you not to tell me about that name). Top spotting.

Another note about the petulant one… Can we call him petulant…? Is he petu…? With the following evidence, coupled with his final appearance you could say that.

In 2005 a documentary called ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’ (French: Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle) was made about Zidane, it was the idea of Glasgow born artist Douglas Gordon, who years before had seen ‘Football As Never Before’ (aka Fußball wie noch nie) which was a documentary about George Best.

In that original 1971 doc the filmmaker Hellmuth Costard followed Best around whilst he was playing in a match against Coventry. He had eight 16mm film cameras watching Best, in real time, for the course of the entire game.

Douglas Gordon took this same idea and with the help of Philippe Parreno, the Algerian-born French artist and filmmaker, they recorded Zinedine playing for Real Madrid in a match against Villarreal, again with multiple cameras watching him.

Ironically in the final minutes of that game Zidane was sent off after getting into the fight.
Below is the documentary, which you will see the Madrid ‘Galaticos’ from back then including Figo, (Fat) Ronaldo, Davey Becks and Roberto Carlos.

Additional notes for you football spotters: The final score of the documentary match was 2-1 to Real. The Villarreal team was being managed back then by Manuel Pellegrini, who is now the coach of Madrid – and in goal for them was one Pepe Reina.

The doc is via Google Video:

The Music…

There was a soundtrack to accompany the documentary, which was created by the Scotia band Mogwai (the sister of Jessica Simpson gave her baby the same name I think…;o). They were convinced to do the soundtrack by their fellow Glaswegian Douglas Gordon who played them some footage of the film with a remix of the track “Mogwai Fear Satan” playing in the background.
Gordon didn’t give any direction to the band as to what the album should sound like, thus giving some of the tracks an improvised feel.

I don’t know which remix Douglas Gordon used, so I’ve chosen one at random, plus the opening track from the soundtrack.

[See post to listen to audio] » Mogwai – Mogwai Fear Satan (Fcuk Buttons Remix) [See post to listen to audio] » Mogwai – Black Spider (soundtrack version)

Look don’t blame me. I am only the messenger.

Ok the advanced warning is given, time to insult your ears with this musical homage to another player, which like yesterday with Juninho, is regarded as a messiah at the club.

You don’t need me to tell you about Eric.

You do..? Just a little bit then:

The now retired enfant terrible spends his time with the occasional acting gig and managing the France beach soccer squad. He has been offered a coaching job back at Old Trafford (because yeah, there’s no difference between beach soccer the and Premier League), but has refused because of the Glazer family. Although the word is that he has softened with age and is now thinking about it.

- -

A song that somehow got out, was done by some unknown “artists” and the name they chose for the occasion – appropriately enough – was “Beach”. The song title is a strange one too. Did he suffer some (unreported) memory loss ..?

[See post to listen to audio]
» Beach – You Are Cantona

Hey stop throwing the shoes, I told you it isn’t my fault.

I need to distract you from the abysmal effort above…. ah how about this one… it actually mentions Cantona in the lyrics:

[See post to listen to audio] » Black Lace – I Am The Mimic Man

*ducks a major barrage of footware heading this way*

OW ! Ah come on it worked didn’t it ? You’ve now forgotten about the first song. But are now not forgiving me for that one…

All right I’ll make it up to you.

Here’s a track from Ash done in 1996. They got permission to use the photograph from that incident for the single’s cover:

[See post to listen to audio] » Ash – Kung Fu