Twenty years ago now.
It was a season where Manchester United were competing with another club who were being bankrolled with the aim of winning the Premier League title. Eventually that team, Blackburn Rovers, pipped them to the title.
It was a midseason game against struggling Crystal Palace and a midweek match. Nothing remarkable about it. Until the 48th minute.
In a fit of petulance Monsieur Cantona kicked the Palace defender Richard Shaw leaving the referee with no choice but to give him his marching orders.
As he was walking off… Well, you know.
That moment in time has been written about many times by many others. No need for me to repeat.
What we are here for is listen to some music (that term used loosely) about the same subject.
The timing of these things…
Since he was signed from Leeds United, the personality, the presence and the talent of this temperamental Frenchman had been filling the tabloid back pages. He was always good copy, a constant headline maker.
The Manchester United fans worshipped him as a god. After he joined in November 1992 their season, which was floundering suddenly struck to life. In the inaugural Premiership season they won their first title since 1967 and Cantona became an instant messiah.
Record labels are dead, but there’s one record label who, along with Cherry Red Records are gods to me here at Football and Music. If it wasn’t for them most of this website wouldn’t exist.
Exotica Records are Man Utd fans. They’ve released four (compilation) albums about the red side of Manchester, including today’s subject.
This CD was in production during 1995 and as I said, perfect timing when it was released a couple of months after the above events. In order to like this album though you do have to be a loyal Manchester United fans. And one that doesn’t really care about some dodgy tunes because well… it’s Cantona.
⇒ I’m do the same as I did with the George Best/Shape Up & Dance post, it will be a track-by-track review.
But only for a select few of the tracks. The, shall we say; “highlights”…
Because this CD is still for sale at all good outlets, none of these will be available to download sorry.
ii Raymond Bizarre – Eric Cantona
Starts off with a spoof of The Beatles – All You Need Is Love/French National Anthem opening, followed by some short Cantona-related samples. Then immediately goes to the first song proper from “Raymond Bizarre”.
The song is sung in French and my friend, Pierre-Etienne Minonzio, a journalist and author of Petit Manuel Musical du Football loves this one and considers it a classic football and music song (because of the very funny French aaccent).
Pierre you have very bad taste in music. The song is broken up with some added commentary of Eric scoring and some crowd noises. The song ends and there’s an excerpt of George Best talking about the man himself, after that more Cantona and Man Utd-related samples. It is all very, Raymond Bizzare.
That’s right, you read that correctly. The one and only Captain Sensible singing about Cantona.
Well when I say ‘singing’…
The track begins with ver Sensible having a conversations with himself. Asking himself if he’s heard about Eric and that incident. He then goes onto argue that if he was an English player playing in France and it was a French hooligan who was abusing him… I’m not going to spoil the ending. Just listen. The track is completed with more samples from commentaries and TV news broadcasts. All very interesting listening back now.
A half sung/half instrumental track about “Doing the Eric”. *THIS IS INTERESTING* – It says the title of this track is one Phillipe Auclair…. Not the same noted French journalist surely ? The song ends and we get more audio samples with news items and comments of the time.
I keep forgetting who sent me the album from this group. But it is the weakest singing and the worst music I’ve ever heard. I’ve said I will never mention or post any of their music because it’s that bad. But I am posting this song from them now to show you how bad. Limp. Insipid. Terrible.
Yet again after the song ends more audio from the news.
“Her” is is an alias and the artist has recorded a few football and musical songs about various players. This begins as a torchsong with samples before changing pace and getting a bit dance-orientated at the end. After the song more news audio with Eric confirming that he would be staying after the affair.
*I haven’t included tracks from K-Stand featuring Pete Boyle – if you want to hear any of his material then go to his website.
Pete Boyle makes a living out of recording and releasing Man United songs. At least he tries to make a living… Either way support the artist (if you are Man U) and buy his music.
Below are some scans of the CD:
EXTRA TIME:
Because I know you’ll pout if you’ve got nothing to download; Here again is a PhilB minimix – He sampled Jonathan Pearce, commentating for Capital Gold at the time, losing his shit when witnessing the event live: