Football and Music

When one of the national teams qualify for a major championship final the the first thing to do next is to of course record some music to cash in celebrate this achievement.

Scotland took this opportunity and they added that other essential ingredient into this mix by calling up the biggest (locally grown) musical act who were the flavour of the day and for the 1974 World Cup* that was…

*Additional note: An actual footballing observation here – Scotland were the only home nation who qualified for ’74. They didn’t lose any of their matches in the first round, they won 1 and drew the other two. Finished on the same amount of points as the team above them – Brazil – and only didn’t get through to the latter stages because of goal difference.

Actually the truth is it wasn’t Les, Alan, Derek and err…Simon and…umm…Tarquin…(?) who got involved, but their creators – the writers and producers Bill Martin & Phil Coulter.

I don’t know who, why and how it all came about, but an album was put out which by the looks of it was slapdashidly (yes I’ve just invented a new word there) put together as a last minute token effort.

Some of the tracks are previous hits (by some other Scotia acts) added on as filler by the looks.
And also by the looks the tracks that involved the ’74 Scotland team were songs previously rejected by the Bay City Rollers – or in this case – a re-recording of one of their hits (Shang-a-Lang in this case) :

» The 1974 Scotland Squad – Easy, Easy Sample lyrics: “Ring a ding a ding, there goes Willy on the wing” “Ring a ding a dong now we know we can’t go wrong”

… or maybe two, because I hear a bit of Sha La La La in there too…

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Also included on the album was the Scotia squad singing a more traditional sounding singalong:

– If you collect that sort of thing then there’s a copy of the original LP up for sale on ebay right now.
If you do buy it can you rip one particular track to mp3 because it looks very interesting…

It’s by the (now reformed) JSD Band and the track is: “Ormond’s Favourite / World Cup Reel”.
I’m assuming that they are singing about Willie…

I’ve been dismissive of the band here, but as well as their twee teeny pop hits the Bay City Rollers did do a couple of decent tunes. Randomly selected here because they could have a link to fitba.