If you speak French you’ll be very offended at the above. If you don’t click here. And now you are too.
But I didn’t say that. I am just quoting the title of the latest song released by a group of French Mexican wrestler mask wearing musicians. No you read that correctly. They go by the name of La Lucha Libre and their act is a bit unique.
This is their bio (which has been run through google translate) which can be found on their official website:
Barely a foothold, the first shop was spotted a Tex-Mex restaurant featuring an illuminated guitar, so they chose to become musicians. It was not the worst idea they had. Knowing the scene, however, one shudders at the thought that the Tex-Mex restaurant adjoins a sushi and they might have to opt for the shamisen and haiku …
I should have asked my collegue in football and music Pierre-Etienne Minonzio to translate that, but you get the gist.
La Lucha Libre are a band…well that’s a hard one to put into words so I did ask my friend Pierre-Etienne (who also wrote something about them) for a description and he had trouble too:
“They’re impossible to describe. It’s a mix of different concepts: Mexican Wrestlers, Breton culture, situationism, Football fantism…their music is creative, entertaining and funny. Far from the usual boring French football songs.”
I’ve mentioned them before when I posted the songs about obscure footballers. They told me about a song they did for the Ligue 2 side Stade Brestois 29 player Bruno Grougi. Very obscure. They’ve also done one about George Best (with lyrics in English).
[parallax-scroll id=”19781″]As you can see La Lucha Libre are very much into football and music and their latest release is in relation to a certain tournament kicking off in June.
All around them were reminders that the Euro 2016 finals were approaching – and at the same time the FIFA bibery scandal was happening. They heard about the French DJ David Guetta being asked to compose the official anthem for the tournament so the band decided to write their own song.
Not because they have anything against Guetta, at first it more because of the choosing of locations for the tournament. They are based in Brest, which is in Northwest France and if they wanted to see a match they’d have to take a long journey to Bordeaux or Paris.
Inspired by these things they came up with a sort of anti-anthem to Euro 2016. To promote it they took a tongue-in-cheek approach by challenging David Guetta via a change.org petition to a play a game of FIFA 95 to decide which song is better. It worked because word of this petition got around and it got mentioned in multiple media outlets, including a Russian online news site. Because of this their video garnered around 17,000 hits.
I decided to contact the band about to ask them about the song. I was then blown away when finding out that the lead singer is actually English and originally from Cornwall. Why did I not know this before?!
The lead singer is called David and with the first question I obviously asked him is how did a bloke from Cornwall find himself fronting a French band. (He answers sometimes as himself and sometimes as El Loco, his persona in the group)
“I am in fact a Mexican Wrestler pretending to be a Cornish Musician.” (El Loco)
The other side of the coin: I was unemployed and playing part time in a super rock, punk folk groups, don’t tell the social!!! We were picked up by the Cornish organiser for the Lorient festival. We played one gig and had a good write up in Le Monde (a bit like The Times newspaper) and toured for years. Met my wife. Then passed many years trying to find a group that worked well, (very difficult) Had a funny 70’s cover band that went well until everything fell to pieces just as it started moving. Pierre came in with his ideas and Jean has already played with both of us. Pablo does the sound and has also played with us in various groups. (David Penberthy)
– Do you tour ? Where do you play ? It is all over France ? Do you go to Germany or Holland ?
Touring here has over the years become more and more difficult. The expense for a small group is impossible to manage. Even locali>ly has been strange, we produce and work incredibly hard but the local organisers seem to stick to the local artists even for support gigs until recently I’ve felt quite excluded.
We would love to play away and hope to find a tour manager or producer ASAP (David Penberthy and EL Loco)
– Will you watch any of the football (Euro 2016) ? Who will you shout for ? England ? France ? Both or neither ?!
We are all big fans and I will have my 3 Lions shirt on and if France lose or loose; depending on your attitude, I will celebrate in style as they do when we lose!!! Imagine how I suffered after the Rugby World Cup!!
Vardy and Kane oui !!!! Will Rooney make the cut. (David Penberthy)
I’ve found out that “Va te faire foutre” means go fuck yourself ! – Is this an anti-Euro 2016 song ? Or do you just hate the mascot Super Victor ?
We were engaged in a Fifa world cup tourament when we heard of David Guettas appointement and felt the need to express our discontent. With all the financial goings on at the moment we felt obliged to say something. (David)
The mascot is a symbol which represents an organisation which in my opinion has become soiled so he merits everything we aim at him. (El Loco)
The video for the song is a throwback to FIFA 95 and protrays the dirty side of football with clips of some players clashing.
In the chorus they repeated tell Super-Victor, the mascot of the European Championship, to go and fuck himself.
» Incidently my Twitter friend @fistedaway discovered that Super Victor has a very NSFW namesake.
You can download the song (part of an EP) via Bandcamp:
and the instrumental version:
Further reading: