Now the mania of the music / football crossover has
abated a little, it seems safe to write this. You see, I have two enduring love affairs:
with Burnley FC and The Fall. These days The Fall seem a better bet. At least they don't
let you down all the time.
For the uninitiated, The Fall are simply the best band ever. Their 'career' spans some
twenty years, thirty-odd albums and innumerable sackings, reinstatements and line-up
changes. Today they remain the band by which all others must be judged. Their subject is
life, in all its gory glory, so I suppose it's inevitable that in their twenty years of
charting the uglier side of proletarian culture The Fall would touch on the beautiful game
more than once. This they did with predictably splendid results in the world's finest ever
song about football, the early eighties classic and undoubted Fall top-tenner, Kicker
Conspiracy. Released years before the game became trendy, it hails from the
dark days of yobbery, aggression and fizzy beer in plastic glasses (although come to that,
we had the last one at Brentford this season.) "In the marble halls of the charm
school, how flair is punished. Under marble Millichip the FA broods, oh how style can be
punished..." it starts, and continues thereafter in much the same vein. It's hard to
bring out on paper how good it is. You really need to hear it. As a bonus, why not watch
the video at the same time? It's on the seminal Perverted by Language - Bis
compilation.
Oh yeah, in case you didn't know, they made the video at Turf Moor. Of course, if
you're going to make the world's best ever song about football, where else? This was in
the early eighties, remember, when presumably the club where so short of brass they'd do
anything for a few bob. I doubt that in the current climate they'd be allowed anywhere
near the place. So this is Turf Moor way back when, when we were, er, a crap lower
division side with no money going nowhere. Seems like only yesterday: barbed wire, Stones
adverts, everything painted green. Of course a close up on the sign to keep off the grass.
Singer Mark E Smith respects that, I'm pleased to say, prowling the perimeter with beer in
hand while the band sit yawning at the back of the Bob Lord. Pratting about in the press
seats before finally turning me green with envy by strolling up the tunnel at the end of
the song. 'Made in Burnley' as the sign at the end says. So few things are these days.
So we fast forward to 1996 and see that the latest glorious Fall release The
Chiselers (sic) is dedicated to that sadly threatened institution Halifax Town FC.
"Relevant to the recent experiences of Halifax," as the sleeve tells us, it's
apparently all about people who let you down. There's more than one side in these parts
that could apply to. To be nostalgic for a moment, I miss them a bit, that local team so
obviously crap that they could never be rivals however many times we played them. I miss
going to the Shay, a vastly underrated ground which we would always make our home from
home. Above all, I suppose it's always good to have to hand an example of a club forever
worse off than ourselves.
You know how the mind wanders. With eerie synchronicity I recall, didn't The Fall once
record Middlemass? (a second division Fall song.) And doesn't the song start,
"in the close season?" And can the name of their double live album which I
rushed to buy so eagerly last year be a mere coincidence? It was called The 27 Points,
which those of you prone to nightmares won't need to be reminded was exactly what we had
in the league for the first two months of that year. But then, perhaps I'm reading
more into this than meets the eye. After all, could that really be a reference to a
young Arsenal player in the words of Lie Dream of a Casino Soul when Smith sings,
"and I think I'll cut my Dickov"?
Or perhaps I'm getting carried away. In any case, the doctor tells me it's time for my
lie down now, so I'd better go. Oh, and I know that writing a retro nostalgia piece in
these times is akin to fiddling while Rome burns. But there's nothing in the future to
look forward to, is there? And Pink Floyd are short.
