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Friday, April 06, 2007

Seville disorder...


(Surprisingly, this wasn't the most troubling sight of the stay...)
So. This entry should, and still could really, have been mostly about the strange and beautiful bonding of English guests and Spanish hosts - for a start, in the makeshift, central "Fans' Zone" offering free paella and at least free-flowing beer, tucked respectfully away from the cramped alleyways down which Jesus and mother Mary models glided upon the shoulders of multi-coloured KKKesque outfits, and with which no perfectly-distracted-anyway-thank-you football fan had any idea of interfering.

Or else, elsewhere, when despite - or due to - the Chas and Dave CDs being on constant rotation, the cheery if beery Tottenham boys and girls and old men and young kids would drift into outlying districts. With maybe a word here or there from helpful, Betis-sympathetic taxi drivers - invariably veering towards those healthily, patiently bustling tasteful and tasty tapas cafes, where hale-and-hearty owners and dainty-figured, friendly-faced, wide-eyed and charcoal-eyelined serving-girls helped while away waiting-times for seats with handy towers of cheese platters and, well, wine, plenty and purple of it.

Or, perhaps, let's lurch into the alarming, disarmingly charming
Semana Santa parades striding through those identikit streets - if "streets" is not too generous a word for some of the cobbled backyards they somehow slunk within and around. Frighteningly intense, that fervor with which those sturdy-yet-fragile-looking figurines were hoisted, pursued by kids in their Maundy Thursday best: young and old, very old women wearing black lace mantillas hardly-complementing above-knee skirts, surprisingly-low-cut tops and more suitable, severely towering headpieces.

And those outfits... Sorry, even knowing they have a historic significance entirely unrelated to how such apparel has been hijacked by the Grand High Wizards and their weird brigades, these could have looked for all the world like Ku Klux Klan rallies, were not the all-whites just one representative of the spectrum: pale violet, pink, ecclesiastical green or crimson were also liable to abruptly arrive around another corner.

After about two hours' sleep in two days, even these bleary eyes couldn't be rubbed raw enough to fully appreciate today's pre-proper-sunrise, 6am sight of those all-in-black pointy heads cheered on by carnivalesque crowds swarming the dim streets, all accompanied by a pungent scent of incense and the almost-menacing soundtrack of thuddering drums.

Ah, all this and much more.


But, ah yes, the unfortunate, the inevitable subject that seems to have dominated the headlines back home (though seemed strangely absent, at all, from the Spanish Press coverage).

Yes, the sheer audacity of Spurs fans booing that laughable penalty decision and thus clearly provoking, indeed inviting, the bombarding charge of
baton-swinging riot police, brutally coshing most startled supporters into fleeing desperately higher along the already-steep and stifling stands...

The police raiders swiping out at all, whether wheelchair-bound or assisting, even thumping the Sevilla and Spurs stewards who had been coping with and calming the crowds perfectly well alone, thankyou. Note, no Sevilla supporters came under threat or in any contact with Tottenham fans. The only things exchanged between the two sets of fans all day were warm words, replica shirts and memorabilia.

Of course, there were Tottenham idiots in the mix too, tossing seats and fighting back whether under direct attack or not. But most were simply scared. Thankfully, being a little higher and out of harm's way, consensus among the many looking on in dismay and disappointment and frustration suggested such a hideous over-reaction with consequent effects.
Here, for example, a little unnecessary police brutality - out of proportion and out of the blue. What were these goons actually doing there, and just where might the closest far-distant Sevilla supporter actually be?

And coming just 24 hours after the ugly scenes at the Roma-Manchester United match, the telling "coincidence" seems not to be the involvement of English fans as the merely-guilty parties, but the inadequacies of a clobber-now-evade-questions-later police strategy you thankfully don't see being called upon at games in England. Hm, now there's an idea...

In fact, for all the valiant efforts of the stewards, there had been a little anxiety on entering the stadium at the blithe instructions to visiting fans, regardless of the seat and stand number on their tickets, to merely: "Sit anywhere, anywhere you like, doesn't matter."

Maybe that's what it was like in the good old days, but it does seem a strange and ominous approach for a high-profile, Uefa fixture, leading an imbalance between the crowding of upper tiers and lower tiers - and, of course, a recipe for at the very least unpleasantness when combined with the boys in black's rather more antagonistic approach.

Well, well, that's quite enough for now - other than to be grateful it didn't turn out significantly worse. As for the game itself, before the baton battalions got stuck in, and after they mysteriously disappeared at half-time, it was all very entertaining. Our players did appear at least partly affected by the simultaneous storm in the stands, that 25 minutes before half-time our most nervous and sloppy.

But the players rallied well after the break, looked the more likely than Seville to score and certainly posed enough problems for the home defence - the marauding, albeit diving, Daniel Alves on the right aside - to whet all appetites, especially Keane's and Berbatov's, for next Thursday night at White Hart Lane.

And the memory, the moment of celebrating that opening goal will linger a long time - even if the thrill was tempered a little by the abrupt realisation of just how stomach-lurchingly steep those terraces could feel beneath the bouncing feet...

All things considered, when personally revisiting these recollections, best to simply go back to the very beginning, a very good place to start.
And stay.
And simply celebrate those heroes among Sevillans.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Hod fuzz...

Concentration on the new Wembley was diverted a little by this rather alarming photo, contained in Saturday's Under-21s official programme:
And there was me thinking the young Glenn could barely muster a wispy excuse for a moustache to make Gary Neville's look Merv Hughes-esque.
Presumably this picture was taken before some kindly soul told Hoddle that Chas and Dave were fine for FA Cup Final songs,
but not - repeat NOT - for personal grooming advice.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

"And they got up to sing a few old country songs..."


RIP "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow.

The Flying Burrito Brothers' Gilded Palace Of Sin and Burrito Deluxe may not quite be my two favourite albums of all-time, but they'd certainly both make it into the, ooh, I dunno - top seven, top eight?
You certainly can't buy a better "two-fer", both classic country-rock LPs (in a good way, honest, not an Eaglesque atrocity - actually, make that the Gram-approved "cosmic American music"...)
Ah, actually, maybe you can - Gram Parsons' own GP and Grievous Angel, put together without the Burritos but with his astonishing new protege, Emmylou Harris, probably the finest accompanying vocalist around and heartbreaking on such ballads as "Love Hurts" and "We'll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning". Last year's reissue, with alternative, discarded session tracks, throws up a fair few gems - including a long-lost, third Gram take on his personal anthem, "Hickory Wind", perfectly balanced between the chugalug of the Byrds original and the Gram/Emmylou, officially-released, slightly-too-slow fake-"live" re-recording...

But anyway, anyway... there was one "one-fer" that not only got me to those, but perhaps directly and indirectly introduced me to more intriguing, enjoyable highways and byways of music than any other.

And a place I suppose I should thank, in starting me off on this life-changing musical journey.
Yes, Dudley.

I'm sure the Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Wolverhampton's less glamorous little brother borough has been the host of oh-so-many minor and major epiphanies, it's untrue...

But while we're waiting for those, here's an actual one: it was in Our Price there that one day I finally took the plunge and, after years of teenage guilt and longing and lusting after that dirty secret that is country music, I tugged a copy of the Byrds' Sweetheart Of The Rodeo to my chest, darted for the check-out and hurled the £8.99 across the counter without making any guilty eye contact at all with the cashier.

Actually, I'd weighed this up well. I'd heard the briefest echoes of pedal-steel guitars while enduring lifts home from school from my John-Dunn-adoring, Radio-2-tuning mother. And even once borrowed a Patsy Cline album from the local library, stowing it secretly under my school jumper through that vulnerable five-minute walk home...

But then again, I did have the Byrds' (latest) Greatest Hits album on tape, b/w another library-copy - Star by Belly. And that jingle-jangle... well, it was sort-of like the Pete Seeger songs my Dad would play in church every so hip-pily often, but not at all.

So I finally bought Sweetheart, and nudged it alongside the Sixties albums I'd been hoarding since the age of, er, seven (mostly the holy trinity of Beatles, Kinks and, er, Donovan). But if ever an album could (ahem) change my life, then Sweetheart... was it.

Because within, ooh, a week I'd bought that GP/Grievous Angel double-set and, greedily, the equally-convenient Gilded Palace Of Sin/Burrito Deluxe Burrito Brothers, er, deluxe set.

And then started to both read and listen up... and find, gradually, both the confidence and knowledge to branch into modern-day Americana, classic Sixties country soul, pure old-fashioned country, pure old-fashioned rockabilly, heart-tugging ballads, nigh-on-impenetrable 18th century American folk songs, rock'n'gospel...

And no, these weren't mostly Gram-led, he was brilliantly-limited, but the lesser-hailed McGuinn blazed a fair few trails even as he shed inspirational and members and cushioned lovely Byrds singles between early-Seventies album filler...

But just as The Kinks Are The Village Green Society lives long as a great, great counter-culture 1968 album, so does Sweetheart....

A recent reissue appended a radio ad, which either made light of or ignored the peak chart position of about 63... but the relevance remains. And adds to the experimentation already heard on Younger Than Yesterday (and Hillman's first country-shuffling tracks), or Mr Tambourine Man (and the harsher-edged jangles on the bonus track alternate versions) or the pastoral laments of "John Riley" or "Purple Heather" up against LSD-astronaut-noodlings...

And I haven't even mentioned Gene Clark's solo beauties either - here's perhaps the finest pop song... (the dancing's not so bad either)

So, country music/country&western/alt-country/Americana/'No Depression'/bluegrass/rockabilly/country-soul/cosmic-American-music - whatever you might want to call it, there's plenty there to be getting on with, redeeming, and relishing. Sure, a good deal of shlock, too...

But thank you, Byrds and Burritos, for giving me - ooh, off the top of the head - Johnny Cash, Uncle Tupelo, Hank Williams, Emmylou, Loretta, Tammy, Bobbie and Dolly, The Jayhawks, Neko Case, Lucinda Williams, George Jones, Laura Cantrell, Merle Haggard, Wilco, Kasey Chambers, Jimmie Rodgers, Iris DeMent, Vern Gosdin, Steve and Stacey Earle, Jim White, Ryan Adams... Ooh, even a bit of Shania every now and then (even if she does have a weakness for a few too many exclamation marks.)


Oh, and of course, the divine Lurleen - the girl who was "going to be a country music superstar, like - er, that jerk in the cowboy hat - and that dead lady!"