Pass, Shoot, Goal: Football and Music

Football and music: small words that evoke memories of players singing out of tune, or Chas and Dave being dug up ahead of a Spurs appearance in the FA Cup final. Or ‘Back Home’ by the England World Cup squad, that dismal Baddiel and Skinner effort … the list of cultural criminality goes on and on.

Music has often used football for its ill-gotten gains and, on the other side of the coin, the sport has gotten a piggy back from the industry to promote a forthcoming tournament or boost the bank balance of a striker.

But perhaps it isn’t all bad, after all The Fall wrote a couple of songs about the sport.

So, here’s our resident Montrose FC sympathiser Craig Stephen, with the top football recordings of all time:

New Order - World in Motion (1990)

It included a rap and was England’s official World Cup anthem of that year but it’s by New Order, a band that could compile a range of fart sounds, add a drum’n bass beat and it would still be the best track of the year.

I was living in north-east Scotland at the time, and buying this at the local Woolworths would have resulted in pelters from the lads who would have accused me of being a traitor. So it was a furtive buy, carried out when the young shop assistant was someone who didn’t know me and probably knew nothing about football.

New Order had taken a new turn on 1989’s Technique, an album that revealed that they’d been listening and taking drugs to the emerging rave and electronica scene. For this single they teamed up with six members of the England squad for Italia ’90 and comedian Keith Allen. 

Footballers don’t tend to have very good musical tastes so it all made for an interesting session. It has a catchy chorus, a passable rap, a brilliant video and was devoid of much of the pommy arrogance that it could appeal to the masses. And it did. But perhaps not in Montrose.

The Undertones - My Perfect Cousin (1979)

Ostensibly about a family member who's good at everything including table football: "He always beat me at Subbuteo/ 'cause he flicked the kick/ And I didn't know," and the cover of this single features a Subbuteo player about to “flick the kick”. Believe me, that game was popular in the 70s and 80s.

I, Ludicrous - Quite Extraordinary (1988)

Graduates of The Fall school of witticism, I, Ludicrous spewed a handful of football-related songs, such as ‘We Stand Around’ (about hardcore fans braving all the elements and bad players), and ‘Moynihan Brings Out The Hooligan In Me’ (about the odious little shit of a Tory Sports Minister at the time).

‘Quite Extraordinary’ was a piss-take of the BBCs footballing and athletics commentator David Coleman. “Same routine year in year out/ It's predictable every summer/ Mispronouncing the Kenyan runners/ It gets worse in the winter/ with the goddamn videoprinter/ That's Stenhousemuir's 13th game without a scoring draw.” 

Getting the name of an obscure Scottish league side deserves a Brownies badge on its own.

The Proclaimers - The Joyful Kilmarnock Blues (1987)

“I'd never been to Ayrshire/ I hitched down one Saturday/ Sixty miles to Kilmarnock/ To see Hibernian play/ The day was bright and sunny/ But the game I won't relay.”

And the bespectacled Leith duo have also gifted the world ‘Sunshine on Leith’ which is now an anthem for Hibs fans.

Billy Bragg - The Few (1991)

Britain’s favourite lefty muso, Billy Bragg, also wrote ‘Sexuality’ which isn’t about football per se (you may have guessed as such from the title) but contains the remarkable line: “I had an uncle who once played, for Red Star Belgrade.”

‘The Few’, also from the Don’t Try This at Home album, was a grim tale of hooligan firms: “At night the Baby Brotherhood and the Inter City Crew/ Fill their pockets up with calling cards/ And paint their faces red white and blue/ Then they go out seeking different coloured faces/ And anyone else that they can scare/ And they salute the foes their fathers fought/ By raising their right hands in the air.”

Bragg’s ‘God’s Footballer’, by the way, was about former Wolves player Peter Knowles, who retired early to become a Jehovah’s Witness missionary.

Half Man Half Biscuit - I Was A Teenage Armchair Honved Fan (1985)

Written in recognition of Hungarian football, and with the almost obligatory “hungary for” joke, it’s actually not even the best song about eastern European football on the Back Again In the DHSS album.

‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit’ is mainly about Subbuteo, well, actually, Scalectrix, but Subbuteo gets the gig among the young crowd when the racing game conks out due to a dodgy transformer.

Barmy Army - The English Disease (LP, 1989)

The English Disease (a reference of course to hooliganism) was very much of its time, with tracks such as ‘England 2, Yugoslavia 0’ and a protest song against a plan in the UK by the then ruling Conservatives to issue all football fans with ID cards.

Barmy Army cut and paste interviews and match commentary, using them ad nauseum; expressing their love of West Ham United with snippets of the ‘Ammers theme tune I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, and songs dedicated to Alan Devonshire and Billy Bonds. 

On a hit-and-miss (the goalpost) album, the strongest moment is ‘Sharp as a Needle’, featuring the Anfield Kop in fine voice.

The Pogues - Down All the Days (1989)

My own favourite football-related song, even if the core subject is writer Christy Brown, is this track from the Peace and Love album, for the line, “And I’ve never been asked, and I’ve never replied, have I supported the Glasgow Rangers,” which can mean many things to many people.

Super Furry Animals - The Man Don’t Give A Fuck (1996)

The Welsh superstars’ expletive-ridden tale of a man who, well, you get the idea. It was dedicated to 1970s Cardiff City player Robin Friday and featured the Welshman flicking the Vs on the cover. Apparently, he really didn’t give a fig, and who can argue with that kind of footballer. It was a great song too, but let’s forget that it used a Steely Dan sample.

The Sultans of Ping - Give Him a Ball and a Yard of Grass (1993)

“If God meant the game to be played up there, He would’ve put goalposts in the air.”

The speculation is that this single was about Nigel Clough. Was he any good?

Primal Scream, Irvine Welsh and On-U Sound - The Big Man and the Scream Meet the Barmy Army Uptown (1996)

Three magnificent talents who utilised those skills in very different ways in this one-off single, Scotland’s unofficial theme tune for the nation’s team’s participation in the 1996 European Championships held south of the border, which ended in predictable glorious failure.

Welsh describes a boozed-up trip to Wembley to watch Scotland play England as opposition supporters chant “who are ya?” in the background, but the writer is essentially hitting out at certain Scotland fans.

“In every hick town/ Across this pseudo nation/ You can see the most fucked up scum/ That was shat into creation/ Where a blue McEwan's lager top equals/ no imagination/ You're hunbelievable.”

Oh, isn’t the mention of the top a reference to supporters of the now defunct club called Rangers? Tee hee, you cad Welsh. 

Gracie Fields - Pass, Shoot, Goal (1931)

And just to prove referencing football in song is not a new fad, Gracie Fields recorded this track before Hitler had even taken power. Fields was apparently a big Rochdale FC fan. The song was written and recorded for a film called Derby Day about a derby match between Rochdale and Oldham Athletic. 

The film was never made but the song survives, with a bedazzling chorus sung in magnificent Lancashire tones: "Football, football, it drives me up the pole. You hear their gentle voices call – pass, shoot... goal!"

Listen here

The Fall - Kicker Conspiracy (1983)

Let’s read what The Fall’s Mark E. Smith himself said about ‘Kicker Conspiracy’ in an interview with Uncut:

"It's about English soccer violence being triggered off by rubbish management and frustration that the game's been taken away from its support, that the English game is so boring there's nothing else to do.”

Like most Smith songs, the lyrics are obscure. It namechecks Jimmy Hill (as J. Hill), Bert Millichip and George Best, but also ‘Pat McCat’, “the very famous sports reporter” ...

The Fall also released a track called ‘Theme from Sparta F.C.’ which contained lyrics in Greek. Here’s some of the most transparent English words: “Cheap English man in the paper shop/ You mug old women in your bobble hat/ Better go spot a place to rest/ No more ground boutique at match in Chelsea/ We are Sparta F.C.”

Trout - Green and White (1995)

This is a single I can't recall buying by a band I had never heard from (nor since). And that's almost the same amount of knowledge as Dr Google has. 

It is gloriously non-produced with incomprehensible vocals - I can detect something about Partick Thistle and “doing the conga” in The Jungle at Parkhead but the chorus is quite transparent: "Green and white and Rangers shite/ Green and white and Rangers shite" repeated several times. And what more would you want in a song?

The single (entitled "A Tribute to Celtic") is shared with electro-friendly act Cha Cha 2000 who's ‘Tired Legs at the End of the Game’ is equally word-unfriendly but I can make out a "Celtic Celtic" chant and some sort of football connection. Somebody out there must know something?

Andy Cameron - Ally's Tartan Army (1978)

Glaswegian comedian and all round gallus Cameron released this wee cracker that even got the supporter of the old Rangers a Top of the Pops appearance when it reached No.6 in the British charts. Comparing manager Ally McLeod to Muhammad Ali was typical of the tongue-in-both-cheeks humour.

Listen to this verse with a straight face: "When we reach the Argentine we're really gonna show/The world a brand of football that they could never know/ We're representing Britain; we've got to do or die/ For England cannae dae it 'cause they didnae qualify."

Scotland lost to Peru, drew with Iran and found themselves out of the tournament instead of winning it.

Morrissey - Munich Air Disaster 1958 (2004)

He used to be an inspiration now he's a flag waver for all the shit political philosophies of the world. But back in 2004, when he was still much revered, Mozza recorded what I think is his only football related song, a tribute to the Busby Babes, the lightning Manchester United side of the 1950s, most of whom died in the infamous plane crash at Munich.

Luke Haines - Leeds United (2006)

The somewhat eccentric Haines, formerly of the Auteurs and various offshoots, wrote this about life in the 1970s of Vauxhall Vivas and Ford Corsairs; of Kendo Nagasaki and World of Sport. "From Wakefield to the Ridings/ To the ground at Elland Road/ At Leeds United they're chanting vengeance, it's a 13-nil defeat on the front page of the Post/ A last-minute substitution but we didn't have the talent/ I was beaten, we were gutted, I was sick as a parrot."

Mano Negra - Santa Maradona (Larchuma Football Club) (1994)

A typical brew of latino, reggae, dub and hip-hop from Mano Negra. There's big drums, tannoyed vocals, the sound of flares, football chants and a certain Argentinian player with a unique way of using his hands during a game. Sounds like Les Negresses Vertes.

Thee George Squares - 74 in 98 (Easy Easy) (1998)

"The official Fortuna Pop! World Cup EP". The A-side featured a “supergroup” of members of Prolapse, The Fabians and John Sims (a band) based around an actual world cup final held at Hampden Park in "92 or 93" in which Scotland beat the United Arab Emirates on penalties after leading 3-nil. 

The B-side, the "Sassenach side" by MJ Hibbert celebrates, as it were, England taking home the ‘Fair Play Trophy (Again)’. It was definitely the poorer cousin to Scotland's entry which when it comes to art and music is usually the case, and to prove how woeful the poms were, they had an image of Jimmy Hill on the back.

Colourbox - The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme (1996)

Despite featuring that same Mr Hill (on the cover, groan), this is actually supremely excellent, an instrumental built around a pumping bass and a horn section, it really does sound like it should be the theme tune for a World Cup highlights programme, or at least a segment featuring cracking goals and other choice moments. The story goes that Match of the Day producers were keen to have this as the soundtrack to its tournament highlights show. I don't care if it's true or not I'm going to tell all my friends that it is.

Pop Will Eat Itself - Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina (1990)

The Poppies were a bang average indie rock band from a humdrum town called Stourbridge; La Cicciolina was a blonde porn star who became an MP in Italy with a small left-wing group. A marriage made in ... ahem. Anyway, the Poppies eschewed their traditional greasy guitar sound for this very 1990 dance track peppered by samples from Bowie, the Human League and Funkadelic that could have been touched by Andy Weatherall. La Cicciolina doesn't have any input into the song itself but does appear in the video looking supremely lovely.

Real Sounds of Africa - Dynamos vs CAPS (0-0) (1984)

The (usually) 11-piece Zairean band who recorded out of Harare, Zimbabwe, also recorded ‘Tornados vs Dynamos’, ‘Soccer Fan’ and ‘Na Alla Violenza’ - likely to be a plea to footy fans. The band, also known just as Real Sounds, were one of the African bands, alongwith the Bhundu Boys, who came to Europe’s attention in the mid to late 1980s and collaborated with Norman Cook.

I haven’t covered everything … how can I? And there are club/band team-ups that are actually quite good, notably Shane MacGowan and Simple Minds appearing on a charity EP, in tribute to Celtic legend Jimmy Johnstone, plenty of songs by Serious Drinking, or more from I, Ludicrous and Half Man Half Biscuit, and an obscure indie trio from Norwich who issued one single in 1991 and who’s name I haven’t made up yet, blah blah blah, but you get the bloody point.

(But you have covered a full first-team squad’s worth, an OCD-defying and curiously symmetrical full score plus two, which in this case, might just about be right. - Ed)

Riot On The Radio: Gigs that ended up in a massive punch-up Part 2

Part 2 of Craig Stephen’s look at gigs that turned ugly …

***

Phoenix Festival, Stratford-on-Avon, 1993

The Phoenix Festival began in 1993 but the only licence promoters Mean Fiddler could get had severe restrictions that made any proper festival unworkable. In contrast to Glastonbury's 24 hour bustle, at Phoenix 1993 the music stopped at 11pm, and security guards ruthlessly quelled campfires and campfire sound systems that went on beyond midnight.

On one night (I recall this as the first) this caused a near riot, to which the security guards responded by taking off their standard security shirts with their identifiable numbers, and battering punters with batons and broken up pallets.

I was at the front of the angry crowd and as always there’s one halfwit using it to sell something, in this case “riot lager” for a pound a can. A stereo was blaring John Peel’s show, and appropriately the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ came on, and the volume was cranked up.

With no sign of the crowd departing, out came all these fascistic black-shirted security guards bashing whoever got in their way. I got smashed on the back, it was so hard it sent me flying but I got up immediately and ran like bloody fuck, as did everyone else.

Julian Cope’s Head Heritage site says that when a list of security guards was handed to the police to run checks on them after the event, it revealed that several of them were wanted for violent crime. Mean Fiddler defended the guards, blaming instead fence jumpers for the trouble. But according to Cope, photographic evidence clearly showed those beaten up had three-day wrist passes.

   

Status Quo, Dundee, 1969

Francis Rossi said of this gig in the eastern Scottish city: “You used to get extra money for playing in Scotland because it was so dangerous, although luckily the Scots took to us early on. We were in this brand new room with parquet flooring, and this fight broke out. I'd never seen anything like it – 1500 people, everybody punching everyone else: men punching men, men punching women, women punching men, women punching women … it was like the Wild West. People bottling each other in the back and neck, glasses flying. And we were onstage and there was no way out. Luckily someone told us to get our stuff, get out, and come back in the morning. We didn't argue, we just left. We came back in the morning and these 20 old women were there in a line, on their knees, scrubbing the blood out of this lovely new parquet floor.”

Public Image Limited, New York, 1981

PiL were in confrontational mode before the gig at the Ritz even started: arriving late, making the audience wait in the rain, then mocking them as they stood in the queue, soaking.

According to Ed Caraballo, who was the band’s “video guy”, the venue refused to let the support band go on stage until John Lydon arrived. The support act (a folk band spotted in a pub says Caraballo) thus came on an hour later than scheduled. They were booed off.

“The crowd was really cranky and pissed by then,” says video guy.

A ‘presenter’, Lisa Yipp goes on stage to introduce a pre-recorded interview with Lydon and Keith Levene.

“The crowd had it by then. They turned on Lisa for everything that happened and pelted her with beer bottles.”

Eventually the band come on, but behind a screen. At the end of the first song, ‘Flowers of Romance’, Lydon says “Silly fucking audience, silly fucking audience...”.

The crowd demand the screen be pulled back.  “John's never been one who likes to be told what to do so he's chiding the audience,” recalls video guy. “He says what fuckers they were to pay 12 dollars to see this, just taunting the audience. The more they say 'raise the screen,' he says 'we're not going to raise the fucking screen.”

After a long, largely improvisational track Lydon ups the abuse, and the response is beer bottles. “Even in the balconies, they were throwing bottles and some of it was hitting the audience down below. The more that they threw bottles, the more that John would chide them,” recalls video guy.

The manager’s demands to raise the screen are ignored by the tech team, and is told that it’s a performance art show and should have been advertised as such.

By now the crowd is pulling on the tarpaulin screen, and eventually a roadie grabs the mic out of Lydon’s hand and declares the show over.

“From the back of the auditorium, it was a beautiful site,” says video guy. “It was a sick feeling because part of me said 'wow, I'm responsible for this carnage' and part of me said 'wow, I'm fucking cool’.”

Hans Werner Henze, Hamburg, 1968

Henze and co-writer Ernst Schnabel wrote this piece as a requiem for Che Guevara. During its debut performance in Hamburg, a student hung a poster of Che over the balcony. An official then tore it down. Other students raised a red flag and a second portrait of Che, while some anarchists raised black flags. Scuffles ensued between the two groups then the police arrived. Students were hauled off, as was Schnabel.

Westlife, Indonesia, 2001

Yes, even at Westlife gigs there would be trouble.

As Shane Filan recounts: “It was an amazing gig, but it ended badly. There were about 20,000 people there because it was our biggest territory outside of the UK: our album had gone 22 times platinum or something.

“But it was afterwards that things went horribly wrong. There was total hysteria and we couldn't leave the stadium until they cleared it of people. Unfortunately, as the police tried to do so, all these security men started running at them. It was like a battle. They were flat-out attacking each other, thumping and kicking. It was unbelievable, about 100 police and 100 security. Eventually, the army got called in. It was like something out of Braveheart.”

Sixteen teenagers were said to have been taken to hospital after the concert in Jakarta.

Cockney Rejects, Birmingham, 1980

After punk, came Oi and the second wave of the movement. If the first outbreak of punk was a bit violent, this was the bloody carnage, with football hooliganism and hardline politics mixed in.

The band had just appeared on Top of the Pops in West Ham United shirts. "After that, everybody wanted to fight us, but you couldn't back down," says Rejects frontman Jeff ‘Stinky’ Turner. "Once you were defeated, it would have opened the floodgates for everybody."

So, on this night, the Rejects were backed into a corner and forced to stand and fight. Guitarist Micky Geggus was charged with GBH and affray, and the Cockney Rejects' career as a live band was effectively over.

"There was a lot of people cut and hurt, I got cut, Micky really got done bad, with an ashtray, the gear was decimated, there was people lying around on the floor. Carnage," added Turner.

Classic Album Review: Barmy Army - The English Disease (1989)

This won’t fit the common definition of what a classic album is, but given that your blogger is a fully certifiable On-U Sound nutter, what passes for “classic” at everythingsgonegreen towers, and what counts as a “classic” elsewhere, is always likely to be two (or more) different things …

The English Disease is something of a novelty item for those familiar with the bass-heavy dub sounds of the On-U Sound posse, and it features several of the artists who produce output for Adrian Sherwood’s legendary label.

The Barmy Army was effectively the loose collective otherwise known as Tackhead and friends, and here they combine a couple of their shared passions – sampling and football – to create a body work unlike anything else heard before or since. It won’t appeal to all, but it does have some curiosity value, and will be well worth a listen for anyone who has previously enjoyed Tackhead, Little Axe, Dub Syndicate, Mark Stewart, or indeed fans of experimental dub or eclectic lightweight cut-and-paste style hip hop.

When this was initially released in the immediate aftermath of the Heysel, Bradford, and Hillsborough tragedies, English football was at its lowest ebb for several generations, and the game was awash with hooliganism, also labelled the “English disease” by those oblivious to its widespread international reach. Attendances were low, safety concerns high, and the family-friendly all-seater environment we see today was still some way off in the future. The Taylor Report of the early Nineties and the influx of cash generated by the subscription television boom of the mid-late Nineties changed the face of English football forever, but that’s not to say that the “product” offered today is any superior.

What it has become, in truth, is a far more sterile and palatable “entertainment” option for the masses. Something has been lost however, and here the Barmy Army unashamedly celebrate a little of what went before, throwing into the mix a splattering of politics, terrace-style humour, and a fairly transparent love of West Ham United.

It’s hard to define the sound in an orthodox sense, but file this one away under: dub, reggae, hip hop, or that extraordinary one-off category created especially for this album: Terrace and voiceover (commentary) samples with some heavy beats holding it all together. Or something.

Those familiar with the On-U compilation series Pay It All Back, will already know of the Barmy Army’s ‘Billy Bonds MBE’, and ‘Blue Moon’ … well, here is some more material of that nature.

Best tracks: ‘Sharp As A Needle’ (tribute to King Kenny Dalglish), ‘Devo’ (Alan Devonshire), ‘Leroy’s Boots’ (Leroy Rosenior), and ‘Brian Clout’ (Brian Clough).

Apparently all crowd samples were recorded by the editor of a West Ham fanzine, but check out the additional credits for this album – it’ll help you recognise just who you’re dealing with here: Doug Wimbish (ex-Sugarhill house band, Tackhead, and various), Skip McDonald aka Little Axe (ex-Sugarhill, Tackhead, and various), Al Jourgensen (Ministry), and Jah Wobble (PIL). Among many others.

All done under the watchful and somewhat critical eye of the UK’s foremost master dub producer himself, Adrian Sherwood.

Recommended for the open-minded, plus football fans of all clubs and creeds …

And Now For Something Completely Different …

I was pretty excited earlier this week with the announcement that West Ham United FC will be visiting my home city of Wellington this coming (northern hemisphere) summer, our NZ winter. The “Hammers” will play in a “tournament” involving fellow English Premiership team Newcastle United, two-time A-League champions Sydney FC, and host club Wellington Phoenix.

You see, aside from having an incurable obsession with pop culture, you could say I’m also something of a football nut.

In fact, way back in the day, between 2001 and 2010, long before everythingsgonegreen was even conceived as an alternative outlet to “document shit”, your humble blogger used to write a fair bit about football for a webzine called Etims, an independent site celebrating all things Celtic FC. It was a labour of love – a small team of about six of us contributing up to a dozen or so posts per week and it soon became (and remains) a hugely popular fan site … clocking up something like one million page hits inside its first five years. While humour was its most obvious draw, my angle was frequently the more serious view of the long distance fan.

One day I just stopped writing for Etims, for no real reason really, I guess I lost a bit of the requisite passion, but as a football supporter I’ll always be a Celtic fan. Family history and the fact that I was employed at Celtic Park for a period in the early Nineties makes that one of the few locked-in non-negotiables in my world. My Celtic “mojo” has faded a little in recent years (distance is an obvious problem) but I made it to Celtic Park as recently as 2011, the love is always there, and I know I’ll never lose it.

 

More than just a football club ...

When it came to watching football (on television) growing up, by dint of its wider accessibility and a weekly highlights show, English football was an ever-present, and given that Celtic (and Scottish football) received virtually no coverage in New Zealand, it became almost obligatory for me to adopt “another” team. So I did, and that “other team” is West Ham United.

It’s West Ham, I guess, because one night in May 1975, as an 11-year-old, I was allowed to sit “up late” with Dad to watch live (early morning) coverage of West Ham winning the FA Cup Final against Fulham. It seemed like a really big deal at the time, and I can still recall the buzz of that occasion. The West Ham team of that era played an irresistible brand of football and those precious Sunday lunch hours watching London Weekend Television’s ‘The Big Match’ suddenly took on an extra significance for me. It also helped that my Monrad Intermediate school uniform colours replicated those of West Ham.


Nightclub superstar Macca

That means I’ve followed the fortunes of West Ham for the best part of 40 years now, as the club bounces its way around the top two tiers of English football (best finish, third in 1986); occasionally brilliant, so often way more stylish than any other club, yet frequently a major disappointment as serial under-achievers.

 

I also have a life-long friend, Scott, who for his sins is also a firm and committed West Ham fan (as opposed to my rather more “casual” status). He’s just an hour down the road, so I hope to hook up with him for the occasion of West Ham’s visit, if only to tick that one off any mutual bucket list.

 

Scott and I share many passions – not only football, but a love of industrial strength dub and On-U Sound reggae. We shared a roof for a year or so 25 years ago, and his influence on my early record collection was immense. It was Scott who introduced me to the delights of dub guru Adrian Sherwood and I recall it was quite the thing when we learned of Sherwood’s own shared passion for West Ham – albeit a far more consummated relationship with the club than either Scott or I could ever have hoped to have. But it felt like an alignment of the tribes, an affirmation of sorts, something meant to be, West Ham, Adrian, Scotty and me …

We saw Sherwood together in Wellington back in 2011, indeed, Scott was granted a post-gig audience with the man himself. Another bucket list event we shared was The Specials in Auckland in 2009, so I’m thinking West Ham in NZ would make it something akin to a very sweet hat-trick … it's been a while since we caught up, so I’ll give him a call.

Right. Back to the music, here’s some appropriate content to finish – On-U Sound’s Barmy Army, on the Adrian Sherwood-produced West Ham-celebrating ‘Devo’ … (a track dedicated to West Ham cult hero Alan Devonshire):