Category: Football

Football, Gone but not forgotten

Triggers

Craig McAllister

In the build-up to Scotland’s historic win over Spain the other night, I caught myself watching old YouTube clips of the same fixture from 1984. Grainy but preserved digitally forever, they opened a portal to a phase when, as history has proven, the Scottish team was in the middle of a golden phase in football. Leighton, Miller, McLeish, Davie Cooper, Souness and, of course, Kenny Dalglish were all in that match’s starting line-up. As too was the contentious Maurice Johnston. Watching the first of his two mullet-powered headers cross the line, a full-length diving effort from around the six yard box, I was immediately back at the game.

Fourteen years old, my feet never once touched Hampden’s West Stand asphalt and my dad kept a tight grip of my elbow right from kick-off as the packed crowd swelled and swirled up and down and across the terracing. Thrilling and terrifying all at once, when that first goal went in at our end, right in front of us, I was lifted into orbit, metaphorically and literally. The only thing stopping me taking off properly was my dad pulling on my jacket, anchoring me to him and he to me.

Near half time, Jim Bett broke free of the Spanish defence down the right hand side, and even before he had crossed the ball I felt my dad’s arm grab me tightly around the waist. He had just about pulled me in to him when Maurice Johnston leapt high above the static defence and connected his golden mullet to the ball once again, aiming the ball past the goalie and into the corner of the net. Two-nil. Scenes. The crowd pulled us apart. I was five, six, maybe seven rows below where I had stood seconds before. In the split instant before the swell of the crowd once again changed direction, whisky-breathed men kissed me on the head and lifted me further up. “Yaaas, wee man!” I’ve no idea where my dad was, yet somehow as the Spanish spotted the ball and kicked off again, the settle of the crowd brought us back together. We were a good few yards to the right of where we’d been and a stanchion kindly appeared for us to lean on and catch our breath and one another.

“‘scuse me,” says my dad to a group of men. “You’re standing on my boy’s flag.” I hadn’t brought a flag, but by half time I was the owner of a dirty yellow Lion Rampant covered in bootprints and beer. Too big to hold and minus the pole to wave it with, I put it on like a wrap-around skirt for the remainder of the game. I had it for years after. Not sure where it ended up.

The best was yet to come though. Spain pulled a goal back in the second half but riotous and free-flowing Scotland simply moved up a gear. Spain might’ve been thrown a cheap lifeline, but there was no way this Scottish team would let them back in. In the 71st minute, Glasgow’s wintery night sky was again punctuated by the Hampden roar as Kenny Dalglish put the game to bed with what will always be my favourite Scotland goal.

A throw in near the corner flag on the right-hand side finds Davie Cooper deep inside the box and, tightly marked, he lays it off to Dalglish who twists and turns his way past one, two, three defenders and takes one, two, three steps before letting fly with his left foot. Even as I type, I don’t need YouTube to see the delicious arc of the ball as it bends outwards and upwards and downwards into the top corner and, through a tangled forest of West Stand bottles and beards and limbs and Glengarries, Kenny Dalglish, arms aloft and turning towards Jock Stein on the touchline to celebrate. I’ve seen plenty of great goals, many of them scored by a Scotland player, but no goal was ever sweeter than that.

A funny thing happened as I watched those highlights. Despite the Spanish commentary and the near-40 intervening years, I found myself crying. Big, proper, from out of nowhere tears. My dad is no longer with us and somehow, suddenly, the emotion of seeing that Kenny goal again was a trigger for all sorts of happy memories. I couldn’t stop, but I’m not sure I really wanted to. There’s something comforting about a good cry now and again. I had just about pulled myself together by the time my wife and daughter returned home.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked my wife. “You look like you’re in a bad mood.”

“Not at all,” I said. And promptly burst into tears once more as I told her what had happened. Football, bloody hell, as the quote goes.

And then…

The next morning.

I was running myself and daughter to our respective places of work. Lauren Laverne’s BBC 6 music show, as always, was playing. Deee-Lite‘s Groove Is In The Heart comes on and immediately – immediately – my mind is flooded with a memory of dear Derek Reid, with his stupid grin and dimples and stubble, and he’s dancing his finger pointy dance to the song in the Attic. We’re on the cramped dancefloor and he’s in double denim, but that’s OK because we all were, and his hair, long by this point, is over the shoulder of his jacket, giving him the appearance of some hipster Francis Rossi and he’s doing the ‘ah-ah-ah-ah‘ bit – ‘Groove is in the hea-art, ah-ah-ah-ah!‘ and flicking his hair and we’re laughing and living and off our heads with the thrill of being carefree and young and alive. And once again it sets me off.

Deee-lite – Groove Is In The Heart

“I’m in the Attic and it’s 1990,” I say to my daughter as my voice cracks. I can’t look at her. “Derek Reid’s dancing. I can see him right now.” And then I can say no more. I drive through thickly glazed eyes. The chills that you spill up my back, keep me filled. Sad. Happy. Emotional. Pondering on what the future holds.

Bloody music and its bloody triggers. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. Thank God Lauren didn’t follow it up by playing True Faith. I’ve told that story before though.

Football

Outside Looking In

Craig McAllister

North of Hadrian’s Wall we’re looking on enviously as another World Cup without Scotland gets underway. It’s a common occurrence these days to find the Scots tiptoed on wooden crates, peering over metaphorical stadium walls and into the machinations of a glamourous tournament that we find ourselves excluded from. Not even the sainted Steve Clarke couldn’t get us there, his team choking in the Hampden sunshine against a Ukrainian team that the rest of the world was delighted to see win. Even the Welsh are there this time around, and they never make the World Cup finals. Panto villains they may be, for daring to beat Ukraine in the final qualifying match, but it’s a slanderous title that anyone in a Jimmy hat and the ability to boogie would happily take. Or maybe not.

Qatar mate? No thanks. It’s a World Cup tainted with bribery and scandal, terrible abuses of human rights… and no beer in stadiums. For many (most?) fans, football and beer go hand in hand. You can look on rightly aghast at the Qataris’ appalling crimes against their fellow men and women, but no beer at the game? Forget that! A dry Tartan Army is nothing short of an oxymoron. It’s just as well we didnae qualify.

I was talking to my son about the World Cup, about how Scotland was always there when I was his age, how it was a given that we’d turn up every time and crash out on goal difference. Indeed, it wasn’t uncommon to find Scotland the only home nation side at the finals, something that millennials might find hard to believe.

Me and my pals, hopped up on Top Deck and Wotsits and laterally real beer and whatnots cheered the highs; the Narey toe poke against Brazil, Strachan’s opener v Germany, Mo Johnston’s winner from the penalty spot against the Swedes, John Collin’s opener v Brazil of course, and bemoaned the lows; the own goal in the same game, the Nicol miss v Uruguay, Costa Rica, the calamity of Miller and Hansen as they contrived to let the Russians in and send us out.

There’s been plenty of disappointment when you consider the phrase ‘Scotland at the World Cup’ but none more so than Argentina ’78. In a tournament featuring just 16 countries – stick that in yer smug pipes, England and Cymru – Ally McLeod had us believe we’d come back as champions, music to this football daft 8-year old’s ears.

A thumping to Peru and their beautifully expressive banana-bent free kicks saw the nails being lined up against the coffin. A draw against lowly Iran brought the first hammer down. Archie Gemmill might’ve scored one of the greatest ever World Cup goals against the swaggering Dutch and momentarily halted the flow of the hammer, but Johnny Rep’s long-distance goal – reducing the deficit in the match to just one goal in Scotland’s favour – would ultimately see to it that we’d be back at Prestwick Airport after just three matches.

Fun fact: ‘Out on goal difference’ is written in Latin on Scottish £5 notes.

1978 was my favourite World Cup. The final was late on the Sunday night, but even with school in the morning, I was allowed to stay up and watch it. I can see it all now as I type. It was the snow of tickertape that turned the pitch a litter of green and white. It was the crowd, free-standing and ever-morphing, a shape-shifting human organism rather than the regimented rows of hand clappers and horn blowers we’ll see on our TVs over this month. It was the way the nets hung loosely from the goals, the way the photographers sat untidily behind the goals, almost on the field of play. It was all about Kempes and Passarella and that iconic Argentinian strip; silky, stripy and with a badge as big as a baby’s head sewn on. An awakening to the greatest show on earth, not the money-obsessed horrorshow it’s become today.

The players looked different then too, even the Scottish ones in their identikit bubble perms and impressive moustaches. These days, all the players look the same; ripped, buff, toned ‘n tanned. Back then, they were individuals with swagger and character, socks at ankle length, shirts outside the shorts and with a maverick approach to dribbling.

Plus, they were as hard as nails. Tackles were as brutal as their haircuts and never shirked. No quarter was given. They got, as you’ll hear them shout from the sidelines at boys’ football on any given Sunday, stuck in. Souness. Wark. Kenny Burns. Hard men with hard stares who played for the shirt – a trio familiar with the sculpted art of the bandito moustache, as it goes.There was none of that rolling around you’ll see at any match you might choose to watch in the next month. With VAR but a twinkle in some mischievous fun prevention officer’s eye, a lot of the dirty stuff was got away with, and all in exactly 90 minutes too, not the 100 or so that’ll routinely see this World Cup stretch to.

Back in ’78, ‘sports’ and ‘science’ were two words that never sat together in the same sentence, let alone the one phrase. Half the players smoked – John Robertson on the wing for Scotland was powered by 20 Benson & Hedges a day, the Brazilian Socrates similarly so. The Scottish ethos of work hard and play harder was forged as much through Tennent’s as training. Once we’re back to that, maybe then we’ll be on the inside again, at the greatest football tournament of them all, counting down the matches until goal difference sends us homewards tae think again. I watch on enviously.

Machine – There But For The Grace Of God Go I

Anthemic, socially inclusive disco. Are you listening, Qatar?

 

Cover Versions, Football

Grim Fairytale Avoided

Craig McAllister

To enjoy the feast, you must first experience the famine.

That’s me misquoting Chick Young, BBC Sport Scotland’s football reporter, a man much-maligned but one who seemingly has a soft spot for the wee teams and community clubs who win little in the way of silverware and league titles, but who continually go to-to-toe with the commercial nous of the big two Glasgow clubs.

In something of a role reversal, it was my team Kilmarnock who were considered the big team, the big scalp, this season. Relegated a year ago in front of 500 socially-distanced supporters, we’ve huffed and puffed in a Championship where we were expected to take the game to our under-funded and under-supported opponents each week and sweep them aside in a display of breathless, free-flowing, attacking football. I’d say each Saturday, but, being the big team, many of our games were televised on the Friday night; games in which we regularly self-imploded by contriving to lose an early goal and then frustratingly fail to break down the opposition. Twenty minutes away to our bitter rivals Ayr aside, where we were three up before anyone’s pie had gone cold, breathless, free-flowing, attacking football was rather thin on the ground.

And yet, we found ourselves top of the league and by Friday night we would wrap up the title if we could only beat Arbroath, the tiny part-time team who had continually out-fought, out-thought, out-played and out-pointed every other team in the league.

Managed by the ‘charismatic’ and ever-quotable old-school manager Dick Campbell, Arbroath were everyone’s second-favourite team. Just as Scotland go head-to-head with Ukraine soon in a match that no-one outside of Scotland wants to see Scotland win, Killie found themselves in the position of being the panto villains, the party spoilers, the most-hated team in the country. If you weren’t wearing blue and white stripes, you were wishing and hoping that wee Arbroath could pull off the (not really a) shock required. In our three previous encounters, Kilmarnock had failed to score a single goal and had they scored one more than us on Friday night, they’d have leapfrogged us into first place with one game remaining. Everyone; the BBC commentators, Rangers fans, neutrals, all wanted an Arbroath fairytale win.

Arbroath did their bit, aided by a poor referee who saw nothing wrong in a bad tackle on the edge of the Arbroath box, and, as the Kilmarnock players remonstrated, an Arbroath player ran the length of the pitch, squared the ball sideways and a cool tap in saw the perfect conclusion to their counter-attacking breakaway. Killie 0 – 1 Arbroath.

The game was turgid, Killie dragged into playing long-ball football and frustrated by a team who slowed the game down at every opportunity, wasted time and employed every level of shithousery known in the name of anti-football football. Effective, though. Outside of East Ayrshire, the country celebrated and dreamed. By half time, the fairytale was within touching distance, but a fired-up Killie would sweep aside any notions of upset in a fly-past and one-sided second half. We left it late. Very late.

Wee Burke came off the bench. Off-form since being injured early in the season, this was rumoured to be the veteran’s last game. If so, he kept his best performance for a night when 10,000 home fans would be chanting his name in delight at the drive, determination and dribbling skills he had in his last twenty minutes locker. He sent over dangerous corner after dangerous corner and, after Shaw had seen his powerful downwards header sclaffed off the line,Taylor followed it up and slammed it into the roof of the net. The 80th minute equaliser was met with an explosion of noise heard as far away as deepest, southest Ayrshire. One goal wasn’t enough to win the league though. Continual Killie pressure prevailed. The Arbroath goalie was playing the game of his life, clearly injured yet turning shots round the post, over the bar, like Dino Zoff in his prime. Real Roy of the Rovers stuff. We battered and battered his goal. A winner would surely come.

It did. Late in the 89th minute, a beautifully-weighted long ball down the right saw Lafferty cooly control and pass it in one sweeping movement. Shaw, our number 9 controlled on the edge of the box and, as the clock turned to 90 minutes, laid it off for the on-rushing Alston, an attacking midfielder who for most of the season has come in for an unfair amount of stick. Alston shifted the ball smartly from left foot to right and, without breaking stride, stroked it home. Bottom right corner, the keeper static. Alston’s top was off and windmilling wildly above his head before the ball had even nestled properly in the net. The entire team, the subs behind the goal, even Hemming our goalie, displaying a Bolt-like sprinting ability to run the length of our hated plastic pitch, piled on Alston the hero. Watching back on the telly, I spotted a former pupil, a ball boy for the night, right in the middle of the celebrations. Scenes, as they say. A real, scripted, Hollywood ending, even if, for most of the country, the wrong team won in the end. Grim fairytale avoided.

Killie last won the league in 1965. Since then, they’ve been relegated to the lowest league, worked their way back up through the ’80s – never winning a title, always going up as runners-up – and, until last season, had spent 28 years in the top flight. It’s not often then that Killie fans see their team win a league. Any league. It’s great to be back where we belong.

Otis Clay – The Only Way Is Up

Many (most?) folk assume that The Only Way Is Up was written for Yazz. Not true. Matt Black and Jonathan More – Coldcut to you and I – had a microscopic knowledge of rare and under-appreciated soul and recognised the potential in Otis Clay’s 1980 little-known original. Adding snatches of samples and a busy, train-like rhythm to a glossy, hi-nrg house production, they sat back in their swivly producers’ chairs and watched as it rattled and thumped its way to the top of the charts.

The original bears all the hallmarks of classic soul; chicken scratch guitar, sweeping disco strings and stabbing brass. If you didn’t know better, you could be be convinced it’s a street-smart cover of a ubiquitous ’80s pop classic, when in fact Clay’s version is the original. You knew that already though.

 

Football, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

“Oim sorry, lads, this is a members’-only cloob….”

Craig McAllister

The Euros start at the end of this week. That they’re occuring a year later than planned means nothing to my nation. My son is 14 and he’s ridiculously excited at the thought of seeing Scotland on the big stage for the first time. A former work colleague on Facebook last week was equally effervescent. “This’ll be the first time I’ve seen Scotland at a championship!” he frothed through heavily bearded face and a craft beer held by tattooed hands. Jeez! Has it really been that long?! ‘Young’ Chris must be 27 or so by now, and given that it’s 23 years since Scotland last crashed out of the World Cup Finals in France, then, yes, it really has been that long.

When I was my son’s age, Scotland was always at the World Cup. We had a glorious run of epic failures between ’74 and ’90 when we’d get an unlikely result against the big nations, get thumped by an unfancied smaller nation and miss out on progression because of goal difference. It was always the way.

Back in 1996, the Euros were in England. Just as now, England and Scotland found themselves pitted against one another. That particular big match swung on the famous penalty miss. England, somehow one-nil up through Alan Shearer were being out-played, out-fought and out-thought by Craig Brown’s superstar-free team. With just over 10 minutes to go, the Scots laid siege yet again on David Seaman’s goal, and, played through on goal, Gordon Durie was chopped to the ground.

Penalty!

Captain Gary McAllister took responsibility and a nation watched aghast as his blasted effort was punched to safety by the swashbuckling Seaman, all VO5 swish and Magnum moustache (a save that crackpot spoon bender Uri Geller claimed to have orchestrated through channelled energy and mumbo jumbo.) To rub salt into the wounds, England then ran the length of Wembley and topped off a decent passage of football with a Gascoigne wonder goal. Bastards.

Going into the final game against Switzerland at Villa Park, Scotland was still in with a chance of progressing. We had to hope England could stick 4 past the Dutch – a team that had drawn 0-0 with Scotland – while we went about our job of beating the Swiss. Four points and a decent goal difference would see us through. It’s the hope that kills you, they say…

Two nights before the game I received a call from my brother’s pal.

“We’ve a spare ticket for Villa Park….”

“I’ll take it!”

“...d’you want it?”

“I’ll take it!!”

“…’cos the thing is, our bus is full, so you’d need to make your own way to Birmingham. We’ll meet you outside the ground when you get there. Big Alan…d’you know Big Alan? He’ll be wearing a massive tartan hat and a Jimmy wig. You won’t miss him.”

Ah shite. After phoning around, I found a space on a bus that was travelling at sunrise from Paisley. It was full of headcases and hardened away-day drinkers. “Drink up, pal, there ye go…” The journey was long, with one guy rat-a-tatting on a snare drum for hours on end and at least five piss stops before we’d crossed the border. Eventually the driver pulled into a layby on the outskirts of Birmingham. “Lads, the polis’ll be on the bus a mile from here. I’m stopping so’s ye can get rid o’ yer empties and anything else you might not want them to find when they get oan. So drink up and empty oot.”

A mile up the road, two police officers wearing those tall, rounded, English police helmets – an unexpected sight, though I’m not sure why that should have been a surprise – came on board. One affable, one looking for bother, a busload of hardened, steaming Scotsmen smiling glaikitly back. “Alroight lads. There’s no booze on board this boose is there?” Naw, ociffer, naw, there isnae, came a handful of muttered replies as bad cop rummaged without success in seat pockets and luggage compartments. “Enjoi thu match, lads!” said good cop before they turned and left. You could’ve punctured the paranoia with a kilt pin.

We arrive at Villa Park. The bus parks alongside 30 or so other supporters’ buses at the Aston Leisure Centre and we pile out, blinking into the afternoon sunshine. I’m looking for Big Alan in his big bunnet and Jimmy hat, but my new-found pals, having been here the week prior when we played the Netherlands, have other ideas. The Aston Working Men’s Club is just over the road. A tiny wee building with a bar. Somehow, I’m at the front of my new gang as we enter the door. A wee old guy looks us up and down. The state of us!

“Oim sorry, lads, this is a members’-only cloob….”

He looks beyond me and my new pals at the thirty or so supporters buses alighting on his doorstep.

“…but you can join today for a pound.”

The place was quickly rammed. The snare drum rattled. The singing got louder. The cheap pints went down quickly and often. Kick off fast approached. It dawned on me that I still had no ticket. I mean, I knew all along that I had no ticket, but I knew one was waiting for me. Either my brother’s pal had it, or Big Alan did. But I had no idea where to find Big Alan. I didn’t even know Big Alan. Mobile phone? This was 1996, mate. The bar started emptying as supporters drained their pints and turrned their attentions to the game. I wandered outside, stoating about amongst hordes of Jimmy hat-wearing Scotsmen, all merrily pissed up and heading to the game, in the unlkely hope that the mysterious Big Alan might make himself known to me. I happened upon a chipshop and found myself suddenly starving. I think I was too drunk to order, but I left with food.

“Gie’s a chip!” I hear outside, and my tea is swooped upon by half a dozen blootered Scotsmen. From out of the depths of tartan hell, up pops my brother’s pal, waving something in my face. “You’ll be wantin’ yer ticket, ya fud?” The magnetism of alcohol and its ability to bring disparate folk together is a strange, brilliant thing. Let’s go!

The game was magic. My overall abiding memory was not of McCoist’s winner – a curling, outside of the foot peach right into the top corner in front of us in the Holte End – or the hairs-on-the-neck-still sight of the crowd going nuts in that same Holte End on the TV replays as McCoist runs towards Craig Brown and the Scotland dugout (I saw it played again the other day and it places me right back into that moment in time), or Scott Booth’s half chance near the end of the second half, or the excited buzz around the stands as England unbelievably went the required 4 goals up against the Dutch, or the deflated inevitability when Seaman allowed a half-shot to squirm through his legs, giving the Dutch the goal they needed and putting Scotland out, on goal difference, again.

Nope, my overrall abiding memory is one of being absolutely ten pints-bursting but not wanting to go in case I missed anything. McCoist’s goal just before half time was a relief…but the end product following a mad sprint and hellish queue at the gents’ at half time was even greater.

England’s campaign that year was soundtracked by Three Lions, a jaunty comedy double act-fronted Britpop bash that reflected on England’s failure to win anything for years. Thirty years of hurt, pal? Best make that fifty-five and counting… It was nothing compared to the unofficial Scottish ‘song’ though.

Swept up in the euphoria that comes when your country is playing at a tournament, Primal Scream joined forces with Leithite Irvine Welsh in a West Coast meets East Coast stand-off that was confrontational, self-deprecating and about as far removed from the ethos of a football song as a is humanly possible. The record may have come stickered with one of those Paul Cannell Screamadelica suns, but don’t let that fool you. The Big Man And The Scream Team Meet The Barmy Army Uptown was produced by Adrian Sherwood and foreshadowed the dubbed-out elecronica of Eko Dek.

Primal Scream, Irvine Welsh and On-U Sound Present – The Big Man And The Scream Team Meet The Barmy Army Uptown (Full Strength Fortified Dub)

Welsh is in full-on baiting mode, sticking the metaphorical size tens into Rangers fans, the metaphorical nut on the arrogance and entitlement of the English media and their football team and holding a mirror up to Scottish fans on tour.

I was sitting outside Wembley in ’79
Jock cunts in London, massive carry-out
Talking to a guy in an ice cream van
So drunk for weeks that we’d gone waaaay past the point of wanting tickets
It’d be horrendous now if someone was to hand you a fucking ticket
You’d have to leave all this bevvy outside the ground, by they polis dumpbins?
No fucking way
10 minutes into the fucking game you’d be climbing up the fucking walls to get out

Behind him, the band play big slamming guitars and a repeating sample chants ‘who are ye‘, Denise Johnson wafting in and out of the electronic stew with soulful backing vocals. Three Lions it definitely ain’t.

Crossbar Challenge accepted

For what it’s worth, I think Steve Clarke will mastermind Scotland’s first-ever qualification out of the group stages. Beyond that is anyone’s guess… we have a dream, and all that. It’s taken time, but he’s fostered that hard-to-beat, no-team-is-invincible mindset that saw him take my team Kilmarnock to the lofty heights of 3rd in the league and European football. For one week we were top of the actual league too…when the news filtered across the terracing that Cetic had dropped points to Livingston, the crowd, drunk on what might be and Steve Clarke-fuelled self-belief broke into a spontaneous and lively rendition of ‘we’re gonnae win the league‘. Quite ridiculuous…and quite thrilling.

There will be, sadly, hopefully, the chance to replicate that chant at the end of this season. Killie, in a Clarke-free freefall since his departure to the national team, found themselves dumped out of the top league a couple of weeks ago. The less said about that, the better, but with luck we’ll be chanting that ridiculous chant again come the middle of May next year. Killie’s loss was clearly Scotland’s gain. I love that man and I’m sure, once we’ve gatecrashed that other exclusive members’-only club by reaching the knock-out stages, I’ll love him even more in the coming weeks.

Football, Peel Sessions

The Twelfth Men

Craig McAllister

This great picture of young Celtic fans storming the Hampden Park barricades and getting themselves into the big match is a real look back in time, to an era when showpiece games at the national stadium weren’t always ticket-only, when brass neckery and opposable thumbs gave you and your pals just as much right to take your place on the ash and pish-coated terracing as anyone else.

This picture has everything; it’s in colour, so it’s not that old. It comes from an era in football somewhere beyond rollups and rattles and record attendances, from a generation deeply entrenched in brutal tribalism and Rangers Ends and Celtic Ends (check out the wee scribble of casual sectarianism graffiti in the picture), with the EBTs and biscuit tins and the Big Two’s unfounded entitlement that they win everything not yet quite in full view.

The clothes would suggest very late 70s or the early 80s. I vividly remember my mum asking me if I wanted ‘flares or drainpipes‘ when she was ordering my new school trousers from the catalogue. “What are flares?” I asked in all innocence, before, once she’d shown me the picture, I very quickly ensured she ordered drainpipes, and only drainpipes. In an era of 2 Tone and Madness and, yes, Baggy Trousers, if you wanted to avoid merciless slaggings and a lifetime of misery, drainpipes were the only obvious choice.

The wee guy side-on at the front, in his grey Harrington and grown-out suedehead is, I’d imagine, no stranger to the back catalogues of both the Nutty Boys and The Specials. His pal, a dead ringer for a young Roy Aitken as it happens, in the home-knitted Celtic jumper has pulled a proper ‘whityegauntaedaeabootit?‘ sneer on his face, purely for the benefit of the photographer, a gaffer ensuring every one of his troops makes it safely over to the other side. Wee bams, and brilliant with it.

The Hampden terracing was quite the place. For someone small like me, it could be exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. Glimpses of the pitch, let alone the actual ball, could be few and far between, the abstract and abrupt swearing, the aw ayes and aw naws providing you with the necessary running commentary in lieu of the actual game. “Great ball Souness that’s shite!” is the one I remember the most, remonstrated from the North Stand during a Scotland V Wales qualifier sometime around 1985. The smell of cigarettes and alcohol and piss hung heavy in the nostrils while your feet hung hopelessly in the air. From first whistle to last, the Adidas Kicks would rarely touch the ash. If there was a goal – and in the 80s, when Scotland fielded teams of world beaters there were always goals – there’d be a massive surge; a tidal wave that started from front and back and all sides simultaneously, and you’d be swept along in its soup-stirring free-flow, down ten or more rows before being jarrred swiftly to the right or left or both then back again, like a giant man-made spin cycle that always, always, returned you to where you’d been standing (floating) before the goal had been scored. You might lose your pals temporarily, but everyone’s your pal when Kenny Dalglish has just swerved in Scotland’s third of the night v Spain.

By the mid 80s my pals and I were going to Hampden ourselves. I say ourselves, but the truth was, Irvine Rugby Club ran a minibus to Hampden and, organised by someone our dads knew, we’d get to go to the game on the bus with them. What our parents never knew was that the bus would park somewhere near the Church On The Hill pub, and while all the men nipped in for a quick pint before the game, we’d get all gallus and, visibly growing a couple of inches, swagger the mile or so to Hampden by ourselves, take in the game then swagger back along the shadowy streets of Glasgow’s southside to the bus again. Semi-free small-towners from the Ayrshire sticks, we’d never have had the nerve to loup the wall like those boys in the photo. Let’s not kid anyone on here.

One particular game (v Romania possibly) stood tip-toed on the North Stand is memorable not for the box-to-box penetration happening on the pitch in front of us but for the ball games happening behind. “Stephanie, Stephanie…c’moan, it’s ma turn!” said the guy in the tight Souness perm, moustache ‘n all, as he and his two pals took turns at disappearing down the ash path and behind the stand with a young woman wearing a tartan scarf and a Crombie and quite possibly nothing else.

He shouts, he scores, to paraphrase.

Like those wee boys in the photo at the top, or or those wee blue disabled cars behind the goals, not the sort of thing you’ll see at the football anymore.

Echo and the Bunnymen – Over The Wall (Peel Session 22.5.80)

From a similar time and place, here’s Echo and the Bunnymen‘s Peel Session version of Over The Wall. Del Shannon via The Doors, filtered through era-defining hair and total self-belief. A bit like that Scotland squad of the times…and the wee guys in the picture at the top.

Football, Gone but not forgotten

Jesus Is Just A Spanish Boy’s Name

Craig McAllister

Hearts and Celtic go head to head this weekend in last season’s delayed Scottish Cup Final, a game that both teams will want to win but one that neither probably expected to manifest.

Hearts, currently plying their trade in tier two (to coin a contemporary phrase) could do with the win, as could Celtic, for so long the dominant force in Scottish football but now a club where the manager’s jacket hangs on a decidedly shoogly-looking peg. A cup win might go some way to thwart off the vultures (and Green Brigade) who are currently gathering with furrowed brow and thunderous, entitled fury outside Celtic Park. I’m neither Celtic nor Hearts-minded (nor do I have an affiliation to the other hairy arsed Glasgow cheek of Scottish football) so while I won’t lose any sleep over who wins and who loses, I’ll maybe crack a wry smile should a maroon ribbon be tied around the cup come full time.

The real winners of Sunday’s final won’t be the happy set of supporters, or a relieved management team, or a grateful chairperson and boardroom. The real winners will be Tiny Changes, the charity formed in the wake of Frightened Rabbit‘s Scott Hutchison’s death a couple of years ago.

Named after a line in the band’s ‘Heads Roll Off’ – “While I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to Earth” – the line become something of a mission statement for fans in the days and weeks following the singer’s death.

Frightened Rabbit – Heads Roll Off

Initially launched in the Scottish Borders where the band began, Tiny Changes provides support and early intervention to young minds struggling to cope with life across Scotland.

Clearly, in an age when mental health in young people, and men in particular, can lead to the most drastic of outcomes, it’s a very worthwhile charity.

Scott Hutchsion was a lifelong Jambo, even singing The Hearts Song at the opening of the new main stand at Tynecastle three seasons ago, and the club have honoured him in the most spectacular of ways.

As they did in the semi-final – after first petitioning the reluctant dinosaurs and decision-makers who make up the Scottish Football Association – Hearts have once again teamed up with Bands FC to produce a bespoke run of warm-up shirts that the players will wear ahead of the kick off. Featuring a Frightened Rabbits-inspired club crest against the famous maroon shirt, it’s a unique football/music crossover.

Players’ jerseys from the semi-final were auctioned off after the game and all monies  – almost £35,000  – donated to Tiny Changes. Likewise, the same will happen following the final. Some serious money – especially if Hearts run out winners – will be going to a small charity with big intentions. What a brilliant thing to happen.

Click to donate to Tiny Changes
Football

Playing For Scotland

Craig McAllister

Man. Folk go on and on about milestone birthdays. 40 is the new 30 and all that nonsense. I was OK with 30. I was even OK with 40. Heck, I got a trip to New York out of it, so who was complaining? For me, it was turning 27 that hit me hard. It wasn’t the thankful realisation that I’d managed to outlive a handful of over-indulgent rock stars and dodge membership of the 27 Club, it was the sudden, sobering dawning that I’d never get to play for Scotland.

I’ll explain.

When I was a wee boy I collected football cards. My hero was Kenny Dalglish and this card below was my favourite.

It shows a proud Kenny, arms aloft as he celebrates scoring in the dark blue of his country, possibly after he’s beaten Ray Clemence in the England goal at Wembley in 1977, when Scotland won 2-1 and a large handful of over-enthusiastic supporters returned up the road with half the Wembley pitch stuffed into their sporrans. The Wembley turf was originally taken from the Bogside flats, a good 5 iron from where I’m typing, so in effect, they were bringing the grass back to its, eh, roots.

Kenny Dalglish, Forward, it reads. And on the back it continued; Kenny Dalglish: Age 27, Clubs: Celtic and Liverpool. Scotland Caps 35 (or so, I can’t remember the actual number.) I wonder what I’ll be doing when I’m 27? I pondered as an 8 year old. I wonder if I’ll have as many caps for Scotland as Kenny does?  I needn’t have worried. When I was 27 I was working in the best job I might ever have, behind the counter of Our Price, as likely to play for Scotland as I was to get the call from Oasis who were needing a replacement for Bonehead. I did genuinely feel disappointed, that my life was somehow unfulfilled.

Fast forward to a few years ago. Steven Naismith was playing for Everton at the time. An ex-pupil of the school I taught in, he was the local hero; the young guy who’d made it in football, from learning his trade in the local team, to signing for Kilmarnock as a school boy before moving on for a record fee to Rangers (no!) before moving on to Everton. Community-minded, Naismith regularly handed in football tops and memorabilia to the school for auctioning off at school fairs and fetes to help top-up school funds. Cornering him one time about the fact the school football team wore the very same strip he had played in the best part of 20 years previously, Steven organised for a whole new set of strips for the team. But that’s not what I want to focus on here.

One time, he brought in a Scotland top – an actual, match-worn, embroidered badge and grass-stained number 10 shirt. It hung in the office for a week or so, waiting on the Christmas Fayre when it would be raffled off. I was in the office late one night after school, photocopying some stuff, when his Scotland shirt started winking at me. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d popped it over my head – the silky material didn’t half crackle at the unexpected size of my barrel chest and, just as I’d popped through my first arm, the depute head teacher appeared in the room.

“What’re you doing?” she asked rhetorically, with a look on her face that can only be pulled by experienced teachers who’ve caught out mischievous wee boys.

“I’m, eh, trying the strip on,” I wagered.

“I won’t tell anyone if you won’t,” she said conspiratorially.

With an alarming burst of crackling static and complaining stitching, I pulled the jersey back off, turning it inside out in the process, righted it and hung it back on the hanger. The rest of my colleagues were none the wiser, but I’d finally succeeded in pulling on the dark blue of Scotland. It felt good, if a little tight.

Today I turned 50. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but so far it’s been OK. I know I’ll never play for Scotland. Or windmill through a solo on the Barrowland’s stage. But I’m OK with that. I’ve lost two pals who never made it to half a century and last week’s daily medicine dose looks like the sort of lucky bag of goodies that would’ve constituted a decent night out for Bobby Gillespie in 1990, but I have a loving family to nurse me through my shonky health and for that I am grateful.

D’you know why they call 50 a round number? It’s because as the inescapable big number creeps ever-closer, you realise that that wee overhang that sometimes gets in the road of you fixing your belt has suddenly become a hideous hulking blobby mess that stops you from even seeing your belt. Yes, 50 is a round number because (unless you’re very lucky) you’re one round number yourself by the time you reach it. Before you know it, you find yourself spending your free time on a treadmill – not a metaphorical treadmill of life with all its mundanities or anything like that, but an actual moving treadmill, with running and panting and wheezing and sweating and everything. Previously when I wrote about this I’d managed to fast-track myself from 7 whole minutes on the thing before collapsing in a heap, to a whole half hour’s worth of running before collapsing in a heap. Nowadays I’m up to 40 minutes and counting. I’m almost enjoying it too. Slow and steady, nothing that would trouble even your most part-time park runner, but heading in the right direction. Nearly at 50, as it happens, although it’ll be a wee while before I match my age in running time.

Rocket From the Crypt – Born In ’69

Woo! Yeah! Guaranteed to blow the grey straight off yer hair, they say. Stax sax blasts! Scorching electric guitar! Moon-esque drums! A st-st-stuttering breakdown and a sudden, abrupt ending. Just like my career in a Scotland shirt.

Football

Score Draw

Craig McAllister

In 2005 the Berlin based Scottish artist Douglas Gordon came up with the idea of creating a film about Zinedine Zidane. Zidane was at the time arguably the finest football player on the planet; an attacking midfielder who played the free-roaming number 10 position while wearing the number 5 shirt for Real Madrid, playing with equal measures of flair, balance, vision and aggression. Zizou could make things happen and had the ability to change games with an ambitious pass or turn of speed or selfish zig-zagging run. His unpredicatable Gallic temper that simmered just below the surface added the extra edge that set him apart from his peers.

Gordon and his film-making partner Philippe Parreno set up 17 cameras in strategic points around the pitch before a league game at the Bernabeu between Real Madrid and Villareal. They were designed to capture every facet of Zidane’s game over the 90 minutes and didn’t disappoint.

With precious little fanfare the film begins as the game kicks off and ends on the referee’s final whistle. It’s relatively low on budget yet high in concept. The excitable Spanish TV commentary tells the story of the game, but really, that takes second place. Zidane is on screen for (almost) the entirety of the match, sometimes without the ball and sometimes with. You get a real feel for the speed of the game as the ball flashes on screen and just as quickly off again, set on its way by the outside of Zidane’s right boot or acutely richocheting as the number 5 clatters meaningfully into an oncoming opponent.

Those 17 cameras miss nothing in Zidane’s game; the awe-inspiring strength and skill, the disgruntled shouts to less tuned-in teammates, the occasional stroppy spit, the dirty looks to the referee, to the temper-flaring fight that leads to a red card and Zidane’s premature end to the match. If the filmmakers had written a script it wouldn’t have been any less perfect.

For the entirety of the film, the Spanish commentator and ambient crowd noise generated by 80,000 fans compete with a superb understated score by Mogwai. Film maker Gordon was a huge fan of the band and to get them on board he showed them a rough cut of the film soundtracked by their remixed Mogwai Fear Satan EP. Blown away by the concept and the clash of football and music, Mogwai agreed to get involved and set about creating an instrumental soundtrack.

The finished result plays underneath the film. It’s slow, quiet and understated, the polar opposite of the film’s subject matter, yet it works brilliantly. Sometimes you’ll forget it’s playing only for a ghostly thrumming guitar or phased out section of white-hot feedback to melt back into earshot. Pick of the bunch for me is the brooding Black Spider where vibrating clean-amped six strings allow ample space for a glockenspiel to pick out a simple melody as a lazy drummer half-heartedly adds percussive splashes in the background. Like its subject matter, it’s a beauty.

Mogwai – Black Spider

Football, Gone but not forgotten, Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Stuart Cosgrove

Craig McAllister

Six Of The Best is a semi-regular feature that pokes, prods and persuades your favourite bands, bards and barometers of hip opinion to tell us six of the best tracks they’ve ever heard. The tracks could be mainstream million-sellers or they could be obfuscatingly obscure, it doesn’t matter. The only criteria set is that, aye, they must be Six of the Best. Think of it like a mini, groovier version of Desert Island Discs…

 stuart cosgrove 1


Number 20 in a series:


Stuart Cosgrove is, to most folk in Scotland, the owner of that distinctive voice with the Tayside twang barking and cackling its way out of the tranny each Saturday afternoon between 12 and 2. “Ah yes indeed Tam!” could almost be his catchphrase. As co-presenter of BBC Radio Scotland’s Off The Ball, he’s a bringer of much needed humour and mirth to suffering Scottish football fans up and down the land.


‘The most petty and ill-informed football show on the radio‘ is a must-listen to in my house – it’s the central part of my pre-match warm up before I head off to Rugby Park to watch my team lie down to whoever they’re up against that week. Although primarily a football show, there’s a fair smattering of music references. Sometimes, one of the guests will be of that ilk, other times Tam and Stuart will discuss their musical preferences, with Stuart the black music obsessed yin to Tam Cowan’s cabaret ‘n crooners yang. And there’s always a record to play out with, a thematically-linked song that encapsulates the mood of that week’s big (or petty) talking point. It’s my favourite show on the wireless by some distance.


stuart cosgrove


In the 70s, Stuart was a buttoned-down and baggy-panted Northern Soul fan, a collector of rare 7″s who was fond of hopping on the overnight Perth to London train and disembarking at Wigan just in time for the Casino to open. In the 80s, Stuart indulged his musical passions further by writing for the fanzines before graduating to the NME and The Face. He was an early champion of electronic dance music and his job gained him access to all sorts of musical royalty, from Stevie Wonder and Jimmy Ruffin to Prince and the hallowed halls of Paisley Park. He’s long-since moved onwards and upwards (would you still want to be writing for NME nowadays? What/who could you muster up any enthusiasm to write about?) and is now a high heid yin at Channel 4. Somehow, inbetween the radio work each Saturday, working in London through the week and going to as many St Johnstone games as he can fit in, he’s found the time to write a book.


Here’s the blurb;


Detroit 67, The Year That Changed Soul is the story of the city of Detroit in the most dramatic and creative year in its history. It is the story of Motown, the breakup of The Supremes and the implosion of the most successful African-American record label ever, set against a backdrop of urban riots, escalating war in Vietnam and police corruption. The book weaves through the year as counterculture arrives in Detroit and the city’s other famous group, the proto-punk band MC5 go to war with mainstream America. The year ends in intense legal warfare as the threads that bind Detroit together unravel and leave a chaos that scars the city for decades to come.


 


It’ll be right up my street, and no doubt many of yours too.




Ahead of its publication at the end of March, Stuart somehow found the time to contribute to Plain Or Pan. Keeping with the Detroit theme, Stuart tells us his six favourite Detroit musicians. In what must surely be a serendipitous moment, most of them have graced this blog countless times already.


 












 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  


Marvin Gaye


The original black crooner who wanted to be the black Sinatra but ended up fronting the greatest album of all time ‘What’s Going On.’




Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)





David Ruffin


The bespectacled lead singer of The Temptations was the most complicated character at Motown and at war with himself. He eventually died of a drug overdose.


The Temptations – Message From A Black Man








Aretha Franklin


The Queen of Soul came from a famous Detroit family whose father was the city’s most flamboyant preacher.


Aretha Franklin – Save Me






Mary Wilson


 Often seen as ‘the other Supreme’ caught in a bitter war between Diana Ross and Florence Ballard, but her voice effortlessly floated from jazz, to soul and even opera.


The Supremes – Automatically Sunshine








Ronnie McNeir


An outsider who often won local talent contests in the Motor City but was in his sixties before he joined The Four Tops as a stand in for the legendary Levi Stubbs.


Ronnie McNeir – Lucky Number







Jonnie Mae Matthews


The godmother of Detroit soul and a pioneer who had a voice rougher than sandpaper and smoother than silk.




Jonnie Mae Matthews – The Headshrinker











 


Stuart Cosgrove is the author of Detroit 67. You can read more about the book and its author on the Detroit 67 Facebook page. Afterwards, you’d best get on the good foot and pre-order your copy from here (or your usual online book retailer.) I’ll see you at the front of the virtual queue.


detroit 67



		


			
		
	






	
	

		Cover Versions, Football, Hard-to-find, Most downloaded tracks
Ramble On
	


	

							

			 Craig McAllister		
		
		

			
One of the greatest pleasures in this blogger’s life is the daily digestion of blog stats. At any given time I can see who’s visited here, where they’re from and what the most popular posts and downloads are (currently the Jake Holmes/Led Zeppelin one). I can also see who’s Googled what and arrived at Plain Or Pan either by sheer good luck or misfortunate malapropos. Current visitors include those looking for What Brand Of Cigarettes Does Keith Richards Smoke?, Pain or Fantasy and my favourite, African Jungle Horse Sex. I can just about understand why trouser arouser browsers looking for Teenage Fanny are directed here. I just hope the sad old bastards leave with a new-found appreciation  of the Bellshill Beach Boys chiming guitars and honey-coated harmonies. But don’t stand anywhere near me at the next TFC gig, or you might just get a punch in the face. OK? I wrote something about the Stone Roses a wee while ago that said the bassline on Something’s Burning sounded like it came from the heart of Africa itself. And a long while ago I wrote about Johnny Wakelin’s In Zaire being total jungle funk, but how Google pointed a slevvering sexual deviant looking for quirky equestrian delights towards this mighty fine site four times in one day is beyond me.




Off course, there’s an underlying seriousness to all this. Clearly, people are using the internet for purposes other than tracking down obscure records by musicians only a handful of people have heard of. Whodathunkit, eh?


On a lighter note, the football transfer window closed at midnight on Tuesday night. This is a nerve-wracking time for fans of any club, but especially for fans of the less-fashionable, poorer clubs. As a Kilmarnock fan I’ve had to endure the pain of seeing our star players being snatched away from us at the stroke of midnight by ‘Sir’ Walter Smith and his satanic promises of first team football and the chance to wear the badge of the team they’ve “always supported since I was a wee boy“. To be fair to my club, the last time this happened they held out spectacularly for a decent sum (£2 million I think) for Steven Naismith. But this was only after failing miserably to command a fee any greater than £400,000 (to be paid in instalements, not even in the one go) for the services of Kris Boyd the season previously, a player who went on to score about 17 gazillion goals over the next few seasons (many against us), helped his team to a European final and cemented his place in the Scotland team, before getting his dream move to a bigger club. That’s Middlesborough, if you didn’t know.


The internet was buzzing on Tuesday night. Fans forums were in meltdown as everyone logged on trying to find the truth amongst the rumours, the rubbish and the rest. This year’s big worry was whether or not our star midfielder and captain, Craig Bryson, would be off to join up with recently departed Killie boss Jim Jefferies at Hearts. The rumour mills were in over-drive. At various points leading up to midnight he was at Tynecastle undergoing a medical, he was being sold for £400,000, he was being sold for £200,000 plus a player in return. At one point he was even off to Ipswich. Truth is, none of this was correct. By midnight, Hearts had had a couple of cheeky bids knocked back and Bryson remained with us.


Amongst all the Bryson rumours was a rumour about another player joining Hearts. Every team has fans’ favourites. Maybe not the most technically gifted set of legs in the team, but the one with the biggest heart, worn on the sleeve with pride. The player who’s first to question the referee’s authority whenever he feels a sense of injustice. The player who’ll give away the ‘clever’ foul and take the ‘clever’ booking for the team. The player who kisses the badge unironically cos he means it (maaaan), the player who, when a goal is scored, is the first to run to the crowd and not his teammates to celebrate, a player who can whip up a frenzy of excitement on the terracing by the sheer mention of his name.




At Killie, Manuel Pascali is that player. A tough, no-nonsene pro he breaks down attacks with a crunching tackle before distributing the ball wisely to a team mate. Not wisely distributing. That would infer that he’s incapable of anything other than giving the ball to a teammate to do the hard bit. No. I mean distributing the ball wisely, whereby at lightning speed he assesses the situation and from all his options picks out the best pass that’ll put his team on the offensive. He’s a bit like one of those Dutch or Spanish holding midfielders that slugged it out in that tetchy World Cup final a couple of months ago. Only not as good, or he’d be at a bigger club. Which takes me back to transfer deadline day and stupid rumours. Not only was Bryson going to Hearts, Pascali was off too! In fact, he was currently undergoing a medical and was about to put pen to paper. Noooooo! This was a disaster! While we were getting all hot under the collar about our star midfielder, our old manager had only gone and thrown a cat amongst the pigeons by pinching Pascali from right under our blue and white noses. Manu! How could you? Except, of course, he hadn’t. As all this drama was unfolding on the football part of the internet, over on the social networking section my close personal Facebook friend Manu Pascali was exclusively revealing we were  not to worry, that he was sitting “at home watching a DVD” and that he was “Killie Til I Die!” Heroes, eh? Dontcha just love ’em?




Also over on Facebook, another friend had posted a video of lost Talking Heads‘ classic This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody). I’ve got Arcade Fire doing that I said. What, with their quirky nature and choice of instrumentation, it’s a song that suits them perfectly. So, for you, Mr Big Stuff and any other Arcade Fire fans (and there must be a fair few, given that they’re currently (ahem, cough) burning up the charts, here’s some rare Arcade Fire.


This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) (taken from a 2004 CBC Radio 3 Studio Session)


Cold Wind (from the Six Feet Under TV series soundtrack)


No Cars Go (from the 2003 and re-released in 2005 Arcade Fire ep)




Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son (Serge Gainsbourg cover, released on one side of a joint tour 7″ single with LCD Soundsystem. Sung in French. Or is that French Canadian?)


And if you haven’t done so already, you need to try this. Arcade Fire video +  Google earth images of your address + some animated birds = pretty fantastic viewing experience. Warning – takes a wee bit to load. But it’s worth the wait.