Tunes and words
The Euro 2016 football (soccer) tournament kicked off in Paris today.
A sadly lost tradition is the national tournament song. It was an opportunity for 20 or more accomplished footballers to sing a specially written song of inspiration. They are marked down in history as some of the least musical offerings to grace the charts, and an eternal testament to the hubris that preceded being dumped out of the tournament within a week of arriving.
Sean Watkins, a friend at school, had the coolest dad. He played the trumpet for a living. He couldn’t play in the dads vs sons cricket match in case he was hit in the face by the ball. He played on ABC’s classic 1982 album “The Lexicon of Love”, which we loved, and Five Star’s 1985 album “Silk and Steel”. Five Star were Romford’s short-lived answer to the Jackson family. As I say, he was the coolest dad.
Hands down the most thrilling record to take home and play for the first time was Two Tribes. The video portrayed a wrestling match between Ronald Reagan and Konstantin Chernenko to settle Cold War differences.