Today the European Football Championship enters its second matchday and it will become clear what Germany's 5-1 win against Scotland was really worth. Hungary has been a difficult opponent to play against recently, wins: none. It will be exciting.The weather is still not very summery, but every now and then summer shows what it can do.
Overall, there have been a surprising number of good games so far, Turkey's game against Georgia yesterday, which was in danger of not taking place due to the masses of water coming from the sky, was such a surprise hit. Endless chances on both sides, spectacular goals. I didn't expect that.
Today calls for another Barmy Army highlight with the album “The English Disease”. In addition to the well-known On-U Sound team, spectacular substitution players were also involved, such as Woodentop's man Rolo McGinty, David Harrow & Ministry's Al Jourgensen. An album full of voice samples, football choirs and the classic ON-U sound. My favorites on the album are “Sharp as a Needle”, the acidic “Devo” & the gorgeous “England 2 Yugoslavia 0”. A result that would make me very happy today: Germany 2 Hungary 0.
„"Nowadays everything happens at once and our souls are conveniently electronic"
- John Cage -
For music fans coming fresh to the Barmy Army's "English Disease" the appeal would obviously be the set of tough rhythms with their origins in reggae and funk. Perhaps the substance of the "lyrics" and the many references to the contemporary football issues of the late eighties may bypass those who do not also hold an abiding interest in the beautiful game (was it that non-heroic goalkeeper, Albert Camus, who first dubbed football thus?) Either way, what we have here is yet another edition in what can now be recognised as an ongoing series of On-U Sound unofficial documentaries. Previous subjects have included mental health, conspiracy theory, the global hegemony of multinational corporations, B.S.E., the use and abuse of technology, the perverse nature of organised religion. But, of course, football is more important than all of these.
The release of the vinyl version of The English Disease" in October 1989 was prefaced,
as On-U's premier football venture, by Tack>>Head's The Game" in early 1987. Featuring the voice of ITV football commentator Brian Moore, the original cut also included the sampled voices of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in a "political mix", these had to be replaced by a sanitised version with a professional impressionist replacing the reluctant Ron and Maggie! Etched on the 12" copy of the Fourth & Broadway single was the legend - Where's the Barmy West Ham Army?". West Ham United are supported by, amongst a few thousand others, Adrian Sherwood. The Barmy Army was the militant faction of the East End team's supporters who, on the odd occasion, tended to be rather over-enthusiastic in their chosen form of encouragement in support of the boys.
The Barmy Army then, surfaced in a more acceptable sonic form in January of the following year with a 12" on On-U Sound, perversely, but generously as befits the average West Ham fan, paying tribute to Liverpool's Scottish striker Kenny Dalgleish. Also contained on "The English Disease" set,
"Sharp as a needle" utilises a sample of the traditionell Wembley anthem "Abide with me" - as well as "You'll never walk alone“ from the original Anfield Kop. The rhythm was first slated for use by Mark Stewart and the Maffia before its appropriation by the army that was barmy. However
another of the album's rhythms was actually used by Mark Stewart when "Devo" surfaced as These things happen" on the artist's Mute album "Metatron". On "Sharp as a needle Adrian Sherwood employed Rolo, then of the Woodentops, to play bass guitar. And a bizarre factoid for this uniquely English product - the man on the keyboards was Ministry's Al Jourgensen, fresh from his Sherwood- „Twitch“ Album.
It should be recorded that prior to the release of "The English Disease" there was little likelihood of coming across any examples of football tunes which would not be enjoyed by your grandmother, at least this was certainly true in England where popular music with a football theme had been strictly confined to the Hip hip hooray we're on our way to Wember-lee" variety. In Europe, where there seemed to be a preponderance of Bavarian oompah bands and rubber castanets, it was even worse. I can recall that in attempting to produce a football themed radio programme at the time the best examples came, unsurprisingly, from Brazil, Jamaica and the countries of the African continent. So The English Disease rather than breaking a mould created one. Recorded at a time of social paranoia when the Thatcher years were drawing to a close, football was under unprecedented scrutiny. Identity cards, the destruction of the traditional terrace, hooliganism ("the English disease"), policing standards, a return to family values - the game was becoming, to coin a
phrase, a political football! Sherwood resisted the obvious temptation of an easy shot by turning out a strictly Hammers polemic but focused instead on producing a passionately political sonic documentary where supporters from across the football spectrum joined together in a joytul celebration of the game whilst levelling a number of incisive jibes against the game's establishment, both at club and organisational levels. As the cool academic Steve Redhead observed in his treatise on post-political popular music, The End-Of-The-Century-Party":
*Instead of trying to represent a locality, region or sub-culture, Sherwood's mix ..... captured a blend of passion, pride, regionalism and nationalism by deconstructing, and then reconstructing, the various diverse elements. Not representation so much as presenting the unpresentable".
On listening back to "The English Disease" the radio and TV samples together with the terrace chants almost, in fact do, take on an anthropological slant. There is little, if any difference in the use of such source material as compared to the ethnic and tribal material to be found on the albums of African Head Charge. Or is the only difference, in the terminology of Marshall McLuhan, that football is "hot whereas pure dance is "cool"?
On an On-U archive note, the fabulously mutant-subbuteo artwork of this On-U Sound release departed from the norm in that it was the responsibility of one Steve Hardstaff. Steve is perhaps better known by his pseudonym, Jah Cuzzi, which appears as a credit on many of the albums coming out from the smaller Merseyside labels, especially Probe Plus. He was also the man with pen and brush duties for the legendary "Bugs on the Wire" - a compilation set which contained the original of Dub Syndicate's "Ravi Shankar Pt.1" radio remix, in addition to BimSherman's long-lost tune "Need to Live".
-Steve Barker from the Album Notes-
https://www.discogs.com/release/474244-Barmy-Army-The-English-Disease
