So, what's up with sports songs?

You're actually quite right about people's sense of superiority over others, from the NME's bafflement - if not moral outrage - at why teenage girls, on the whole, don't buy indie rock, to the Wire's tendency to consider all music less avant-garde than its own choice as "stupid" or "backward". I don't like football songs, but rest assured that I don't consider myself intellectually and culturally "above" those who buy them (indeed, I've long thought Momus deeply misguided for his belief that he is "above" football fans in some way).

Cheers Tim!

I haven't seen any others. They must be dreadful.

>if sometimes it takes a bit of silly generalisation to get that ball >rolling, so be it.

I look forward to seeing any evidence of a rolling ball. Or perhaps the discussion of 'Scooby records' was it. So far, all I can remember seeing is belittling references to people 'only liking' music x 'because of y', rather than endlessly interesting cultural commentary.

And I know not all of the contributors here are one-horse guitar music obsessives, Tom, but the it's a rare contributor who doesn't count guitar-pop as a central musical interest (me included). Take a look down the topic list sometime, and see what dominates.

Other open forums are dreadful, generally, yes. Usenet offers boundless examples: see also Hissyfit and other sites' music boards. Mailing lists tend to be better: not quite sure why this should be.

I won't defend ILM against charges of being generally glib, because I like it that way, but I think occasionally some interesting ideas and back-and-forths have come out of it, and not neccessarily always about music. The Nirvana thread, your and Robin's countryside stuff, and the music taste turn-offs which I found glib AND interesting, in that it forced people to turn their prejudices about music on themselves a bit.

And my point wasn't that we're not guitar-centric but that we don't usually combine guitar-centricity with the kind of superiority and knee-jerk dismissal of other musics you seemed to detect. It strikes me that most of the disparagements are aimed at other guitar bands, indie-rockers etc. (The point of Classics Or Duds isn't praise, usually). That doesn't make them better, sure, but indie-kid self- loathing is different to indie-kid snobbery (and more entertaining, for my money).

Why do we talk about guitar music so much here? Because it's a forum, and the stuff contributors have in common gets more bandwidth on a forum than the stuff they don't.

And finally, it is interesting to speculate on why people like the musics they do. It's often wrong, but it's part of the social aspect of music and I wouldn't try to sever it from the other parts. Interesting things do come out of it - you see generalisations about football comps, it ires you, we get a few sentences out of you which we wouldn't otherwise have got. Bingo: worthwhile.

End of rant. Have a lovely fantastic day. Sports songs still suck, and their suckhood is what makes them endearing as far as any of my non-defensive friends and family have told me. When it was asked "Does anyone like these songs round here?", I expected a well reasoned response as to WHY you like them, not a rant by anyone about how "guitar centric" a bunch of admitted Daphne & Celeste* fans are.

* I am not a Daphne & Celeste fan, incidentally, I think they are vile and wicked. Give me Backstreet Boys or give me death.

Anyhow, the World Series is dead and gone, I have no interest in sports songs anymore, so if you got something to say to me about what I just said, feel free to email me.

PS NME blows great big chunks of goat cheese.

Anyway, Real Sounds' "Tornados And Dynamos" is a really brilliant football song, it being a 13 minute song about a game of football between the Tornados and the Dynamos. Cracking stuff.

- aye, esp. when tha TOON are playin':(

So there's this British guy named Johnny Wakelin, and his band is called the Kinshasa Band even though they're apparently not based in Zaire, and in 1975 he has a #21 pop hit in the States with a sort of semi-proto-rap/disco song called "Black Superman - Muhammad Ali." His only Top 100 hit in the States. But now I've been listening to a big pile of '70s K-Tel and Arcade LPs from the UK and Germany, and apparently he followed up the Ali hit with a 1976 single called "In Zaire," about Ali's Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman. Had no idea he had other hits in Europe. Another compilation has one he did called "African Man," but that's not about boxing -- more about slave ships, it seems. So now you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ2_pVq1dsM

nb: missing parenthetical (for wayne gretsky)