Track of the Week - 3 July 2016
I've been a football fan for as long as I can remember (a long time), so I've been getting together with my friends to watch England play in major championships for a long time.
That's meant going through emotions like joy at a last minute winner (see David Platt v Belgium in 1990), anger (I'm looking at you Diego Maradona) and disappointment (many penalty shoot-out defeats).
There was a new one this week - bewilderment. England's defeat to Iceland in the second round of Euro 2016 was like watching a practical joke being played out in front of our eyes. A quite extraordinary level of incompetence was displayed by England players and coaches alike.
To mark this low point in England's international football history* here's Iceland from The Fall's toweringly magnificent 1982 album Hex Enduction Hour. This track was one of three recorded in Reykjavik. The group came up with a tune, vocalist Mark E. Smith had some words written but before recording neither knew what the other had planned.
The lyrics reference both Smith's experiences in and views of the country. Lines like 'witness the last of the God-men' and 'a Memorex for the krakens' are believed to be a view that Iceland is moving from its dark past of myths and legends and into the modern world. Cleverer people than me have written about this.
A more appropriate line is 'to be humbled in Iceland', which we can adjust slightly this week to 'be humbled by Iceland'.
*Some people are calling this the worst England game ever. They have short memories. England v Algeria in the 2010 World Cup is one of the most crushingly boring things I've ever seen.
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