Collider: Paraguay Zero

And so our journey through Collider ends where the Great Men story began: our first ever track.



CW - I’m not interested in football, so when the World Cup approached in 2006 and I realised I’d lose my friends, housemates and living room for the summer, I took action for the positive and decided that when football left me under siege in my room I would have the duration of the match to write, record and mix a track. This project, which has also spanned the 2008 Rugby World Cup and 2010 Football World Cup, is called “Widdleman VS The World Cup”. The very first one I did was “England 1 Paraguay 0”, which a couple of years later became the first song Regan and I would learn to play together.

R-Man - 1st thing ever.  Debuted in my living room to 3 people who I think were honestly expecting us to be pointless noise.  We sure showed them...

CW - For other Widdleman Vs The World Cup victories, check out our Live in London EP, or Shazam session videos, for a couple of tracks that came out of the 2010 World Cup: Spectators at an Execution (England 0 0 Algeria) and Messerschmitt (bits of Uruguay 2 3 Netherlands and Germany 0 1 Spain).

Spectators at an Execution: Year One

On June 18th 2010, my friends went to the pub to watch England play Algeria in the World Cup. I retreated to my feedback den and, in my ongoing Widdleman VS The World Cup tradition, over the course of the match I wrote, recorded and mixed this track:

England 0 0 Algeria by chris-walls

Some geeky points to note are the dual drum machines (one of them hand triggered - the out of time one!) and the feedback duet that I finished just moments before the neighbours knocked on the door...

Shortly thereafter, R-Man and I learned the song and incorporated it into the Great Men set. We dropped the initial World Cup name in favour of something a little more us (with some conceptual continuity of course - there's a present for the first person to spot it). You can hear our version on the Live in London EP and here's a video of us playing it in the Shazam live lounge on October 22nd 2010:



At some point, I'm not sure when, I started noodling about on an acoustic guitar and over time this solo acoustic version came together:

Spectators at an Acousticution by chris-walls

Since I'm not that great on acoustic, I tried playing a solo (with drum machine) version on electric as well:

Spectators at an Electricution by chris-walls

There's probably more mileage in this yet. If anyone out there fancies trying their own version we'd love to hear it and add it to the catalogue!

The Shape of World Cups to Come

Anelka - Mardy French

Bloke and R-Man Hair Hero

C-Bomb has Transmogrified into Piddleman and is now locked Renton style in a warm dark space with only tins of soup, paper pornography and suppositories to sustain his new musical express train –We wait expectant.

Pretty accurate - though Regan forgot to mention the 6 foot stack of amps and pile of drum machines. - CBomb.

R-Man however is enjoying the sunshine, beer gardens and the world cup. England’s performances have been um, well, pretty nasty. So nasty the Bishop of Croydon has been (divinely?) compelled to write a new prayer for the team. It consists of 2 only words…"OH GOD".

Sympathy does not abound for the serial adulterer/rapist/millionaires and nor should it. Love the game – just wish the players were the genuine heroes the soft drink adverts claim.

The early games seemed to re-inforce national stereotypes – Germany were the model of efficiency, Italy were noisy and demonstrative but got little done and France were well a bit mardy. BUT WAIT! Missed Teutonic penalty? Sombre functional Brazilians? Looks like the pundits will have to find some new verbal dexterity rather than falling on hackneyed phrases.

Thankfully the Aussies have kept to form and proven to somehow be even worse losers than they are winners. Any Australian sporting team is perhaps the only one (s?) that I hope draw every game. Miserable & Taciturn in defeat can be quickly followed by Crowing, Boastful Swagger in victory. Not cool – but they probably used the whole country’s cool quota on Nick Cave (with a bit left over for Confide in Me era Kylie).

Musically this has been a varied and enjoyable world cup – All the countries theme tunes are a bit camp and jolly apart from the genuinely pretty Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika perhaps the best fusion of the disparate cultures in South Africa – well apart from Bunny Chow that is. I’m most interested in the Vevuloza which are roundly hated but sound to me like the sort of noise that Kevin Shields has in his head and been spending the last 25 years trying to get out. Just think how different the world would be if his divine grace Ornette Coleman had bought one instead of a plastic saxophone…

Widdleman VS The World Cup

Here's 2 things you may or may not know about me:

1) I'm not interested in football.
2) I am a superhero. (You guys will keep my identity secret right?)

Every once in a while, the world of sports conspires against me and takes all my friends away for a month. Instead of wandering the streets lonely and confused, in the 2006 World Cup I decided to use the time taken up by each game (or "match" as they say) to write and record a new song. I've reuploaded my efforts from that World Cup, as well as one from the rugby one in 2008 onto my Myspace page (yep, I'm only decades behind the rest of the world). Have a listen. Great Men fans will recognise Paraguay Zero in my original recording.

This summer I intend to do the same thing, so I've just been sorting out my "World Cup Studio". It's tricky to say what will happen until it happens but look out for some gnarly riffs, slap bass, and maybe even some stadium trumpet. (Yeah I play trumpet through a distortion pedal and a 6 foot high guitar stack, deal with it). I'll be sure and keep y'all updated with my progress.

PS - If anyone out there shares my sentiment and would like to offer themselves up as a special guest star, give me a holler!

COME ON FOOTBALL, KICK A GOAL INTO THE NET!

ifwhitemiddleenglandtoldthetruth

One of the benefits of being the (slightly) older member of Great Men is the appreciation of keeping life simple and truthful. Truth is important – it is also beautiful. People are not. 2 examples of this have piqued my interest this week, both come from the 2nd best selling national newspaper.

Check your mum’s coffee table – it’s probably there – burn it.

C-Bomb will be using the impending World Cup to lock himself away and create the next batch of super human, super sonic riffs. Being a Real Man as well as a Great One I’ll be watching – but far from the sunburned, bulldog tattooed En-ger-land idiots. Patriotism is indeed the egg from which wars are hatched and enjoyed by the kind of people who lapped up the recent story about the “banning” of England football shirts. My favourite example comes from THAT paper:

Heady stuff and provoked suitably angry responses from the enraged masses on the comments page. There is only one problem with the story – best described by Paul de Santis, the bus company’s commercial director: "As time has gone we have reached the conclusion that the incident did not happen”.

No driver on that route matched the “dodgy-foreigner” description given and no other witness recalled the incident. It just didn’t happen. Apart from the possibility of a pitchfork wielding mob scouring the streets of Staffordshire this story seems a little harmless.

Sadly the same isn’t true of another story from that paper. I’ll not dwell on the papers contemptible decision to abuse the suffering and illness of a dying mother for its own political motives. The TRUTH of the matter is that again the paper completely invented the facts around this story.

Rather than the 15 rejections of cancer treatments in the past 18 months that were reported – the agency responsible for appraising new drugs for the NHS actually approved 10 of those 15 and is still considering another. Either the journalist and Editor were criminally stupid or they just plain lied. I have my suspicions which of those statements are correct.

Even successful battles against cancer are terrifying and painful experiences for sufferers and their families. To brazenly lie about cancer treatments to create more fear in order sell a few more copies of your newspaper is shameful.

Check your Mum’s coffee table – it’s probably there – burn it.