Sunderland music: from cops and pop to the classics

saffron


Anything to fill in time on a football-free Saturday (meaningful football, that is). Colin Randall recalls a few of the musical pieces familiar to fans of Sunderland going back to the 1960s …

Samantha Marie Sprackling is the real name, Saffron the one she’s better known by. It probably won’t offend her to know Salut! Sunderland finds her pleasing on the eye and the ear.

As lead singer of Republica, her little belter, Ready To Go, was the perfect foil to Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance Of The Knights from Romeo And Juliet, classical changing abruptly to rousing rock as the teams emerged from the tunnel at the Stadium of Light and reached the pitch. Unless I am mistaken, the band performed it on the pitch once during the pre-match warm-up.

A lot of older fans regret the obsession with noisy entertainment as a substitute for atmosphere built by the fans as kickoff approaches.

But there has always been some music in the distressingly long period of time that I have been supporting Sunderland.

In my earliest days at Roker Park, the teams ran out to the theme from Z Cars. I was never quite sure what a television police series based in East Lancashire had to do with us, and was aware that Everton – with more geographical justification – played the same music at Goodison.

On the Fulwell end, the fans roared along in time, and broadly in tune, with the Monkees’ I’m a Believer. It would be an exaggeration to say I was ever a Monkees fan, but the Fulwell augmentation of the chorus was an impressive sound.

Later, much later, our supporters adopted Queen’s We Will Rock You, and it was heard with great volume and passion at various points before and during the 1992 Cup Final against Liverpool, underlining our fans’ massive superiority in the stands. Pity the Lads couldn’t match that on the field.

What else? Well, there are obvious ones – Wise Men Say and the rest of the medley, which always makes the congestion on leaving the East Stand seem more bearable when we’ve won – and the good, bad and ugly tracks on that Mackem Music CD.

But I’m bound to have missed plenty out. Anyone care to fill in the gaps?

6 thoughts on “Sunderland music: from cops and pop to the classics”

  1. how about Wimbledon, in their Selhurst Park days? They’d play that awful ice-hockey music when they won a corner, just to make you like them even less.

  2. We really need an obese Opera singer to come out, fart into a microphone, insult the away supporters then tell a couple of gags that would make Bernard Manning blush. Just like what they do up the road infact!!

  3. The presentation at The Stadium, music wise is good, and I was very pleased when they dropped the I Feel Good track after we had scored. Unneccessary.
    Wolves wre terrible for pre match music, with “Heigh Ho Silver Lining” and the crowd joining in. It makes me squirm, and if I hear Tom Hark once more, I will scream. And as for Local Hero……; great film, great music, but wasted on that lot.
    Dumbarton have the best one; in homage to the wonderful David Byrne ,who was born there, I saw them run out to Talking Heads “We’re On The Road To Nowhere”. Sums up Scottish Division 3 perfectly!

  4. You weren’t a Monkees fan? What a prevarication! You never used to miss them on TV. I remember you rushing home to see them and arguing with Alan Sims over who was your favourite. He was a Mike Nesmith disciple while you, as I recall, were torn between Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz, because you liked him when he was “Circus Boy.”

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