Richard I
Sorry, you'll have to elucidate - was vaccinated against football at a very early age.
I have no problem conceding that these songs have a place in ritual, but I believe our traditional songs were deliberately made and re-made as a deliberately creative part of community life; they are not just repetitions of what went before, but wherever they land, they become part of the expression of those communities, taking on the vernacular and identities, and often theexperiences of the people who sang and listened to them.
We were recording song we believe to have orignated in, say, Scotland, from Irish Travellers who insisted that they were not just Irish, but Traveller songs. For instance, the song 'Mary on the Banks of the Lee'; we were seriously told that it was made by a Traveller whose wife died in a workhouse fire - it wasn't, but it was an indication that the song had taken root.
If someone were to take Y N W A and adapt it , say, You Never Wore Cologne, the parody would have some claim to have moved away from its beginnings, the re-maker would have put his/her own stamp on it. If then it was taken up by the terraces it could be said to have passed into some sort of a tradition.
This, as far as I know, has not happened with the song as it stands. It remains as fixed as Land of Hope and Glory as sung at The Last Night of the Proms (sorry Mike you're going to have to explain the difference between a crowd turning up for a night's entertainment at The Albert Hall, (or on holiday in Spain, or on a stag/hen night in Blackpool) and one at Anfield enjoying watching Liverpool being beaten again - what makes football so special?))
I mentioned 'Ballads of the Banner' earlier - a fascinating anthology of 172 sporting songs, some dating back to the 1800's, right up to the 1990s, when the book was published; all made about famous sporting people, matches, teams.... Even if they were never taken up generally, they have more claim to represent the communities they arose from than does a song from a Broadway Musical.
There are plenty of sporting songs in the tradition to compare them with - surely the difference is obvious?
Jim Carroll