And, lest anyone doubt the transformative power of music, what happened over the next few weeks was remarkable. English soccer was at a very low ebb in 1990, and not just for the usual reasons – drunken knuckle-dragging Calibans baying in the stands as the cascading urine from those above them trickles down and rots their shoe leather, etc. Two decades back, footie was not just yobbish but homicidal:
In the preceding five years, 39 Juventus fans had died in Brussels when a wall failed to withstand a charge by Liverpool supporters, 56 spectators were killed at Bradford City after a cigarette butt set fire to decades’ worth of piled-up trash under the stands, and another 96 met their end at Hillsborough in the new secure cages in which the crowd-control experts had decided to contain them. Even the bloodiest opera doesn’t come anywhere near that scale of carnage. What did such a world have in common with Pavarotti or Puccini? Before the 1990 World Cup, you wouldn’t have given much for Luciano’s chances if he’d run into a rampaging Millwall mob and by way of fraternal greeting said, “Relax, lads, I’m an operatic tenor.”
I couldn’t believe it, but I accidentally watched Eurotrip when it was playing in the background on Spike — and it isn’t horrible. Also? Matt Damon:
