Cool drumming
Musicians recruit steel band, backing singers...and resident who plays the saucepan...for Trinidad & Tobago's World Cup song (Leeds Today)
EXCLUSIVE
by Richard Edwards
THE FOOTBALL World Cup song is a tradition loved and loathed in equal measure.
For every classic like New Order's World in Motion, there have been disasters like Del Amitri's Don't Come Home Too Soon, which helped Scotland to an inevitable first-round exit in 1998.
National football associations usually get the squad to do the honours, or choose to wheel out one of their country's favourite musical stars.
But England's group B rivals Trinidad & Tobago have gone down a different route - by choosing two Leeds musicians to sing the song they hope will propel them to glory in Germany.
Paul Jepson and Choque Hosein, who live a few doors away from each other in Farsley, reinvented themselves as the TNT Socaboys to pen Soca Warriors.
Along the way they recruited Harehills resident Dudley Nesbitt, who plays a saucepan, three backing singers from Chapeltown, and, for the B-side, a steel band from Leeds West Indian Centre.
Paul, an ex-member of early 1980s indie-pop band The Neats, plays guitar on the record, while Choque, whose former band Black Star Liner got a Mercury Music Prize nomination in 1999, produced it.
The unlikely arrangement came about through Paul's longstanding love of football, as he runs Leeds's Work-inc.com Sunday league.
Keen to qualify for the 1998 World Cup, the Trinidadian FA sent its players to a gruelling 1996 training camp in Leeds, and asked Paul to help out.
He ended up as manager for one game - a 2-2 draw with Scotland's East Fife - and says he has kept an eye on the team's results ever since.
Spotting there were no plans for a Trinidadian World Cup song, Paul, 49, and Choque, 45, contacted the country's FA to ask if it would like the two musicians to write one.
The answer didn't come back quickly.
"There is such a thing as Trinidadian time, things don't move quickly there, and it took a lot of chasing down. But eventually they got back to us and gave us their official backing," Paul explained.
Choque, whose father is Trinidadian, said: "Everyone in Trinidad is jumping up and down about the World Cup but no one had thought about doing a record. It took us about two-and-a-half minutes to write, then five weeks in Trinidad to record it. We mixed it in my studio at home."
The Yorkshire Evening Post has had a sneak preview of the song, due to be released in Britain on May 1.
It is a classic, 1970s-style good time football anthem that sticks firmly in the brain after just one listen.
Choque said: "Soca is a Trinidadian style of music that has been developing over the last 10 years. It has been influenced by radio from Miami, Brazil, Venezuela as well as reggae.
"We wanted to do a classic football song and the best ones are from the '70s."
The musicians, both Leeds United season ticket holders, will be in Germany to watch their adopted team play.
Choque admitted he will feel torn if England need a win when they meet Trinidad & Tobago on June 15.
"Obviously we want England in the final but we are supporting Trinidad & Tobago as well. Just the fact they are there is amazing, we hope they get as far as they can."
richard.edwards@ypn.co.uk
20 March 2006
