The story of FC Sankt Pauli, the football club from Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, that has managed to retain its distinct identity in a football era of excess.
February, 1976. Bang in the middle of a glorious era of Pink Floyd’s Echoes and Dark Side of the Moon, and Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti, a band from Queens, New York, released an album that took the world by storm. Abstract, endless layers of instrumentation and lengthy tracks – stretching the limits of the vinyl – had become commonplace on rock ‘n roll records. When The Ramones came to the party, listeners across the world had never heard something like this before. Their songs were short, played at a high-tempo with minimal orchestration, and carried very strong personal, social or political messages through their lyrics. The band and the album, also called The Ramones, are credited with the birth of punk rock.
If you dig deep enough, every form of music will give you a backstory and legacy. Jazz and blues originated from African-American slaving away at cotton plantations in the 19th century, and funk came from bars where people wanted to dance to live music. But in definition, most genres of music are largely characterised by a distinct phonetic structure, rarely depending on the musicians, venue or any socio-political context setup by the lyrics. Punk is probably the only genre of music in the world that comes with an ideology of its own, almost bordering on a cult. Although it most definitely has a characteristic sonic graph, just the music doesn’t make a punk artist. The lyrics have to project a certain message and the artists should commit themselves to the core ethos of what embodies Punk.
Like most of popular Rock ‘n Roll produced in the 1960s and 70s, modern football is currently in an era of excesses. It is now a full-blown industry where the giants of European football are like kingpins rivalled only by each other. In a race to spread their brand image farthest, clubs leave no stone unturned and no territory uncharted. Manchester United have ex-players flying out to Soweto, FC Barcelona and Paris Saint Germain have opened soccer schools and coaching centres in Tokyo, while Jamie Carragher inaugurated a Liverpool academy, gave a press conference and packed home a kilo of Shrewsbury biscuits all in one afternoon in Pune.