Aaron's Suprise Visit and the Kop Makes Floyd "Fearless"

Today is my 30th Birthday. Outside of this being an excuse for donuts to be served at work, I really didn't think it was that big of a deal. That is, until about 9:15 this morning when my longtime friend Aaron showed up unexpectedly at my office. Now that is something to celebrate. Aaron lives in College Station, TX and apparently I am the only person in the state of Colorado that didn't know he was coming into town for my birthday. On top of that, I get to see a bunch of the Shermans and my sister and brother-in-law - all very cool people.

The real point of this post is that I was finally able to re-listen to a Pink Floyd song that Aaron had been trying to get me to hear for quite some time. I've heard the song many times (I used to have in the neighborhood of 15 Floyd albums before my entire collection of music was stolen), but it had been years since I really listened to this particular track. It is called "Fearless" and it's from one of the bands earlier, more psychedelic efforts, "Meddle." Through the magic of YouTube and Wikipedia, I was able gather the materials necessary to share with all half-dozen of you readers how cool "Fearless" is.

The title is apparently football slang for "awesome" - at least during the early 70's when the album was recorded. I know that Kacie is thinking, "crap, I thought this wasn't going to be another soccer post," but please humor me...it's my birthday. Also, at the beginning and again at the end of the song, there are haunting football chants (including "You'll Never Walk Alone") that are courtesy of the Kop, Liverpool FC's most fervent supporters.

The real curiosity is how did nice, Cambridge art school boys get sucked into the dirty scouse world of Liverpool football? Such is the power of the Reds of Anfield!

YouTube was kind enough to supply audio of the original version of the song. It's a 6 minute track but if you want to hear the chants they are about 20 seconds into the song and again for the last minute and a half. To aid in your enjoyment of the latter (the accent makes comprehension tough), I will tell you that they are singing the anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone" followed by staccato shouts of "LIVERPOOL".