Monday's Long Song

The Paris Olympics has been a joy from start to finish. The opening ceremony was a surreal delight, the rain lashed streets and river Seine, Olympic athletes on boats headed by the refugee team, and a party on a bridge with a man dressed as Dionysus accompanied by drag queens which upset all the right people. 

Highlights for me included: the cycling road race through the streets of Paris, crowds packed into the streets of Montmartre and winner Remco Evenepoel stopping on the finish line, a minute ahead of the chasers, dismounting and celebrating framed by the Eiffel Tower; the speed climbing with competitors racing up climbing walls to hit the button at the top in under seven seconds; the appearance of a fifty one year old, Andy McDonald, in the skateboarding; the men's hundred metres final where all eight runners crossed the line within a second of each other; Pidcock's gold in the mountain biking; the madness and excitement of the track cycling at the velodrome, and Emma Finucane's trio of medals; the breakdancing; Snoop Dogg; and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to find joy in Simone Biles and the gymnastics. 

When the games were held in London on 2012 we sat down to watch the opening ceremony and I joked that the organisers should play Olympians by Fuck Buttons, a ten minute collision of noise, frenetic rhythms and ecstatic melody produced by Andrew Weatherall (a production job he likened to hod- carrying, so physical was the noise the three of them created on what became the album Tarot Sport). Later on that evening, the sound of Olympians boomed out of the speakers at the stadium along with among other tracks Underworld's Rez. Well played Danny Boyle. 

Olympians