Snooker Loopy – The Matchroom Mob With Chas & Dave (1986)

Description

Additional information about this, The Matchroom Mob vinyl art.

The Matchroom Mob with Chas & Dave – The Artist

The Matchroom Mob are snooker players Steve Davis, Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, Terry Griffiths and Tony Meo, who sang as backing vocalists to Chas & Dave.

Chas & Dave (often billed as Chas ‘n’ Dave) were an English pop rock duo, formed in London by Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock. They were most notable as creators and performers of a musical style labelled rockney (a portmanteau of rock and cockney), which mixes “pub singalong, music-hall humour, boogie-woogie piano and pre-Beatles rock ‘n’ roll”. For a time, Rockney was also the name of their record label.

Snooker Loopy – The Song

Snooker Loopy is a humorous song which was released as a single in 1986 and entered the UK Singles Chart, reaching #6. It was written and performed by Chas & Dave and featured snooker players Steve Davis, Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, Terry Griffiths and Tony Meo, as backing vocalists under the name ‘The Matchroom Mob’ – Matchroom Sport being the company owned by promoter Barry Hearn which employed all these snooker professionals at the time. The lyrics are a mild satire on the style and antics of the players involved: “old Willie Thorne; his hair’s all gawn” for example. The verse on Steve Davis also makes light of the 1985 World Snooker Championship final and his missed black in the final frame, and notes that his manager is not concerned who should win the upcoming 1986 Championship “because he’s got the rest of us signed up!”. Ironically, while all the top players of the day were featured on the recording, the 1986 Championship was eventually won by rank outsider Joe Johnson who was neither involved nor mentioned in the lyrics.

A Rack – The Shape

A rack (sometimes called a triangle) is a piece of equipment that is used to place snooker balls in their starting positions at the beginning of a game. Rack may also be used as a verb to describe the act of setting billiard balls in their starting positions (e.g. “to rack the balls”), or as a noun to describe a set of balls that are in their starting positions (e.g. “a rack of balls”, more often called a pack or a pyramid in British English). Traditional racks are in the form of triangular frames, usually made from wood, plastic or metal.  The most common shape of a rack is that of an equilateral triangle. Triangular racks are used for eight-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, bank pool, snooker and many other games.

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