Commentary

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Interviewing Mark E. Smith for New Musical Express, Roger Morton couldn’t understand why Smith was bothering to complain about the then-current crop of “Madchester” bands, noting that “you wouldn’t expect Mark Smith to be jumping for joy at the proliferation of post-Roses and Mondays pop, but this does sound a bit like Mr Niggley blowing his top.”:

So can we assume “Idiot Joy Showland” is an attack on bands like The Stone Roses or Happy Mondays?

“Yeah. It’s like a routine. It’s like a cycle you see every two or three years. I don’t think those bands are bad, it’s just it seems to get worse. It’s like people are happy now to see any f-ker who plays a guitar. It’s also about the area, Manchester, the whole thing around the bands and the mentality it produces.

“Once you get something like that you get hundreds of other bands trying to be like it, who are pinching off other bands who are pinching off others. You just end up with a really diluted situation, which is really typical of British Industry, where you finally put yourself out of business, ‘cos you’re not producing anything.

“The whole thing there is just like easy buzz. It’s easy buzz… Aerobatics on stage, dancing, throwing your body about. Which is good, but it’s not good. It’s stimulus. It’s BSB… It’s Sky as music.”

Erm, you mean you object to…

“People think it’s a clever combination of dance and rock. I don’t think it particularly is.”

So it is much more than a minor objection to the way the music has gone?

“Yeah, well that’s what I’m saying. I think that’s a lot of why people resent musicians. There’s going to be a big backlash against music, I’m positive of it.”

Are you sure it isn’t just your age showing?

“Me age? No it’s not me age. No, ‘cos all these groups pinch tunes off us anyway. They’re always in the front line of our bloody gigs.”

Are you sure that you’re not just jealous?

“MAAHAHAHAHAHA!… HA! It’s very good that. Very good. I knew people were going to say that about ‘Idiot Joy Showland’. Are you saying to me I can’t write an objective observation of a scene I am in the corner of, and can join any time I want? I mean that’s ridiculous. I’m trying to observe it.”

It just seems strange that you should be motivated to write a song about it, and it is unusually explicit for you.

“Well it’s good to do parody. I mean that was a really heavy rock song. I mean we had the clicked skip drums, and we had the old nyaaaaar nyaaar naaa… We had the whole caboodle in there. It’s not just the lyrics. I think it’s pretty funny, actually.”

I still find it odd that you should be so concerned about it all.

“Well you can’t help it in Manchester. You get it shoved down your bloody throat. You do. It’s nowhere down here. Up there it’s 24 hours a day. The TV… Even the local news programme… blaaah raaaar raaaaar raaaaaaar…”

Simon: “And you get Piccadilly Radio throwing it down your throat.”

Mark: “The best station in Manchester is Sunset. They play reggae, really bad toasting, and daft groups.”

IN THE background, the hotel piped music plays ‘Pomp And Circumstance’ military marches. Mark Smith orders strong tea and more cigarettes from the waitress, luv, and curls his lip into his habitual sneer. His insectoid eyes sink into black folds of skin. It is time for the obligatory searching analysis of the man’s political stance.

Looking at it one way, Smith is pretty much a John Major kind of guy. Smart dresser, self-made man, opposed to a class-ridden society. Shaves regularly. So the question that has to be asked is, does he steal the towels when he’s staying at The Hilton?

Mark: “I wouldn’t steal the towels from here… They stink. Or they did last time I was here.

You’ve been on about ‘the working class’ again. ‘Idiot Joy Showland’ talks about how the working class have been “shafted”.

“Yeah well, they’ve been shafted up their arse by f-ing stupid videos, and cheap pop videos as TV. And films are on late.”

What?

“Good films are on at four in the morning, after The Hit Man And Her. So being the working class, being brought up not like they are in America, but to watch TV as a form of culture almost, they take it.”

Source: Morton, 1991, pp.18-19.

Footnotes

1. “Blow” is slang for either cocaine or cannabis/marijuana. It was once the case that the former was American usage and the latter more commonly UK usage, but as far as I can tell from my middle-aged armchair, the American usage now predominates. However, I tend to think Mark E. Smith probably has weed in mind: see the entry for “Like to Blow“, which documents MES introducing that song with the words, “The next one’s about the old marijuana…”. On the other hand, that was in 1978 and whose to say that MES’s usage stayed the same? ↩︎
2. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “kecks” as slang or dialect for “Trousers, knicker, or underpants.” I think most British people would think of it as specifically northern English slang. The reference here is to the baggy/flared jeans associated with the “Madchester” music scene. In particular the “Joe Bloggs” brand of such trouser-wear was adopted by bands such as Happy Mondays and the Inspiral Carpets and many of their fans (see Bamford, 2024). The groups have no “shape or form” and nor does their clothing. ↩︎
3. On the original doomby Annotated Fall, bzfgt offered the following unimprovable note on this line: “This would perhaps be a stronger lyric if worms actually ran in packs.” ↩︎
4. If I’ve understood this somewhat obscure couple of lines correctly, the people MES is having a pop at in this lyric probably wore mainly nylon clothing, to the extent that even their metaphorical brain-foliage is nylon. In what world even metaphorical leaves would fall from the inside of a skull is another question I’m not in a position to even attempt to answer. ↩︎
5. A jumpsuit is a one-piece item of clothing incorporating both trousers and sleeved top (like overalls, boiler suits or dungarees, but considered to be more fashionable). ↩︎
6. Freddie and the Dreamers were a beat group formed in Manchester in 1962. They are often regarded as essentially a novelty band because of the silly dancing and jumping about of lead singer Freddie Garrity (1936-2006). They enjoyed singles chart success between 1963 and 1965 but limped on in various incarnations until 2000. Their four top ten hits in the UK singles charts were “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody” (peak position #3, 1963), “I’m Telling You Now” (peak position #2, 1963), “You Were Made For Me” (peak position #3, 1963), and “I Understand” (peak position #5, 1964).
   
   Mark E. Smith told Daniel Dylan Wray: “There’s something about Manchester musicians that’s particularly fucking irritating. They have this sort of God-given right, which Londoners used to have I suppose. They think they’re superior, but they’re not. Manchester’s only got Freddie and the Dreamers.” ↩︎
7. Disney’s theme park in Anaheim, California, was opened on 17 July 1955. It was the first of the Walt Disney theme parks, and the only one to be completed while Walt Disney himself was still alive (he died in 1966). ↩︎
8. Funland is an indoor amusement arcade located on the Promenade at the seaside resort of Blackpool, Lancashire, UK [Google Street View]. Distinct from the perhaps better known Pleasure Beach resort, Funland is part of the Golden Mile (referring to the stretch of the Promenade between the North Pier and the South Pier) entertainment complex, first opened in 1968. Funland was originally operated by arcade entrepreneur Barry Noble on a different part of the site. ↩︎
9. The reference here is specifically to the land – sometimes a very narrow strip – between the English and German trenches on the battlefields known to the English as Flanders Fields in Belgium during World War I (see Wikipedia). ↩︎
10. “This place” being Manchester. Note that Manchester is not explicitly named in the song. ↩︎
11. A “microcosm” (literally, “little world”) is a smaller set that epitomises a larger set (for example, a village that typifies a country in miniature). It’s unclear exactly what the lyric is getting at here. ↩︎
12. Laudanum is a “tincture of opium”: a medical preparation of mainly opium dissolved in alcohol. In the context of the song it seems to carry the sense of “opium of the people” (echoing, therefore, the earlier line, “The working class has been shafted”). The lyric is probably referring to an incident during the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy, when English footballer Paul Gascoigne (“Gazza”) started crying after receiving a yellow card for a bad tackle during England’s semi-final match against West Germany on 4 July. Had England beaten Germany and gone on to the final, Gascoigne would not have been allowed to play because of this disciplinary offence. But England lost (4-3 on penalties), so it was moot. See Burnton (2018). ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Idiot Joy Showland” [Archived]
• Burnton, Simon (2018). “World Cup stunning moments: Gazza cries as England lose at Italia 90.” The Guardian, 22 May. [Online]
• Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
• Bamford, Thom (2024). “The rise and fall of an iconic Manchester streetwear brand”. ilovemanchester.com, last updated 9 May. [Online]
• Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
• Morton, Roger (1991). “Time and a Half Gentlemen, Please”. New Musical Express, 20 April, pp.18-19. [Text and page images available via The Fall Online Bibliography]
• Official Charts: Freddie and the Dreamers
• Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
• Smith, Mark E. (2008). vII. The Lough Press & AMarquisManipulationProductions. [AKA the Blue Lyrics Book]
• Smith Start, Brix (2016). The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise. London: Faber & Faber. [Text available online in archive.org]
• The Track Record: “Idiot Joy Showland”
• Wikipedia: Disneyland
• Wikipedia: Flanders Fields
• Wikipedia: Freddie and the Dreamers
• Wikipedia: No man’s land
• Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).
• Wray, Daniel Dylan (2015). “‘I Don’t Like Northern People, I Don’t Like Mancunians’ – Mark E. Smith’s Guide to Britain”. Vice, 1 June. “Translated from Noisey UK” [Online].