O'er grassy dale, and lowland scene Come see, come hear, the English scheme The lower class want brass, bad chests, scrounge fags The clever ones tend to emigrate Like your psychotic big brother who left home For jobs in Holland, Munich, Rome He's thick but he struck it rich, switch The commune crap, camp bop, middle class, flip-flop Guess that's why they end up in bands He's the creep creep in us all He's the creep creep in us all Condescends to black men Very nice to them They talk of Chile while driving through Haslingden You got sixty-hour weeks, and stone toilet back gardens Peter Cook's jokes, bad dope, check shirts, fancy groups 1 Point their fingers at America Down pokey quaint streets in Cambridge Cycle our distant spastic heritage It's a gay red, roundhead, army career, breadhead If we was smart we'd emigrate
Commentary
< Post in progress >
Footnotes
Many thanks to HenryP in the comments for spotting that “lousy groups” should be “fancy groups.” The Orange Book has “lousy groups”, but that isn’t what can be heard on record, and the doomby Annotated Fall had corrected it as long ago as 2017. But I’m using my concordance texts as the basis of entries here, and must have missed the update. ↩︎
Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
Smith, Mark E. (1985). The Fall Lyrik & Texte Von Mark E. Smith. In Deutsch & Englisch. With Drawings by Brix. Berlin: The Lough Press. [AKA The Orange Book. Available online in The Internet Archive]
Smith, Mark E. (2008). vII. The Lough Press & AMarquisManipulationProductions. [AKA the Blue Lyrics Book]
First of all, thanks for the endeavour – a great task in more than one way.
I was having a nose around my old favourites and “lousy groups” stood out to me here – always heard it as “fancy groups”. Anyhow I checked the old site on the archive and that had the same.
Not sure if you are welcoming comments yet but I guess you can moderate if not!
But given the doomby annotated fall has had it right for years, what archive were you looking at? https://thefall.org/discography/data/album03.html (i.e. based on the old Lyrics Parade)? Long superseded, those versions.
First of all, thanks for the endeavour – a great task in more than one way.
I was having a nose around my old favourites and “lousy groups” stood out to me here – always heard it as “fancy groups”. Anyhow I checked the old site on the archive and that had the same.
Not sure if you are welcoming comments yet but I guess you can moderate if not!
Comments are very welcome. Thanks for spotting that “lousy” should be “fancy”, It’s “lousy groups” in the Orange Lyrics book, but the old doomby site (https://web.archive.org/web/20240614122928/http://annotatedfall.doomby.com/pages/the-annotated-lyrics/english-scheme.html) had changed it to “fancy” (because that’s what it is on record) as long ago as 2017. I must just not have updated my version of the text.
But given the doomby annotated fall has had it right for years, what archive were you looking at? https://thefall.org/discography/data/album03.html (i.e. based on the old Lyrics Parade)? Long superseded, those versions.
Spotted a couple of other mistakes too.
Sorry, when I said archive I meant doomby on the internet archive!