Commentary

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“Gramme Friday” is mentioned in the last line of the lyrics of the preceding song on Grotesque, “W.M.C.-Blob 59“.

Footnotes

1. After years of fruitlessly but nonetheless obsessively trying to link this line to the Fastnet yacht race [see Wikipedia], and in particular the 1979 tragedy [see Wikipedia], I hereby concede that it was “fast debts” on record here all along. Live it sounds like “fast net” though. ↩︎
2. So really this should be “fast debts” as well. It just doesn’t sound like it. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Gramme Friday” [Archived]
• 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]
• Smith Start, Brix (2016). The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise. London: Faber & Faber. [Text available online in archive.org]
• The Track Record: “Gramme Friday”
• Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).