"Yeah, it's like, its a bit sort of reedy, John, somehow, it's weedy sort of..."
It's hard to live in the country In the present state of things Your body gets pulled right back You get a terrible urge to drink
At three a.m. the stick people recede The locals get up your nose And leather soles stick on cobblestones
It's hard to live in the country It has a delicate ring Nymphet new romantics come over the hill It gets a bit depressing
Paper local, drunken scandal Publish your address as well Locals surround where you dwell Old ladies confiscate your gate railings for government campaigns
It's tough in home county Councils hold the ring D Bowie look-alikes permeate car parks Grab the churches while you can Portaloos Yellow cabins by Methodist doors New Jersey car parks permeated by D Bowie sssss 1
It's good to live in the country You can get down to real thinking Walk round look at geometric tracery Hedgehogs skirt around your leathered soles Fall down drunk on the road It's good to live in the country It's good to live in the country It's good to live in the country It's good to live in the country
Look at yourself as a man The valley rings with ice-cream vans It's good to live in the country It's good to live in the country It's good to live in the country It's good to live in the country
Leather soles stick on precinct flagstones Small up-town America's like your outskirt town
The villagers are surrounding the house The locals have come for their due It's hard to live in the country It's hard to live in the country It's hard to live in the country It's hard to live in the country It's hard to live in the country It's hard to live in the country It's hard to live in the country It's hard to live in the country
Commentary
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Footnotes
The hiss is hard to make out, but possibly it is “soundalikes”. ↩︎
Sources / Links
The Annotated Fall: “Hard Life in Country” [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]
