Lyrics
Psykick Dancehall
Is there anybody there?
Yeah!
Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock
Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock
Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock
Rocky! Rocky!
Is quester psychic dancehall
Get aboard for ESP medium discord
My garden is made of stone 1
There's a computer centre over the road
I saw a monster on the roof
Its colours glowed on the roof
Round the corner is quester psychic dancehall
Step forward for ESP medium discord
Here they have no records
They know your questions about no words
Just bumble stumble to the waves
Twitching out to the waves
Clock it! Clock it!
It's quester psychic dancehall
Never bored with ESP medium discord
When I'm dead and gone
My vibrations will live on
In vibes not vinyl through the years
People will dance to my waves
Rock it! Rock it!
It's quester psychic dancehall
Get aboard for ESP medium discord
I say ESP medium discord
You gotta come
You gotta come for a mental orgasm
[ ]
Psykick Dancehall #2
Part of the quest, part of the quest
Part of the quest, part of the quest, two
Rocky! Rocky!
It's quester psychic dancehall
Get aboard for ESP medium discord
My garden is made of stone
I saw an ape thing on the road
Ricky's hump is made of flesh
He has got a pigeon chest
Round the corner is quester psychic dancehall
Step forward for ESP medium discord
Here they have no records
They know your questions about no words
Just mumble bumble to the waves
Twitching out to the waves
Clock it! Clock it!
It's quester psychic dancehall
Get aboard for ESP medium discord
Helen Duncan was accused of being a fraudulent medium
They burst into a seance over in Portsmouth, over a chemists' shop
A length of ectoplasm or a suit of cheesecloth was grabbed but it got away
The Witchcraft Act 1735 was used to give her nine months' gaol
The vibrations will live on
Never mind, it's quester psychic dancehall
Get aboard for ESP medium discord
I said ESP medium discord
Step forward, step forward, get aboard
Commentary
“Psychic Dancehall” was a story I told Mark about a club I used to go to – a little disco – above a spiritualist church in Prestwich, called Questers Psychic Disco. It was a rough little dive, a pre-18 place, because there was no alcohol. It got raided by the police one night. I didn’t know Mark at that point, and Mark never went, but later I told him about this place, and the “outside” of Prestwich became a strong theme in his writing.
Martin Bramah, The Story of Dragnet [Link to PDF]
Footnotes
- Perhaps an echo here of a lyric from The Groundhogs‘ “Garden”: “My garden is overgrown / And the weeds are creeping up on my home.” The Fall later covered The Groundhogs’ “Strange Town” as “Strangetown“, into which M.E.S. inserted lyrics from “Garden”, including the “My garden is overgrown…” lines. The Fall also covered The Groundhogs’ “Junkman” as “Junk Man”. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Psykick Dancehall” [Archived]
- The Annotated Fall: “Psykick Dancehall #2” [Archived]
- Barbanell, Maurice (1945). The Case of Helen Duncan. London: The Psychic Press.
- Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet. pp.230-231.
- 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]
- The Track Record: “Psykick Dancehall”
- Wikipedia: Helen Duncan
Views: 296
Possibly a critique of the hippie club or event, with its claim about “going back to the garden” (Woodstock) while Smith’s garden is Salford austerity. His view is not of nature, it is of the “computer centre across the road.” The “monster on the roof” with glowing colors isn’t a psychedelic vision of a deity; it’s likely the neon hum of industrial machinery or a TV aerial. It’s a “working-class psychedelic” experience—hallucinations born of urban boredom rather than LSD. Impossible to know if Smith intended this, but I detect a pun in “discord,” namely “disk,” “disco,” and “discord,” so that the “ESP medium,” as in someone who can connect you with the astral plane is actually in Smith’s world connecting him to an urban jungle, discord also emphasizing the sonic harshness of his sound compared with the jangly-bangly sound of 1967. The “discord” is the reality of the North crashing into the “medium” of the music industry. The song is almost like a snake oil salesman selling you this psychedelic heaven, just like record companies hype their records, so that “you gotta come for a mental orgasm” mocks the grand promises of rock stars who claim their music is a transcendent, quasi-sexual spiritual experience. It’s as if the “sellers” of rock are saying “we can’t give you a real, physical, connection in this cold town, the “orgasmic” one this young lad surely really wants, so instead have this “psychic vibration.” “My vibrations will live on” is like a parody of New Age “good vibrations” (which the Beach Boys gave us). I could be wrong but there is almost a taunt that “while I’m not talking about spiritual energy, I’m talking about literal, physical, scratches on a piece of plastic that will offer immortality not through the soul but through the manufacturing process – or else Smith is taunting musicians’ claims about that too. “Here they have no records/they know your questions about no words” which further my contention that the song critiques the hippie club. In these “choosy” scenes, music is not the point, the search or “quest” and the pretension are. “Bumble stumble” and “twitching” describe a dance floor of people trying to look profound while reacting to “no words,” and “no records.” It’s the ultimate anti-disco. Smith seems to be rejecting the fake spiritual for the hard material. he takes the language of the counter-culture (ESP, psychic, vibrations, gardens) and drags it (forgive the dragnet pun) through the mud of a Manchester industrial estate until it becomes a cynical, rhythmic, “discord.”