Lyrics
The evil is not in extremes
It's in the aftermath
The middle mass
After the fact
Vulturous in the aftermath
Summer close season
A quiet dope and cider man
But during the season
Hard drugs and cider mates
The boy is like a tape loop
The boy is like a uh uh
Not much contact
Drinking, the men wait
They are set at nought
Because cripple state's a holy state
Because cripple state's a holy state
The Wehrmacht never got in here
The Wehrmacht never got in here
The Wehrmacht never got in here
The Wehrmacht never got in here
Though it took us six years
The Wehrmacht never got in here
The Wehrmacht never got in here
The Wehrmacht never got in here
The worm never got in here
And living here you whisper, bub
And living here you whisper, bub!
This boy is like a tape loop
And he has soft mitts
But he's the last domain
Of a very very back room brain
He learned a word today
The word's "misanthropy"
And he's running to and from
The cats from tin pan alley
And he's running with and from
The cats from the alleys of tin pan
And he's going down the alley
To meet the cats from the alleys of tin pan
The alley's full of cats from tin pan
The middle mass
The middle mass
Vulturous in the aftermath
It's the back-room brain
His motive: revenge
Commentary
< Post in progress >
Middle Mass Explanation
Ride in my long varied career
Incident
English goes in every bar in Europe
And think, is it some kind of exception?
You wanna know about Switzerland
You wanna know about Oslo
Violence
Well, I sat down, he sat down
You always sit down
Anyway – this is M-Mass Explanation
And people go round and round Europe
And they think everything is an exception
They go in a bar and think there’s some kind of, er, wealth here
But they know it’s standard
When they know its standard
That’s when they hit out
A mere bold attentuation
M-Mass – S.H.
Footnotes
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Middle Mass” [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: “Middle Mass”
- Wikipedia: Wehrmacht
- Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).
Views: 8