Lyrics
This was fol-de-rol? 1
Holy roll
Dag dag dag dag dag
Oh I dag dig
Does it fol-de-rol
Dah dah fol-de-rol, way-o
Sad! Sad! Sad!
Commentary
Mark on biro and wine glass
From the @ImperialWaxBand Twitter account, during the Tim Burgess Twitter Listening Party devoted to New Facts Emerge, 22 October 2020. Source: https://twitter.com/ImperialWaxBand/status/1319368015197110273
The opening track to The Fall’s final album, New Facts Emerge (2017). It is credited to Mark E. Smith alone and consists of MES singing randomly on a “fol-de-rol” theme while accompanying himself on lo-fi D.I.Y. percussion.
Perhaps we are to understand the track as a literal segue (pronounced “segway”) – defined as a seamless transition from one thing (for example a piece of music) to another. If so, then because it’s the first track on the album (an otherwise unusual position for a segue), it must be a segue between “Fol De Rol”, the next track on New Facts Emerge and the last song on the previous record, which would either be “Quit iPhone”, the final song on Sub-Lingual Tablet (2015), or “All Leave Cancelled (X)”, which concluded the 2016 E.P. Wise Ol’ Man.
“Segue” was never played live, obviously.
Footnotes
- “Fol De Rol” was the next track on the album. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “folderol” as “A showy but useless item, a trifle; nonsense, trivial display.” The Shorter Oxford says of the word’s origin: “from a meaningless refrain in songs.” ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Segue” [Archived]
- The Track Record: “Segue”