Lyrics
< No lyrics available >
Commentary
The song appears on two setlists which came up for auction via Omega Auctions in September 2023 and April 2024: the Marquee Club, London, 22 November 1977, and Eric’s, Liverpool, 17 December 1977. No recordings of these gigs have emerged, and there is no known studio version of the song.
We don’t know who wrote the song, or what the lyrics were, or anything else about it at all.
A challenge for even the most intrepid annotator, you may be forgiven for thinking. And you’d be right, let’s be honest. All we’ve got is a song title. A flimsy foundation for discussion.
But we can’t let a mere lack of any meaningful information whatsoever get in the way of the annotation project. Let’s see what we can do.
The song was nearly played at the 13 November 1977 gig at Band on the Wall, Manchester (officially released in 2022 as disc 6 of the Cherry Red 12 x CD box set, The Fall: The 1970s).
At the end of “Your Heart Out” (track 9), MES can be heard asking the group, “Er, ‘Weeds of Evil’, or ‘Copped It’?” There’s some brief, indistinct, discussion. Then at the start of track 10, MES tells the audience, “Right, ‘Copped It’ it is then; we were going to play a new song but these morons forgot the music…” And he counts the group into “Copped It”.
There are some observations we can make about the song title.
First of all, the song title is reminiscent of a line from “Muzorewi’s Daughter”: “The trees are reeds with evil seeds for me.” Perhaps the line was adapted for use in the later song.
Secondly, there’s a Biblical echo:
The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one.
The Bible: Matthew 13:38 (New International Version).
Thirdly, “evil weeds grow apace” is an English aphorism or proverb.
Fourthly, The Flowers of Evil (French: Les Fleurs du mal) is an anthology of poetry by the French poet Charles Baudelaire, first published in 1857 [Wikipedia: Les Fleurs du mal]. Baudelaire was likely referencing The Bible (see Avni, 1973).
Sources / Links
- Avni, Abraham (1973). “The Bible and Les Fleurs du mal“. PMLA, Vol. 88, No. 2, March. pp.299-310. Available online via JSTOR (login required). DOI link.
- The Bible: Matthew 13:38. Available online at: The Bible Gateway: Matthew 13:38 (NIV).
- Discogs: The Fall: 1970s (disc 6: Manchester Musicians Collective – Band On The Wall – 13/11/1977). Cherry Red: CRCDBOX121.
- The Track Record: “Weeds of Evil”