Lyrics
Well, I've never had a car
I've never been near a lorry
Got a nasty habit of scratching my nose
My codename's Happy Harry
I'm into C.B. 1
I've had loads of jobs for very minute lolly 2
Creation schemes, so I suppose I was lucky 3
And the money it took to buy the C.B. set took lines off my belly 4
My codename's Cedar Plank 5
I'm into C.B.
I'm into C.B.
At sixteen I drank cheap sherry
Got plastered in the stations and swing parks 6
Off my mother I stole some money
Had a treat with a bottle of Martini
So sick I couldn't walk or sit
Since then I've not touched it
I won't bore you with tales of being greedy
I'm just into C.B.
I'm into C.B.
My family's a weird lot
My stepsister's got a horrible growth
Listens to all this muzak shit
Reads Smash Hits while she's eating her tea 7
To me it sounds like bad C.B.
My father's not bad really
He got me these wires and bits
Apart from that he talks to me hardly
I'm just into C.B.
This is Happy Harry Plank from the land of waving palms 8
Calling out to Cedar Plank 9
Four seven seven C C C
There's no Code Thirteen in the home of chocolate city 10
I'm having trouble with the terminology
But I'm into C.B.
I've got this letter before me
It's buff with a confidential seal
I'd better open it
It's a fine and a formal threat
I should have listened to "New Face in Hell" 11
The date expired last week
Up here I forget what time it is
It says you're going to go when you go
Or else you're for it boy
If that's what you get for having a hobby
Next mail you get will be mail in gaol
If that's what you get for having a hobby
Next year mail in gaol
If that's what you get for having a hobby
Next time I'm out I'll join a riot
That's the last you'll hear for me
I'll keep clear of C.B.
Keep clear of C.B.
Keep clear of C.B.
Commentary
< Post in progress >
“I’m Into C.B.” was the B-side to the “”Look, Know” 7″ single, released 19 April 1982 (Kamera: ERA004). The single reached #4 in the ‘official’ Indie Charts (see Lazell, 1997, p.83).
The track is credited solely to Mark E. Smith.
“C.B.” stands for Citizen’s Band. Citizen’s band radio was legalised in November 1981.
Tommy Mackay: “Snappy little song with a groovy bit about midway when the drum picks up a beat.” (2018, p.47).
Stewart Lee:
I first heard The Fall’s single I’m Into CB in early 1982, aged 13, on the John Peel show late at night in the dark. I was alone listening to music, as I have been for most of my life. I did not know who The Fall were at the time and ‘I’m Into C.B.’ seemed impossibly annoying. There was no chorus. There was no middle eight. Two guitar chords slashed around its vast formless space. A xylophone beat out a single note throughout. A man shouted incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness lyrics, making no concession to conventional notions of singing. It went on for six and a half minutes, and the band’s occasional extemporisations around the restrictive structure seemed to betray apparent frustration rather than joy. I thought it was one of the worst things I had ever heard.
Why would anyone make this music?, I wondered, with my Madness and Specials tapes stacked by my bed. It clearly had no commercial potential. Surely, no-one could actually like it? Yet, over the following weeks, as Peel repeatedly played I’m Into CB, I became captivated by it, and within a year I’d spent my paper round money on buying every record the Manchester punk veterans had released. One day, as a special treat, the classical music schedule of our school musical appreciation class was suspended and we were allowed to play whatever we wanted to the rest of the class. Our music teacher turned off I’m Into CB in a fury, assuming that I had submitted it as an attempt to subvert the lesson. To allay his suspicions, I then had to explain in front of the class why I liked the record. The Fall could not be accommodated. Authority could not loosen its tie and meet them half way.
<snip>
Sometimes, I wish I’d never heard I’m Into CB.
Source: Lee, Stewart (2018). The original date and place of publication are unknown to me.
Dave Thompson:
‘I’m Into C.B.’ is equally hostile, the story of Happy Harry Plank and a salutary lesson in the perils of operating an unlicensed Citizen’s Band radio, that most fashionable of early 80s automobile accessories. Dimply perceiving unfettered access to the airwaves as an open invitation to crime and pirate radio broadcast, the government cracked down hard on unlicensed CB operatives. But maybe if they’d left them alone, cell-phones wouldn’t seem so exciting today. Today, Happy Harry probably has one in every pocket.
Thompson, 2003, p.61.
Taylor Parkes:
When The Fall do out-and-out comedy, of course, you really know about it. ‘Solicitor In Studio’, their jab at TV chattering-shows (and at starry-eyed “professionals” who jump at the chance to participate), is still one of their funniest stories, revelling in public catastrophe as proper retribution for a basic lack of pride – and like most good send-ups of the media, it seems to grow more relevant with time. ‘I’m Into CB’, a cautionary tale of sorts and one of the really great half-forgotten Fall songs, is funnier still. Against a two-chord riff that’s immobile and hysterical, its immobile, hysterical anti-hero transcends his social inadequacy by sitting alone with a CB radio, conversing in jargon with total strangers – a topical satire that’s found new relevance in the last decade – and ends up in a (grimly inevitable) spot of bother. It features probably Smith’s most careful characterisation, and in these great, unreliably-narrated lines, something that could be comic pathos, were it not so brutal: “My father’s not bad really,” shrugs the CB spod, perpetually shut in his upstairs room. “He got me these wires and bits.” A pause. “Apart from that, he talks to me hardly…”
Source: Parkes, 2010.
Paul Hanley:
‘I’m Into C.B.’ is one of those tracks that neatly sum up The Fall – it features many of the traits that Fall detractors find most annoying, and Fall fans find most appealing… it’s almost impossibly cloying and features incredibly little in the way of progression, apart from Karl’s drums. I played the one-handed snare pattern that starts the song and continues unchanged for the next six minutes plus. Mark came up with that, along with the one note everyone, including him, hits pretty much throughout. It’s quite striking how little anyone deviates – and also how much authentic tension can be built up when everyone’s playing that one note like they really mean it.
Unusually, Mark makes a half-decent stab at a rhyming structure, but on its own that’s hardly enough to elevate ‘I’m Into C.B.’ into an actual song. What really makes the track impressive is the massive sound – Richard captured the group at its very best, and it’s telling that this is one of the songs recorded after we moved upstairs to the studio.
Hanley, 2020, p.108.
Steve and Marc had many a post-pub listening session ruined by our neighbour Gary ‘Superchef’ Hood assaulting the airwaves with ‘Breaker breaker 1-9’ in a broad Manchester accent as they tried to listen to Street Hassle or 1969. Our subsequent tales of his ridiculous and often hilarious combination of witless Wythenshavian and wildly misplaced truck-driver patois directly fed into Mark’s lyric for ‘I’m Into C.B.’. Given that, the text is really quite sympathetic, and no one is treated too harshly.
Hanley, 2020, pp.108-109.
Live History
Footnotes
- The narrator doesn’t drive a vehicle, but is nonetheless “into” C.B. M.E.S. intends us to find this ridiculous. ↩︎
- “Minute” (pronounced “mine-yoot” not “minnit”) meaning small, not a unit of time (which is obvious if you’re listening to the lyrics rather than reading them!). “Lolly” meaning money. ↩︎
- “Creation schemes” is a reference to Government-funded/subsidised employment programmes, designed to get people into work and off benefits. In the live recording of The Fall’s gig in Leeds, 5 November 1981, M.E.S. mentions both “creation schemes ” and “Government schemes” (pointed out by doomby.com Annotated Fall user @Martin). ↩︎
- This is sometimes interpreted as lines of cocaine or amphetamines. But why would lines of cocaine or amphetamines be on someone’s belly? Not very practical, it seems to me. In context, it seems more plausible that “lines” might refer to marks on a measuring tape: in other words, buying C.B. radio equipment has left the narrator without money to pay for food, which has resulted in inches/centimetres coming off their waistline. ↩︎
- This verse is usually interpreted as introducing a new narrator (“Cedar Plank”, the first verse narrated by “Happy Harry”), but it could also be argued that it’s the same character throughout. They just can’t make up their mind about which codename to use. Hence M.E.S.’s comment in his Melody Maker “review” of “Look, Know“: “Smith belatedly jumping on CB bandwagon with song about some idiot who doesn’t “know” who he is.” (see Smith, 1982). And after all, it is “I’m Into C.B.”, not “We’re Into C.B.” However, there is a later verse that makes this interpretation problematic. ↩︎
- “Plastered” meaning “drunk” in this context. “Stations” probably means “bus stations” in this context. “Swing parks” probably means municipal playgrounds for children, equipped with swings and other such equipment. ↩︎
- The meaning of “tea” is heavily regional in the UK (possibly also a class dimension to it). It can refer to a light afternoon meal, perhaps with sandwiches and cakes and definitely drinks of tea. Sometimes referred to as “afternoon tea” or “five o’clock tea”. However, elsewhere in the UK it primarily means the main cooked evening meal of the day, and therefore equivalent to “dinner” (“dinner” means “main cooked meal”, regardless of whether it occurs at what would otherwise be lunch-time (middle of the day) or in the evening). But this is a linguistic minefield and can make people very angry.
Smash Hits was a pop music magazine (although its coverage was wider than that might suggest), published from 1978 until 2006. See Wikipedia. They featured The Fall several times and reviewed a number of their albums and singles. The lyrics to The Fall’s “New Face in Hell” were printed in Smash Hits dated 25 December 1980 – 7 January 1981.
At the 30 April 1983 gig at City Gardens, Trenton, New Jersey, M.E.S. replaced
“My family’s a weird lot / My stepsister’s got a horrible growth / Listens to all this muzak shit / Reads Smash Hits while she’s eating her tea / To me it sounds like bad C.B.”
with
“My family’s a weird lot / My stepsister’s got a horrible growth / Reads the New York Rocker when she’s eating her tea / Well it’s, uh, defunct, that’s fine by me”
New York Rocker had indeed ceased publication in November 1982 (it would be briefly revived in 1984). ↩︎ - If we interpret the song as being about a single narrator, and I think we should, then “Happy Harry Plank” could be their new codename, after flirting uncertainly with “Happy Harry” and “Cedar Plank”. ↩︎
- And here we have the verse that makes the single-narrator-throughout interpretation problematic. Who is “Calling out to Cedar Plank”? Is it Happy Harry Plank, who on the single-narrator interpretation is supposed to be same person? Or is it someone else, replying to “This is Happy Harry Plank” line? Maybe they recognised the voice? ↩︎
- In a UK context, the “home of chocolate” might refer to Birmingham, Bristol, all of which had notable chocolate manufacturing industries. The biggest names were Cadbury in the case of Birmingham (where they set up the model village of Bourneville), Rowntree in York, and Fry in Bristol. All three companies were founded by Quakers.
But in my view, the lyric is probably referring to York. ↩︎ - c.f. the song “New Face in Hell“, which features a doomed wireless enthusiast character. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “I’m Into C.B.” [Archived]
- Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
- Hanley, Paul (2020). Have a Bleedin Guess: the story of Hex Enduction Hour. Pontefract: Route Publishing.
- Lazell, Barry (1997). Indie Hits, 1980-1989: The Complete U.K. Independent Charts (Singles & Albums). London: Cherry Red Books.
- Lee, Stewart (2018). “I’m Into C.B.” [Available online]
- Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
- Parkes, Taylor (2010). “The Fall and Mark E Smith As A Narrative Lyric Writer.” The Quietus, July. Published online, 24 January 2018. [The Quietus] [Archived]
- Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
- Smith, Mark E. (1982). “Prole in Art Threat Horror.” Melody Maker, 1 May. p.23.
- Smith, Mark E. (2008). vII. The Lough Press & AMarquisManipulationProductions. [AKA the Blue Lyrics Book]
- Thompson, Dave (2003). A User’s Guide to the Fall. London: Helter-Skelter Publishing.
- The Track Record: “I’m Into C.B.”
[…] I’m into C.B. […]