The best description of being a bit stuck and a bit pissed I've ever heard, but the most poetic as well, Oscar Wilde has nothing on MES.
Song: Couldn't Get Ahead
Album: This Nation's Saving Grace
Year: 1985
A punk-infused number that I would dearly love to hear live, this is MES focused and direct, the music is energetic and manic, particular mention should go to the wailing harmonica, which does a good job of emulating the rush of blood that comes with messy drunkenness, of which I feel MES is ploughing through on this song.
The lyrics mention 'flopping on the doorstep' and 'my eyelids were sick of it' suggesting exhaustion as well as being merry. The best lines come with the description of drunk panic: 'Light flashes: return to seat/I feared withdrawal/ And I feared beer was making sludge of my head' but not before he describes being on an 'Asiatic plain'.
The line: 'Where I'm at is a cabbage patch/ No longer strewn with weeds' is what I presume to be the confidence that hits you like a train when you realise you are sober, or you have somehow gotten over a hangover fast, but still rings with the notion of the title, you've still been drunk, you are still where you were before, you haven't moved forward.
Interesting point to make about the album, it has been covered in its entirety by three separate groups, once by members of the then-official Fall online forum website, then by a band made up of members of Fudge Tunnel and Faith No More called Triple Gang and an electronica artist called Globo has covered the original vinyl version as 'an experiment'. This is an album that endures, obviously.
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