Missed day 44, so sorry to any readers who were expecting this yesterday, had a job interview away from home, so didn't have time to spurt off any Fall-ness.
Here's one that goes with the weather and is one of my favourite covers, really funny/tragic at the same time.
Song: I'm Going To Spain
Album: The Infotainment Scan
Year: 1993
So this is a nice airy number with some very 80s/90s guitar tone and some hilarious lyrics, this is a cover of a Steve Bent song, which he performed on New Faces in 1974, which is doubly funny for me, I'm a fan of comedian Graham Fellows, who does a character called John Shuttleworth (older Fall fans will remember him as Jilted John with this song) but his show featured a sad, has-been neighbour called Ken Worthington, who came last on New Faces in 1976, touting himself to be 'TV's Clarinet Man'.
Anyway, back to the song, MES has changed some of the lyrics, instead of being 24 years old, he says he is 34 years old, in the line 'I sold my car, packed in my job, I'm 24 years old' this makes me laugh, its the kind of doe-eyed thing you hear from friends now and again, that they would love to sell everything and move, they rarely do. The whole song is so tedious, the fact MES is singing it at all (and badly) is funny enough, but gives it a sad air.
Lines like 'the factory floor presented me, with some tapes of Elton John' are great and don't really need changing, the original is a soft rock nightmare, even has castanets all over it. The Fall version omits the lines about cheese and pickle sandwiches, which is a shame, maybe it was too silly for Mark. Instead he replaces it with a line about cashing in premium bonds, amazing/. Instead of the original's castanets, there's some amazing finger clicking happening over the track and at the end of The Fall version, this is the stuff of nightmares.
Weirdly, this track sounds at odds on this album, which is a punchy, dance-influenced stomper of a release, with some amazing vocal performances and a band that sounds focused and tight, I think he just felt he had to make a statement of intent with a track like this, its so ridiculous that there cannot be a reason more credible. An odd choice, even for The Fall, but one I sing along to regardless.
Mad, here's the original below, even weirder than the cover.
What sane person thinks, "Yeah, let's cover that!"
I believe that this was on an album that Kenny Everett put together of what he considered to be the world's worst records of all time and was released in 1979. I think for Mark E. Smith that having been told everything by the Fall sounds the same, which we all know is bollocks, is a good enough reason to cover a song from a album called 'The World's Worst Record'. Sums up his ad-hoc attitude to cover versions for me. I find that on occasions I am singing this in the bath, so it's catchy enough and I like it in the context of the album's original numbers.
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