Sunday 12 June 2011

Day 88: You don't need that cosmic crap...

This one seems the most playful I've heard in a while...



Song: Choc Stock
Album: Dragnet
Year: 1979

So this one is just a bit daft, but MES couldn't help but slip some serious lines in there towards the end. This is as close as The Fall get to sounding a bit like Frank Sidebottom (his cover of Hit The North still makes me laugh). They even say during the course of the almost too-long tune 'Why are you smiling/Why are you laughing/At or with this song' it is intended to be funny I suppose, but then The Fall's snotty, antagonistic head rears up again as well, meaning you can't feel fully comfortable with it.

The song seems to be a statement about the band being different, I suppose Dragnet has the self-reverential Printhead and Your Heart Out on it, so this is just another one recorded as a mission statement of sorts. I know MES didn't particularly like being part of the punk scene, or even the post-punk scene, so the comments about class in this song are probably something to do with that. Similarly, the parts about not needing space boots or 'that cosmic crap' are probably about the rise of glam in that era too, there are some gems among that scene that still sound great today, but for the most part, it was terrible, ugly chaps in make-up and with frizzy hair singing see-thru sexual metaphors in platform shoes. Those kind of bands end up in country parks playing to middle-aged/elderly people who are sipping wine while sat on rugs, can't imagine MES at one of those.

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