Auto Chip 2014-2016

Lyrics

(1) 

Suffering away ay ay
Suffering
Suffering away ay ay
Suffering

Suffering away ay ay
Suffering
Suffering away ay ay
Suffering

Two Oh One Four!
Suffering
Suffering away ay 
Suffering away ay 
Suffering
Suffering
Suffering

Suffering

Two Oh One Four...

He sees life through a cracked chip (2)
(Suffering...)
He sees life through a
Twenty fourteen chip

Detailed medicine
How bad English musician
Two Oh One Four
Descending
How bad are English musicians
(Suffering)

He sees life through a cracked, cracked, cracked...ch-ch
Ch-ch
Detail medicine cracked mirror
How bad English musicians are there
He sees life through cracked
One sixteen welcome   (3)
One sixteen, Mark, welcome
RGDS the town menacing (4)
How bad English musician
How bad English musicians
Chetwynd!     (5)

Two Oh One Four

Suffering away ay ay
Suffering away away 

Suffering away way way
Suffering away way

Suffering 


Twenty Fourteen chip
Suffering away way
Suffering away way 

He sees life
He sees life

Suffering away ay ay
Suffering
Suffering ay ay away
Suffering


He sees life through the back of the blackheads at in front
He sees life through a broken chip
He sees life through a chip
He sees life through a broken glass window  (6)
Chip!
Glass
Glass
He sees life through blah blah Oh One Four!

Two Oh One Four!
Back of...
Into the...

Suffering!

Twenty Fourteen chip
Twenty Fourteen
Twenty Fourteen rip
The town medicine
How bad are English musicians?
How bad are English musicians?
He sees life through a Two Oh One Four cracked
Window chip!

Twenty Fourteen!
Twenty Fourteen chip!
Twenty Fourteen!

Suffering away ay away
Suffering
Suffering away ay ay ay
Suffering
Two Oh One Four
Chip

["What else you get for Christmas, boy?"
"Well, a dolly! Well, dolly! Well, dolly..."]    (7)

Notes

1. A studio version appeared in 2014 on Uurop V111-X11 Places in Sun & Winter, Son under the monicker "Auto (2014) Chip Replace." As with "Fibre Book Troll," previewed on a compilation album called Modoselektion Volume 3, no one then suspected that it would go on to change the world...

Joseph Mullaney has the following:

"In the UK a company called Autoglass used to (or still does?) run radio adverts for repairing chipped car windscreens. The catchphrase in their jingle is `Autoglass repair, Autoglass replace'."

Thanks to Buy Kurious! for transcribing the lyrics.

^

2. The word "chip" is a kind of Fall motif, figuring in the lyrics to (consulting The Flickering Lexicon) to "Arms Control Poseur," "Devolute," and "Enigrammatic Dream," and, in a more specified way, in "Eat Y'self Fitter" ("vid chip") "Jerusalem" ("protruding brick chip") and "Jawbone and the Air Rifle" ("chip off a value tomb").

And "chip" is a central word in "Gut of The Quantifier": "Life can be a downward chip," "Make the Kane Gang look like an Einstein chip." "He sees life through a cracked chip" here is somewhat reminiscent of the first formulation.

In the notes to "Gut of the Quantifier," I wrote:

"Chip" may be an empty signifier which allows the lyricist to draw connections that otherwise would not be available to him. It is possible that it is meant to have a more determinate semantic content than this, but I do not have much of an idea about what that would be. Thus, [in the line "Life can be a downward chip"], "chip" could replace "spiral," "motion" or "trajectory," whereas none of these words would work at all in the phrase "Einstein chip," where "theory," "equation," "formula" or something of the sort would be more appropriate; even if we start to wander farther out looking for a noun that could go with "Einstein" (shirt? joke? hairdo? television appearance?), it is hard to arrive at anything that could follow "downward."  Simon (below) suggests that "upward, downward chip" means that an implanted computer chip will, in the future, supplant drugs ("uppers" and "downers").

I have to admit that Simon's theory is my favorite, but I'm not sure how much it helps us here. 

^

3. The song moves up two years. Bazhdaddy suggests that "One Sixteen" is 1/16 (January 2016). Sub-Lingual Tablet was released in 2015.

^

4. According to the Internet, "RGDS" means "regards" in its own language, although some wag claiming to be William James has posted the following definition on Urban Dictionary which I am confident has no direct bearing on song (indirect is a different matter, though!):

Rgds means rolling grenades down streets, it is the new way to say, "we want peace to the world and sustainable renewable energy along with an open, free, unmonitored, uncensored, unrestricted internet so that our future generations will accomplish more than we could dream of, that with the collective human knowledge at our finger tips, we will strive to do more than look at porn or pictures of cats with this power and that wealth inequality will be equalized just enough to eliminate poverty and starvation." Kind rgds...

^

5. Buy Kurious wonders whether "Chetwynd" is an allusion to writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Ronald Chetwyind-Hayes (1919-2001) was an author of ghost and horror stories, a genre of which MES was known to be a fan--the names of authors of horror stories figure prominently in "Spectre vs. Rector." And MES was likely aware of Chetwynd-Hayes, as nairng notes: "Chetwynd-Hayes wrote The Monster Club, and in the movie he appears as a character who is taken to the eponymous club by Vincent Price. The movie is where MES got the shadmock whistle business off Post Nearly Man." A "shadmock" is a monster known for its horrible whistle, in both the movie and the source book The Monster Club.


There is also a Chetwynd, British Columbia, so the enterprising sleuth has an embrarrassment of riches here...which I now bequeath you, dear reader. Bazhdaddy thinks it's "chipped wind." It's hard to be sure.

^

6.See note 1 above...MES may be thinking of automobile glass repair.

 

^

7. I'm quite unsure about the "Well, a dolly!" Anyway, Mike Smith has this to say:

"The 'Auto Chip' of the title, plus 'bad English musicians' could suggest the auto-tune system (digital device - a 'chip'), which corrects the shortcomings of "bad" musicians who sing or play off-key. The second-to-last line, 'What else you get for Christmas, boy?' could be likening the chip, in a denigrating way, to the status of a toy, such as is given to a child as a Christmas present."

^

 

Comments (21)

Joseph Mullaney
  • 1. Joseph Mullaney | 01/06/2015
In the UK a company called Autoglass used to (or still does?) run radio adverts for repairing chipped car windscreens. The catchphrase in their jingle is `Autoglass repair, Autoglass replace'.
Mike Smith
  • 2. Mike Smith | 02/12/2015
The "Auto Chip" of the title, plus "bad English musicians" could suggest the auto-tune system (digital device - a "chip"), which corrects the shortcomings of "bad" musicians who sing or play off-key. The second-to-last line, "What else you get for Christmas, boy?" could be likening the chip, in a denigrating way, to the status of a toy, such as is given to a child as a Christmas present.
Wrayx8
  • 3. Wrayx8 | 03/12/2015
Nice one Mike! Sounds pretty on the nose to me.
Mike Smith
  • 4. Mike Smith | 05/02/2016
Upon further listening, reflection, etc, I'm now leaning toward a general theme of digital technology which we're seeing elsewhere on the album. "Quit iPhone", "Fibre Book Troll" being obvious, the chip could be a stand-in for all these things. Seeing life through a cracked chip: who doesn't know people who spend more time staring at the cracked screen of their mobile device than at the world around them? Auto-tune could be just another aspect of the theme.
policetruck
  • 5. policetruck | 10/08/2016
Sounds like "Well a dollie" at the end to me. Infants get dolls for gifts at Xmas time.

"What else do you get for Christmas, boy?"

"Well a dollie, well a dollie".
bzfgt
  • 6. bzfgt | 25/08/2016
Crap, you might well be right, we keep hearing so many different things on this one...spoken, more or less a capella, and we still don't know. I'll listen again.
bzfgt
  • 7. bzfgt | 25/08/2016
Actually that sounds right to me now, I am running with it, at least until someone gets mad at us.
Bazhdaddy
  • 8. Bazhdaddy | 22/09/2018
At 3.40 I think the "wanker" is a "welcome". As the bass riff changes, the song moves up two years; "One Sixteen, welcome/One Sixteen, Mark, welcome, RGDS the town menacing". One Sixteen = Jan 2016

To continue the automotive theme I think Chetwynd is a dead end - sounds to me more like a variation on the cracked windscreen theme - "chipped wind.!"
bzfgt
  • 9. bzfgt (link) | 13/10/2018
OK. Also "The town menacing" = "internal medicine" I think
Huli
  • 10. Huli | 06/06/2020
For me it sounds always like "shuffle around" and not "suffering away".
Nairng
  • 11. Nairng (link) | 14/10/2020
Re note 5 - Chetwynd-Hayes wrote The Monster Club, and in the movie he appears as a character who is taken to the eponymous club by Vincent Price. The movie is where MES got the shadmock whistle business off Post Nearly Man. So that adds weight. Not massively important, but still.
bzfgt
  • 12. bzfgt (link) | 23/01/2021
Does add weight.
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 03/02/2021
A 2019 Autoglass advert. Jingle at the end.

dannyno
  • 14. dannyno | 03/02/2021
Just posted that because of comment #1 by Joseph Mullaney. We don't know that Autoglass are the company that MES may have had in mind.
bzfgt
  • 15. bzfgt (link) | 10/04/2021
"Internal Medicine"....something to do with the "UG Medicine theory"?

But, I changed it to "Detailed medicine" until someone convinces me otherwise
bzfgt
  • 16. bzfgt (link) | 10/04/2021
Made lots of little revisions here
bzfgt
  • 17. bzfgt (link) | 10/04/2021
Where we have "Into the..." I hear maybe "internet"
bzfgt
  • 18. bzfgt (link) | 10/04/2021
Gets dodgy toward the end
dannyno
  • 19. dannyno | 30/08/2022
According to Daren Garrett on the Mighty Fall Facebook page (28 August 2022, 7:43PM, talking about the version of Autochip on Uurop V111-X11 Places in Sun & Winter, Son:


FACT: The version of Auto Chip 2014 on that is the first time it was ever played; in truth, it was virtually being recorded as it was being written! I had my 1st & only rehearsal before my debut gig in Koln at Ding's space/studio. Mark got us playing the riff, told Ding to start recording and joined in. True story, that one


Uurop of course was released on 27 October 2014. The earliest documented performance of Autochip is from Warwick Arts Centre, 1 May 2014.

But the Cologne gig Daren is referring to would seem to be Friday 13 December 2013 (although he shared the drumkit at the Brudenell on 29 November 2013).

So the recording on Uurop is much earlier than we might have imagined.
dannyno
  • 20. dannyno | 15/04/2023
There's been an assumption that the "Auto Chip" is car-related. Other suggestions have been made, but not, so far, to "auto chip fryers" or dental equipment.

https://www.swallowdental.co.uk/neo-biotech-acm-auto-chip-maker.html
harleyr
  • 21. harleyr | 23/07/2023
>>The town menacing…

On my latest hearing I thought I heard…

The town men are saying…

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