Stout Man

Lyrics

(1)

Jump that train school laughed
Jump on train that kids at school laughed

Time of defeat  
Time of disease
Time of deserts    (2)

I’m a big fat man pushing a little pram
I’m a big fat man pushing a little pram

Shut your trap skinny go or I'll shit in your brain ram it up your crack 
Shut your trap skinny go and shit your brain
Go and shit your brain   (3)

Big man big man big man push pram
Big man big man big man push pram

I’m a big fat man pushing a big pram
I’m a wide problem or a pot-bellied Elton John

I never did nothing ‘cept I’m only one
All my kids are behind Asiatic tech

Big man go push a fucking pram
Big man push pram

Hey shut your trap skinny go and shit your cram pram
Big man push pram
Big man push pram

Jump that train at school man
Jump that train and scoot back

Notes

1. This is highly speculative, watch this space for improvements.

The song is, musically, identical to "Cock in my Pocket" by the Stooges. On Sub-Lingual Tablet, the song is credited to "Iggy Pop/James Williamson." However, the lyrics are completely new, and in cases where MES has written new lyrics to existing music I have included the songs here; this is no less an original song than "Breaking the Rules," to give one example among several possible candidates. Certainly, there is a lot of grey area, and MES changes the lyrics of songs he covers virtually 100% of the time, so eventually I may get around to annotating everything they've recorded...

Here is the entry from Reformation on "Stout Man":

This is a cover of the Stooges' Cock in my Pocket, released on the Rubber Legs album in 1987.
 
 
Talk soon turns to a track from the album called “Stout Man” because, well it’s called “Stout Man” and it sounds like James Williamson-era Stooges as Mark barks about a fat man pushing around a pram. “That came about because the group are always going on about The Stooges and I’m a lot older than them, so I’m going like you don’t like the fucking Stooges. They think the Stooges is A/E/A/E and I said, you fucking do “Cock in my Pocket” [from the Stooges 1976 live album Metallic KO]. You know, they’re saying about the first Stooges album and I’m like don’t you fucking tell me about that, I bought it when I was 16. So, I said to them “alright then, cunt, learn “Cock in my Pocket”. Try and find that because I know it’s not on any of their LPs but of course they did because it’s on fucking ebay or something or they fucking shazammed it. So I said, learn it. It was a challenge.” The group took up the challenge, almost too much for Mark’s liking, “They’d been tricking me, they’d been sneaking back into the studio to keep tightening it up. I couldn’t catch them out but in a car on the way down to London I was looking behind the seat and there was this CD, covered in dirt, with the original rough mix of it. I made them use that; they’d been doing about eight or nine different versions of it, it was pathetic. They must have worked more on that song more than any other on the whole album.”
 

^

2. This would of course be a pun so I could have spelled it "desserts" with as much justification.

"Pledge" also mentions a "time of disease."

^

3. There is a difference of opinion here whether it's "brain" or "bran." I do not have a clue which one it is. Clearly the last time I listened to it I thought it sounded more like "brain," but that doesn't mean it's correct.   

^

Comments (32)

Wrayx8
  • 1. Wrayx8 | 28/07/2015
Just after first two "big fat man" lines:

Shut your trap skinny or I'll shit it your bran, ram it up your crack-uh.
Shut your trap skinny, go and shit your bran.

:S
Wrayx8
  • 2. Wrayx8 | 30/07/2015
"Shit in your pram"
nairng
  • 3. nairng | 03/08/2015
Definitely "Shut your trap, skinny, go and shit your bran" to these ears. Bran is good roughage, keeps you regular, if you know what I mean.
bzfgt
  • 4. bzfgt | 08/08/2015
Gross but OK, it's probably right. I'll fix it up.
bzfgt
  • 5. bzfgt | 08/08/2015
This may surprise you but I suspect "Asiatic Seth" may not be right either. Too bad, it's my favorite line...
bzfgt
  • 6. bzfgt | 08/08/2015
Alas, Seth has been purged.
Simon
  • 7. Simon | 12/08/2015
I'm hearing 'crack' rather than 'peg'. Where'd 'peg' come from?
bzfgt
  • 8. bzfgt | 25/08/2015
Same place "crack" came from, someone's ears. In this case I think they were mine, and mine aren't that good, plus "crack" makes more sense, and finally I don't want to listen to it right now, so I'll take your word for it and change it.
gizmoman
  • 9. gizmoman | 25/10/2015
It's "I'm a wife problem of a pot-bellied Elton John" Elton once had a female wife of course, his current 'wife' has prams to push (or would have if they didn't have a nanny. Also check this out!http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2335119/David-Furnish-dotes-Elton-Johns-mini-mes-holiday-Venice.html Mini M.E.S. ha ha.
Wrayx8
  • 10. Wrayx8 | 03/03/2016
"And my kids are behind asiatic tech" Is what I keep hearing.
bzfgt
  • 11. bzfgt | 19/03/2016
Why not?
SCOTT
  • 12. SCOTT | 25/04/2016
On some live versions of this he clearly says "stout man" in some lyrics instead of "big man" - but the pronunciation is so soft and hoarse sounding I wonder if originally he sang/wrote it to be STOUT MAN in lyrics but found it difficult to sing and changed in the studio to big man, in the studio version I only hear "big man" in the lyrics
very weird
the line about elton I hear as
"I'm a wide problem of a pot-bellied elton john" which I took as a diss on elton's current "wife" ;)
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 29/04/2016
I guess it's natural, given the lyric, to think that stout=fat. And that's the most likely thing. However, I think it's worth recording that "stout" is also a dark beer, and so a "stout man" might also be someone who likes drinking stout. There's no textual reason to take this thought any further, but, you know...
bzfgt
  • 14. bzfgt | 19/05/2016
Maybe...it's a shame that the granular level of accuracy it would take to distinguish "or" from "of" is completely beyond any of us at this point!
Mr. Nelson
  • 15. Mr. Nelson (link) | 04/05/2018
you are my new flavourite site!
but
bran it is not
it's BRAIN
MES doing his best Rod Stewart faux yankee accent!
bzfgt
  • 16. bzfgt (link) | 09/07/2018
Thank you Mr. Nelson, and this seems obviously correct now you say it. Could others listen and weigh in, and people from the British Isles weigh in on the plausibility of this? "Shit your brain" seems WAY more likely now you mention it.
dannyno
  • 17. dannyno | 17/07/2018
It's definitely "shit your brain". I wouldn't say it was a phrase I've come across very often, though, if at all. "Shit for brains", on the other hand...
bzfgt
  • 18. bzfgt (link) | 22/07/2018
Good, much better
Simon
  • 19. Simon | 09/02/2019
'Go and shit your brain' instead of 'bran'? Is this really the consensus? 'Go and shit your brain' is such a bizarre and meaningless, non-existent phrase and 'bran' is perfectly audible. . . I'm confused.
dannyno
  • 20. dannyno | 21/02/2019
Comment #19, Simon: all I can say is that I'm hearing "brain" and not "bran". Given that, it seems moot to me whether the phrase is bizarre or meaningless or non-existent. But as always if others hear it differently they should say so.
bzfgt
  • 21. bzfgt (link) | 21/03/2019
I have no idea. For some reason I thought we'd replaced it with something else, I can't remember what I thought. "Brain" sounded right last time I checked, I'll revisit this issue soon.
bzfgt
  • 22. bzfgt (link) | 13/04/2019
For some reason when you search for anything on this site, the result is under the heading "Flat of Angles: (#) Result(s)." I honestly don't think it's anything I did because I can't think of why search results would be titled "Flat of Angles." Like you're searching through a mazy abode? But I only thought of that es post facto.

I need to get "bran" in the notes at least I guess. who the fuck knows what it really is.
bzfgt
  • 23. bzfgt (link) | 13/04/2019
I added a "bran" note. Since I won't figure it out anyway, I'm not going to subject myself to this racket again to try to straighten it out....
dannyno
  • 24. dannyno | 18/05/2019
Isn't it "desserts", not "deserts"?
bzfgt
  • 25. bzfgt (link) | 07/06/2019
See note 2, it strikes me as a pun, so both/either. "Deserts" seems like the more likely straightforward spelling in context (as in "just deserts").
bzfgt
  • 26. bzfgt (link) | 07/06/2019
All kinds of broken links on these SLT songs...I hope it's only the SLT songs though, come to think of it, I don't know why it would be. Fuck!
Ant
  • 27. Ant | 19/10/2020
Hi @bzfgt, I'm just wondering which pressing/format or other edition your tracklist for this album is from? My 2015 Cherry Red pressing (2xLP) has "Venice With The Girls" as the first track, "Fibre Book Troll" as track 10, "Snazzy" track 9, Black Roof as track 2....it shouldn't be too much of a slog checking Discogs but I'm not in the mood for cross-referencing etc with more tabs open than is necessary!

N.B--From 2009 to 2012 I did a lot of voluntary work with Addaction, one of the UK's main substance abuse charities. We did loads of work for the organisation, mediating between clients and members of staff, redesigning the complaints procedure and generally pushed for more "client" representation at every level of the charity.
Anyway, before all this a charity-wide memo was released to all branches of the organisation and I was put forward from my local Addaction (I was in treatment at the time--it wasn't like a rehab, think of it more as a court-ordered mandatory "outpatient rehab", with the focus being on group work and one-to-one counselling sessions with your key worker, and weekly urine tests! Also had to appear in front of a judge once a month who would track your progress--there was a real danger of you getting chucked in jail if you didn't play along).
Okay, so I got chosen to represent my hometown's Addaction branch in this new "Service User Group" and was interviewed by two ladies in the charitie's base in Farringdon, London--and one man, a Brummie, whose dress, although not ostentatious at all, screamed "muso". You can see where I'm going with this, can't you?
Well, the Brummie fella was introduced to me as "Darren" (not knowing it was only spelled with one "r") and as part of the interview we had to give an extemporised answer of between five and ten minutes, an "off-the-cuff presentation", I suppose, to the question: "what are your main interests?". So I said: "alternative/underground comics, drawing my own comics in that sort of style, music, film and reading, everything from comics to James Joyce" (sorry folks gonna be a long comment!). Shook hands with everyone, got re-imbursed for train journey and told my branch of Addaction would be notified in a week whether my application for The Service User Group had been successful.
Long story short, I was accepted, and the next meeting was in Newcastle to meet our fellow, newly-chosen members and erstwhile "directors/bosses" (though they ABSOLUTELY discouraged the latter designation!). Daren was about two minutes late and the closest empty chair to the door, wouldn't you know it, was mine. So we all made our (re) introductions and went through a long-assed meeting. But I got to talk to Daren in the cig breaks. Turned out he WAS a muso, into all the bands I was--and he was in the process of recording an LP with a group called "The 'Gales", as he called them--The Nightingales, who I'd heard a few times via Peel. And he kept talking about his producer "Joe". He'd told me he was the drummer but not an original member (Daren of The Nightingales, I mean). Anyway, Daren said some more stuff about their being "legal problems with a couple of members in Joe's old band so we've got a few weeks rest while he goes back to Germany to sort all this legal shite out." And I'm thinking: "Joe? Was in a band that's fractured into two camps? Quite possibly German?" when Daren referred to him as Joachim and the "lightbulb came on"--I said: "Fuck! I'm a bit slow--you're not talking about Joachim Irmler from Faust, are you?!?!". And he replied in the affirmative, I was, like, "FFFUUUUUCKING HELL!!!", starstruck by the proximity of this substance abuse counsellor (although his position was a lot higher than that--he got his start voluntarily advising speed-injecting punks about harm reduction practices during the twilight of punk/early days of new wave)--btw I must point out I'm not doxxing Daren; all this info is out there online, much of it posted by Daz himself, there's even an interview with him on YT about how he started in substance abuse counselling and the organisation he went on to found (The Methadone Alliance)---to his connection to a legendary kosmiche musician.
I saw him a month later, he played me mixed and mastered songs from the album, he had about four or five (?) completed, it was really good stuff too ("This one's our Tom-Waits-circa-Rain-Dogs rip off", "this is our Gang Of Four rip off", "this is our attempt at "Doc"-era Beefheart" etc! In truth they weren't "rip offs" at all, just captured the feel of those records wonderfully, with maybe the odd riff "nicked" and a whole new song built around it)!!!
I'd go on to see him at least one out of two Service User Group meetings; he and "the director" of the group who worked for Addaction were long-time friends and colleagues; we did all the big DDN conferences, ended up travelling all over on Addactions dime, it was a wonderful time and I made some great friends. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and the Service Users Group ceased to be operational around early-mid 2012--a lot of members ended up getting jobs, some went into the field, some pursued their passion (there was a lad who was a talented mechanic--wasn't nothing he couldn't do to a car!). Daren was the only guy apart from the bosses assistant and a few members who I didn't stay in touch with. I don't even remember him having a Facebook tbh. I DO recall getting a Facebook message from my former "boss" and I asked about Daren; "haven't seen him for a while, he's concentrating on his music" (this would have been during his tenure in The Fall--my "boss" wouldn't know The Fall from The Summer--she was an old school b-girl, breaker, graffiti artist etc under the aegis of her big brother; she always said she was "the crew's mascot as a little kid"). I remember going on at Daz to buy Through The Eyes of Magic--next time I saw him he'd bought it and was like: "it's bloody great, I'm glad I took your advice, all my mates have been going on about it!", over a hung-over breakfast in a posh Liverpool Hotel.
Anyway sorry, again, for the blogpost--but that's the story of how I met Daren Garrett, one-time drummer for The Fall (and member of the semi-legendary Pram!),I thought maybe at least one Fall "stan" may appreciate it! Cheers for reading if you got this far, lol!
Ant
  • 28. Ant | 23/10/2020
I obviously meant: "the chair nearest the door was next to mine"
bzfgt
  • 29. bzfgt (link) | 06/02/2021
Ant, great, great story! The website puts all the tracks in, I think, alphabetical order....either that or it's the order I tagged them, whatever it is I have no control over the order they're in.

I didn't realize Garrett was in Pram.
Simon
  • 30. Simon | 18/10/2021
It ain't 'brain', don't be daft.
dannyno
  • 31. dannyno | 30/10/2021
See above. I'm hearing "brain" still.
Lacy Porncheese
  • 32. Lacy Porncheese | 03/02/2022
Brain is bran but with a Deeply Southern accent.

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