All Leave Cancelled

Lyrics

(1) 

(...He said, why don't you tell me?...)

Why don't you tell me?
Next time you ring
Why don't you tell me
Next time you ring
Why don't you tell me?
All leave's cancelled again

All leave cancelled!

Why don't you tell me
The next time you ring 
Why don't you tell me
The next time you ring
And, why can't you ring and tell me?
Why can't you just ring and tell me?
Disappearing glass
DIsappearing in the glass
(Ba ba ba ba...)

Why can't you 
Why can't you ring and tell me?
Why can't you ring and tell me?
Why can't you ring and tell me?

(In the garden?)
Why don't you tell me
The vacuum pack
Isn't ready
In the holy temple
Of the Quakers

Welcoming
Dismenting
Glasses
Miniscule 

All leave cancelled

Who can't be trusted
With a one half bucket of whiskey
Without injecting salad
All leave's cancelled 
In eight minutes, fifty seconds
It's really nice
(All leave's cancelled)
Gone, til
Five minutes twenty seconds  (2)
(All leave's cancelled)
Title:
"All leave X"
(Wake up)
Going on ten minutes, oh five seconds
(And why can't you ring and tell me?)
Arrow in green as used by the bandmates  (3)
(Why can't you ring?)
Straight on
Resorting back
To a seven twenty
(Why can't you just ring and tell me) 
To eight fifty 
Why can't you wait for nine fifty (4)
Is your art so shallow?
Do you have to abuse the indigenous 
Over the borders of M1     (5)
With your savage puritan Polishness?
Laughing at you
As you go upstairs
With your African friends
To pitch against our goal
(I can't!)
All leave cancelled
(Why?)

Why don't you tell me next time
All leave's cancelled again?
Why don't you tell me
Next time you ring
All leave's cancelled,
All leave's cancelled again?
Why don't you tell me
Next time you ring?
Why don't you tell me
Next time you ring?

One day you're gonna be lonely
But I don't know when just now 
Lie-ie--es             (6)

 

 

Notes

1. The lyrics are very difficult to make out here, and MES seems to slide into nonsense syllables at times, although I cannot be sure of this.

^

 

2. Indeed it is; the track reaches 5:20 right when he says "twenty." The previous "Eight minutes fifty seconds" is in the ballpark of the running time of the song, which runs to 8:19. The ensuing times in the lyrics do not seem to correspond to anything. Dan suggests these could be train schedules or something of that nature...

^

3. Antoine points out that I've missed the obvious here, DC superhero the Green Arrow.

^

4.  This track plus the next, "Wise Ol' Man (Inst.)," run to 8:50. "Seven twenty"--no correspondence, but "Facebook Troll"/"No Xmas for John Quay" [sic] combined run to 7:30. I don't have anything for "Nine fifty," but "Facebook Troll"/"No Xmas" would get you 9:37. Thus--and I don't claim this is a likely interpretation--but it is possible to read "Why can't you wait for a nine fifty/Is your heart so shallow?" as meaning something like, "Are you really turning the album off before it's over, you philistine?!" 

^

5.  M1 is the central Manchester post code district; MES lives in Greater Manchester, hence he is outside the borders of M1.

So, where does MES actually live? I have long been confused about this, as sometimes it seems to be Salford, sometimes Prestwich, and sometimes Bury...Dan claims to have the skinny:

"If you consider what MES says about Bury, it is clear he considers where he lives in Prestwich to be in Salford. Others would agree. However, his local authority is the metropolitan borough of Bury - Prestwich became part of Bury in the 1974 local government re-organisation . There were proposals in the early 20th century to merge Prestwich with either Salford or Manchester - but they came to nothing as far as I can tell..."

^

6. Here MES seems to be singing lyrics from "Lies" by the Knickerbockers (thanks to misterrogers from the Fall online forum). "Lies," which is a near perfect knockoff of the sound of the early Beatles, was a top 20 hit in late 1965. Here MES seems to me mashing two different parts together:

Some day you're gonna be lonely
But you won't find me around
Lies, lies, breakin' my heart

Someday I'm gonna be happy
But I don't know when just now
Lies, lies, breakin' my heart
 

MES doesn't really pronounce "lonely," he sort of tails off there, but the combination of lyrics transcribed above is pretty close to how it sounds.

^

Comments (23)

dannyno
  • 1. dannyno | 21/02/2016
9:50 etc. Could these be bus or train times?
Rik
  • 2. Rik | 21/02/2016
First impression- upon reading near the end... He may be referencing the wife. We get a "darling", and earlier " as you go upstairs"... Immediately thought of him being at home.

These may be the most cryptic lyrics to date.....cwazy
Wrayx8
  • 3. Wrayx8 | 03/03/2016
"It's really nice until 5 minutes 20 seconds"?
bzfgt
  • 4. bzfgt | 19/03/2016
I hear the "Gone, til" pretty distinctly in there, don't you? I mean, if not that, then two other syllables like that?
bzfgt
  • 5. bzfgt | 19/03/2016
I made some adjustments, mostly for the better I think...by which I mean, if not accurate, more accurate...whatever that means...
dannyno
  • 6. dannyno | 19/03/2016
Note 4:
Historically, geographical boundaries change. And political boundaries don't always accord with cultural boundaries.

If you consider what MES says about Bury (http://annotatedfall.doomby.com/pages/the-annotated-lyrics/bury-pts-1-3.html), it is clear he considers where he lives in Prestwich to be in Salford. Others would agree. However, his local authority is the metropolitan borough of Bury - Prestwich became part of Bury in the 1974 local government re-organisation . There were proposals in the early 20th century to merge Prestwich with either Salford or Manchester - but they came to nothing as far as I can tell..
Antoine Procuta
  • 7. Antoine Procuta | 08/04/2016
The Green Arrow is a DC superhero, whatever that has to do with anything. He wears a hood and the group is young and therefore wear hoodies??

"Why can't you ring and tell me" might be adressed to Mark himself, he's mentioned that friends keep suggesting he get a cell phone. Also, he's recounted stories involving the bandmembers and their phones in a few interviews.
Bob
  • 8. Bob (link) | 11/06/2016
Re point 5 - from a local perspective - MES lives in Prestwich which is in Bury as has been stated. The confusion often arises around the juxtaposition of the three local authority boundaries at the apex of Cheetham Hill and to the south western edge of Heaton Park. The predominantly Hassidic settlement in Higher Broughton/Kersal (Salford) South Prestwich (Bury) and Higher Crumpsall (Manchester) straddles all the two cities and the borough of Bury. This tends to give the impression of one whole district rather than the three separate components. This is further confused by the North Manchester parliamentary boundary including part of North Salford. The Smith family originally lived in Broughton which is the basis for MES's legitimate claim to be a Salfordian by birth. However he does live in Prestwich which is a village in the southern part of Bury, To be fair Prestwich is very close to Salford but it is definitely not in Salford, I'm not aware of any plans to merge Prestwich with Salford and in all my time at Salford Council I never came across any records of that Turning to the tune M1 specifically is Piccadilly, and the Northern Quarter and does not cover the whole of the City Centre. I'd guess that MES is commenting from the perspective of Oldham Street area aka Northern Quarter where one of his favourite watering holes is situated.
dannyno
  • 9. dannyno | 16/07/2016
Bob, if you're interested in the merger proposals I can dig out the relevant newspaper articles (Guardian, for example). They would predate your time at the council by decades unless you are very very very old.
RM
  • 10. RM | 21/07/2016
@ Rik, I know we shouldn't talk of such things, but I'm wondering if this might be about a certain break up....

"One day you're gonna be lonely
But I don't know when just now
Lie-ie--es"


dannyno
  • 11. dannyno | 11/03/2017
More information link: "All Leave Cancelled: Fall Tracks A-Z"

... it's not a live link!
bzfgt
  • 12. bzfgt (link) | 23/03/2017
Weird, there was no link there at all, I guess I forgot to paste one in.
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 16/06/2018
The annotations seem to be trying to link to a different page each time, rather than to the notes, and generate a "Sorry, we couldn't find that page (error 404)" error.
dannyno
  • 14. dannyno | 16/06/2018
"One day you're gonna be lonely"

Reminscent of the Kiss song, Nowhere to Run:

Just pretend I'm only a friend and disappear from sight
One day you're gonna be lonely, wishing I was by your side
dannyno
  • 15. dannyno | 16/06/2018
Further to my comment #13, the notes don't link properly back to the text either.

And I think it's because the URLs are missing the "the-annotated-lyrics" bit in the middle.
bzfgt
  • 16. bzfgt (link) | 15/07/2018
Huh. When they changed the format you can't add new ones a certain way, but the old ones are usually grandfathered in...I hope this doesn't become widespread.
bzfgt
  • 17. bzfgt (link) | 15/07/2018
Got it, there was a bunk "Bury" too... it was the deal where it has the %s in it...
bzfgt
  • 18. bzfgt (link) | 15/07/2018
I didn't know you were in the Army...
Grimo
  • 19. Grimo | 21/03/2019
This is obviously precog about the present cancellation of Brexit. May imploring EU bigwigs to call whilst in meltdown. Obvious innit.
bzfgt
  • 20. bzfgt (link) | 09/06/2019
Self-evident, even...
joincey
  • 21. joincey | 01/07/2020
Is it " ... in the holy temple of the Quakers" ?
bzfgt
  • 22. bzfgt (link) | 05/07/2020
Zweigeist= I'd think twin spirit or double spirit, google translate for some reason gives me "twofold" but I don't know about that. I'm surprised we didn't have a note, and i wonder where that came from....I'll listen to it for "Quakers"
bzfgt
  • 23. bzfgt (link) | 05/07/2020
Definitely not "Zweigeist." Sounds like "Quakerst," I went with Quakers for now

Add a comment