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The Annotated Lyrics
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Arranged By Album
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- Home /
- The Annotated Lyrics /
- All Leave Cancelled
All Leave Cancelled
Lyrics
(...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)
These may be the most cryptic lyrics to date.....cwazy
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..
"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.
... it's not a live link!
Reminscent of the Kiss song, Nowhere to Run:
And I think it's because the URLs are missing the "the-annotated-lyrics" bit in the middle.