Assume

Intro.
Female voices:
...well I think at the end of the bridges there might be a few little shops...
Yes
Yeah
Shall we have a little go at one...

MES:
It's a weird new language init?
It's it's the hunes
It's the hune
The hoons that took over from the hunes (1)

Seven productions, they assumed 
Seventh of them were Hume's (2)
Three places
Or I di-ge-gest

If you are a Hume
You assume (3)

They move through the night
At the sky
No destination
They are Hu?mes (4)

If you half assume
You are a Hume (5)
The third term
Is mystical rabbiter (6)
If you half assume
You are a Hume
If you fully assume
You are a Hume

When Cliff Barnes read out in the June
The lyrics of Hey Jude (7)
He was victuous trembling (8)

If you are Hume
You assume
If you don't assume
You are Kapitän
Kapitän! (9)

His verbals, victuals and interest
Trembling is its tech antic [?]
Be he [?]
The watch was blackish in the morn (10)

If you assume
You are a Hume
If you half assume
You are a Hume

Seven productions, they assumed
The seventh of them was a Hume's
It took places I di-ge-gest
I think you guess
And if you are a Hume
You assume
If you don't assume
You are Kapitän!
You are Kapitän!
You are Kapitän!

Tch tch tch tch tch
Tch tch tch tch tch

1. This is how I got the transcription from the Lyrics Parade, and the fact that I don't know what to replace it with doesn't mean I think it is correct. Anyway, a "hoon" is slang in Australia and New Zealand for a lout, or someone who drives a car or a boat too fast. And Dr. X O'Skeleton wonders if there is a reference to Geoff Hoon, who was a Defence Secratary under Blair (see note 9 below). Racing, or doing doughnuts and the like, is sometimes called "hooning." Several people and things bear the name "Hune," but none of them seem to shed much light on the lyrics (Google it if you don't believe me). The closest is perhaps former British M.P. and European Parliament member Chris Huhne (currently serving time, but this post-dates the song).  Also, Hulme is an area in Manchester (thanks dannyno). I can't do a whole lot with this one, but I may be schooled in the comment section (I hope so, anyway).

"I think we got some hoon trouble" is a line uttered by Mel Gibson in "Mad Max" (Dan).

From a radio interview:

Let's talk about Assume, what's the...tell us about that song, how you wrote it.

That was a random one, definitely...it's about humans, and air flight, and um, rabbits, and um, things like that.

Bert suggests that "Hume" could be short for human, as in "It's human to assume..." So, is "Kapitän"... God?

Martin says:

2 October 2003 Bierkeller Manchester:  


- "If you assume, you are a hume; if you half assume, you a hume" (extra lyrics in Telephone Thing, fully 2 years before the release of Fall Heads Roll) 

^

2. Joseph Mullaney reports that Seven Productions is an Australian television production company, a branch of the Seven Network.

"Hume" maybe refers to David Hume (1711-1776), the great Scottish philosopher. Hume is generally considered an Empiricist, and he critiqued rationalism and sought to give a psychological account of knowledge, to the extent that he is sometimes considered a Skeptic.

On the other hand, on "I've Been Duped" there's a reference to a Dr. Richard Hume, who is seen retiring to the South of France after World War I. I have not found a corresponding historical figure; there is a character named Dr. Richard Hume in the extemely obscure 2002 Global Effect, the plot of which has nothing to do with the first World War.  

Dan:

I wonder if this is another song with some connection to Eleni's soft toy, Gunther O'Leipzig, because the instagram account, run apparently by Eleni, sometimes refers to "hooms" i.e. humans (so "hooms" is Gunther's term for humans, kind of thing). So perhaps "hoons" is "hooms", at least sometimes.

^

3. David Hume is mostly known for challenging assumptions, for instance the notion that causality is found in nature rather than in our habitual modes of cognition, or the idea that there is a unified soul or self behind our perceptions and impressions. Assumption is in fact, for Hume, a central part of our epistemology, as the only grounding he can find for causality is a "habit of mind" (i.e. assumption) we develop as a result of seeing events constantly conjoined in a certain order--if you see a brick hit a window and the window then break enough times, you begin to think there is a necessary connection, i.e. that the brick causes the window to break. But we can never actually perceive causal connections directly so, as an empiricist, Hume concludes that we do not have good grounds to say they actually are a part of nature.

Of course, it's possible none of this has anything to do with Hume.

^

4. harleyr drops the kind of science that comes along from time to time and almost suffices to justify our little enterprise:

I've pointed this out previously on the forum, but it appears that the music for Assume was partly inspired by the theme tune to Supercar. The lyrics to Supercar appear to have left a residual trace in Smith's lines about moving through the sky at night: Supercar... Supercar... With beauty and grace, as swift as can be, watch it flying through the air. It travels in space, or under the sea, and it can journey anywhere. Supercar... Supercar... It travels on land, or roams the skies, through a heavens stormy rage, It's Mercury-manned, and everyone cries, "it's the marvel of the age!"

^

5. Somewhere in all of this, there may be a play on the old saw "When you assume, you make an ass of you and me" (i.e. U and ME, ASS/U/ME). And note that "Hume" is a portmanteau of "half assume. " Dan says "half assume" might be "Hume" in a cryptic crossword puzzle. I've never done one so I'm not sure exactly how that works...

^

6. The Lyrics Parade had "Was Mr. A Court, ready tell." There was an English footballer named Alan A' Court (1934-2009) who played for Liverpool, but I don't think this is what it says.  

^

7. Cliff Barnes, played by Ken Kercheval, was a character on Dallas, the American "prime time soap opera" that aired from 1978 to 1991. He is not known to have ever read out the lyrics to "Hey Jude." Dan points out that Dallas, which never aired in June in the USA, it being in the off-season, did air during that month in Britain (and it would be unconscionable not to admit that certain events on the program, for all I know, may have been portrayed as taking place in June).  

^

8. Possibly a variant of "vicious," formulated this way to bring out the polarity with "virtuous," or else a portmanteau of the two...

^

9. Kapitän is German for Captain. Maybe this means that one shouldn't assume, and if one doesn't, one is "boss," i.e. cool. How the hell should I know?  

^

10. Dan speculates this may have something to do with the Black Watch, a Scottish infantry battalion. Dr. X O'Skeleton asks, "Could there be a reference to Geoff Hoon MP who was a member of the Blair government at around that time as Defence Secretary?" Why yes, why not? On the other hand, who knows? Dan adds, "There is a satisfying Geoff Hoon/Black Watch link, in that Hoon was defence secretary when proposals were published to merge the Black Watch into a larger regiment. MES mentioned the Black Watch a few times over the years, so we might expect he would have noticed the news."

^

SaveSave

Assume: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 2005