Athlete Cured

(1)

Ahh-ha-haaa...Look under (2)
Look under
 

From the hotbed of creation (3)
in dreamstate.
The cure, bulletin, zeitung  (4)
Was in no pill.
Look under.
The cure was in no pill. (5)
 

The German athletic star was continually ill.
For months doctors were puzzled.
The star would complain of the smell in his room.
On visiting him this was found to be true.
An odor resembling hot-dogs permeated the whole bedroom.
 

A solution was only discovered by my closely
watching his brother Gert.
Gert was handsome, well-meaning,  but slightly a careless type.
Not malicious, I hope you understand and grasp.
No chance.
 

But on returning from his clerical job, Gert 
would park his Volkswagen at the end of the day
willy-nilly in the driveway, usually the wrong way round,
so that the exhaust fumes would flow upwards right through
the open windows of the athletic star's upstairs bedroom.
(carburetor)

I also discovered that Gert would turn his engine
over for up to an hour. I don't know why.
Citizens in my street are also
partial to this.               (6)
 

Look under.
The cure was in no pill.
 

Obtaining a new parking space for Gert's motor-car, athletic star soon
recovered.
Unfortunately, this being East Germany,
Gert patriotically volunteered to be sent on a labor
beautification course of the countryside north-west of Dresden.  (7)
And never seen again.
And never seen again.
 

Look under.
The cure was in no pill.
Had to look under the window sill.
The window sill.
 

Look under.
The cure was in no pill.
Had to look under the window sill.
The window sill.
 

From certain facts you have to go on and further
and often it is better to go around or look under.
the windowsill

etc..
etc..

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1. This song notoriously cops the riff from Spinal Tap's "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight." The lyrics have the feel of a late 19th or early 20th century detective narrative.

Steve Hanley's below account of the fraught recording of the track is from The Big Midweek:

‘You can’t use that!’ insists Simon Rogers. ‘It’s a clear lift.’

‘I don’t care, we’re using it!’ says Mark and we’ve got a stand-off I can’t help feeling slightly guilty about.

‘It’s a total rip-off!’ Simon’s wide-eyed with outrage. One of the things he’s always loved about our music is how original it is, and now here’s Mark insisting we use the riff, note-for-note, exactly the same, not altered in the slightest by key changes, time changes, chord changes or any other sort of disguise from ‘Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight’. A symptom of constant touring, this spoof anthem of modern rock has been ingraining itself into my internal sound system ever since we got the video player. Which is why, during a recent soundcheck, I happened to be doodling it just as Mark walked in. ‘We’ll use that,’ he decided. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked pointedly, thinking that, since Mark had seen the gospel according to Spinal Tap at least half as often as the rest of us, there was no need to spell out what it actually was.

‘You can’t just call it somfin else and sing about a sick German aflete and pretend it’s a new song and expect me to cover it ap [sic] with some bloody cymbal-rattling! I’ll neva live it dahn.’ I wonder if Mark’s got a private bet on with some of his alter egos as to which of them can piss the next producer off first.

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ he retorts. ‘I’m trying to show that if you locked these fuckers in a studio and told them they weren’t getting fed till they’d copied a song, they’d starve to death!’ Simon shakes his head in disbelief, struggling to interpret this back-handed compliment for what it is.

Dan submits:

Brix, in the sleevenotes to the Beggars Banquet 2xCD/LP 2020 edition of The Frenz Experiment:
 

Part of Athlete Cured as influenced by the fact that athletics was on 24/7. I was always extremely obsessed with World Championship Athletics and Olympic Athletics. I am the kind of person who will watch the Olympics from sun up to sun down. Mark was forced to have the fucking tv on watching the athletics because I found it inspiring. I would read biographies, everything. There was the whole thing when the horrible thing happened; when the Israelis got killed. There is part of Munich 72 in there too.

... but not in the narrative of the lyric, perhaps more conceptually. And Munich of course was West Germany.

^

2.This is sung in the style of the opening (i.e. the only) lyric in "Wipe Out."

^

3. Dan makes a few observations which germinated in the thread on "Athlete Cured" on the Fall Online Forum (check it out!):

"We never learn what sport the "athletic star" is involved with. Nor do we learn his name, though we are told his brother's name. 'Volkswagens' would not have been common in East Germany. And it seems this all happens in a dream: 'From the hotbed of creation in dreamstate.'"

^

4. Zeitung means "newspaper" in German.

^

5. From James Evans:

"The cure was in no pill" can be taken on many levels, but I've always read it as a comment on totalitarian methods: you couldn't just reprimand Gert for his careless behaviour; he has to be carted off to a labour camp and worked to death. I also think it's a sort of "can't see the wood for the trees" thing. Rather than treat the symptom, look for the cause; the fumes aren't the problem, the car producing them is, and by extension the person who's turning over the engine.

^

6. J Temperance says: "I always thought that MES was using a play on words here - Athlete Cured as in the sense of cured meat - from all the smoke i.e. like wood smoked ribs or whatever - as well as cured in the sense of medically cured. 

The hotdog odor was from the athletic star being wood smoked by the exhaust fumes!

Bit mad, but kind of makes sense."

^

7.  Dan points out that beautifcation projects were a phenomenon in East Germany. These were often competitions with prizes awarded, organized by the National Front of the German Democratic Republic (which was basically a front for the ruling Socialist Unity Party). 

^

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Athlete Cured: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1987

Fall Online Forum: Athlete Cured