Bo Demmick

(1)

He was called
He was called... a lot of things
A lot
Like a fatty
It was very peculiar
They said (2)
Hey fatty, Hey fatty
For the CD that you hold in your hand (3)
Is a construction of a left-sided mind    (4)

He was called... a lot of things
It was peculiar
You need a tape 
Off Derek, Bo... (5)
Go to the Hulme missionary consort

Moderninity... what it is?   (6)
Moderninity...what it is? 


8:30, 8:30
8:30, 8:30

It was peculiar
He was called
He was called
A lot of things
8:30
It was peculiar
I said, where's my record?
Give it me!
Well we have had 2 and a half weeks
There's 5 of us
They were multiplying so fast
Bo! Bo!
I was mystified, I was mystified, mystified

Now the cd that you hold in your hand
Is a construction by a left sided mind
It was peculiar
8:30, 8:30
8:30, 8:30

Mystified

1. Like "Hey! Marc Riley," this is essentially "Hey! Bo Diddley" with different lyrics. The single version is called "Bo Doodak," for some reason. SInce Bo Derek is mentioned in the lyrics, the title (either one) could be heard as a combination of Bo Diddley, Bo Derek, and something else. According to anonyarena on the Fall online forum, Ben Pritchard told him after a gig "The song used to be called 'Bo Diddley', actually, but then we started getting silly and it got called Bo Doodak for some reason."

"Demmick" (sometimes "demic") was British army slang in the second World War which meant a soldier on the sick list (perhaps derived from "epidemic"). It subsequently came to be used to mean a dummy or perhaps a jerk (both definitions can be found on the internet, and neither seem to be common).

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2. Debate has raged about what MES is saying here. It could be "Hey Fatty," it could indeed be "8:30," as the Lyrics Parade has it, or we could follow the book which apprently has "a fatty." I'm not convinced he says the same thing every time, so probably all of these come into play, but I stick with the Lyrics Parade above.

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3.  There is a song called "The CD In Your Hand" on MES' solo outing, The Post Nearly Man (see note 6 below). 

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4. The brain is divided into two hemispheres with, to a certain extent, specialized functions. The left side is associated with language, fact retrieval and calculation, whereas the right is associated with processing images and sounds, although all of these functions are to an extent bilateral. The popular press, especially New Age and self-help writers, have exaggerated and made much scientifcally unwarranted hay with these differences.

As Ddddd puts it, "he is accusing somebody of being overly analytical/ literal."

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5. Bo Derek was a minor actor in the 1970s who starred in 10, the premise of which is that she was one, and then quickly faded from view. 

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6. This word also appears in this way on "The CD In Your Hand" (see note 3 above). 

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Bo Demmick: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 2005