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The Annotated Lyrics
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- Where's the F***in Taxi? C**t
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- Win Fall CD 2088 AD
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- Wise Ol' Man
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- Words of Expectation
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- Yes O Yes
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- Your Heart Out
- Youwanner
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- Zandra
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Arranged By Album
- Live at the Witch Trials
- Dragnet
- Grotesque (After the Gramme)
- Slates
- Hex Enduction Hour
- Room to Live
- Perverted by Language
- The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall
- This Nation's Saving Grace
- Bend Sinister
- The Frenz Experiment
- I Am Kurious, Oranj
- Extricate
- Shift-Work
- Code:Selfish
- The Infotainment Scan
- Middle Class Revolt
- Cerebral Caustic
- Light User Syndrome
- Levitate
- The Marshall Suite
- The Unutterable
- Are You Are Missing Winner
- The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click)
- Fall Heads Roll
- Reformation Post TLC
- Imperial Wax Solvent
- Your Future Our Clutter
- Ersatz G.B.
- Re-Mit
- The Remainderer
- Sub-Lingual Tablet
- Wise Ol' Man
- New Facts Emerge
- 2014
- O! ZZTRRK Man
- New Facts Emerge
- Segue
- Ponto
- Smith and Mark
- Afternoon Disco
- Reece Stick
- Home /
- The Annotated Lyrics /
- Bug Day
Bug Day
Lyrics
First off we got the answers
Misery, oil-based skin (2)
Bug day
Bug day
Bug day
Midges - midges hovered over the heather (3)
3 moths shivered
Green moths shivered
Cockroaches moldered in the ground
Tonguehorns belched fire (4)
So, fleet at sea (5)
Terrors hit water
Minoa said 'eek'
Minoa said 'eek' (6)
Sea reaffirms some things
We learned some things
People behave very wrong
Crave company
Green is starboard, back
Left is port, there (7)
Old continental women
Coffee cups poised on front
Facing up to the sea is a very hard thing
Facing up to sea is a v. hard thing
Anything is better than bug day
Bug day
Bug day
Bug day
Bug day
First off we got the answers
Misery, oil-based skin
Bug day
Anything is better than bug day
Bug day
Bug day
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Notes
1. Dan has turned up a greeting card designed by Andy Warhol with pictures of various insects and the inscription "Happy Bug Day." I nominate this for most underrated song in the Fall canon.
Dan found this in the sleeve notes from The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall:
BUG DAY
- These things wanted rights and tenancy, Govt. sponsored bands - of course it all stemmed from the Nip Insect Glorification craze - the tinned bean diet for Spiders just about sealed it ...
Dan comments:
There are bug days in various places in the US, but the mention of "nip insect" in the sleevenotes cited in my comment #35 made we wonder about Japan ("Nip" being an offensive slang term for someone from Japan, derived from "Nippon", the Japanese name for Japan).
And indeed June 4 in Japanese is "mu" (six) "shi" (four). "Mushi" is Japanese for insect/bug/creepy crawly (?). And so 4th June is Mushi No Hi, or "insect day" or "bug day" (???).
And in Japanese popular culture, things like rhinoceros beetles feature heavily.
So maybe the song is based on the idea that the glorified beetles got above their station?
Nutterwain points out a plausible musical resemblance between this and "Lesson No. 2" by Glenn Branca (1981).
On Twitter, Brix (via Dan):
I seem to remember this was improvised live.
Again Leckie just gets the most amazing sound layers here. He is a sound sculpted. [sic]
Paul Hanley:
Mark told me to do some drums that were completely random. After I'd done it he said they were too random - so I had to overdub a more regular pattern. And that's life in The Fall in a nutshell.
2. I dislike bracketed lyrics for aesthetic reasons, but their relative absence on this site shouldn't always be taken to imply that I am any more certain about the lyrics than the other sources are. In any case, Marc Balance has sent me a slowed down version of the intro and these lines seem close.
3. "Ecstatic midges" make an appearance on Levitate's "4 1/2 Inch."
4. There is no insect called a "tonguehorn," as far as I can make it. Dannyno points out that there is a Norwegian reed instrument called a Tungehorn (which means "tongue horn" in Norwegian); I'm not sure how that would fit in to the presumed Aegean setting of the song (Wikipedia maintains that the instrument was unknown outside of Scandinavia).
5. The Lyrics Parade and Reformation have "fleed at sea," which would be a nifty pun--if we take it as the past tense of "flee" (and also a pun for "fleet" and also "flea/flea-ed"), it would seem that the narrator has taken to the water to escape the bugs. And the lyrics seem to indicate that this is indeed the likely situation, but "fleed" is not well-attested, so we have to go with the safer "fleet."
6. "Minoa" is the title for a region of bronze-age settlements (possibly named after the legendary king Minos of Crete, of labyrinth/Minotaur fame) in the greater Greek cultural area of influence, centered on the Aegean islands of Corfu and Sicily (today Corfu is part of Greece and Sicily is in Italy). If it were something like "Minoa is screaming" we would imagine some sort of widespread insect-induced panic, but it is unusual to say of an entire region that it says "eek." Nonetheless, if we keep in mind the unbiquitous sense of humor and delight in strange formulations in Fall lyrics, this could be what is intended; otherwise, "Minoa" could be meant as a proper name here. I have not been able to find a single notable individual named "Minoa," although it does seemingly persist in some cases as both a first name and a surname. Dan has also discovered that there is a genus of moth called a "Minoa."
If forced to choose among these options, I think it is both a slightly more likely and a much more amusing option that the populace of Minoa is saying "eek." On the other hand, marc balance in the comments below has made the suggestion that MES is singing a German-English hybrid ("Minoa said 'Ich'!). And both balance and Mike Lynch think "Minoa" may be "My Noah." Dan, meanwhile, suggests the narrator may be referring to a fisherman, to wit "Minnower said 'eek'!" Unfortunately for this last, the "i' sound is long... As for myself, I prefer "Minoa said 'eek'!" Eek is, after all, an exclamation that is most commonly associated with vermin, and "My Noah" just doesn't sound right to me. On the other hand, since there is a bug (or actually a genus of bugs) called Minoa, that would be consonant with the title and refrain, and although moths are not known for volubility, we can allow a little poetic license.
7. When facing, while onboard, the bow of a ship, port is the left side and starboard the right. The port side, at night, is identified with a red light and the starboard side with a green one, so everything is in order here.
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Comments (56)
"Minoa". Are we sure about that? Could it be "minnower" - someone who uses minnows as fishing bait? If terrors hit the water, then fishermen would certainly be among those would be scared and likely to say "eek", wouldn't they?
Dan
There’s this 1975 horror film ‚Bug’ written by William Castle and Thomas Page, after Page’s 1973 novel ‚The Hephaestus Plague’, in which an earthquake releases mutant, not really ‚fire belching’, but fire-producing cockroaches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_(1975_film)
The main protagonist, a scientist, christened these bugs ‚Hephaestus Parmiteri’, after himself, and the ancient greek god of fire and blacksmiths ‚Hephaestus’ (his roman counterpart is Vulcan)...
Hephaestus is associated with ‚Labrys’, a double-bitted axe, that in turn is closely associated with the Minoan civilisation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labrys
maybe the longhorn beetle have just been renamed/ or blended with tonguehorn to make it sound more dramatic ?
what do you think?
What I should I do is listen to this again, but I haven't.
But I'm thinking, so far we always have this as "Minoa said 'eek'"
Why isn't it the other way around.
Why isn't it, " ' Minoa', said Eek".
I mean, what if Eek is speaking, not "Minoa"?
Add it to the pile of implausible alternatives, anyway :-)
And, you would really prefer it to be "'Minoa,' said Eek"? That's weird!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoa_(moth)
Might be. Might not be. I'm still just throwing rocks at the snowman.
for clearly the distraught Supplicant is summoning, often, dead kin.
So I hope you are not displeased with the way I worked it in above.
Just had a few listens.
I agree, it probably is "misery... almost skint". Good call, I reckon.
Not sure about "seance" etc in the previous line now.
Sounds to me like one summer's day there seemed to be a load of irritating insects around, so MES decided to go to the seaside, even though there were some challenges there too... like having to look at the sea.
And indeed June 4 in Japanese is "mu" (six) "shi" (four). "Mushi" is Japanese for insect/bug/creepy crawly (虫). And so 4th June is Mushi No Hi, or "insect day" or "bug day" (虫の日).
And in Japanese popular culture, things like rhinoceros beetles feature heavily.
So maybe the song is based on the idea that the glorified beetles got above their station?
First stop we got ze answer/Glycerine, all day, skin
I'm not sure it's "first stop", sounds more like it could be "First moth". But it does sound like "ze answer", and I can hear "glycerine" (which is a component of preservative fluids for insect specimens) and "skin".
"We got the answer, skin, ?, baste, oil, glycerin" which would suggest an insect repellant
so back to the second line: "Glycerine oil baste skin"?
In the 2nd verse I'm fairly sure its "crave company"
Thanks for "crave." It's hard to hear but probably a little more likely than "create."
Last "but day" is just more "bug day" (probably another Lyrics Parade artifact).
I'm going to the safer and more likely "fleet at sea." But leave a note for "fleed."
I can't remember why.
Oh, maybe because flamethrowers are used to try to kill the bees, and in the end the swarm is lured out to sea and blown up. Which might have echoes of parts of the lyric.
The movie was shown on BBC 1 on 23 March 1984, 7.05pm-9pm. But on that day The Fall were playing a gig in Ayr. Anyway, it predates this song. So if you really wanted to make a case for some semblance of an influence, you could.
I don't think it's a very good film.
I also don't think it's got anything much to do with this song.
https://twitter.com/Brixsmithstart/status/1245824926713511939
https://twitter.com/hanleyPa/status/1245824921202315264