Cab It Up

Cabbing it uptown
You're moving it uptown
You taxi it uptown uptown

And you're moving it southwest 
You're cabbing it uptown
You're moving up sideways sideways

And you're cabbing it uptown uptown

Cabbing it uptown

Your business friend
Your business friend's Australian
And when he comes it's cobber-dämerung! (1)

But you're cabbing it uptown
You're moving up south now
You're moving it uptown uptown
Sideways sideways

Main strips! Main strips!

People going, people going
Moving it uptown

And locked in the door bins (2)
Slowly slowly

Jump in! Jump in!

You're cabbing it uptown uptown

But you know the best, Dan (3)
I dunno where I am
I feel like crying

But cabbing it uptown
You're moving up sideways
Moving up slowly
You're cabbing it uptown

(Taxi! .....)

You'd better cab it up slowly

Moving in circles
A Shepherd's Bush man (4)
Eats from a can
He taxi it southwest southwest
He moving it uptown uptown

Uptown Uptown

You'd better cab it up slowly
You'd better taxi it slowly
You'd better cab it slowly
You'd better cab it up

Jump in! Jump in!
Michael! Michael! (5)

1. A pormanteau of "cobber" and Götterdämmerung. "Cobber" is Australian slang for "mate" in the English sense, i.e., friend. Götterdämmerung means, in German, "twilight of the gods." It comes into German as a rendering of Ragnarok, which literally means "fate (or 'end') of the gods," or Ragnarøkkr, which means "twilight of the gods." In Norse mythology (our knowledge of which is mostly derived from the Eddas), Ragnarok is a final cataclysm, including battles and natural disasters, that heralds the end of the current cycle of world history. Richard Wagner may have coined the term (it's hard to say, since German is particularly amenable to combined terms such as this); in any case, he brought it into common usage in 1876, when his Götterdämmerung premiered (it is the fourth and final installment of his four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung [Der Ring des Nibelungen]). The term often refers to a tragic doom or a final cataclysm, and is often used in a humourous or exaggerated manner, as Smith seemingly does here. Friedrich Nietzsche, who early in his career was a friend and disciple of Wagner's, lampooned Wagnerian (and, in general, German) bombast when he entitled one of his last works Götzen-Dämmerung ("Twilight of the Idols").

On the Peel version, we learn that the business friend "looks like Charles Atlas" and "worships Bob Dylan." And, although in context the bodybuilder Charles Atlas seems to be the obvious reference above, the Michael Clark Company has included, since about 1984, a filmmaker and lighting designer of that name.

In the 1980s there was a Dutch TV show which showed music called Gotterdammerung 2000. I have not yet been able to find much information about this. But in comment 3 below, Pster links to a performance by the Birthday Party on this program, which was broadcast September 12, 1982.. This was of course an Australian band. It is possible, then, that the "business friend" is Nick Cave.  The picture at the head of this blog post seems to be of Michael Clarke's Charles Atlas. If that's the case, he does seem to look a bit like Cave (or vice versa). "Business friend" would then seem to be some kind of dig at Cave, with whom MES was known at times to have a somewhat adversarial relationship...note that Bob Dylan is discussed in this interview, and MES utters the immortal words "I respect Dylan. The only good thing I've heard of his is that LP he did with George Harrison and Roy Orbison."

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2. In British English, a "bin" is a trash receptacle.  

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3. A mysterious "Dan" also appears in "Hip Priest."  

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4. Shepherd's Bush is in western London. In Fall lyrics, anything from southern England, particularly London, often carries a negative connotation.  

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5. Refers to Fall collaborator Michael Clarke, the choreographer behind the ballet I Am Curious, Orange. The Fall accompanied the dancers live, and the album I am Kurious Oranj is the soundtrack of the ballet that almost shares its name.

Dan reports this statement from MES in the New Musical Express:

"Like there's a song 'Cab It Up' in there which was originally intended to be about William Of Orange living it up after he'd got to London. But it's turned into a song about Michael Clark and his mates, full of gross insults. They haven't realised that yet. Ha ha!" 
 

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Cab It Up: Fall Tracks A-Z