Chicago, Now!

(1)

Do you work hard? (2)
Do you work hard?
You don't!
You don't!

You don't! Chicago, now!

Do you work hard?
Do you try hard?
You don't! Chicago, now!

All is commission time
Commission C.T. time (3)
Set down, setting down
C.T C.T. time

Chicago, now!

Work hard.
Do you try hard?
Dear crew
Try hard.

Chicago, now!

That's it: you don't.
That's it: you don't.

Chicago, now!
Chicago, now!

Step down
Setting down, just setting down
See their butt all over the street
You just go up and meet
Just setting down.

Chicago now.

Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho. (4)

1. Speculation has it that many of the songs on Extricate are about Brix Smith, MES's recently estranged wife (although both Smiths have denied this); M. Smith met B. Smith in Chicago, which may or may not have something to do with this song.

Dan has found a painting called Chicago Now by one George Becker. It is somewhat obscure, but cannot be ruled out.

 

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2. This line was resurrected in 2005 on "Blindness."  

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3. Maybe the Chicago Crime Commission, a private watchdog group dedicated to educating the public about crime in Chicago. "C.T." could be "Central Time," Chicago's time zone. A literal interpretation would have it that the singer is setting down in a plane in Chicago, to work ("hard?") on commission. The Peel session version mentions "M.T." Perhaps at that point MES thought Chicago was on Mountain Time.  

According to harleyr:

CT time / commission time etc. - a year or so after Extricate came out I believe I saw a billboard poster along the North Circular which had similar phrases. I never saw it again and can't find any evidence that it existed so perhaps I dreamed it.

Whatever the case, it strikes me as something you might find in a key to explain abbreviations on a timesheet for sales people. 'Put your commission hours in the column headed CT.'  Making people fill in time sheets is sometimes perceived as being a way of getting them to show that they don't work hard. 'Do you work hard? That's it, you don't and we have the time sheet to prove it.'

The Peel version has the lyric 'MT is Mission Time' which might be related to the corporate mission statements that I think were becoming popular in the late 80s when this song was written. 

With all that in mind, might 'hi de hi de hi de hi de ho' have more to do with the Seven Dwarves and 'hi ho hi ho... It's off to work we go' than Cab Calloway? Perhaps Smith got the two songs mixed up? (See note 4 below)

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4. A nonsense phrase associated with Cab Calloway, who was not, however, a Chicagoan. The scatted lyrics first appeared in Calloway's signature song "Minnie the Moocher" (see note 3 above). Dan points out that a version of "Minnie the Moocher" by the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra reached a high of #35 in the UK singles charts on 12 November, 1988.

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Chicago Now: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1990 mentions that the Peel version sounds exactly like the studio version, but in fact the radio session is slightly faster, with a choppier beat.