Crackhouse

Lyrics

(1)

Good evening, we are the Fall! 
The house that crack built! (2)

Notes

1. The transcriptions of Elvis Chomsky, from the Fall online forum, generally display at least as much creativity as fidelity.

[The rest are Elvis Chomsky's lyrics. There's a small chance that they sometimes overlap MES's:

To hell!
You.
Respect elves!
XL pre-dying a house in FR
He was.
Average out of town
You're a fowl - whoop!
The hell stuff.
When the cat growls.
XL pre jail
How it feels.
And every person can be rubbish.
Then you watch
Come back
Here
A drug
A house!
A cat growls
Damn smokey - whoop!
Woah! Woah!
Oh from mail on
The hills.
The cat growls.
After the hall 
Free the hall 
Long rhythm
Wow!
Peel alone oh-wow-oh-wow
Student kick arse 
Stunned.]

If anyone has corrections, please do not hesitate to submit them. 

Here is what Reformation has on the song:

Julia Adamson [Nagle], in an email correspondence with this writer: "I can't remember much about this one. I know it was a Dose tune, Mark called it 'The House That Crack Built' and I remember helping him with lyrics for it and picking up on the nursery rhyme theme thought using the big bad wolf story with the three little pigs, (two of whose houses were destroyed by the wolf), and we worked something out around that.
 
Dose and Mark did a gig in Brighton at the Barfly, Mark wanted me to do some backing vocals on a couple of tunes but I got shy at the last minute and bottled it. I can't recall if or why Mark didn't want to use it. Maybe Dose didn't want it used?"
 
Steve Hanley interviewed by David I Williams (TBLY, issue no. 10; January 1998): "That's another DOSE song...The first two songs we did [for the Levitate album] were Inch, which was one of theirs, and Spencer. But we never got around to doing Crackhouse."
 
The two performances of the song are quite different. On the first night at Manchester, the song follows Plug Myself In, a Dose track, and is much punchier and shorter. MES begins the first night's version with the words "The house that Kat built". On the following night, Crackhouse begins the set, and is much more atmospheric, slower, with Hanley's bass grumble standing out that bit more.
 
It is very possible that the track is a early version of Spencer Must Die (but especially Spencer on the Peel session track), both lyrically (references to "crack" and "the house that crack built") and with a similar synthesiser part.
 

^
2. See the nursery rhyme "The House that Jack Built":
 
This is the house that Jack built. 

 

This is the malt 
That lay in the house that Jack built. 

This is the rat, 
That ate the malt 
That lay in the house that Jack built.

etc.

Thanks to Dan for pointing this out.

Bob writes:

"It may be purely coincidental but there used to be a pub in Higher Broughton called The House That Jack Built which was directly opposite the old Fall Foundation office on Bury New Road. Maybe the name stuck in Mark's mind as a suitable source of inspiration. It was one of those peculiar early seventies pubs with a bizarre multi-level layout."

^

More Information

Crackhouse: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1997

Comments (5)

Zack
  • 1. Zack | 24/08/2013
Oddly enough, in June 1998 DOSE released a single called "Crack Man In Bat Den Sex Shock." I purchased a copy and the tune does not seem to bear any resemblance to "Crackhouse."
Bob
  • 2. Bob (link) | 27/06/2016
It may be purely coincidental but there used to be a pub in Higher Broughton called "The House That Jack Built" which was directly opposite the old Fall Foundation office on Bury New Road. Maybe the name stuck in Mark's mind as a suitable source of inspiration. It was one of those peculiar early seventies pubs with a bizarre multi-level layout -http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/work-finally-start-9m-development-8164413
dannyno
  • 3. dannyno | 02/10/2018
"The House that Jack Built" is a nursery rhyme. Obvious, but someone has to state the obvious.
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 02/10/2018
Comment #2:

A history of the pub: https://web.archive.org/web/20160507150418/http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2015/12/house-that-jack-built-sports-bury-new.html
Mark Oliver
  • 5. Mark Oliver | 20/09/2023
The Alan Price Set had a hit with the single 'The house that Jack built' in 1967. The lyrics are a Geordie stab at surreal Dylanesque character creation.

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