Craigness

(1)

Neighbour downstairs with one eye
Co-habs with a mass of blonde curls
Oo-ar!
Oo-ar!    (2)
T'pau (3)
Mind moving fast is mad
Mind moving slow is sane
It's Grandpappy with Satan's eyes
Like a McEwan’s can (4)
He sports the maroon flares

Mind moving slow is sane
Mind moving fast is mad
Mind left stopped is God (5)

Writer in bed insane
Clutches pen in hand
The scrawl he wrote

Neighbour downstairs with one eye
Co-habs with a mass of blonde curls,
Her shadowed face...  (6)

Oo-ar!
Oo-ar!

Mind moving fast is mad
Mind moving slow is sane
Mind left stopped is God

Neighbour downstairs with one eye
Co-habs with a mass of blonde curls
Their babe cries (7)

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1. Like the preceding song on The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, "Stephen Song," this is named for the band member who wrote the music, in this case Craig Scanlon; according to Hanley, it was a working title that never got changed. Brix's comments in the liner notes to the CD:

Craig wrote that...The song was about our downstairs neighbours. Mark and I moved to the flat on Rectory Lane. It was gross, it was 20 pounds a week and there were springs coming through the upholstery. It had five cats, it stunk. I don't think we had a fridge, it was just shocking when I moved there. We were upstairs watching one day and all of a sudden, there was like smoke pouring into the flat. There was this really creepy guy downstairs who had two eyes but one of them was mutant. There was something really creepy about his wife and him, they just freaked us out. We ran downstairs and helped them put out the fire. That was the story of one-eye. And there was a prostitute across the hall.

And:

CRAIGNESS - "Shimmering violet shimmer, twisting haunts shadow passers veil night time silvery veils swirling rustling sweep. Shining, melodious Drifting." - B.E.S. 

"Joker Hysterical Face" is also about downstairs neighbors, maybe the same ones (via Reformation):

MES on "Joker Hysterical Face": "It's about a couple who live sort of downstairs from us, where we were living, and they used to play Abba and all that stuff, they always used to have it on full blast. She was a divorcee. I used to know women like her, and it's not very far from the feminist movement. Like the man is the main thing to blame." (Quoted in The Biggest Library Yet, February 1997.)

Dan quotes Brix during a Twitter listening party in April 2020:

I am playng the single note melodic hook. To go with Craig’s soundscape melody.
It gets so so SO psychedelic at the end!
It’s [producer] John Leckie at his sublime mindblowing best!!!

Paul Hanley, also on Twitter:

'Craigness' Craig's tune, unsuprisingly. The Riff that me and Brix are playing originally had an extra note which changed the time signature, but none of us could get it right. We had to leave it out. It was always a shame when we couldn't accommodate Craig wayward timing.

^

2. Brix on Twitter:
 

When Mark says “Ooo-ar “, he is making fun of the neighbour downstairs with one eye, like making out he was a pirate who’s eye was put out. “ It’s grandpappy with Satan’s eyes“.

^

3. It sounds sort of like "T'Pau," and that's what the Lyrics Parade had, but this is just a transcription, mind you...T'Pau was the Vulcan leader who was to preside over Mr. Spock's aborted wedding in the classic Star Trek episode "Amok Time"; a true maverick, she was the only person ever to turn down a seat on the prestigious Federation Council. A popular British group named themselves after her, although they post-date this song.

The Story of the Fall knowingly remarks that the neighbors "evidently like a bit of T'Pau," but I don't know what he's on about; he may be joking about his own ignorance of the lyric, or he may mistakenly think the band was around in 1984 (they formed in 1986). Or, he may think "T'Pau" is slang for sex or something, but if it is, the internet hasn't heard about it (I don't claim to be hip, but I can Google). What seems most likely to me is that MES is just scatting; after all, the previous line is "oo-ar." But it's good to have a pretext to mention "Amok Time."

^

4. These four lines are simultaneous. McEwan's is a Scottish ale.

^

5. Dan has found the source of these cryptic words in the movie Alone in the Dark. At one point the character played by Donald Pleasance, a psychiatrist named Dr. Leo Bain, says to his bemused colleague Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz)  "Always remember what the Hindu mystic said. 'Mind moving fast is crazy. Mind slow is saint. Mind stopped...is God!"

^

6. This could be just a flippant way of referring to the first-mentioned neighbor's cohabitant, but it also could be a description of her from his perspective if he is myopic, or doesn't see well with his remaining eye.

^

7. There is a musical shift into chaos here, which suggests that the "writer upstairs," surely MES, has succumbed to his madness due to the racket downstairs.

^

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Craigness: Fall Tracka A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1984