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The Annotated Lyrics
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- Get A Summer Song Goin'
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- New Facts Emerge
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- Noise
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- O! ZZTRRK Man
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- Oh! Brother
- Ol' Gang
- Oleano
- On My Own
- One Day
- Open The Boxoctosis
- Oswald Defence Lawyer
- Over! Over!
- Overture From "I Am Curious, O
- Oxymoron
- Pacifying Joint
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- The Usher
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- Unutterable
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- Various Times
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- Weather Report 2
- What About Us?
- What You Need
- Where's the F***in Taxi? C**t
- Whizz Bang
- Who Makes the Nazis?
- Win Fall CD 2088 AD
- Wings
- Winter (Hostel-Maxi)
- Wise Ol' Man
- Wolf Kidult Man
- Words of Expectation
- Wrong Place, Right Time
- Xmas With Simon
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- Yes O Yes
- You Don't Turn Me On
- You Haven't Found It Yet
- You're Not Up To Much
- Your Heart Out
- Youwanner
- Zagreb
- Zandra
-
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 /
- Cruiser's Creek
Cruiser's Creek
Lyrics
What really went on there?
we only have this excerpt:
There's a party going on down around here
Cruiser's Creek yeah
Watch the shirt-tails flapping in the wind
Sidewalk running
See the people holding from the back
Hat-boaters tilting (2)
There's a party going down around here
Cruiser's Creek now
Uh, Cruiser's Creek yea
Uh, Cruiser's Creek, uh
Uh, Cruiser's Creek, now
Got nice pink bubbles in my mouth
From what I've taken
There's a party come around annual
Cruiser's Creek now
And Bianco on the breath guaranteed (3)
Cruiser's Creek yeah
Cruiser's Creek now
Cruiser's Creek
Uh, Cruiser's Creek yeah
Uh, Cruiser's Creek, now
Uh, Cruiser's Creek, yeah
See the street-litter twisting in the wind
Crisp bags turning
See B&H cartons laughing in the wind (4)
Road-litter turning
Spent forty-five minutes last night
Parallel crease, pow!
There's a good mid-afternoon breeze
In the air now
Welcome treats from party
My brain is clear now
No more Red Wedge in the pub or ZTT stuff (5)
At Cruiser's Creek now
At Cruiser's Creek yeah
At Cruiser's Creek
Cruiser's Creek, yeah
Cruiser's Creek, now
Cruiser's Creek, yeah
There's a party going down around here
Cruiser's Creek now
Watch the shirt-tails flapping in the wind
Sidewalk running
See the people holding from the back
Hat-boaters tilting
There's a party going down around here
Cruiser's Creek now
Uh, Cruiser's Creek now
Uh, Cruiser's Creek
Nuptial
Annual
Freaks limited
Cruiser's Creek! (6)
There's a party going down around here
Next to Freedom street
Get the last of the poison off my chest
Cruiser's creek
I crave sex behind steel cabinets (7)
It's for what I'm yearning
And there's a dim chance it's what I'm gonna get
At Cruiser's Creek yeah
At Cruiser's Creek now
At Cruiser's Creek
Workforce! Limited!
Cruiser's Creek yeah!
Somebody went and left on the gas
Checkpoint, main gate
As I lit a number 6 cigarette (8)
Like a wick, burning
Cruiser's Creek.
Stamp it out just before it's too late
Turn the tap off.
My name is Big Hero, mate
Cruiser's Creek
Avoid disaster
And I imagine
The sound of its blast, yeah.
There's a party going down around here
Cruiser's Creek now
Watch the shirt-tails flapping in the wind
sidewalk running
See the people holding from the back
Hat-boaters tilting
There's a party going on around here
Cruiser's Creek now
Cruiser's Creek yeah
Cruiser's Creek
Nuptial
Annual
Breach limited
Cruiser's Creek!
Notes
1. This may be bout an office party, judging by the reference to "steel cabinets" and the "workforce," and in light of these comments from MES in the Record Mirror, 26 October 1985, quoted in the booklet with the box set reissue of This Nation's Saving Grace:
I got the title from a library on a ship we were on, but the song's about the time I worked in an office, really. The idea behind it is this sort of macabre office party where, at the end, you don't know whether the people are left alive or not or whether somebody left the gas on. It's a party lyric with an evil twist.
Fit and Working Again points out that the common usage of "cruising" to mean looking for sex. See "Cheetham Hill":
See the fleet of cruising cars
Go past the stations and the bars
Never stop to get out
In case they choose to cruise about
Dan: In Brix Smith-Start's The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise, Brix tells the story of the time her grandparents took her 'entire family' on a fiftieth wedding anniversary cruise: 'Mark was fed up with my family, and the whole experience, and he escaped to the library. Every room had been given some kind of grand, nautical title, like the Pelican Perch Bowling Alley, and the Narwhal's Nebula Theatre. The library was christened Cruiser's Creek... ..When [MES] wrote the song, I assumed it concerned the Salenger family vacation. But his miserable voyage made him reminisce about his brief time working at the docks in Manchester... He had been fascinated by the office parties there, and remained curious about office parties in general... So "Cruiser's Creek" was about an office party that ended in disaster because somebody left the gas on and the whole thing blew up.'"
From the lyrics, however, it seems that the "disaster" was in fact averted ("Stamp it out just before it's too late/Turn the tap off").
Dan, as usual an outstanding sleuth, has determined that the cruise ship the Salenger family were on was the Royal Viking Sky, and the journey probably began on 21st December, 1984.
2. A boater is a flattish round-brimmed summer hat.
3. Bianco is a variety of vermouth.
5. Red Wedge was a group of musicians (including Billy Bragg and Paul Weller) who tried to get young people interested in voting for the Labour Party to defeat Thatcher in the late 80s. ZTT (for "Zang Tumb Tuum," a corruption of "Zang Tumb Tumb," the name of a sound poem by the Futurist Filippo Marinetti) is an independent record label founded by Paul Morley and Trevor Horn.
6. Dan suggests this is a slight rearrangement of "Annual nuptial breach, limited." Karlb says "I always took this to suggest the once a year office party infidelity." Dan responds that the cruise was a wedding cruise, this could account for the lyric. See note 1.
7 Zack notices a connection with "An Older Lover, Etc." which contains the lines "Get ready for old stories/Of teenage sex/From the early sixties/Under cover/Behind office desks."
8. No. 6 was a cigarette only sold in England and parts of Europe and, later, Canada.
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Comments (54)
Hm?
Next to Freedom street"
Where is Freedom Street? Was it a corridor on the cruise ship? I've just searched google maps, and in the UK, perhaps surprisingly, there is only one currently-existing "Freedom Street" - in London. There have been others historically, and there are a couple more in the world: one in Garrettsville, Ohio, and a "Street of Freedom" in Algiers.
Bazdad...
https://archive.org/stream/op1276529-1001/op1276529-1001_djvu.txt
Detective work documented here:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/cruiser-s-creek-notes-and-queries-t6019-s48.html
Since the Royal Viking Sky was a Norwegian ship, and "Frida" is a Nordic name, I think it's worth further thought.
Page 25 here:
"Return it to the white reader in stink of sewage looking at open shirt flapping and comes maybe five times his ass fluttering like---We sniff what we wanted pumping out the spurts open shirt flapping ---"
https://books.google.com/books?id=Aei26HlTs_YC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=open+shirt+flapping+and+comes+maybe+five+times+his+ass+fluttering+like%E2%80%94We+sniff+what+we+wanted+pumping+out+the&source=bl&ots=bpD0iyM4g2&sig=MRJr2ptMncayLecF09v-2BKj_v0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR0L_41rHbAhVzIjQIHR1tD70Q6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=open%20shirt%20flapping%20and%20comes%20maybe%20five%20times%20his%20ass%20fluttering%20like%E2%80%94We%20sniff%20what%20we%20wanted%20pumping%20out%20the&f=false
On all the versions of CC I've heard it sounds like he puns Red Ledge or Red Letch in the pub
All the random lyrical suggestions above seem very plausible and possible, but I can't tell from listening, so we see kind of stuck for the moment.
FAWA, I can't believe I didn't note that meaning of "cruiser" above, I don't think it's too obvious to mention, just obvious enough that I didn't notice it needed mentioning...
But here are some of the pictures, for convenience:
Nuptial
Annual
Breach
Limited
I always took this to suggest the once a year office party infidelity.
There is a post-1981 distinction, though, between a private limited company ("Ltd") and a PLC. Basically the former cannot trade shares on the stock market. There's a minimum value of share capital PLCs have to have.
Parallel crease, pow!
Brilliant!
Crap--so I googled it. If you google "parallel crease," every result is about Asian people's eyelids. "Parallel crease clothing"--no relevant results. What is the story then?
After the single version ends, the lyrics are Peel. But I can't find where this part comes from, is there another version?
"There's a party going down around here
Next to Freedom street
Get the last of the poison off my chest
Cruiser's creek
I crave sex behind steel cabinets (6)
It's for what I'm yearning
And there's a dim chance it's what I'm gonna get
At Cruiser's Creek yeah
At Cruiser's Creek now
At Cruiser's Creek"
I have this marked as "Peel" right now but I don't think it's actually on the Peel version. It's not in either lyrics book...am I missing something and just not hearing it on one of these versions? Did someone transcribe a live version?
This is the original (6 minutes plus) single version:
When it was added to later versions of TNSG and some compilations a whole section of lyric from the Freedom Street bit was edited out. In other words, although it was songs from the single that were added to reissues of the album, it wasn't the version actually found on the single that was added. The edited version is about 4 mins 17 secs. And when the 458489 A Sides compilation was released, it was also the truncated version that appeared. Same is true of 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong and 58 Golden Greats.
The correct versions appear on the TNSG box set, and on the 7CD singles boxset.
The pub was the Ravenscourt Arms (became the Black Bull) at King Street, Hammersmith.
See. https://whatpub.com/pubs/WLD/16637/black-bull-hammersmith
And
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101079786-black-bull-figure-outside-the-ravenscourt-arms-public-house-ravenscourt-park-ward#.W3lGvvZFxYc
More in the FOF thread on the song: https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink/topic?url=https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/cruiser-s-creek-notes-and-queries-t6019.html
Brix, p.6:
Google Maps: Heaton Park Boating Lake
I am probably stretching massively to see an echo here of People You Were Going To, by MES-faves Van Der Graaf Generator:
The banality and desperation of a bit of fun ,getting drunk ,or getting a grope or more is clear in the video . Characters so half alive that a big social party brings out their desperation.
Working class banality and intellectual crapulance like the office. The BBC TV series The Office is another take.
Walking in sidewalks may refer to the ships journey if the weather was a but choppy.
Crease may be a cricket reference
Freedom st may be sarcasm ,with the red wedge stuff mentioned.
Lyrically it expresses clear class boundaries, pink bubbles in the mouth and white wine ,and Bieters? Not exactly Skol and party tins if Watneys pale ale and vodka.....from the times.
The party theme expresses a social or other situation where everyone's so desperate for a bit if something they quickly go into danger fuckuo disaster zones , after a few drinks,snogging fellow staff ,getting pissed and being rude to colleagues etc.......getting pissed and not realising the gas is on.
The reference to rubbish and b an h packets is symbolic.
Socially it was normalish for the proles to smoke number six ,but ,there were those who would pay more for the shiny gold encased B and H. B and H could also be a musical lyrical sarcasm ,to refer to Goosey and Hawkes , a British old old school music company and instrument maker of quality,in most orchestras.
You never know with him.The docks were declining rapidly and this post industrial machete called Thatcherism . It's obviously a party of desperate.
The red wedge Tour etc, CND,the closure of Salford docks,mass unemployment......a party at the end of the post industrial universe.
Poor Mark ,stuck on fkn cruise ship with the in laws and no drugs.
Visually as well many of the lyrics expresses adence and privilege,imagine the student s wearing bowters boating on the Isis ,in privilege ,dumping their rubbish everywhere,pissed students on Prosecco .
Section 3: 'with quick treats from clerk Pete', as opposed to 'Welcome treats from party'
Section 3: 'no more red lead chimney puff' sounds more accurate than 'no more Red Wedge in the pub' - I'd always heard an 'l' rather than a 'W' at this point
Section 4: 'next to Frieder's Freighter' as opposed to 'Freedom Street'. Could it be this freighter?
Section 4: 'lead ore deposit' as opposed to 'last of the poison' also sounds right
Section 4: 'And quick sex' (as opposed to 'I crave sex') - this is what I'd always thought he was singing.
Section 6: 'avert disaster' rather than 'avoid'
Section 7: 'freaks limited', not 'breach limited'
I think the "Frieder" caption is just a typo for "freighter" in that photo.
Note that on the lyric sheet it's actually "Freiders", not "Frieders".