Cruiser's Creek

(1)

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!

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.

^

4. B&H= Benson and Hedges.

^

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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Cruiser's Creek: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1985