Hard Life in Country

(1)

[spoken: Yeah, it's like, its a bit sort of reedy, John, somehow, it's weedy sort of...] (2)

It's hard to live in the country
In the present state of things
Your body gets pulled right back
You get a terrible urge to drink

At three a.m.
The stick people recede
The locals get up your nose
And leather soles stick on cobble stones

It's hard to live in the country
It has a delicate ring
Nymphette new romantics come over the hill (3)
It gets a bit depressing

Paper local
Drunken scandal
Publish your address as well
Locals surround where you dwell
Old ladies confiscate your gate railings
For government campaigns  (4)

Its tough in home county  (5)
Councils hold the ring
D. Bowie look-alikes (6)
Permeate car parks
Grab the churches while you can
Portaloos    (7)
Yellow cabins by methodist doors  (8)
New Jersey car parks permeated by
 

D. Bowie sound-alikes

It's good to live in the country
You can get down to real thinking
Walk around look at geometric tracery (9)
Hedgehogs skirt around your leathered soles
Fall down drunk on the road
It's good to live in the country

Look at yourself as a man
The valley rings with ice-cream vans (10)
It's good to live in the country

Leather soles stick on precinct flagstones
Small up town Americas like your outskirt town

The villagers
Are surrounding the house
The locals have come for their due
It's hard to live in the country

1. The title may have been inspired by "It's A Hard Life" by the Seeds, a band MES admires (thanks to Zack).

Dan:

From the cover of Room to Live: "Vignettle [sic] number three shows the harsh results of technology in yokel hang outs. Horrid truth behind all that romanticized green grass."

From the Room to Live press statement: "Back home with HARD LIFE IN COUNTRY, a song too true to describe, except maybe to say Sainsbury's have it all Pre-Cogged and slowly creep the land while the locals conspire against each other and lie-down. This song plus ROOM TO LIVE feature the unrecognised genius of Arthur Cadman, who supplied off the wall lead guitar."

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2. Dan points out that John Brierly is credited with production on this album...but not on this song.

MES comments in Masterbag:

"It's really hard for me to explain that song, it's like, I'm too subjective. It started as a sort of pop song, real simple, but then I kept distorting it you know, kept adding bits, like, when I heard Bow Wow Wow singing about the country it really pissed me off so I put in the line about when New Romantics come over the hill - it gets a bit depressing. It's like, semi-fun but very prophetic, I really did have feelings of paranoia about the villagers surrounding the house, and it came true. When we went to Australia I left this bloke in charge of me house, but he let all the scum of the village in and they, like, wrecked the place, broke down doors, and they attracted the police to the place, so the village did close in on me. I mean don't get me wrong, I love Manchester, but sometimes the claustrophobia sets in ..." 

Zack points out that the Bow Wow Wow song is seemingly "Go Wild in the Country":

I don't like you, I don't like you, town
I don't wanna like you, I'll shop around
I don't want you, I don't want you, town
I don't wanna want you, I'll shop around, I'll shop around

Wild, go wild, go wild in the country
Where snakes in the grass are absolutely free
Wild, go wild, go wild in the country
Where snakes in the grass are absolutely free

And, the coup de grace:

Sweet from the trees, nakes in the breeze
But I got no boiled chicken, I wanna go hunting and fishing

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3. See note 1.

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4. Martin informs:

"During WWII there was a national scrap drive especially active in London where a lot of railings were grubbed up and sent off to be scrapped. I have never been able to find out what really happened with this pre-emptive move to destroy London before the Luftwaffe but it seems that program was more of a public relations exercise rather than of any practical use and the railings were dumped."

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5. The counties around London are called the "home counties." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, they are "the English counties surrounding London, into which London has extended. They comprise chiefly Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Hertfordshire."

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6. Bowie also turns up in "Mere Pseud Mag. Ed.," "Get A Summer Song Goin'," and "He Pep!" 

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7. From Darrg, "'Portaloo' is the trademark name of a type-of prefabricated plastic portable toilet cabin much beloved of British festivals, sporting events, construction sites and car parks where the council have closed down the public toilet block." Note that "Portaloo" is also sometimes used in a generic sense in Britain, much like "Xerox" or "Hoover."

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8. Again from Darrg: "The 'yellow cabins' might also be Portaloos, as well as a pun on 'yellow cabs' to lead into the otherwise slightly incongruous New Jersey reference?"

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9. "Geometric tracery" is an architectural "term used for the early type of bar tracery, a French invention adopted for the East end of Westminster Abbey, begun in 1245. The chapel windows...are divided into two lights separated by a slim central mullion with a pointed arch above filled by a foiled circle."

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10. Wordsworth's "The Idle Shepherd-Boys" opens: 

THE valley rings with mirth and joy;

          Among the hills the echoes play

          A never never ending song,

          To welcome in the May.

Thanks to gappy tooth on the Fall Online Forum for pointing this out; gappy very aptly points out that "Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether MES had WW in mind or not, the suburban bathos of starting a line with the pastroal "the valley rings" and ending it with ice cream vans is the same either way." 

Wordsworth's poem is a pastoral idyll which does sound a cautionary note about shepherd boys having too much fun and neglecting some lambs, but in all expresses a much more cheery and sentimental view of country life than MES does here. 


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Hard Life in Country: Fall Tracks A-Z 

Story of the Fall