He Pep!

THE LIGHT USER SYNDROME

(1)

I don't want to go on bike anymore
I don't wanna go to work in the rain (2)
No more toast grilled on the heater
No more of that A&R girl
And having to meet her (3)
My personage it writes everywhere

YOU PEP!

And I stick my Parker pen under my ear (4)
Beneath my own carefully scruffed hair
What I wear
Have to check it out of Moody's lair  (5)
Hang on!

Hang on, he lives in the (bmai) house with me (6)
Into the room of the bass player.
Why won't you go up stairs?

YOU PEP!

Don't think he don't get in slippy
North-old-hamptonshire. (7)
I believe there's a new drug out
It's called speed, I wrote a song about it
Conceptually à la Bowie   (8)
But it's been lost in the vaults of the record company
By our manager  (9)

So instead our new 45 is 'Girlies'
And eyes on brown tongue
Yours, brattingly.
Everyone seems pleased with it
Anyway is a waste of life
Wait to say it in Lancashire
YOU PEP!

You had the best summer and now it's wearing off
No more excuses for traitorism

COMPLETE PEEL SESSIONS

This style is identical to none, the style is identical
Go delve elsewhere, more mature, course
Go delve, delve elsewhere, hex, git

Stop clogging my system up, go elsewhere British new found voyeur
Can’t even point a film camera straight, or get a telephone number correct
Get the girl, you can’t, you’re a crusty stick-up     (10)
 

YOU PEP!
YOU PEP!
YOU PEP! 

I don’t wanna go to work anymore
I don’t wanna go to work on my bike in the rain (11)
I got a part in Soldier Soldier     (12)

I don’t wanna go to work
No more toast grilled on the heater   
No more A&R girls and having to meet her
My personage 
YOU PEP!

It writes everywhere
What I wear, what I wear
I have to check that out
Stick my Parker pen under my ear    (13)
‘Neath my own careful scruffed-up hair
Hang on, he lives in the same house as me
Bass player

YOU PEP!
YOU PEP!

The tug of war, like other musical groups, 
Shouldn’t put it here, 
Sung Mungo Jerry, not Sleeper  (14)

You had the best summer and now it's wearing off 
No more excuses for traitorism to the old 
Cold dark winter on the Seventeenth of December

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1. The ever-helpful Dan has found the apparent origin of the phrase "You Pep!" in the sporting chant "Your pep!":

From the book about Silvio Scionti by Jack Guerry: "Although Elio spoke no English, she taught him the old pep-rally chant: "Your pep! Your pep! You got it, now keep it, doggone it don't lose it!" - to be repeated indefinitely. Sixteen years later, Elio was still quoting that chant but in a shortened and comically pronounced version: "You pep! You pep! You got eet... dooon loose eet!" Also, top left p18, "Boy's Life" magazine, 1937: And the book, "Milton Brown and the founding of western swing", by Cary Ginell: "You haven't got the team That our school has! Your pep! Your pep! You've got it, now keep it! Dog-gone it, don't lose it! Your pep! Your pep! " Similar wording also in the books: "Hadacol Days" by Clyde Bolton; Hi-school Pep for Principals" by Daniel Ulysses Cochrane; Cheerleader Handbook by Carolyn Frances Bruce; Barefoot Boy, by Roy Suttie; Oh there's lots, just google "your pep! your pep!" in google book search.

There's also the line further down, "There's a new drug out/It's called speed..." This suggests there could be a secondary allusion to synthetic pep, particularly to "pep pills," intended (I owe this thought to someone on the Fall Online Forum, but I cannot remember whom or where).

Brix confirms both of these hypotheses in one stroke in her memoir The Rise, the Fall and the Rise:

"I loved singing the cheerleader backup on 'He Pep!', another one of Mark's odes to speed mixed with a rant about record companies."

This song has the wacked-out greatness of the best moments of The Light User Syndrome. The refrain pops back up later on the album on "Oxymoron."

^

2. This seems to be taken from the Barron Knights' "Pop Go the Workers," which is about what would happen if the pop stars of the time (1965) had to get real jobs. MES more or less quotes the lyric verbatim on the Peel version (see note 11 below). 

^

3. This strikes me as a very un-MES rhyme, but it's not unwelcome for all that.

^

4. Parker effectively ended the age of blotting paper in 1931, when it unveiled "Quink," or quick drying ink. The ear maneuver would have come with a heavy price to pay in the days before this technological innovation.

Martin points out, however, that blotting paper was still in use in his school days in the 1970s, and is still used today, albeit less commonly.

^

5. Martin reports that on the version from 1996/10/08 at Worthing MES says "And what I wear is a secret in Mr Moody's lair in his attic." There's a 1971 book called The World in the Attic, by Wright Morris, featuring a Mr Moody.

^

6. The word I render "(bmai)" is a garbled mumble, but see the Peel session below--it apparently was to be "same house as me."

^

7. There is actually a village named Old in Northamptonshire, a county in the East Midlands. The name is a corruption of "Wold," which means "forest."

^

8. Thanks to Dannyno's Fall concordance, we now know that Bowie also shows up in "Hard Life in Country," "Mere Pseud Mag. Ed.," and "Get A Summer Song Goin'."

^

9. Martin:

MES on the song: 27 April 1998 Dingwalls, London: - "Got a new song out. It's about (...) drugs and that. It's set in Lancashire. But it's been lost in the vaults of the record company by our manager. Our single is called 'I'm A Fucking Brown Tonguer'."

^

10.  It's tempting to say that MES seems like he might be addressing himself here, although safer to say it seems like the narrator is addressing himself, anyway...but "seems like" is a key phrase, as the way the verse starts, it seems most straightforwardly to be addressed to someone else.

^

11.  From "Pop Go the Workers" by the Barron Knights:

I don't want to go to work
On me bike in the rain
So keep buying all our records
Then we won't clock-in again

Thanks to SB for spotting this.

^

12. Soldier Soldier is a British TV series that ran from 1991-1997. The show, set in the mid-90s, is about fictional soldiers in the British Army, and the way their lives were affected by changes in the downsizing military in the wake of the Cold War. According to Wikipedia, the title is from the ballad "Soldier, Soldier, Won't You Marry Me?":

Soldier, soldier won't you marry me, with your musket, fife and drum?
Oh, no, sweet maid I cannot marry thee,
For I have no coat to put on.

The "sweet maid" gets him a coat, and he then mentions he's lacking various other bits of apparel, all of which she fetches...when he is covered from head to toe with coats, hats, gloves, and boots, he finally admits that he's already married.
 

^

13. Parker is an American company that makes luxury pens, to the tune of 75 dollars or more for a single pen...

^

14. Mungo Jerry had a huge hit in 1970 with "In the Summertime" (see the next line below, "You had the best summer and now it's wearing off"). I'm not sure of the reference with "Sleeper"; for starters, there is a Woody Allen movie of that name (1973) in which the protagonist is cryogenically frozen and wakes up 200 years later, and finds himself in the middle of a revolution against an authoritarian (but kind of incompetent) regime. More likely is the band Sleeper, who  had some hits in the 90s.

^

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He Pep!: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1997