How I Wrote Elastic Man

Lyrics

I'm eternally grateful
To my past influences
But they will not free me
I am not diseased
All the people ask me
How I wrote "Plastic Man" (1)

 

Life should be full of strangeness
Like a rich painting
But it gets worse day by day
I'm a potential DJ (2)
A creeping wreck
A mental wretch
Everybody asks me
How I wrote "Plastic Man"

 

His soul hurts though it's well filled up
The praise received is mentally sent back
Or taken apart
The Observer magazine just about sums him up (3)
E.g. self-satisfied, smug

 

I'm living a fake
People say, "You are entitled to and great."
But I haven't wrote for 90 days
I'll get a good deal and I'll go away
Away from the empty brains that ask
How I wrote "Plastic Man"

 

His last work was "Space Mystery" in the Daily Mail, (4)
An article in Leather Thighs;  (5)
The only thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes
So I'm resigned to bed
I keep bottles and comics stuffed by its head
Fuck it, let the beard grow
I'm too tired,
I'll do it tomorrow
The fridge is sparse
But in the town
They'll stop me in the shoppes (6)
Verily they'll track me down
Touch my shoulder and ignore my dumb mission
And sick red faced smile
And they will ask me
And they will ask me
How I wrote "Plastic Man"

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Notes

1. It's not clear why the lyric doesn't match the title. There could have been an anticipated legal difficulty from putting "Plastic Man" in the title, or, as has been suggested elsewhere, it is possible MES means to indicate that fans and journalists get the name wrong. Both names reference DC characters. The creator of "Plastic Man," Jack Cole, killed himself in 1958 for reasons that remain unknown; given the state of mind of MES's protatgonist, this is potentially significant. 

A comic strip called "Ping the Elastic Man" by one Hugh McNeill appeared in the English children's magazine The Beano from 1938-1940. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that McNeill was a tortured soul...from Dan: "There are some Fall-world connections worth noting about McNeill that I haven’t seen noted by anyone else. First of all, he was born in Moss Side, Manchester. And secondly, he died on 22 November 1979, just a couple of months before the live debut of How I Wrote Elastic Man." 

One of Captain Marvel's enemies was called first Plastic Man, then Elastic Man....see More Information below.

"Plastic Man" is also a 1969 Kinks song, and before that (1967) there is a Sonny and Cher song.

The following remarks probably date from 1980:

TC - What's 'How I wrote Elastic Man' about?

MS - Writers, which is why Dave McCullough didn't like it. It's about a guy who wrote a book called 'Elastic Man' and everybody gets on his back about it, he's a celebrity and it fucks up his art. 

 

On the bootleg of the 12 December 1980 Acklam Hall gig (the day after the gig at the same venue released as the Legendary Chaos Tape/Live in London), MES can be heard to say before this song: "This one's about science fiction authors" (Dan).

Dave "Angry" McCullough is an Irish music journalist who wrote for Sounds magazine and cofounded the punk fanzine Alternative Ulster. He once described the single "Horrorshow" by the Scars as "the Fall meets the Bee Gees" (meaning the late-70s disco Bee Gees), and remarkably I can see what he means (although "Psykick Dancehall" might just as plausibly be taken as evidence that the Fall were not unacquainted with the Bee Gees). In one of those late night link clicking sprees, I discovered that MES was once (supposedly) quoted as saying that Scars were his favorite group; his reason, that they were polar opposites of the Fall, cannot of course be right if McCullough is, but what does it mean for two bands to be opposites anyway? But we should approach this with skepticism anyway: I can't find an official-looking copy of the article that is the original source of MES's quote on this subject, and in any case there is no quote, just a paraphrase. This paraphrase, as it has passed from article to article, has gotten larger and fuzzier with time (see "More Information" below).

McCullough may have been holding a bit of a grudge when he panned "Elastic Man" (if indeed that's what he did):

TC - What do you think of Dave McCullough, 'cos he seems to have turned
against you now?

MS - He's just a failure in life y'know. No, I've known Dave for ages.
This thing about us is a big personal thing though 'cos I wrote a
thing in a Dublin magazine about him. Y'see when he did that thing
about Ian Curtis in Sounds he used a lot of my lyrics and I wrote
this article saying this was fucking typical y'know, and Dave
thought he was like that with us and then that came out. I mean I
had to tell the truth. I mean it doesn't bother me, it doesn't
interest me 'cos all the papers are full of rubbish, but he used
my lyrics in his article and it upset me. Well, it didn't upset me,
but I thought y'know, cross him off the list. He had a page to fill
in a certain amount of time so he just put my lyrics in. Then he
turned against us, which was really great. He gave us a bad review
and all the band went 'hooray!'. It's really funny - he's against
us at last.

And, from Mark:

"Re: Dave McCullough, some altered lyrics from the gig at Queen Mary's College, 5th February 1981: '"Hello, this is Dave McCullough." "Dave? Dave who?" "Hello Sounds, this is Dave." "Oh, hello Dave!" "Well, I've got this wee band I want to interview." "Yeah?" "Oh yeah, well, uh, yeah." "Well, if you can screw the band's mothers for some money for the expenses we could make out what a big deal they are!"'

From "The Prestwich Horror and Other Strange Stories," by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, 31 January 1981: "The way people said 'Elastic Man' was about the music business, it wasn't anything to do with it, it was about a writer freaking out it was almost Lovecraftian like somebody I imagine Stephen King to be, everyone saying to him 'How did you write The Shining?'"

Aleister Pook: "There is a science fiction novel, written by a gentleman called Jeremy Brent and published in 1974 by the New English Library, called Plastic Man. It's pretty much an evil brain in a tank pot boiler..."

HoHoHoVisland: "Tenuously re: 'Plastic Man,' MES as a Can fan may have picked up on the sleeve notes to the 1969 pre-Can Holger Czukay record release of Canaxis 5: ‘Plastic man turned himself around on the planet of the moon trying to reach CANAXIS 5.'

The opening riff, and thus the chorus melody, more or less, is taken from the riff of "Pictures of Matchstick Men" by Status Quo.

^

2. I initially said that this is a curious remark, which elicited the following response from Philip Cartwright:

RE: note 2 about DJs. It's not so curious if you bear in mind that in the 70s British DJs were mainly a smarmy, vain, vacuous bunch who played anodyne pop with huge, self-satisfied plastic grins on their faces. This was especially true of BBC Radio One DJs (Jimmy Savile, Dave Lee Travis, Noel Edmunds, Tony Blackburn, etc., etc.). And these people were HUGE figures in British popular culture at the time. For American readers, think "gameshow host" and you've just about got it. Mental wretches indeed.

^

3. The Observer is a Sunday newspaper in England which also publishes a weekly magazine of the same name. Also, for many years a subscription to the Observer came each week with a free monthly magazine devoted to a single topic, such as sports or music, but it is unlikely that any of these are intended.

^

4. The Daily Mail is a British tabloid. Unlike the liberal Observer (see note 3), the Mail has had a conservative editorial stance for most of its history. The Mail seems to have published fiction up until 1950...on the other hand, this may be a joke about the quality of its journalism. 

Surprisingly, "Space Mystery" doesn't seem to be a title that was ever used by an author prior to this recording, perhaps because of how utterly generic it is. David points out, however, that there was an American comic called Mystery In Space (the first series ran from 1951 to 1966 on DC).

^

5. Leather Thighs is the name of a "great prison novel" a Firesign Theater character is writing in a sketch on their 1968 debut album, Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him (thanks to William Ham for this). 

^

6. The word is pronounced here with two syllables, so that it almost rhymes with "stop me": "shop-pees."

^

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More Information

How I Wrote "Elastic Man": The Track Record

 

From Dan:

 

MF Enterprises version of Captain Marvel (with the rather bizarre superpower of being able to separate his limbs and head from his body) first appeared in Captain Marvel comic, dated April 1966.

One of his enemies was Plastic Man:

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/pics/elasticman/marvelapril1966.jpg

DC Comics had rights to Plastic Man, and they didn't like this.

So by the June 1966 issue, MF Enterprises had been forced into renaming their villain Elastic Man instead.

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/pics/elasticman/marveljune1966.jpg

But it seems this was a last minute change. Because the artist made (presumably) a mistake in one of the panels, and uses the old name.

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/pics/elasticman/june66b.jpg

 

SCARS:

 

Someone named "Jerry" posted this to ILXOR. Remarkably, it seems to be the only document that exists on the internet where the purported original source of MES's statement that the Scars were his favorite band seems to be mentioned:

 

(From Careless Talk Costs Lives issue 12, written by Kevin Pearce)

MUSIC THAT TIME FORGOT 1: THE SCARS This column will each issue point you in the direction of unavailable music. This is not an excuse to brag about something we have and you don’t. It is rather a plea to that part of the music industry dedicated to salvage. It is a plea to make this music available.

So, for a start, it is absurd that no music by Scars is available on CD. This is a ridiculous oversight, for in the spring of 1979, Scars released the greatest single ever in the form of “Horrorshow” c/w “Adult/ery”. This extreme pop single was released on Fast, a small label out of Edinburgh, and was even better than its more famous stable-mates’ finest moments: The Gang Of Four’s “Damaged Goods”, the Human League’s “Being Boiled”, The Mekons’ “Where Were You”.

“Horrorshow” was gloriously depraved. Singer Robbie King barked strange “Clockwork Orange” passages in the broadest of Edinburgh brogues. Over a rumbling bass line, guitarist Paul Research came up with the most piercing trebly guitar squall you can ever imagine. The other side was a brave bash at being the first to hit the spot where punk and disco collided. Someone at the time said it was The Fall and the Bee Gees, but that barely hints at its momentum. The song was coincidentally inspired by a night out to see “Saturday Night Fever”.

Scars then were cocky, provocative and brash, and how they never became pop stars remains a mystery to me. Attention to detail was central to their art, and these kids were perfect material for the State Arts design group to produce the best range of pop T-shirts ever. The people involved with State Arts were also involved in setting up the style-mag i-D (a great story for another time and place), and Scars contributed a song for a free flexi with an early edition. The song, “Your Attention Please”, seems curiously apt now, being a setting of a 60s Peter Porter poem about impending nuclear terror.

Scars’ shot at the big time came with the Chrysalis-sponsored Pre label. The imprint briefly had a stable to savour, with Scars, Delta 5, Manicured Noise, Prince Far I and Gregory Isaacs among others, though most if not all Pre-releases are curiously unavailable nowadays.

Scars’ relationship with Pre resulted in a few singles and one LP. It also saw the teenage upstarts adopt a startling new image with a look inspired by Viviene Westwood’s World’s End pirate collection. If this makes Scars seem like comrades of Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants, that’s fine. Mark E Smith said Scars were his favourite group as they were the complete opposite of The Fall.

The LP, “Author! Author!” deserves to be heard, though at the time it sounded as though ex-Penetration guitarist Robert Blamire’s production was a little too lush. Now it would probably sound completely avant garde and rough as you like.

The finest moment was the single, “All About You”, which made that emerging big pop sound (Bunnymen/Wah! Etc) seem just right momentarily. Better still was the earlier, edgier single “Love Song”.

After the LP, Scars seemed to run out of steam. There was talk of Postcard saving the group, but perhaps this was just romantic speculation. It should be noted however Scars were as much an influence on the emerging Postcard groups and attitude as the better documented litany of the velvets, Subway Sect, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. It is coming to something when the Subway Sect is better documented than the Scars, but that’s the way it is.

Jerry, Thursday, 9 May 2002 00:00 (sixteen years ago) Permalink

 

The closest thing I can find to a statement like the one in question from MES is "The Scars are a great group," from an article he wrote for Vox in summer of 1980 (issue number 3) about the reaction to Ian Curtis and his death (including some critical remarks about McCullough). The article doesn't mention the Scars apart from that one sentence. And Dan found the following:

There's an interview with The Fall (i.e. MES) in the fanzine Nag Nag Nog #1, dated to 1980, on internal evidence possibly November 1980.

Quote (p.17) (typos as original):
 


"None of the English bands around at the moment do alot for me, you know, though I like the Scars."

 

A page called "Rock Music Wiki" has an entry on the Scars that quotes Smith, and footnotes it with a link to a Wikipedia entry that doesn't even mention him, although there may be something buried in the page history...eh, let them have it. It's not good enough for us, though!

 

Comments (88)

John
  • 1. John | 17/10/2013
MES is very good at trolling the audience with words that sound alike when they are recorded. I just heard an early version of Neighbourhood of Infinity when he's talking about "the time of the giant moths" and wondered if he is saying "moss" instead, since he says "the moths became rotten" which sounds more like "the moss became rotten" and I came to the conclusion that he's alternating to screw with us. Glad you put "Plastic" in the lyrics.
Philip Cartwright
  • 2. Philip Cartwright (link) | 10/12/2013
RE: note 2 about DJs. It's not so curious if you bear in mind that in the 70s British DJs were mainly a smarmy, vain, vacuous bunch who played anodyne pop with huge, self-satisfied plastic grins on their faces. This was especially true of BBC Radio One DJs (Jimmy Savile, Dave Lee Travis, Noel Edmunds, Tony Blackburn etc, etc). And these people were HUGE figures in British popular culture at the time. For American readers, think "gameshow host" and you've just about got it. Mental wretches indeed.
dannyno
  • 3. dannyno | 25/12/2014
"shoppes":

Worth making the point that this is often done for the same effect as "ye olde" - i.e. making out it's quaint and old and historic and whatnot.
russell richardson
  • 4. russell richardson | 04/05/2015
addendum:
'Shoppes" in two syllables - for sure. a plague of cheaply tarted up theme pubs and theme town centres with fake/revival olde age shoppes instead of any actual social or municipal improvements. Annoying, if petty.
and as for the DJs... an obvious undercurrent from the 1970s only now in the open as criminal fact, is that these very sleazy DJs of Radio One and Top of the Pops (all anodyne anti-music) were in fact parts of gangs of shady organized paedophile groups... American readers should look up Jimmy Savile (and Yewtree) and Dave Lee Travis on the internet. That MES and friends were so scornful shows (again) what great instincts they had and have. - you might also track down a Johnny Rotten radio interview from the late 70s where he actually names and shames Savile, and is treated as a kind of irresponsible slanderer.... but he was precisely right.
Simon
  • 5. Simon | 13/08/2015
"It's not clear why the lyric doesn't match the title. "

It was always clear to me.....Everyone is treating the guy like a celebrity and saying how amazing his book is, but in reality, they don't actually understand anything he's saying, not really. It's all superficial celeb-hero worship - they can't even get the name of his book right. You can picture it:

"Oh I really love that book you wrote...'Plastic Man'"
"Actually, it is called 'Elastic Man'"
"Yea, well, whatever, you're really cool"
bzfgt
  • 6. bzfgt | 25/08/2015
Yeah, I mention that possibility but it's an interpretation, it could be for one or all of any number of reasons.
Paul
  • 7. Paul | 03/09/2015
Re: "Shoppes"

Definitely making the Olde English reference what with it being followed up with "verily they'll track me down..." "Shoppes" abound here in New Jersey where I am ex-patted to, just saw one the other day in fact: "The Shoppes at Marlboro." Basically a posh strip mall featuring a Gap and a Banana Republic. Very authentic...!

Great site by the way, amazingly only just discovered it today whilst on a Fall binge.
bzfgt
  • 8. bzfgt | 05/09/2015
Yeah, I'm from Jersey and there was a place in my town called "The Jigger Shoppe."
bzfgt
  • 9. bzfgt | 05/09/2015
And, welcome to the site! Great call with "verily," it's all of a piece...
Sumsiadad
  • 10. Sumsiadad | 30/01/2016
Re: "Shoppes"

See also the Swell Maps' track, "My Lil' Shoppes 'Round the Corner".
Mark
  • 11. Mark | 06/01/2017
Re: Dave McCullough, some altered lyrics from the gig at Queen Mary's College, 5th February 1981: "'Hello, this is Dave McCullough.' 'Dave? Dave who?' 'Hello Sounds, this is Dave.' 'Oh, hello Dave!' 'Well, I've got this wee band I want to interview.' 'Yeah?' 'Oh yeah, well, uh, yeah.' 'Well, if you can screw the band's mothers for some money for the expenses we could make out what a big deal they are!'"
Zack
  • 12. Zack | 11/01/2017
No discussion of "Elastic Man" is complete without mentioning "Pictures of Matchstick Men" (1968) by The Status Quo. Giving the song a similar title may have been MES's attempt to hang a lampshade over the borrowed guitar riff.

In the Grotesque-era self interview MES offers a succinct explanation of the song: it's about "how the public kill off their heroes' creativity."
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 22/01/2017
Zack, comment #12: similar title?
bzfgt
  • 14. bzfgt | 28/01/2017
Thanks, Zack, I am very surprised it wasn't in there already, I assumed that it was. An oversight, for sure.
bzfgt
  • 15. bzfgt | 04/02/2017
Hold on, Dan; they both have a form of the word "man"....writing and making pictures of some kind are both sorts of arts...they both have between four and five words...

Sorry, Zack, your comments are usually very kick ass, I am just fucking with you a little, it's actually good to see you whiff once in a while, otherwise I'm afraid I'll have to turn the site over to you.
Zack
  • 16. Zack | 19/02/2017
The titles rhyme (albeit imperfectly), they both end in a form of the word "man" and the accents land on the same beats:

ONE TWO THREE AND FOUR
PIC TURES of MATCH STICK MEN
HOW i WROTE 'LAS TIC MAN

I really didn't think the resemblance could be more obvious.
David
  • 17. David | 08/03/2017
In note 4 you wrote "..."Space Mystery" doesn't seem to be title that was ever actually used by an author..." There was an American comic called Mystery In Space; given the other references to comics in the song, perhaps Smith was thinking of this, maybe even combining it with such newspaper strip SF characters as Flash Gordon and the very British Jeff Hawke, who appeared in the Mail's rival paper the Daily Express for many years
lloyd
  • 18. lloyd | 22/03/2017
It is "dumb mission" and not "dope mission" (i.e. search to buy dope)?
bzfgt
  • 19. bzfgt (link) | 23/03/2017
It definitely sounds "dope mission" to me. On the other hand Orange book has "dumb mission." I'd appreciate if others would listen and confer.
Lloyd
  • 20. Lloyd | 24/03/2017
It fits in with the earlier line about getting a good deal (i.e. scoring) and going away, I think. Your site is extremely entertaining, by the way.
bzfgt
  • 21. bzfgt (link) | 01/04/2017
Thanks, Lloyd!
dannyno
  • 22. dannyno | 13/05/2017
Note #3: "The Oberver"

Typo! Twice! Should be "Observer!!"
Dr X O'Skeleton
  • 23. Dr X O'Skeleton | 17/05/2017
I always heard the more prosaic "dog mission", as in he's walking his dog
bzfgt
  • 24. bzfgt (link) | 18/05/2017
Yes, especially considerate of you to tell me what it should be--I might have thought it meant "Obersver" or "Obverser."
bzfgt
  • 25. bzfgt (link) | 18/05/2017
Actually there were three Obervers, I must have copied it so I didn't have to fiddle with italics every time.
bzfgt
  • 26. bzfgt (link) | 18/05/2017
Yeah "dog mission" sounds somewhat plausible, all of them do really except "dumb mission" which might be it but seems like it shouldn't be. I'll give it a few more minutes for people's views and then listen with all suggestions in mind (and when I say "a few more minutes," in practice that might be a few months, or even years if no one reminds me....)
dannyno
  • 27. dannyno | 24/05/2017
Sounds more like "dog" than "dumb" or "dope", but it's very difficult to hear.
dannyno
  • 28. dannyno | 20/10/2017
Interview quote: The Prestwich Horror and Other Strange Stories, by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, 31 January 1981:

The way people said 'Elastic Man' was about the music business, it wasn't anything to do with it, it was about a writer freaking out it was almost Lovecraftian like somebody I imagine Stephen King to be, everyone saying to him "How did you write The Shining?"
James
  • 29. James | 09/12/2017
I took "dumb mission"
as his facial expression. Fits for me.
Andy Viner Seiler
  • 30. Andy Viner Seiler (link) | 04/01/2018
Wow, I remember the Jigger Shoppe! I'm from New Jersey myself, just one town away from the Jigger Shoppe, although I was living in London when How I Wrote Elastic Man came out. I bought it.

I came to this page from website devoted to Jack Cole, who really did write Plastic Man and committed suicide in 1958. (Here's a typical page: ) which got me to thinking about the song again. Interestingly, there are quite a few similar characters. In addition to Plastic Man and Elastic Man, there are Mr. Stretch from the Fantastic Four and my favorite growing up The Elongated Man, who appeared in the back of The Flash.

But the real reason I am moved to add to this conversation is the bit about Pictures of Matchstick Men. While it's true that the opening riff of Elastic Man plays as a sort of half-assed tribute to the earlier song, that's the end of it. The rest of the song is totally different and the Fall never return to the original riff.
bzfgt
  • 31. bzfgt (link) | 04/01/2018
Andy, that's wild! Are you from Washington?
Robert
  • 32. Robert | 27/01/2018
I always heard it as “dormition,” in the sense of looking sleepy or dead. Regardless of how exhausted he looks, they would still approach him...
bzfgt
  • 33. bzfgt (link) | 10/02/2018
Robert, that is really appealing to me, as "dumb mission" is not.

James--is there any precedent for the word "mission" meaning face?
bzfgt
  • 34. bzfgt (link) | 10/02/2018
The Orange book shouldn't be taken too seriously, although as of now it still earns a note every time we vary.
bzfgt
  • 35. bzfgt (link) | 10/02/2018
Crap, I can only hear "dope" or "dumb" there. Any live ones sound more like "dormition"? Often when something just won't fit like this it turns out to either be wrong, or to have an obscure meaning that eludes us for a spell.
dannyno
  • 36. dannyno | 14/07/2018
Note #4:

"Amazingly, "Space Mystery" doesn't seem to be title that was ever actually used by an author"

I haven't yet found one before this song was written, but I have found this:

A Space Mystery by Mary Margaret Horan. Published in Alien Worlds #6, September 2000.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1547994
dannyno
  • 37. dannyno | 14/07/2018
Also on note #4, the Daily Mail did publish fiction.

This site indexes it up to 1950:

http://dmfictionindex.atwebpages.com/
dannyno
  • 38. dannyno | 21/11/2018
I think it's kind of moot whether "Elastic Man" or "Plastic Man" was invented out of whole cloth or taken from a real life work, such as that of Jack Cole. The lyrics don't on the face of it seem to refer to any real incident or issues in the life of Jack Cole or anyone else, or not that we've discovered so far.

And there are lots of rubber, elastic and plastic or otherwise stretchy characters. Might be interesting to see who got there first.

There's a thread on the FOF on the subject, though they don't mention what follows below.
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/stretchy-comic-characters-t4510.html

But I like noting these things anyway, because it's interesting and echoes are echoes regardless.

In which case, if we're mentioning Jack Cole, we should also mention Hugh McNeill, who drew the "Ping the Elastic Man" comic strip for The Beano from issue one of that comic (dated 30 July 1938) until 1940.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_the_Elastic_Man

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/p/pingelas.htm

UK Comics wiki: http://ukcomics.wikia.com/wiki/Hugh_McNeill_(1910-1979)

https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2006/12/hugh-mcneill.html

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/p/ping2.jpg

I claim no credit for discovering McNeill. Frames from the ...Elastic Man strip were recently posted to Fall-related social media: for example by "Lora Tadine" to "The Mighty Fall" Facebook group on 6 November 2018.

There are some Fall-world connections worth noting about McNeill that I haven’t seen noted by anyone else. First of all, he was born in Moss Side, Manchester. And secondly, he died on 22 November 1979, just a couple of months before the live debut of How I Wrote Elastic Man.

The Guardian (a paper which still had strong Manchester connections at the time) carried an obituary on 23 November 1979, which mentioned that he was born in Manchester, and also that he drew Ping the Elastic Man. Unfortunately they seem to have got his date of birth wrong, giving it as 1901 and stating his age as 78.

The Times published a short obituary on 26 November 1979. They have his date of birth as 1910. And they also mention Ping the Elastic Man.

I can find no evidence that McNeill harboured any particular concerns about celebrity ruining his art.
aleister Pook
  • 39. aleister Pook | 13/12/2018
There is a science fiction novel, written by a gentleman called Jeremy Brent and published in 1974 by the New English Library, called 'Plastic Man'. It's.. pretty much an evil brain in a tank pot boiler, on a par with the pulps the NEL churned out in the early 1970s before James Herbert's 'The Rats' scuttled into the UK's national consciousness and kick started all kinds of illiterate and very bloody nonsense.
Here's the thing. The only other publication by the same author I can find is 'Searching for Community: Representation, Power and Action on an Urban Estate'. Published in 2009. It's by all accounts a really worthy addition to our knowledge of who we are and where we might be headed.
Given the anorakish nature and stature of (and cheap bus fares available to) SF nerds by 2009, I would not like to have been Jeremy Brent on that particular book signing tour.
Umm.. pre cog?
dannyno
  • 40. dannyno | 22/12/2018
It's not the same Jeremy Brent.
HoHoHoVisland
  • 41. HoHoHoVisland | 29/12/2018
Tenuously re Plastic Man, MES as a Can fan may have picked up on the sleeve notes to the 1969 pre Can Holger Czukay record release of ‘Canaxis 5’. ‘Plastic man turned himself around on the planet of the moon trying to reach CANAXIS 5’.
bzfgt
  • 42. bzfgt (link) | 12/01/2019
And, if we were annotating everything in the world, which someone ought to do, what is the connection between "Shook Eyes Ammunition" and "Eye Shaking King"?
dannyno
  • 43. dannyno | 19/01/2019
"How I Wrote"? Somewhat truncated!
bzfgt
  • 44. bzfgt (link) | 26/01/2019
Fuck, I don't know what happened to the rest of it...
bzfgt
  • 45. bzfgt (link) | 26/01/2019
I'm glad you saw that before I looked it up in the manager and didn't find it...
jensotto
  • 46. jensotto | 26/02/2019
BBC Genome has a fascinating result when searching for Elastic+Man: 'THE MARK ON THE SHUTTER' - A short story by Desmond MacCarthy (then watch the Cruiser's creek video) on an elastic conscience https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/13681ac8299e4da6b6d1994237fa0739 - first broadcast 3rd Jan 1937.
Then, Occupational Voices https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/third/1958-05-18#at-17.25

Plastic Man: Men and Materials https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbctwo/england/1970-03-20#at-19.05 repeat 13th Dec 1970, BBC One

Plastic Man in music: The Real Thing on Top of the Pops, 15th Feb 1970 + Coldcut early 88 on Peel.
The whole Peel Session database is part of the picture ...
bzfgt
  • 47. bzfgt (link) | 06/04/2019
Crap, I just caught up on that DM fiction thing...I need to go through these comments again and check the notes.
bzfgt
  • 48. bzfgt (link) | 06/04/2019
Dan #38 -- Reed Richards of course. Anyway I'm about to check out your links. I don't know what I've been doing with this one....nothing...
CPIII
  • 49. CPIII | 23/10/2019
The Russell Richardson comment needs supplementing or editing - it contains a dangerous inaccuracy. Dave Lee Travis, firstly, was neither a paedophile nor an ephebophile (and, never forget, they're not the same thing, they're as different as chicken and telephone) - secondly. most of the charges against him (including the gravest ones) were dropped.
bzfgt
  • 50. bzfgt (link) | 09/11/2019
I don't edit the comments here but yours supplements it, and stands as the last word unless anyone wants to dispute it.
SM
  • 51. SM | 21/07/2020
“Touch my shoulder and ignore my dumb mission” - is it actually “dumb mission”? I always thought it was “dogmition”, maybe a MES made up word for “the act of being dogmatic”.
bzfgt
  • 52. bzfgt (link) | 26/07/2020
Lots of talk above, SM. No idea, "dormition" is appealing too
dannyno
  • 53. dannyno | 11/08/2020
Some more plastic/elastic men:

toys, dating to late 1970s:
http://www.megomuseum.com/galleries/elastic-super-heroes/

Sonny and Cher, Plastic Man 1967, so before The Kinks):

Mark Lungo
  • 54. Mark Lungo (link) | 07/10/2020
Great site, but I have two correct two little errors because I'm that kind of person.

1. Pre Records was a sublabel of Charisma, not Chrysalis.

2. It's Mr. Fantastic, not Mr. Stretch.

Also, TV Tropes has a full page of characters with elastic bodies: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RubberMan
Anon
  • 55. Anon | 20/11/2020
In 1968 Steve Katz wrote a short story “Plastic Man.” Published in Creamy & Delicious (Random House, 1970).
dannyno
  • 56. dannyno | 21/11/2020
Comment #55: Text of the story is in the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160305043639/http://www.altx.com/katz/Plastic.htm

Katz was clearly aware of the comic book connection:


Then I saw the old sign nailed to a wooden stake. It was quite faded, and looked insignificant, so I didn't pay any attention to it though I noticed it said: ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN. I thought that was amusing, probably put there by someone with a sense of humor, who read comic books.


Another story in Creamy and Delicious, by the way, is Mythology: Faust.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160305193813/http://www.altx.com/katz/Faust.htm

Obviously there's no particular textual connections and no indication MES ever read the book. But it's a coincidence to note either way.
dannyno
  • 57. dannyno | 21/11/2020
Just posted some links to Steve Katz's story in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, but too many links means it's in moderation.

Anyway, the story explicitly references the comic book. Another story in the same collection is Mythology: Faust.

No obvious textual connections and no evidence MES read the book, but a nice coincidence to note anyway, I think.

But while I was looking at all that, I found out about a Raymond Roussel essay, titled How I Wrote Certain of My Books, originally published in French (after Roussel's death in 1933) in 1935, and translated by Trevor Winkfield for the 1977 collection which took the essay's title. The book was reprinted in 1995 and 2005.

Roussel is often cited in discussion about Katz, and Katz has had things to say about Roussel. See for example the book 43 Views of Steve Katz.

This has piqued my curiosity.
dannyno
  • 58. dannyno | 21/11/2020
The Steve Katz story was sent to Fall News by Paul Saxton back in 1999:
https://thefall.org/news/990930.html
dannyno
  • 59. dannyno | 21/11/2020
The bit where Katz's story references the comic book:


Then I saw the old sign nailed to a wooden stake. It was quite faded, and looked insignificant, so I didn't pay any attention to it though I noticed it said: ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN. I thought that was amusing, probably put there by someone with a sense of humor, who read comic books.
dannyno
  • 60. dannyno | 21/11/2020
Mark Fisher, Memorex for the Krakens: The Fall's Pulp Modernism, re: Spectre vs. Rector:


The story is simple enough, and, on the surface, is deliberately conventional: a post-Exorcist revisiting of the classic English ghost story. (At another level, the narrative is generated by a Roussel-like playing with similar words: Rector/Spectre/Inspector/Excorcist/Exhausted.)


So I'm not the first to spot a Roussel connection.
dannyno
  • 61. dannyno | 21/11/2020
Of course plastic/elastic might also be seen as a Roussel-esque strategy.
bzfgt
  • 62. bzfgt (link) | 16/01/2021
Right and sort of clang-y
dannyno
  • 63. dannyno | 28/02/2021
Just to note that the Orange lyrics book text has some unambiguous mistakes:

"Dideased" instead of "diseased" (just a typo, obviously).

It has the first verse ending "Everybody asks me", when it should be "All the people ask me"

It has "My life should be full of strangeness", but there is no "my" on record.

It has "wreck" and "wretch" (which it misspells) in the wrong order.

Which is why you can't just plump for the lyrics books. Go with your ears, and perhaps appeal to them when a line is unclear (but use common sense too).

Dan
dannyno
  • 64. dannyno | 11/04/2021
The cover of the single features a now demolished building (now the site of a car park) on Fairfax Road, Prestwich. To its left is what is now the church hall for the out-of-shot Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church.

The church hall was built as a two story school/church, opening in 1891. Eventually school took the whole building and the church next door opened in 1931. These buildings are still there.

https://sloucher.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/thefallwired.jpg

A later photo of the same scene appears on the reverse of the cover of Grotesque
dannyno
  • 65. dannyno | 13/04/2021
I wrote on the FOF about the World Science Fiction Convention that took place in Brighton in 1979, and the TV documentary series which coincided with it, interviewing some science fiction writers and portraying the conference.

It was all in connection to the song Backdrop. But if MES saw any of that series, it could well have stimulated the idea of this song. Not necessarily because of anything in the series as such, but perhaps as a reaction to the idea of a conference of science fiction writers in close proximity to their fans.

See https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/the-annotated-fall-megathread-t35700-s1317.html

For example, listen to Moorcock talk in passing about the Sunday Times magazine and you wonder if it might transform into the Observer.. Especially since Moorcock was profiled by the Sunday Times on 5th November 1978, p.100. Moorcock talks about being condescended to, and the "crap" that the media was talking about when he first wrote about Jerry Cornelius.
dannyno
  • 66. dannyno | 13/04/2021
On the bootleg of the 12 December 1980 Acklam Hall gig (the day after the gig at the same venue released as the Legendary Chaos Tape/Live in London), MES can be heard to say before this song:


This one's about science fiction authors.


As I pointed out on the FOF, the series Time Out of Mind had first been shown in September-October 1979, just a few months before the live debut of this song, and repeated twice in 1980, including in October-November, mere weeks before the Acklam Hall gig. So take your pick, it's context if it's nothing else.
bzfgt
  • 67. bzfgt (link) | 17/04/2021
65: very suggestive, worth keeping an eye on.

66: gold
bzfgt
  • 68. bzfgt (link) | 17/04/2021
Fuck all the Metropole stuff has my head spinning
dannyno
  • 69. dannyno | 29/05/2021
MF Enterprises version of Captain Marvel (with the rather bizarre superpower of being able to separate his limbs and head from his body) first appeared in Captain Marvel comic, dated April 1966.

One of his enemies was Plastic Man:

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/pics/elasticman/marvelapril1966.jpg

DC Comics had rights to Plastic Man, and they didn't like this.

So by the June 1966 issue, MF Enterprises had been forced into renaming their villain Elastic Man instead.

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/pics/elasticman/marveljune1966.jpg

But it seems this was a last minute change. Because the artist made (presumably) a mistake in one of the panels, and uses the old name.

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/pics/elasticman/june66b.jpg
dannyno
  • 70. dannyno | 01/06/2021
The Scars.

There's an interview with The Fall (i.e. MES) in the fanzine Nag Nag Nog #1, dated to 1980, on internal evidence possibly November 1980.

Quote (p.17) (typos as original):


None of the English bands around at the moment do alot for me, you know, though I like the Scars.
dannyno
  • 71. dannyno | 03/06/2021
Hugh McNeill

During a recent trip to the British Library I had a look at the Manchester Evening News for November 1979 (McNeill died on 22 November, see above). I couldn't find any mention of McNeill.
bzfgt
  • 72. bzfgt (link) | 05/06/2021
70. There's two places MES praises the Scars we've found, then....I still think the line that they were has favorite because polar opposite was likely invented by that guy on ILXOR
dannyno
  • 73. dannyno | 21/07/2021
MES discussed Firesign Theater in his 1983 Greenwich Sound Radio appearance.
Kris
  • 74. Kris | 18/12/2021
I've always assumed the difference between the title and the lyrics is that Elastic Man is written after and the journey of the track is how he come writing it after his writers block and caving into public demand for more of the same. Just a thought anyway
jack bond
  • 75. jack bond | 05/01/2022
Just to reiterate CPIII's comment on what Russell Richardson wrote - to say 'these very sleazy DJs of Radio One... were in fact parts of gangs of shady organized paedophile groups' is ludicrous. One Radio DJ was posthumously found to have been involved in paedophilic activity, the discovery of which instigated a witchhunt by the police and media during which all sorts of accusations were made about lots of people, but in the end it all turned out to be a false alarm. And the one person who did engage in this activity acted alone as far as anyone knows and was not part of any 'organized paedophile group'. So the whole comment is nonsense.
dannyno
  • 76. dannyno | 07/01/2022
Comment#75. Correct. As documented by wikipedia, DLT was charged with 14 counts of indecent assault, involving 11 women aged between 15 and 29. He was found not guilty of 12 of the allegations, and the jury failed to agree on the remainder.

At retrial he was found guilty of an indecent assault allegation relating to a 1995 incident, not guilty of another from 1990, and the jury failed to agree in relation to a third dating from 2008.

Clearly the culture and behaviour of the pop milieu left a lot to be desired, but what it was not was rife with "paedophile groups".
The Singing Gorse Bush
  • 77. The Singing Gorse Bush | 21/05/2022
Re: “Dumb mission/dope mission” etc…. I always heard it as
“don’t mention”, as if he’s walking to the shoppes, head down, dodging sycophants: “Elastic Man was great!” “Don’t mention it” “No man, really, it was SO fucking cool, how did you get the idea?” “Look just FUCK OFF”
dannyno
  • 78. dannyno | 29/05/2022
"Touch my shoulder and ignore my 'don't mention...'" , you mean?

interesting, but I'm not hearing it personally.
Scott D. Drake
  • 79. Scott D. Drake | 01/10/2022
I've always heard the music from this song as a direct steal of "The Girls are Naked and They Dance" by The Creation.
Barmy
  • 80. Barmy | 15/12/2022
input to Plastic/Elastic by Marc Riley on Twitter:

It was originally called Plastic Man but The Kinks ( who MES loved) had a song of that title… hence the change.

https://postimg.cc/ftNxsHny
dannyno
  • 82. dannyno | 16/12/2022
According to Paul Hanley on Twitter, 16/12/2022:


‘Elastic Man’ as a title was post-recording, so was never going to be part of the lyric


Source: https://twitter.com/hanleyPa/status/1603490910167355393?s=20&t=5I5pSucJR_d0ZwRnImHJyQ
dannyno
  • 83. dannyno | 16/12/2022
The song does appear as "Plastic Man" on the only pre-recording (i.e. May 1980) set list that we know of, for the gig at Kings College, 7 March 1980:

http://thefall.org/gigography/image/1980-03-07.jpg
Reg Side
  • 84. Reg Side | 15/03/2023
Re Plastic Man v Elastic Man. It's always been the case that DC Comics have been ludicrously litigious, interpreting any use of anything they owned, even if just by name, as infraction of copyright unless permission to use has been negotiated and granted. I have no idea how Laurie Anderson may have got round this for O Superman but the revenue it brought in as a chart single would probably have covered it but obviously The Fall didn't operate on the kind of budget. Putting Elastic Man in the title would have averted potential trouble from DC without substantially damaging the record.

Re the notional comics writer who is the subject of the song. At the time the single came out, comics were going through a kind of commercial and cultural shift which ended up with a connoisseur readership and a new publishing category, the graphic novel. Comics writers like Alan Moore were lionised by fans and a prehistory of great comics was celebrated, including Jack Cole's Plastic Man. Obviously MES may have picked on some of this, without being in on the scene. In an interview with Escape magazine he noted he'd read comics but didn't like the hedonism associated with them - presumably meaning the indulgent spread of the collecting and dealerships that were driving up the value of historic comics. If he'd seen any Plastic Man comics by Cole, they were pretty memorable so it's not impossible they'd have stayed with him. In fact MES told Escape he preferred Luther Arkwright, Bryan Talbot's series (with a strong Franco-Belgian comic feel) that first ran in a comic titled Near Myths and ended up as a multi-book collection from Proutt, People like Moore and Talbot, like most comics writers and artists, would attend comic conventions where they would engage with fans asking them about their work. Not all writers were or are happy to do this. Some go out of their way to avoid it. So I'm suggesting some vague amalgam of all this may have gone into the making of How I Wrote Elastic Man.
dannyno
  • 85. dannyno | 22/03/2023
MES does appear to have been well into comics at least into his 20s. Lots of comments by him and others about this, plus references in his lyrics. He was definitely comic-literate.
Russell Richardson
  • 86. Russell Richardson | 12/05/2023
Replying (belatedly… 4 years later) to comment 49 by CPIII - yes, dave lee travis had accusations of underage sex dropped. My bad, though it is confusing to read back the trial reports and work out what was dropped and which accusations stuck as guilty verdicts.
Certainly the point about sleazy tv djs stands.
Mark Oliver
  • 87. Mark Oliver | 24/08/2023
On the line about the 'Shoppes', in the 1980s, I visited Salford Art Gallery..driving from there towards Manchester city centre ( I think it must have been the A6, Salford Crescent or Chapel Street) I clearly remember seeing a dilapidated sign which included either the word 'Shoppe' or 'Shoppes'- it struck me because of this Fall line, and I wondered if MES had taken it from that. Maybe a native Mancunian has a clearer memory of the wording and/or location?
Mark Oliver
  • 88. Mark Oliver | 01/09/2023
On 'Dumb mission/Dog mission/ Dormition', I always heard it as 'Dogmission'. a single, made-up word with no ready meaning. Hope that clears things up. As for Dave 'The Hairy Cornflake' Lee Travis, in 1974, I went to see him in a personal appearance at the Heavy Steam Machine in Hanley (billed itself as 'Europe's largest Disco'). Two images remain from that night; first, DLT announced 'You probably don't recognise me off the telly' and produced a hollowed-out TV set with an aperture in the base, which he then placed over his shoulders, to give an impression of a 3-D talking head. The other memory is of him giving away lots of LPs as prizes- he would skim them out to the winners like frisbees, after first folding over the corners, so that the record didn't exit the sleeve while flying through the air. As a vinyl aficionado, I was mildly outraged by this vandalism to the sleeves.

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