Idiot Joy Showland

(1)

Idiot groups with no shape or form
Out of their heads on a quid of blow
The shapeless kecks flapping up a storm (2)
Look at what they are: a pack of worms (3)

Idiot Joy Showland

The nylon leaves are falling
From the twisted shell of your cranium
Your mystic jump suits cannot hide
Your competitive plagiarism

Idiot Joy Showland

Freddie and the Dreamers, come on up (4)
Hey you imitators, come on up
Hey little singer, come on up
Show us your house and
Show us your cock  (5)
The working class has been shafted
So what the fuck you sneering at?
Your prerogative in life it seems
Is living out an ad man's dream

Idiot Joy Showland

California has Disneyland
And Blackpool has a Funland
And Flanders had no man's land
This place idiot show bands (6)

Idiot Joy Showland

And now microcosms come and go
And it's amazing what they show
Your sportsmen's tears are laudanum (7)
Idiot Joy Showland (8)

The locusts are all queuing in
For Idiot Joy Showland
Idiot Joy

1. A swipe at "Madchester." From an interview with NME:

So can we assume 'Idiot Joy Showland' is an attack on bands like The Stone Roses or Happy Mondays?

"Yeah. It's like a routine. It's like a cycle you see every two or three years. I don't think those bands are bad, it's just it seems to get worse. It's like people are happy now to see any f--ker who plays a guitar. It's also about the area, Manchester, the whole thing around the bands and the mentality it produces."

Once you get something like that you get hundreds of other bands trying to be like it, who are pinching off other bands who are pinching off others. You just end up with a really diluted situation, which is really typical of British Industry, where you finally put yourself out of business, 'cos you're not producing anything.

"The whole thing there is just like easy buzz. It's easy buzz ... Aerobatics on stage, dancing, throwing your body about. Which is good, but it's not good. It's stimulus. It's BSB ... It's Sky as music."

Erm, you mean you object to...

"People think it's a clever combination of dance and rock. I don't think it particularly is."

So it is much more than a minor objection to the way the music has gone?

"Yeah, well that's what I'm saying. I think that's a lot of why people resent musicians. There's going to be a big backlash against music, I'm positive of it."

Are you sure it isn't just your age showing?

"Me age? No it's not me age. No, 'cos all these groups pinch tunes off us anyway. They're always in the front line of our bloody gigs."

Are you sure that you're not just jealous?

"MAAHAHAHAHAHA!... HA! It's very good that. Very good. I knew people were going to say that about 'Idiot Joy Showland'. Are you saying to me I can't write an objective observation of a scene I am in the corner of, and can join any time I want? I mean that's ridiculous. I'm trying to observe it."

It just seems strange that you should be motivated to write a song about it, and it is unusually explicit for you.

"Well it's good to do parody. I mean that was a really heavy rock song. I mean we had the clicked skip drums, and we had the old nyaaaaarnyaaarnaaa. ..We had the whole caboodle in there. It's not just the lyrics. I think it's pretty funny, actually."

I still find it odd that you should be so concerned about it all.

"Well you can't help it in Manchester. You get it shoved down your bloody throat. You do. It's nowhere down here. Up there it's 24 hours a day. The TV ... Even the local news programme .. .blaaahraaaarraaaaar raaaaaaar. .."

From A User's Guide to the Fall (via Reformation):

"The song's about attitudes that go beyond Manchester too. Competition, again, a promoter said to me recently. They're just a bunch of fuckin' little girls nowadays. It's true. All they talk about is clothes and chart positions. It started about 1987. I can't figure it out, but it fits in with the sampling stuff. Young bands come into the studio when you're mixing and they'll ask - they're blatant about it - 'Oh, what BPM's that it?' I go, 'What the fuck's it got to do with you! Get out!'"

From an interview in an unnamed Toronto zine (also reproduced at Reformation):

"Was "Idiot Joy Showland" (from '91's Shiftwork) a swipe at the whole Manchester techno explosion?"

MES: "Correct. It's really collapsed now, but it was amazing even when it happened because it was over so quickly. You probably saw it yourself when you were here. It's all t-shirts and rubbish. It shocked me because it was over in the space of a month. Factory closed and boom! I was fed up with it long before. That's why I moved to Scotland. I couldn't go out anymore and have fun and that means a lot to me."

And from an interview with Q:

You really hate these people then?

"No, it's objective," he claims. "Sam (sic), our drummer, was doing all these Madchester beats so I thought, Let's go the whole hog. But the song's about attitudes that go beyond Manchester too. Competition, again, a promoter said to me recently, They're just a bunch of fuckin' little girls nowadays. It's true. All they talk about is clothes and chart positions. It started about 1987, I can't figure it out, but it fits in with the sampling stuff. Young bands come into the studio when you're mixing and they'll ask -- they're blatant about it -- Oh, what bpm's that in? I go, What the fuck's it got to do with you! Get out!"

Smith was at the time very exicted about this song: "'Fucking great song, man," he enthuses. "Best song on the album by a mile. You name me one song that's better than that.'"

According to Hanley in The Big Midweek, "idiot joy showland" refers specifically to the Hacienda.

The Peel version of the song has a harder-edged guitar sound which gives it an added kick.

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2. "Kecks" is northern English slang for pants.

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3. This would perhaps be a stronger lyric is worms actually ran in packs.

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4. Freddie and the Dreamers was a Manchester band that had some hits in the early 60s. Although they were from the same northern city that spawned the Fall, stylistically they were grouped with Merseybeat bands. Although Freddie and Dreamers persisted until 2000, it isn't clear why they are lumped in with the Madchester scene here, which they had little or nothing to do with. 

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5. Aubrey points out that "show us your cock" is a well-known music hall heckle; here the singer seems to be addressing the acts from the perspective of a heckler:

"Show us your cock, said to a performer while onstage is another music hall type of catch-phrase/joke. It is mentioned in Gershon Legman's Rationale of the Dirty Joke. He gives an example of a Shakespearean actor performing a set of monologues at a music hall and getting heckled: 

'Sing us a song!'

'But Sirs, I can't sing.'

'Well, show us your cock, then.'

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6. Funland is an arcade in Blackpool; "no man's land" was the stretch between trenches in World War I Flanders, in Belgium. MES switches from the expected "showland" to "show bands" here, presumably since the parallel construction is already sufficiently obvious. 

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7. There is apparently an English footballer named Paul Gascoigne, inexplicably referred to as "Gazza" by all Brits, and apparently so famous there he needs to be invoked by no other appellation, even while the rest of the world remains entirely oblivious, if not indifferent, to his existence. Dan has suggested that this line refers to a famous weeping episode involving this "Gazza," as Steve69 explains:  "I always assumed this was a reference to 'Gazza' crying at Italia 90. Sort of saying footballer crying at the world cup distracted the country so much it was like a new 'opium of the masses.'"

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8. The good folks at Reformation very appropriately declare these lines to be among MES's most obscure.

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Idiot Joy Showland: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1991