Joker Hysterical Face
Lyrics
They say nothing ever changes
Which is certainly true of the Poly-ocracy (2)
The sweetest sound she had ever heard
Was the whinging and crying due to the recession (3)
In fact, if you get up pretty close enough
She had a Joker Hysterical Face
Her back head's full of skriking kids (4)
There's no cure so find a case for it
There's no cure so find a case for it
Let's face it, you don't make the same mistake twice
Let's face it, you don't make the same mistake twice
Joker Hysterical Face!
Ted Rogers' brains burn in hell (5)
Ted Rogers' brains burn in hell
And there's no cure so find a case for it
There's no cure so find a case for it
Let's face it, you don't make the same mistake twice (2x)
Joker Hysterical face!
By order of the assessor
There's no cure so find a case for it
There's no cure so find a cause against it (6)
She made the mistake three times, at least
Let's face it, you don't make the same mistake twice (2x)
Joker Hysterical Face!
When he came home, the hi-fi was playing
She threw his dinner down on the table
And there's no cure so find a cause for it
There's no cure so find a case for it
Let's face it, you don't make the same mistake twice
Let's face it, you don't make the same mistake twice
When he'd finished eating, the hi-fi cried
Your face!
Your face! (7)
Notes
1. This song is reputedly about Mark E. Smith's one-time downstairs neighbors. From the Reformation site (see link under "More Information"): MES about the track: "It's about a couple who live sort of downstairs from us, where we were living, and they used to play Abba and all that stuff, they always used to have it on full blast. She was a divorcee. I used to know women like her, and it's not very far from the feminist movement. Like the man is the main thing to blame." (Quoted in The Biggest Library Yet, February 1997.)
From the Room to Live press statement: "JOKER HYSTERICAL FACE is a tale of urban pretentiousness turning rotten within marriage. This person is classless and could dig K-Tel or Kreches or house prices."
K-tel is a Canadian company that sells products via "infomercials," like the Veg-O-Matic. In another words, it is essentially like Acme--not the actual grocery chain, but the fictional company that sold Wile E. Coyote all the products with which he tried to kill the Roadrunner.
I have no idea what Kreches are, unless this is a misspelling of "creches," which in the USA are Christmas dioramas, but in Britain the word means a nursery or daycare center.
Marc Riley, on Twitter, points out that he wrote the riff.
2. Wiktionary: (UK) The section of the left-wing political establishment typically educated at polytechnics (or similar new universities). However, in the comment section, Michael points out that this may be MES' rendering of "polycracy," which means rule by more than one person.
Dan submits:
The sense of "polyocracy" apparently intended here was apparently coined by Keith Waterhouse (the author of Billy Liar), in his "Keith Waterhouse on Thursday" column in the Daily Mirror of 23 October 1975 , entitled "The New Polycrats" (p12).
He wrote:
The other day, in one of those rambling, chest-prodding pub arguments I seem to get into from time to time, I was accused of being middle class.
I hotly denied it. I define middle class as Indignant Ratepayer from Surburbiton, with a mortgaged semi, a glass-fronted shelf of Reader's Digest Condensed Books, two children at grammar school, a wife who bottles fruit, and a small ginger moustache.
My accuser then put it to me that, whatever back street I might have once infested, I could at any rate no longer describe myself as working class.
I agreed. I am, I said grandly, a member of the Polyocracy.
You will not have heard of the Polyocracy, since I have just made the word up...
3.Joincey suggests this may allude to Perry's Como's "Sweetest Sound":
The sweetest sounds I'll ever hear,
Are still inside my head!
The kindest words I'll ever know,
Are waiting to be said!
4. (Lyrics Parade): "'skriking' is northern British slang for crying." MES goes into a bit more depth in this passage, provided by Zack:
MES explains "skriking" in depth in the interview portion of the 'Perverted By Language Bis' video:
"Expressions like that are works of art. That is what I call art, y'see. That word... 'skriking', stuff like that... They're not words I particularly use a lot meself. I do use 'em." [Brix: "What's skriking?"] "Skriking is like when kids are crying and it really gets on your nerves. [...] That's what Fred in the Foresters used to say to this kid who used to come in the vault, right? This woman used to bring her kid in the vault and, like, it's the worst thing she could do. And she's going 'Aaargh' and all the long [?] guys'd be around there going 'Oh, great baby. Aw, she brings a baby in the pub." And like Fred behind the bar, he's all Salford. Like, he comes out and goes 'SHUT UP, YA SKRIKING KID!"
The Foresters Arms in Prestwich was (is?) one of MES's favorite haunts and I believe Fred the cranky publican pops up elsewhere in Fall Lore.
5. (Lyrics Parade): "Ted Rogers was a British comedian and gameshow host, best known for presenting the TV quiz show '3-2-1' between 1978 and 1988." According to Martin, Rogers appropriately enough appeared on a panel show called Jokers Wild.
6. This has the sound of a proverb to it, although one that escapes me. The only analog I can find is the line "Long on causes, short on cures" in the song called, believe it or not, "Fall" by Texas psych rockers Cold Sun.
7. Lloyd points out that this ending echoes "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," written by Ewan MacColl and made famous by Roberta Flack.
Comments (42)
"...No Oxford Union elitist this lad, but a genuine member of the polyocracy..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokers_Wild_(TV_series)
No idea if this is coincidental or not.
"Even Smith, a supporter of many merits of the New Right, described Thatcher as revelling in the economic woes facing the British working class in the period immediately leading up to the confict [Falklands/Malvinas].On 'Joker Hysterical Face'...he insists that `the sweetest sound he had ever heard was the whinging and crying due to the recession."
bzfgt: "What do you mean by a polyocracy in the 3rd Reich?"
It means there were competing power structures. The concept came out of debates among historians about the nature of Hitler's domination of German politics, which apparently wasn't a case of him just telling everyone exactly what to do.
As luck would have it, a lot (maybe all?) of the episodes of the aformentioned series of 3-2-1 have been uploaded to youtube, so it's just a matter of ploughing through them to see if there are any references to brains burning in hell.
"Expressions like that are works of art. That is what I call art, y'see. That word... 'skriking', stuff like that... They're not words I particularly use a lot meself. I do use 'em." [Brix: "What's skriking?"] "Skriking is like when kids are crying and it really gets on your nerves. [...] That's what Fred in the Foresters used to say to this kid who used to come in the vault, right? This woman used to bring her kid in the vault and, like, it's the worst thing she could do. And she's going 'Aaargh' and all the long [?] guys'd be around there going 'Oh, great baby. Aw, she brings a baby in the pub." And like Fred behind the bar, he's all Salford. Like, he comes out and goes 'SHUT UP, YA SKRIKING KID!"
The Foresters Arms in Prestwich was (is?) one of MES's favorite haunts and I believe Fred the cranky publican pops up elsewhere in Fall Lore.
There's the Yiddish word "krekhts", which means "groan" or "sob", and has a musical meaning also - a kind of singing, or a particular kletzmer sound.
Google Ngram
Lloyd--could you please tell me what the extra lyrics are? It's really time consuming to do this and listen to an entire song every time someone mentions something.
He wrote:
And so on. The wiktionary definition in note #2 is different.
Waterhouse followed up with more in his column on the following Monday ("Keith Waterhouse on Monday"), 27th October.
And it cropped up in several columns over the next few years.
Dan
https://twitter.com/marcrileydj/status/1167726421697060864?s=19
"Which is certainly true of the Poly-ocracy (2)
The sweetest sound she had ever heard"
referred to Scritti Politti and "The Sweetest Girl" single. Scritti were formed at Leeds Polytechnic, and the single came out in 81... I can't imagien MES had much time for Green Gartside. Suspect there are multiple layers to Poly-ocracy, the Waterhouse quote, this ref and don't forget the spats about Leicester Polytechnic on Words of Expectation.
40: I will check it