Kurious Oranj
Lyrics
They were curious orange
They were curious oranj
Pained and intense, man (2)
They were inquiring
They were curious orange
They were curious orange
They rode over peasants like you, they rode over peasants like you,
And their horses loved them too, and their horses loved them too
They were curious curious curious orange
Curious curious curious orange
They were curious curious curious orange
They built the world as we know it, all the systems you traverse
Rode slipshod over all dumbshits
They were curious orange
They were curious orange
They were curious orange
They freed the Blacks too.(3)
They built church in one day, man,
Amish (4)
They were curious orange
They were curious orange
Ba ba ba ba
They were curious orange
Curious orange
They were curious orange
They were curious orange
Their clothes were cool
Paved way for atom bomb
They made the Jews go to school
They sent Hitler/missionary girls to Arab states, and the sun-baked men
did drool (5)
They were curious orange
They made Hitler laugh in pain
They turned Napoleon over and didn't know
They invented birth control (6)
They were invulnerable to cool
They were curious orange
They were curious curious curious orange
They were curious orange
They were curious orange
They were beyond Ooobenblief (7)
They were primo efficient to a man.
They were Stuyvestant smoking. (8)
They were the Reformation spring
And everybody in the world turned Reformation blue
They were invulnerable to cool
And everybody in the world...
And they were inquiring
They were curious curious curious orange
They were positively deranged and they were curious orange.
They were curious orange
They were curious orange
Notes
1. The album I Am Kurious Oranj was written for the ballet I Am Curious Orange, choreographed by Michael Clarke and performed by his troupe to the live accompaniment of the Fall. The theme was more or less William of Orange (1650-1702), aka William III, ruler of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Holland. William was seen as a standard-bearer for the Protestant faith, deposing the Catholic James II, and waging war against the Catholic king of France, Louis XIV. In some ways the song is about William, but at times it seems to be about Protestantism in general. The ballet coincided with the 300th anniversary of his accesion to the English throne. According to Mark E. Smith in his book, Renegade, "We adapted the title from a Swedish porno film--I am Curious, Yellow. I was trying to make the point that we all share some kind of common knowledge that's within ourselves; that comes out in all sorts of things. Some people call it a gene pool. It's as if you already know subconsciously about historical incidents. You don't have to have been taught it. It's in-built. At the time I wanted to put this across, basically as a loose explanation of what was happening in Belfast: it's in the head and bones and there's nothing you can do about it." (158-9)
Dan has discovered that, in conversation with Adam Buxton in Norwich in 2016, Brix says she came up with the title in reference to the above-mentioned film.
According to Russell, though, "I am Curious, Yellow is NOT a porn film - but when it came out (early 70s?) in Manchester there was only one cinema showing foreign films - Swedish, for example - and that also showed for-the-time porn, too, anything with a bit of nudity or a saucy title, nothing on the modern internet... WR Mysteries of the Organism also showed there, if i remember rightly. But the "I am curious" films are wonderful (and witty) examinations of bohemian/student lifestyles in generally stuffy 60s Sweden. The original film had Yellow as a suffix , while there's a whole other film called I am Curious, Blue made up entirely out of outtakes, and almost as good as the first version (the two are complementary and can now be purchased together on dvd). The Yellow and Blue refer to the colours of the Swedish flag."
2.The lyrics book has "pains in the arse, man" which makes more sense.
3. This may refer to the "Black Irish," a term which may have been used by Catholics to describe Protestant Irish. However, I am unsure about this, having found little corroboration of this usage; it seems to more commonly refer to an Irish person with dark hair and features. England under William was heavily involved in the international slave trade, so the term probably doesn't refer to those of African descent. There is a Royal Black Institution that is associated with the Orange Order, but this connection seems tenuous. Otherwise, MES seems to be having fun attributing all kinds of historical events to William III and his retinue. According to Keg on the Fall online forum, "The 'Glorious Revolution' and constitutional reform that went with it (historians generally include the Act of Settlement 1701 in this) is seen as the foundation of the modern state, ie parliamentary democracy, Bank of England, National Debt. The monarch would no longer be able to rule without a sitting parliament. So MES is just referencing things back to this pivotal time in British history, in an 'it all started here' way." This seems as plausible an interpretation as I've seen.
4. The Amish originated in what is now Switzerland and parts of Germany toward the end of the 17th century. They are known for cooperative building projects, in which they raise a barn, a house, or a church in one day. The Amish (along with other new world Anabaptists) are largely Pennsylvania Dutch (a term in which "Dutch" is an old variant of Deutsch, or German) so they may also be lumped in here for the Dutch theme, as well as the Protestant one. Throughout, MES seems to be conflating William and his court with Protestants and Dutch in general, but even that may be too narrow an interpretation, as the following lines show...
5. Two vocals overlap here, with one taking the "Hitler" line and the other, seemingly edited in, taking up with "missionary girls."
As far as I can make out, Protestant missions to the Middle East began in the early 19th Century.
6. Most of these deeds are not attributable to William or any of his crew. The birth control reference is again perhaps aimed at Protestantism in general. And, for the "Dutch" theme, the world's first birth control clinic, I am told, was in Holland in the early 20th century. So it goes with the "gene pool" method of history (see note 1 above).
7. Uben blief means "overflowing."
^
8. "Peter Stuyvesant" is a brand of cigarettes, named after the Dutch director of the New Netherlands (a large colony whose capital was New Amsterdam, which later became New York City). He held the post while William was the regent of Holland, and at one point New York City was called "New Orange," when the Dutch briefly recaptured it from the British in 1673 (at this point William was the ruler of Holland, but not yet the king of England).
Comments (68)
As far as I've always understood it, Black Irish refers to Irish people with black hair and dark eyes, a physical type which is notably more common in Ireland than in England and Scotland (let's leave Wales out of this for the moment). My father used to repeat the old wives' tale (or old father's tale) that they were descendants of shipwrecked sailors from the Spanish Armada. Anyway, this has always seemed to me like a derogatory term, and the opposite of what you state: used by the Protestant Irish, who were largely Scottish and English settlers, to described the 'native' Catholic Irish.
As the song is more about Protestantism, though very loosely, than William of Orange in particular then the line, 'They freed the Blacks too', probably refers to the ending of the slave trade - particularly the efforts of the Abolitionists, who were often evangelical Christians or Quakers.
The wonderful TV Tropes website calls this either a Bragging Theme Tune ("the song is about just how amazing a character is, describing how all his enemies pale in comparison") or an "I Am" Song ("a song which establishes a character's personality, role in the plot, and/or motivations right away").
"Kurious Oranj" reminds me very much of these types of Broadway musical numbers and likely served a similar role in the 'I Am Curious Orange' ballet.
"Pained & intense man" I think is wrong...The VII lyrics books has "pains in the arse, man", which I think is correct. There's an overdubbed vocal so it's not very clear (I refer to the vinyl versh, dunno if CD differs), but to me "pains in the arse, man" is more of an MES line than "pained & intense man".
Love the site, etc etc
N
Anyway, are you hearing that instead of, "And their horses loved them too"?
"Uben" is German for "to practise", or "to do". That's as far as I can get.
It sometimes sounds like "They turned the poem over..." to me.
See the comment from Renegade in note 1:
MES calls it the "gene pool", but it sounds more like some version of Jung's "collective unconscious".
Or perhaps a mistaken reference to "genetic memory": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_memory_(psychology) , cf Johann Herder's "racial memory" or W.B. Yeats' Spiritus Mundi or Anima Mundi.
It's all bunk, of course, and in the case of Herder, dodgy []iVölkisch[/i] bunk which fed into Nazi ideology. But something like this seems to be what MES has in mind.
If this is "Napoleon" and not "the poem" or some other thing, and bearing in mind the Orange/Protestant Irish theme... might this be some cryptic reference to Napoleon's plans to invade Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Legion?
p.s. it's "dannyno", not "dannyo".
I think that the genetic memory is more of a Macguffin for a more free-associative ramble, I agree that there must be an element of parody. Remember MES is a fan of sci-fi, alternate history, and flat-out pseudo-science, but he's not a gobemouche (ha! I learned that word in the 1980s and never, ever remembered to use it until just now), he gets a kick out of that stuff and I think he thinks it frees the imagination in some sense and gets us out of an overly (four)square take on history etc.
Yes, in part the song seems to be just about Protestantism ("birth control" etc.) which was William III's main driving passion, seemingly...
I no longer remember where I even got the connection of Black Irish with Protestantism, all I can find about it on the internet now is the reference to hair/features.
"Uben" is German for "to practise", or "to do". That's as far as I can get."
Huh, I missed some comments back there somehow. Note that this is now sorted.
But MES uses neither phrase in the lyrics. He just says "blacks". It's people commenting on that in the context of other themes who have looked for a "black Irish" meaning.
To me, I think it's straightforward. I think "They freed the blacks too" means what it says, and in line with other historical claims, or parody-claims, it is attributing the eventual ending of slavery to the ascent of William of Orange, or Protestantism, or the Reformation, or something like that.
I don't see any strong warrant for speculation about "Black Irish".
Well, "turned over" to the authorities is a metaphor to begin with, so the line is blurry there!
Yeah, we've got Thule notes under "Gut of the Quantifier" and maybe other places too I seem to recall, Hotel Bloedel maybe? Anyway, the song expresses a similar fascination but seems to do so in a florid stream-of-consciousness or at least free associating way, so it's hard to annotate...
Some results from a search on Mennonites and Anabaptists with a burlesque twist.
BBC Genome: William Teeling, journalist, later MP had visited religious groups in USA and Canada. He reported 26 Sept 1932 in the BBC broadcast "Strange Sects in Canada and the USA" on Doukhobors (nude protests), Huderites and Mennonites. Kind of matches both the Sjöman film hint and Dutch reformation.
There is also Meyerbeer's Le Prophete - eg 9 Oct 1977 (Watermelon Man on Two) or 1 Nov 1928.
Plus a talk 6 June 1956 on Anabaptists and the Reformation.
Burlesque: BBC Genome (amish) includes Friedkin's 1968 fim "The night they raided Minsky's", first shown 15 Aug 1974.
Apart from the giant hamburger, what were the themes and stage props in the Fall/Clark performance?
Freeing the "blacks" is certainly the slavery of black people, even if they didn't actually do it! You wouldn't call the Black Irish "the blacks", especially in the context of being freed. It would be a hell of a stretch and everyone would assume the obvious meaning instead. Even if the Oranj men didn't do it, Protestantism in general fuelled the Renaissance and more secular, liberal social values. Making progress from the Catholic church that was superstitious (and still is to a fair extent) and back then, horribly corrupt (and...).
Mark was quite a smart bloke for an autodidact, though like all heavy drinkers you'd find down the pub, he also talked a lot of bollocks. So maybe he was reading a book about William III, or maybe he half-remembered some of it and just made the rest up. It's only a song after all. Most of the stuff in the song is general 17th / 18th Century progress. Holland has a long history of Protestantism. It stands up within it's context, a song for some ballet weirdoes to fling themselves about to.
At first I often wonder where MES gets his information from, because some things he sings about are censored, or otherwise not known in Britain. The Netherlands is a country that was created by the Reformation, so he certainly has a point in calling the land where King Billy came from "Reformation spring". The successes of the Dutch defense against popery gave Queen Elisabeth the courage to taunt King Philip II of Spain.
Further, there where black people in New Amsterdam, which where slaves that where freed by the Dutch.
From other sources, namely Eric Jon Phelps, he talked about "Black Catholics" in Ireland, that went out to murder any Irish protestant they could find. What William of Orange did, was saving the lives of Protestant Irish. Maybe in Britain this is not known, but the ancestor of William of Orange, William Silence, would go from the Catholics to the Protestants, after he had overheard, that the Catholic nobility in Europe planned to murder all protestants in Europe. Prince of Orange William Silent refused to help with that plan, and decided to help the protestants against otherwise certain annihilation.
MES didn't mention the Seabeggars. And never did in his songs, but historically, William Silent gave buccaneer letters to these pirates, in order to prevent them from being hanged in England, where they became the marines for the Dutch army against popery. In fact, William Silent was one of the Seabeggars. This was the world that William of Orange came from, before he became the king of England. In other words, William of Orange understood that the Catholic Church tried to murder every protestant, or better said Bible scholar, in Europe, so was aware that he had to defend these protestants in Ireland, although the British may have been less aware of this.
Counter Reformation has made many things secret, and also in Holland the Reformation is unjustly portrayed.
The word protestant is some what confusing, because in fact the Catholic Church made it prohibited to read the Bible, and would murder any one that had read the Bible in the common language. This ban was lifted in 1965, at Vaticanum II.
All in all, I must say that MES is correct with mentioning some subconscious common knowledge on the subject, because his texts often tell things that he must have gathered with his intuition, rather than historical knowledge. He may have overheard interesting things in the pubs to. That there where freed black slaves in New Amsterdam is known to me by American sources doing historical research on the New York area, it is no common knowledge in the Netherlands.
About Napoleon, there is indirectly some truth in it. The Dutch monarchy was started by Napoleon, Bonaparte made his brother Louis Napoleon the first king of the Netherlands. Louis would take his job as king very serious, and became almost a Dutch nationalist, opposing Bonaparte for the Dutch when needed. In that way, Napoleon could said to be converted, but this was Louis Napoleon, not Napoleon Bonaparte.
These are the followers of Menno Simons, also known as mennonites. The Anabaptists in the German states had a Dutch King named Jan van Leyden. This name, Jan van Leyden, is still known by most Dutch today. Jan van Leyden would concur Muenster, a city now in Germany. Menno Simons, and other Dutch prophets, had many followers in what we now know as Germany.
Most off these first prophets where murdered in terrible ways by the Catholic Church. Jan van Leyden was tortured for a week, and than his body was hanged at the gates of Muenster for a month. This all in the 1500's.
Yes, the Dutch republic was the Reformation spring.
Many martyrs inspired a successful revolution, and William Silent did everything Jesus would teach in the Sermon on the mount. William Silent gave all his riches to the Seabeggars, and in two months he became a beggar himself. Until the victories came, which we call, the Duke of Alva lost his glasses, which in Dutch refers to the first village conquered on the Catholics at April 1 1572: Den Brielle. That was the point where propaganda lost, and truth was victorious over the people, and all other cities in Holland would revolt. Catholicism was made illegal, what it still is in the British Parliament and monarchy today, thanks to William of Orange.
Beggars Banquet.
https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/bonus-audio/blog-post-title-two-mfm5y
MES would obviously have been aware of Cooper Clarke's Curious Yellows, though they would surely have been a distant memory by the time this song was written and there would seem to be no obvious reason to refer back to them specifically.
I Am Curious (Yellow) came out originally in 1967, released in the US in 1969 (destined to spark a notable court case over obscenity in 1970). It was classified for UK distribution in 1968: https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/i-am-curious-yellow-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0ynziyodc.
But I have found that it was being shown in cinemas (mainly cinemas specialising in sex films) into 1971.
The Manchester Cinephone appears to have closed in 1974 (and demolished to make way for the Arndale), according to http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/33861, so I suspect this may be another example of Cooper Clarke's memory not being entirely accurate. If he did see the film in 1977, it wasn't at the Cinephone, because the Arndale was sitting atop its ruins.
Anyway, since the movie was infamous in the US due to the court case, I'm sure Brix would have been aware of it too.
Brix Rickenbacker with the flange pedal really makes it.
also the final line
They were anti-Semitic anti- Gaelic anti Arabic,
Hey shit man you name it man they were against it.
always makes me smile