Lay of the Land

(1)

Lay
Lay
Lay (2)

Armageddon
This beautiful tree
Boo hoo
Give up living
Am who I they given

On the buses, up the stair (3)
By the television
Pretend to learn 

Where's the lay of the land
My son 

Where's the lay of the land
My son
What's the lay of the land
My son 

The last Briton on the street
He said the radio fuzz
Is dead and beat
No longer reflects our daft fate
We'll leave this city
Hit a quick coach, pick the town in Surrey (4)
There's no-one there but crooks and death
Kerb-crawlers of the worst order  (5)

Where's the lay of the land
My son
What's the lay of the land
My son 

Eldritch house (6)
With green moss
Sound of ordinary on the waves (7)
Tiles drip from, from its roof
Home secretary has a weird look  (8)

Where's the lay of the land
My son
What's the lie of the land
My son 

The good Book of John
Surrounds son (9)
Sound of ordinary on the waves
Italic scribble on horizon

When the height of culture is a bad stew
Space bores, normal disorder
Indian clerk
low-calorie drink
Where's the lay of the land
Where children circle in cycles
Giving jokes ad lib
By bearded writers
Who defected to
Higher realms
(Higher realms...)
Advertising realms (10)

Where's the lay of the land
My son
What's the lie of the land
My son

People laughing...people fighting...people watching...

Between the ticker and the mind lies an air-block of wind (11)

Boo!

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1. "Lay of the land" is a common English idiom, literally meaning to get a sense of the geography of a place, but probably more commonly used metaphorically, as in "How your new job?" "I'm still getting the lay of the land..." Ex worker suggests there is a play on words here, such that the title also refers to a "lay" or ballad, and there may also be an allusion to ley lines (see note 2 below).

From Brix's book The RIse, the Fall, and the Rise (via Dan):

"The Wonderful and Frightening World … starts off with a song Mark and I wrote, ‘Lay of the Land’. The main body of it, the guitar part, was thrashy country rockabilly; it’s the way I play rhythm guitar. E and A minor are my favourite chords; I put them in everything. I wrote the music for ‘Lay of the Land’ at home, and then I brought it into the rehearsal room and everyone added their bits. The spark of the song was the science-fiction TV show Quatermass (a cult show about cults). Mark and I sat down to watch it one night, and the characters were chanting, ‘Lay, lay …’"

Brix on Twitter (via Dan):

https://twitter.com/Brixsmithstart/status/1245819325291859970?s=19
 

It was also about Lay [sic] Lines and me and Mark were fascinated by them and studied ancient maps of Britain to understand where the [sic] were snd how to harness their power

I was heavily into rockabilly at the time when I wrote it, hence the lopsided swaggerY groove of my guitar.
I was also trying to write a Fiery Jack type feel to Keep it #TheFall esque.

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2. This is chanted by several people, and continues throughout the introduction. The chant is derived from the 1979 BBC miniseries Quatermass, in which a cult of hippie-like "Planet People" are on a quest to be taken to a new planet; they believe if they find the stone monolith structure called "Ringstone Round" they will be transported from there. Their search for Ringstone Round consists of walking aroung chanting while one of them holds a pendulum out in front of them which may be intended to sense certain cthonic forces. Thus, the original chant may be "ley, ley, ley," as the Planet People are perhaps relying on a ley line to lead them to their goal. Ley lines (if they indeed exist, which is disputed) are alignments of old, and in many cases partially or wholly effaced, paths and roads to mounuments, old buildings, standing stones and mountain ridgetops in the British landscape. Alfred Watkins, the British amateur archaeologist who coined the term in 1921, believed ley lines to be a network of straight tracks laid out for navigation purposes, with perhaps some ceremonial significance. Critics have claimed that the amount of straight lines that can be drawn between such sites as mentioned above is no greater than one would expect from chance alignments. John Michell's 1969 book The View Over Atlantis, drawing on the Chinese notion of feng shui, claims that ley lines are channels of earth energy. Michell's book is still enormously popular among those given to the kind of speculation often grouped under the rubric "New Age," and his theories were almost certainly an influence on Quatermass's depiction of the Planet People. This derivation is given great significance in a remark Brix made about the lyrics to the song: "Lay of the Land was about leylines running through the country. Mark was like, really like into spiritualism and haunting and energy and stuff like that." If this particular remark by Brix seems a bit vapid in tone if not in substance, it must be remembered that, whatever ideas whichever Smith may have had about so-called earth energies at whatever time, the Fall have never been known for promoting the adoption of the speculative or spiritual notions that are sometimes included in their lyrical palette. Among the Michell school, ley lines are sometimes located via a dowsing tool, and this may be done with a pendulum like the one in Quatermass. There are two basses on the song, a powerful rockabilly rave-up composed by Brix, with Karl Burns doubling Hanley at the end (Zack points out that for most of the song, Burns is on tambourine).  

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3. This may be an allusion to the British sit-com On the Buses; the show's star, Reg Varney appears in the lyrics to "Garden," and "On My Own" also includes the phrase "on the buses."  

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4. Surrey is a county in southeast England, and borders London, where many ley lines are thought to have their center.

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5. Kerb (or "curb") crawling is driving around slowly in an attempt to solicit sex. Hawkwind has a song called "Kerb Crawler."

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6. "Eldritch" is a pet adjective of MES favorite H.P. Lovecraft, as Martin Gammon points out:

"'Eldritch house' is presumably a Lovecraftian reference, as the protagonist encounters sinister ancient forces when he leaves the city for his new environment."

^

7. This might mean radio waves, as Dan points out--i.e., ordinary sounds coming through the radio. Whatever this connotes, it could be perjorative, but it seems to me this is not necessarily the case. 

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8. From David:

"The Home Secretary when this was written (1984) was Leon Brittan. He was moved to Trade & Industry after a relatively short time in post (1983-85): Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wrote 'Everybody complained about his manner on television, which seemed aloof and uncomfortable.'"

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9. The Book of John is the fourth gospel, which begins "In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The "Word" in question is commonly thought to refer to Jesus Christ, so a very literal interpretation of the passage could indeed suggest that the book "surrounds the son." There are three epistles in the New Testament also called "John," and the disciple John is traditionally credited with composing Revelation (note that the song begins with a reference to Armageddon). Modern scholarship generally holds it unlikely that St. John the Apostle is the same man who authored these works, and it is also doubted--although with less consensus on the matter--whether the same author penned all four books.

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10. According to Dan:

"It could be a Quatermass reference. The first three series of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass were broadcast on the BBC, but the fourth and final series was broadcast on ITV. Since the BBC carries no advertisements, this could be perceived as defecting to advertising realms. On the other hand, I haven't found a picture of Kneale with a beard. 

Also Dan suggests that this could refer to Salman Rushdie, a bearded author and former ad man, and points out that John Michell (see note 1) wrote an anti-Rushdie pamphlet after the Ayatollah Khomeini's famous fatwa condemning the latter to death for penning The Satanic Verses. This did not happen until a couple of years after this song was released, however: The Satanic Verses was published in 1988 and the fatwa was issued in 1989; The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall was released on October 8th, 1984. At the time, Rushdie was mostly known for Midnight's Children and Shame. Thus, although the line could refer to Rushdie, I've been unable to connect him with the themes of the song.

^

11. This may be too patent to require a note, but to err on the side of caution I will mention that "ticker" is common slang for the human heart, usually identifying the literal, but sometimes the metaphorical, organ.  

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Lay of the Land: Fall Tracks A-Z