Lie Dream of a Casino Soul

Lyrics

 

(1)

Well, I didn't eat the weekend
But I put the weight back on again
And our kid got back from Munich  (2)
He didn't like it much
Böse schlechte Heiden mit Synthesizern (3)
Just like machines
It's getting like that here now It just goes to show

I got no nerves left Monday morning
And I think I'll cut my dick off  (4)
The trouble it got me in
Went home to my slum canyon
On my way I looked up
I saw turrets of Victorian wealth
I saw John the ex-Fox          (5)
Sleeping in some outside bogs (6)
There's a silent rumble
In the buildings of the night council (7)
It's a meeting of controllers
Who drive right through the gates
In white roll-tops

And I guess this goes to show
The lie dream of casino soul
And I just suppose this goes to show
The lie dream of the casino soul scene
And I guess this goes to show
The lie dream of casino soul 
And I suppose this just goes to show
The lie dream of the casino soul scene 

I'm a bit jagged right now In a tongue-tired, wired state
Cause Sunday morning dancing
I had an awake dream       (8)
I was in the supervision dept. (9)
Of a big town store
Security floors one to four
They had cameras in the clothes dummies. (10)
A man came up to them
He wanted sex in the dummies eyes
Then came up the cry
Security mobilized
Meanwhile in the sticks
Proles rich, dance in cardboard pants

And I guess this goes to show
The lie dream of casino soul scene
And I just suppose this goes to show
The lle dream of the casino soul scene
And I guess this goes to show
The lie dream of casino soul 
I suppose this just goes to show
The lie dream of the casino soul scene 

(11)

 

Notes

1. This song is about the Northern Soul scene that kicked off in late 60s Britain and was particularly robust in the late 70s and early 80s (as Dan points out, "Casino Soul" could refer to a person who frequents the casino--like when we say "the ship went down with 70 souls aboard"--but also to the genre of music). Adherents of the scene were originally focused on relatively obscure American R&B and soul music, some of which charted in Britain years after its release; by the late 70s original music was being produced specifically for the Northern Soul market, sometimes by British recording artists. Wigan Casino in Greater Manchester, which MES mentions by name several times in the Peel version (at times substituting "Wigan" for "casino" in the chorus), was a focal point of the scene until it closed in 1981, the year this song was released. In 1978, Billboard magazine voted Wigan "The Best Disco in the World," with Wigan beating out New York City's world-famous Studio 54 for the honor.

Smith spoke to the NME in 1983 about the song:

That song actually did create quite a bit of resentment in the North because people thought it was being snobby and horrible about the old soul boys, which it was never about anyway. Because I was brought up with people that were into Northern Soul five years before anybody down here [in London] had even heard about it. But they've all grown out of it, which is what the song is about, but it wasn't putting them down at all. If anything, it was glorifying them, but not in the format of, where are those soul boys that used to be here?

There are actually a lot of old soul boys who like The Fall, because that music was always offbeat and it gives them a feeling for the sort of wackiness that you find in our music. It's really funny because Dexys bust a gut trying to attract that audience and never even got close. All the kids I know just thought it was pathetic 'cause they were wearing the clothes they'd been wearing six years ago and ripping off all these horn riffs that they knew off by heart from the originals.


According to MES's liner notes for the single, "This is the pre-amble youthful ramble of Big Priest. The ripper mentality hid well under ex Empire wealth. The above referred to slates will be struck with revenge forthwith." The "slates" are scenester businessmen "making capital out of The Fall sweat and pre-cog."


John (in the comments below) has suggested that the title is inspired by Picasso's illustrated prose poem "The Dream and Lie of Franco," designed in 1937 to raise money for the Republican government in Spain, which mocks Generalissimo Franco. Picasso's piece may also be what finds an echo in the Grateful Dead's "Crazy Fingers": "Gone are the broken eyes we saw through in dreams/ Gone both dream and lie..."

Ted points out that the riff bears a resemblance to the riff from John Lennon's cover of "Be My Baby" (an outtake from Rock 'n' Roll--use Google if you want to hear it, as Youtube links are volatile, and in any case permissions differ by country).

Dan reports that a book by Adam Gearey entitled Law and Aesthetics (Hart Publishing: Oxford, Portland, Oregon, 2001) has "Lie Dream of a Legal Soul" as the title of chapter 2. This is a book with an intruiguing title if there ever was one; perhaps only a Fall fan could truly be qualified to write a book on law and aesthetics, but I suspect it is Dan under a pseudonym...

Darrg points out a certain similarity to the Beefheart title "Neon Meate Dream of a Octa-fish."

Paul Hanley, Have a Bleedin Guess, p.78, note 65 (Dan):
 


Mark said he wanted the music for 'Lie Dream of a Casino Soul' to be 'a bit 'mod'. As a consequence the drum beat is 'influenced' by Secret Affair's 'Let Your Heart Dance'.

^ 

2. Dan points out that the brat is back from "Düsseldorf" on at least one live version (May 22, 1981 in Hof, Bavaria, Germany), and that Munich is a historic center of synthesizer music.

^

3. The lyric that is given in the blue lyrics book is as follows: "the bands go hierden faerden clunken klicken aren Kobenhan anchines."  The vocal on the Peel version more or less follows this, although it becomes indiscernable after "klicken" and then resolves into "like machines." The line as written above was transcribed Portsmouth Bubblejet, and means "evil bad heathens with synthesizers."

^

4. On the sleeve of the "Lie Dream of a Casino Soul" single, the lyric is rendered as "I think I'll cut mein Dyckhoff." Below it is a note that says "Dyckhoff=Deutsche Kendals." Kendals is an English department store, and there is, or at least was, apparently a German department store named "Dyckhoff." 

I guess, as Dan suggests, this means MES thinks of Dyckhoff as the German equivalent of Kendals. I mean, when I say it like that, it sounds obvious, but I don't know anything about any of these stores.

An observation by Paul Hanley in Have a Bleedin Guess:
 


It is written as 'Mein Dyckhoff' on the sleeve to avoid a potential radio ban. Dyckhoff was a German department store and Mark had been using one of their carrier bags as his briefcase since the last European tour.



(p.78, note 63)

 also from Hanley, p.78:
 


'I think I'll cut my dick off, the trouble it got me in' was, according to Mark at the time, a more-or-less verbatim quote from someone he knew who was a Wigan Casino regular.

^

5. Robert Brokenmouth suggests this may be "ex-Vox," referring to John Foxx of Ultra-Vox, in which case it could be either "Vox" or "Fox(x)," although the latter makes less sense. MES was friends with Foxx, who left Ultravox in 1979. But according to Dan "on the reverse of the 'Lie Dream' single, the lyrics to this song (or a version of the lyrics) are reproduced. And it's 'John the ex-Fox' there (capital 'F')."

Dan and Hexen Blumenthal suggest it could also be a reference to Thin Lizzy's "Johnny The Fox," a hustler-junkie who appears in at least 2 songs.

^

6. "Bogs" are toilets in British lingo. 

^

7. Dan refers us to the "Night Council" in Plato's Laws. This powerful body, in the Utopian city Magnesia, would meet from dusk until dawn, when citizens have the requisite leisure to consider weighty matters...

^

8. William Walters points out that another word for Daydream in German (besides Tagtraum, literally "daydream") is Wachtraum, waking dream or "awake dream."

^

9. Characteristically, MES pronounces "dept."

"Supervision [Department]" is not a common phrase. Dan: "'Supervision' can mean a kind of management, of course, and historically some companies/organisations might have 'supervision departments' in that sense, but here it seems to mean 'surveillance.'"

^

10. Dan reveals that in 1983, the fanzine Alternatives to Valium published a collage that is probably by MES, which contains a clipping from the magazine Titbits about a store dummy called "Bionica" who contains a hidden camera and microphone intended to thwart thieves. MES has written across the top "HEREWITH COINCIDENTAL 'LIE-DREAM' COME TO LIFE ALMOST."

Dan has also discovered that the original publication in Titbits predates the lyric in the song, so it is possible that it is not "coincidental," and that the lyric was inspired by Bionica.

See More Information for the collage.

^

11. At least one early version seems to have lyrics that wound up in "W.M.C. Blob 59." From the Reformation! entry on this song:

From the version of the track found on the DVD release "Northern Cream" (details above). The review on the webzine issue of this website has this to say:

"About half of an early version of Lie Dream of a Casino Soul, in which the tune isn’t fully formed and we get the lyrics "to deny it was I...I spent a lot of time...wondering who or what the hell was the crime” (also uttered in Blob 59 / Prole Art Threat from 23 February 1981 in Glasgow); and then “all of Britain was a university town..." (prefiguring lyrics in CnC-S.Mithering) The track finishes with MES remarking, “That’s the experimental bit for tonight” (By the time Lie Dream makes its Peel session debut in late March, it has been considerably tweaked and sounds a very different beast.)"

^

More Information

Lie Dream of a Casino Soul: Fall Tracks A-Z

 

From Dan:

 


"They had cameras in the clothes dummies.
A man came up to them
He wanted sex in the dummies eyes"
 

http://dannyno.org.uk/atv.jpghttp://dannyno.org.uk/atv.jpg

Comments (74)

John
  • 1. John | 17/10/2013
The "lie dream" is likely from Picasso's The Dream and Lie of Franco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_and_Lie_of_Franco
Mxyzptlk
  • 2. Mxyzptlk | 18/02/2015
I've always assumed John the ex-fox to be fellow Mancunian John Foxx on some psychogeographical spree around his beloved decaying cityscape. Why 'ex' though I can't fathom, as his star was still ascendant in 1981.
dannyno
  • 3. dannyno | 26/10/2016
"And I think I'll cut my dick off
The trouble it got me in "

On the reverse sleeve of the Lie Dream single, a version of the lyric is printed. It's really not the same as what is being sung.

Instead of the above, we have:

"And I think I'll cut mein Dyckhoff
The trouble it got me in"

And "Dyckhoff" is explained with:


Dyckhoff = Deutsche Kendals


Image

This seems to be a joke or pun of some kind, rather than an accurate rendering of MES's lyrics, but still.

Kendals, by the way, was a Manchester department store. Could it be the "big town store" of the lyric?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendals

And it turns out that Dyckhoff seems to have been a German department store. See reference here:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=alGsBwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA46&vq=dyckhoff&pg=PA46#v=snippet&q=dyckhoff&f=false
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 04/03/2017
Note #2

"The bad news is that we had to find out what "Dyckhoff=Deutsche Kendals" means..."

Well, surely he's saying that the Dyckhoff store is the German equivalent of Kendals' store.
dannyno
  • 5. dannyno | 08/04/2017
"slum canyon"

This phrase is used out there, it's not an MES coinage. I'm gonna try and find some good examples.
bzfgt
  • 6. bzfgt (link) | 06/05/2017
I didn't get anything good with a simple google of - slum canyon -, the first result was "Lie Dream of a Casino Soul" (not #^%! ours, either!).
Dr X O'Skeleton
  • 7. Dr X O'Skeleton | 17/05/2017
I always thought he said "I'm Mick Jaggered right now, in a tongue tied wired state"
bzfgt
  • 8. bzfgt (link) | 18/05/2017
Anyone else hear that? Live versions help any?
dannyno
  • 9. dannyno | 23/05/2017
I don't hear "Mick Jaggered" on any of the versions I've got.
egg
  • 10. egg | 17/09/2017
About the line "Had a psyche that hadn't been synthesised": although it's what the lyrics on the sleeve say, it really doesn't sound what MES sings. What he does sing is hard to make out but it's always sounded to me like fake German, like "there's a schlechte heiter been synthesisèd", with extra emphasis on the last syllable. Of course this would tie in with Munich in the lyrics and the Dyckhoff joke on the sleeve.
egg
  • 11. egg | 21/09/2017
(To update my above comment, I actually looked at the sleeve, rather than relying on weak memory, and it doesn't include the "psyche" line, making the line even more questionable.)
bzfgt
  • 12. bzfgt (link) | 07/10/2017
Yes there are some things before the end that are a bit muddy, but I swear I hear "synthesizéd".
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 09/10/2017
"John the ex-fox"

You don't suppose this could be a reference to the Thin Lizzy song, "Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed"? Jimmy the Weed, of course, is said to be based on an actual Manchester gangster of that name: http://web.archive.org/web/20170107003932/http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/gangster-jimmy-the-weed-donnelly-12033201
bzfgt
  • 14. bzfgt (link) | 04/11/2017
Yeah, Manchester; maybe...
bzfgt
  • 15. bzfgt (link) | 11/11/2017
Yeah the lyrics book has The bands go hierden faerden clunken klicken aren Kobenhan anchine

I think it ends with "synthesizen" here
bzfgt
  • 16. bzfgt (link) | 11/11/2017
OK egg, check out what I have. It matches the Peel version better than the single, in the way I indicate in the note.
egg
  • 17. egg | 11/12/2017
Thanks, bzfgt! Agree with what you've written about the Peel session, but as for the single, if I had to write the fake German down, it would be "böse schlechter heitner mit synthesizen", on the grounds that "böse" and "schlechter" are common German words (ie, "evil" and "worse"), which MES would probably have at least heard a few times, and that when English-speakers pretend to speak German, two things they almost always do are to substitute "mit" for "with" and to add "-en" to words. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights for a good example, and I'm very disappointed that no-one outside Australia seems to use the euphemism "Scheissenhausen", beloved of infamous football commentator Rex Hunt).
It does sound like he sings "heitner" (which isn't a German word as far as I can tell, but is a personal name), rather than "heiter" ("bright") or "heisser" ("hotter").
(I only have Year 10 German plus four months' work in Frankfurt to assist me with this, but perhaps someone who barely knows German is in the best position to decipher these lyrics! My other question is where the "psyche that hadn't been synthesised" line originally came from — it sounds nothing like any version of the song I've heard.)
dannyno
  • 18. dannyno | 11/12/2017

There's a silent rumble
In the buildings of the night council
It's a meeting of controllers ...


I've long wondered about "the night council". And I've found something I like because it suggests MES has read more of Homer than you might imagine.

In Alexander Pope's translation of The Odyssey, book III, is the following:


The brother-kings inspir'd with fell debate.
Who call'd to council all th' Achaian state;
But call'd untimely (not the sacred rite
Observ'd, nor heedful of the setting light,
Nor herald sworn, the session to proclaim)
Sour with debauch, a reeling tribe they came.
To these the cause of meeting they explain,


To this Pope appends a note:


It may seem at first view, that the Poet affirms the night to be an improper season to convene a council. This is not his meaning. In the Iliad, there are several councils by night; nay, the night council is used proverbially to express the best concerted councils.
What therefore Nestor here condemns is the calling not a select, but a public assembly of the soldiers in the night, when they
are in no danger of an enemy, and when they are apt to fly into insolence through wine, and the joy of victory. The night is
then undoubtedly an ill chosen season : because the licence of the soldier cannot be so well restrained by night as by day.


So make of that what you will.
dannyno
  • 19. dannyno | 11/12/2017
"And our kid got back from Munich"

It's Dusseldorf on the "Alter Bahnhof" (1982) CD in the "Live From The Vaults" series.
dannyno
  • 20. dannyno | 11/12/2017
Listening to the single on the new singles box set,

"'Cause the bands go hierden faerden clunken klicken [aren Kobenhan anchines]"

Sounds like it ends "mit synthesizen". I can't make out the rest of it, except it doesn't really sound like the above. "Hiren Firen" is somewhere in there, maybe.
dannyno
  • 21. dannyno | 11/12/2017
A book by Adam Gearey entitled Law and Aesthetics (Hart Publishing: Oxford, Portland, Oregon, 2001) has "Lie Dream of a Legal Soul" as the title of chapter 2.

Dan
bzfgt
  • 22. bzfgt (link) | 16/12/2017
OK, egg, I'm on it...I'll see what I hear and what I can get away with on the basis of that and what you say you hear.
bzfgt
  • 23. bzfgt (link) | 16/12/2017
Wow, it sounds like exactly what you have, I think that transcription with my note to cover Peel does it, I hope anyway.
bzfgt
  • 24. bzfgt (link) | 16/12/2017
The German/English translator bot apparently reads "heitner" as sons, since if I remove the "n" it spits out "bad bad cheerful with synthesizers" (as opposed to"heitner": "bad bad sons with synthesizers"). So "heitner" actually returns something that makes more sense, even if it's not correct, as he mentions his son in the previous line (although it would have to be Heitner with capital 'H' right? if it's a noun).
bzfgt
  • 25. bzfgt (link) | 16/12/2017
Incidentally, however, if I remove the rest and just put in Heitner, it refuses to translate it at all. I wonder if that means it's guessing from context? It's nothing like Söhne, of course. Anyway for some reason that makes me not think it's a good idea to capitalize heitner, of that makes any sense.
bzfgt
  • 26. bzfgt (link) | 16/12/2017
WOw Dan, when I google "night council" I get nothing of Pope on the first page. That is suggestive but I am uneasy about it.
bzfgt
  • 27. bzfgt (link) | 16/12/2017
Not for anything to do with our respective Google fates, I hasten to add.
Darrg
  • 28. Darrg | 30/01/2018
I've long wondered if the title isn't also a nod to Beefheart's 'Neon Meate Dream of a Octa-Fish'
dannyno
  • 29. dannyno | 01/02/2018
Comment #28. Could be. Could also be a nod to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or any title with "dream of" in it.
bzfgt
  • 30. bzfgt (link) | 12/02/2018
But it's much closer in form to "Neon..." and we know MES is a Beefheart fan, so I think it needs to be mentioned.
peudent
  • 31. peudent | 12/02/2018
In at least one live version from 81/82, MES sang "....And i think i'll cut my head and dick off"
bzfgt
  • 32. bzfgt (link) | 15/02/2018
Noted here for possible future action, from Robert Brokenmouth:

realised something - you know the line about John the ex-fox?

apparently Mark and John were good mates: the line may be

John the ex Vox

as he'd walked away from Ultravox...
bzfgt
  • 33. bzfgt (link) | 17/02/2018
OK--it would be nice if John Foxx reverted to his birth name upon leaving Utravox, then it could be ex-Foxx. I can't tell if he says fox or Voxx. Does anyone who knows more about this know more about this?
dannyno
  • 34. dannyno | 18/02/2018
Now we know from Foxx's tribute to MES that they got on well and socialised, he seems a more likely candidate for a lyrical reference than Johnny the Fox in my comment #13. Or maybe there's a double reference.

I'll look into this some more.
Portsmouth Bubblejet
  • 35. Portsmouth Bubblejet | 04/03/2018
With the caveat that Smith's German pronunciation is not easy to disentangle, I make the fifth line: 'Böse schlechte Heiden mit Synthesizern' ('Evil bad heathens with synthesizers'). The Peel sessions and live versions of this line are cod-German gibberish, but Smith does seem to have made a little effort here.

Regarding Dyckhoff, there was indeed a range of clothing department stores owned by H. Dyckhoff AG which were very successful in the German-speaking countries from 1967 onwards: http://www.zeit.de/1971/10/wenn-bellinger-kommt
bzfgt
  • 36. bzfgt (link) | 17/03/2018
OK I'm going with that, unless and until egg objects...it seems right to me.
Hexen Blumenthal
  • 37. Hexen Blumenthal | 13/08/2018
John the ex-Fox could also be a reference to Thin Lizzy's "Johnny The Fox" a hustler-junkie who appears in at least 2 songs.
Art Simak
  • 38. Art Simak | 31/10/2018
Dunno about "Be My Baby", but it's "Tequila" by the Champs, quite blatantly!
dannyno
  • 39. dannyno | 06/11/2018
Re: Note 5 and other speculation.

Just to note that on the reverse of the Lie Dream single, the lyrics to this song (or a version of the lyrics) are reproduced. And it's "John the ex-Fox" there (capital "F").
dannyno
  • 40. dannyno | 17/11/2018
Note 8.

Reformation! changed their text. It now begins:


This ties in with the version of the track found on the DVD release "Northern Cream" (details above). From this review::

https://halfedge.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/northern-cream/


Then the quotation continues as before.
dannyno
  • 41. dannyno | 08/12/2018
"Night Council"

The "Nocturnal Council" is part of Plato's "Laws".

Lots to be found through googling. But just as a reference :https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-utopia/#noc

What this would be doing in the song is anyone's guess, but there are references possibly from ancient Greek philosophy and literature scattered through MES' lyrics.
bzfgt
  • 42. bzfgt (link) | 12/01/2019
Oo, good one! I should have come up with that, damn it! I don't really know the Laws though...I confess.....
dannyno
  • 43. dannyno | 27/12/2019
Note 4, "I think I'll cut my dick off". An observation by Paul Hanley in Have a Bleedin Guess:


It is written as 'Mein Dyckhoff' on the sleeve to avoid a potential radio ban. Dyckhoff was a German department store and Mark had been using one of their carrier bags as his briefcase since the last European tour.


(p.78, note 63)
dannyno
  • 44. dannyno | 27/12/2019
Oh, and also from Hanley, p.78:


'I think I'll cut my dick off, the trouble it got me in' was, according to Mark at the time, a more-or-less verbatim quote from someone he knew who was Wigan Casino regular.
dannyno
  • 45. dannyno | 27/12/2019
Sorry, missed out an indefinite article:

'I think I'll cut my dick off, the trouble it got me in' was, according to Mark at the time, a more-or-less verbatim quote from someone he knew who was a Wigan Casino regular.
dannyno
  • 46. dannyno | 27/12/2019
And same book, also p.78, note 65:


Mark said he wanted the music for 'Lie Dream of a Casino Soul' to be 'a bit 'mod'. As a consequence the drum beat is 'influenced' by Secret Affair's 'Let Your Heart Dance'.
dannyno
  • 47. dannyno | 20/05/2020

They had cameras in the clothes dummies.
A man came up to them
He wanted sex in the dummies eyes


In Alastair McKay/Jane Denholm's Aberdeen-based fanzine Alternatives to Valium (dated Spring 1983), there's a couple of Fall-related pages, including a page which seems to be a collage sent in by Mark E Smith.

http://dannyno.org.uk/atv.jpg

Note the clipping from Titbits (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit-Bits), about the "Bionica" store dummy containing hidden camera and microphone.

MES's scrawl reads, "HEREWITH COINCIDENTAL 'LIE-DREAM' COME TO LIFE ALMOST".

At some point I'll check the date of the piece, but the clear suggestion here is that the article postdates the lyric.
dannyno
  • 48. dannyno | 17/06/2020
The two figures on the cover of the single

http://thefall.org/discography/indexpics/lie.jpg

.. and Mark E Smith and Karl Burns. Confirmed in Rated SAVX: the Savage Pencil Skratchbook (Strange Attractor Press, 2020: ISBN 978-1907222696), p.131. Features the artwork for LDoaCS and also the Before The Fall compilation, (accompanied by instructions from MES which confirms that the figures on the cover are Karl Burns and MES). Footnotes to these two pieces on pp.221-222.

The Before The Fall cover artwork also features Karl Burns and MES!

https://acerecords.co.uk/cache/images/CDCHD-1299_500_500.jpg
bzfgt
  • 49. bzfgt (link) | 21/06/2020
Who is Billy Bardo?
dannyno
  • 50. dannyno | 21/06/2020
"Billy Bardo" is a Johnny Paycheck song. I would imagine that's the reference, esp. given the b-side of the single was "(Stay Away From) The Cocaine Train"...
bzfgt
  • 51. bzfgt (link) | 28/06/2020
Ah, I didn't know that...I know a Bill Bardo
dannyno
  • 52. dannyno | 02/09/2020
In comment #47, I reported that the Spring 1983 issue of Alternatives to Valium contained a clipping from the magazine Titbits, sent in by MES accompanied by a note describing it as coincidental.

The song debuted in February 1981, so the implication of the note was the the magazine article postdated the article.

However, the article in fact dates from much earlier than the fanzine's 1983 publication date would suggest.

After a day or two reading through bound volumes of Titbits, starting with 1983 but then going back to 1982 and finally 1981, I have tracked down the Bionica article to the issue dated "week ending March 1981", p.5 (full article on Bionica p.4-5). p.5 is also where the elephants trunk clipping is found.

This puts the surveillance-dummy much closer to the first performances of the song, which means we now need to check any gig recordings to see how complete the lyrics were in February 1981. While we would still have to respect the "coincidence" claim, that the article appeared a couple of years before the clipping was published in 1983 might make us a little skeptical, perhaps.
dannyno
  • 53. dannyno | 02/09/2020

magazine article postdated the article.


"magazine article postdated the song", that should have been.
dannyno
  • 54. dannyno | 02/09/2020
Obviously it's also possible that the issue of Titbits in question was discovered a couple of years later, either sent to MES by an amused fan, or chanced upon in a waiting room or something.
dannyno
  • 55. dannyno | 02/09/2020
Date of Titbits wrongly transcribed there, should be "week ending March 14 1981".
dannyno
  • 56. dannyno | 02/09/2020
I've checked bootlegs for the following gigs:

20 February 1981: St Helens Technical College
22 February 1981: Brady's, Liverpool
23 February 1981: Glasgow Plaza
9 May 1981: Eksit, Rotterdam

The lyrics are pretty much complete by the 9 May gig, and the clothes dummy lines are present.

But the lyrics for the rudimentary version of the song tested out at the three February gigs are little more than the first few lines about not eating at the weekend but putting the weight back on again, followed by variations on "I guess this goes to show the lie dream of Wigan soul."

Nothing about clothes dummies.

So what can we conclude? Not that MES must therefore have read Titbits - we cannot prove that (unless and until someone who knows confirms it). But we can note that the first three performances of the early version of the song do not mention clothes dummies, and that those performances pre-date Titbits. And we can note that the first performance of the song after the publication of the relevant issue of Titbits includes lyrics more or less in their final form, and that those lyrics do include mention of clothes dummies.

It is therefore chronologically possible (because it hasn't been ruled out by the publication timeline) that MES did read the March 14 issue of Titbits and took some inspiration from the security dummy story.

Against that, we have the note from MES describing it as coincidental. Can we believe him?
Steve
  • 57. Steve (link) | 03/09/2020
Doubtless no more than a quirky little coincidence, but the 'synthesizers and soulful guises' line from Dexys Midnight Runners' (see 0:47 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FzA8R2rfdg ) sounds uncannily like 'Böse schlechte Heiden mit Synthesizern'.
Steve
  • 58. Steve (link) | 03/09/2020
Dexys Midnight Runners' 'One Of Those Things', the above note should say!
dannyno
  • 59. dannyno | 03/09/2020
Ought to note that the Peel Session version of this song was recorded on 24 March 1981. The clothes dummies lyrics were in place by then, which still fits the chronology above.
dannyno
  • 60. dannyno | 09/09/2020
"Casino Soul"

Bit of a pun or double meaning here.

A "casino soul" on the one hand is someone who likes going to the Wigan Casino. "Soul" meaning "person" almost in a spiritual sense - like "a gentle soul" or "a lost soul". Not common perhaps to hear people referred to as a "golf soul" or a "long distance running soul", but we'd know what was meant. Doing a bit of googling I found an example that works, though: "am I too sensitive a cycling soul?", says someone on some forum somewhere - that's the kind of sense I have in mind.

But then, on the other hand, the Wigan Casino is best known as a home of Northern Soul. So "Casino Soul" means "Northern Soul".

The title has an indefinite article - "a casino soul", but the title could have been "Lie Dream of Casino Soul", and that would have made sense too.
dannyno
  • 61. dannyno | 09/09/2020
Munich is a historic centre of synthesizer music. Apparently Georgio Moroder produced Donna Summer's pioneering "I Feel Love" in the city, but you can back to the Siemens Studio: http://120years.net/the-siemens-synthesiserh-klein-w-schaafgermany1959/.
Bob
  • 62. Bob | 18/10/2020
In the Rotterdam '82 version he sings about

'Cardboard Blackpool pink pants'

Was it a thing to wear cardboard pink pants in Blackpool in the 80s?
dannyno
  • 63. dannyno | 20/10/2020
I think cardboard pink pants were at normal levels in Blackpool at that time.
westpier
  • 64. westpier | 14/12/2020
Interesting to read that the characters on the cover are MES and Karl Burns. As the setting appeared to be based on a photo (late 1970s or very early 1980s) of two men outside the Wigan Casino that I've seen a few times. Sadly I can't source it yet.
dannyno
  • 65. dannyno | 18/12/2020
If we can find that, that would be great!
dannyno
  • 66. dannyno | 06/02/2021
"John the Ex-Fox"

Notwithstanding the possibility this refers to John Foxx, and the spelling fits, I wanted to note tenuously that a photo of MES and The Fall was taken by John "Phoxx" Groot at Eksit, Rotterdam, in November 1980 (so a few months before this song debuted):

[Source">https://digitup.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/1980-The-Fall.jpg]<br />
<br />
<a href=
william walters
  • 67. william walters | 23/04/2021
Secondary word for Tagtraum (daydream) in German is "Wachtraum" = Awake Dream.
bzfgt
  • 68. bzfgt (link) | 24/04/2021
what is a supervision department?
dannyno
  • 69. dannyno | 24/04/2021
Comment #68:

"Supervision" can mean a kind of management, of course, and historically some companies/organisations might have "supervision departments" in that sense, but here it seems to mean "surveillance".
bzfgt
  • 70. bzfgt (link) | 01/05/2021
Right, I don't think the phrase would ever appear in America, and I couldn't find one on the net, but it makes sense
bzfgt
  • 71. bzfgt (link) | 01/05/2021
I kind of like older ways of doing things that don't assume you're stupid as much as the next guy, and I hate innovations like any red-blooded Englishman, but I hate putting commas and periods outside of quotes if they're not from the quote, just because it's ugly....but 100% of my contributors continue the practice.
Martin
  • 72. Martin | 01/05/2021
Comment 71: what makes ou say this?
bzfgt
  • 73. bzfgt (link) | 08/05/2021
It just seems neater to me to have them all tucked into the quotation marks, I guess....more tidy?
dannyno
  • 74. dannyno | 31/10/2022
Lyric sheet from the 29 November 2022 Omega Auctions hoard:

https://goauctionomega.blob.core.windows.net/stock/26580-2.jpg

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