Loadstones

Lyrics

(1)

Local lodestones
Local lodetones (2)

And after dark sunset
My brother and I
We walked the path
Far from the tower
A light sea breeze
Ruffles blood
Skin is bleeding

Shoes for the dead
Shoes for lodestones! (3)

Local lodestones
Local lodestones

Pink dots off the Island of Wight (4)
Sails off the Island of Bergen  (5)

Sataffopsagaffop
Sataffsagopfa

Pink!

Shoes for the lame
Shoes for the lodestones,
Shoes...
Shoes for the dead!

Local lodestones
Local lodestones

Lights out at eleven
On the lodestones and the, the parish
Revisited island (6)

Bergen

And running my hand
Across your little stone

The pill police seen in your, (7)
In their stupid barges

Waiting
In text 
In flesh (8)
Shoes for the dead
Shoes for lodestones!

Notes

1. This song began its life in 2012 live peformances under the working title "Defurbish"; Reformation has transcribed an early stab at the lyrics:

sounds like
sounds like the lochs
sounds like the lochs of the islands
sounds like the sound of lost friends
why does channel 4 do that?
why does channel 4 on reptile(?)
got by reptiles(?)
sounds the lochs
sounds like the lochs of lost sand
take my hands
i'll watch that (channel?)
good evening we are the Fall of the long long days
of the corporation of the long long days hit it
why does channel 4 not like us?
and i speak to you knaves
in my black consomme
why is channel 4
why is channel like news 4? 

The riff is reminiscent of Fairport Convention's rendition of "Matty Groves" (see note two below for more). County Folk on the Fall online forum  finds it to be similar to the theme to the British children's television program Grange Hill, and I can see what he means. The show uses a 1975 song by composer Alan Hawkshaw called "Chicken Man," which was also used as the theme for the game show Give Us a Clue

^

2. I have made a somewhat arbitrary decision to transcribe instances of this word in the body of the song with its standard spelling. This would not be unprecedented ("Frenz" is generally rendered "friends" when the lyrics are reproduced, and, in fact, in popular music there are countless instances of this sort of thing), but it does violate what is probably a pretty good principle: when in doubt, do nothing.

However, "loadstone" is an archaic variant spelling of "lodestone," and indeed most of the earliest instances attested to in the OED are spelled with an 'a.'

From the 18th Century poem "Jubilate Agno," by Christopher Smart:

For the Life of God is in the Loadstone, and there is a magnet, which pointeth due EAST.
For the Glory of God is always in the East, but cannot be seen for the cloud of the crucifixion.
For due East is the way to Paradise, which man knoweth not by reason of his fall.

 

This probably has nothing to do with the song, but I like it.

A loadstone/lodestone is magnetic oxidized iron, either one that is naturally occurring or such a stone that is being used as a magnet; by metaphorical extension, anything that attracts may be referred to as a lodestone, and it can also mean something that serves as a guide or a fixed point taken as a goal. The lodestone is a central figure in Plato's Ion, a dialogue which asks about the art of the rhapsode--one who recites, but does not compose, poetry, in this instance the epic poetry of Homer. The dialogue asks whether the rhapsode's performance derives from inspiration or from craft; Socrates seems to suggest it is the former, averring that the rhapsode “dangles like a lodestone at the end of a chain of lodestones. The muse inspires the poet and the poet inspires the rhapsode.” The complex and mysterious relation between inspiration and ecstasy on the one hand, and craft and discipline on the other, is in fact one of MES's central concerns, and this theme is most directly and extensively addressed in "New Puritan." "Loadstones" itself can be seen as a song which takes up this question, not explicitly in the manner of "New Puritan," but performatively; here, the jointure between composition and execution is virtually indiscernible. The words and their utterance, that is to say, seem to be inseparable, which is a feature of many Fall songs, and seems to be an increasingly conscious feature of late-period efforts. In general, a salient feature of much Fall material is a unity of the song considered as a blueprint for performance-- think of traditional or "folk" songs, which we often do not associate with any specific performance at all--and the execution or performance of the song (which isn't to say most of the songs do not have multiple tokens, as they are performed live; I am rather making a specific point about the recordings and what I see as their aesthetic effect). 

As MES's lyrics, over time, have become more impressionistic and less diegetic, the vocal melodies seem to be more noticably embedded in the arrangements. While this is especially pronounced in the case of the Fall, it must be said that this is not an uncommon or unprecedented phenomenon, and it seems to be particularly characteristic of music that is (more or less) contemporary, as the recording industry has made songs more readily associable not only with the artist who recorded them, but with particular recordings. Today when we speak of a "song," it is more likely that we are referring to a recording or a particular performance (vs. a composition) than it would have been even 80 or 90 years ago. Most of us probably seldom reflect that the word "song" is ambiguous in this way, and this ambiguity is in many ways a function of changing media and the rise of music as a commodity. It is not particularly easy (although not impossible) to imagine "Loadstones" sung beside a campfire with an acoustic guitar; if this were done, the result would doubtless strike us as a kind of representation or interpretation of "Loadstones" rather than the song "itself." Yet at the same time, "Loadstones" resembles "old-time" music more than perhaps any Fall song since "The N.W.R.A."; the repetitive riff is reminiscent of "Lord Randal" aka "Matty Groves" (and to a lesser extent "Little Sadie"); although that song seemingly only dates back to 1920 or so, the riff is probably older than that, and is in the tradition of 'D' tuned banjo songs. Thus the song itself, whether or not it is an explicit source of "Loadstones," is a kind of reference point for a certain kind of "old-time" playing that "Loadstones" quite explicitly evokes. The folk tradition, particularly in old-time and mountain music, exemplifies a kind of music that emphasizes the endless repeatability, and at the same time mutability, of songs, and de-emphasizes their association with a particular composer, performance, or performer; again, this should certainly be considered a reflection of economic, social, physical and logistical factors rather than of conscious aesthetic preferences--unlike "revivalist" iterations of traditional music which are often in large part motivated by a disaffection with the contours and constraints of music that is recorded and commodified. The Fall, on the other hand, have always made music that embraces the conditions of its own production: by this I do not primarily mean the market for recorded music, which has always kept them at arm's length (a situation with which MES has always seemed remarkably content), but rather the technolgies and techniques of modern recorded music. The lyrics seem to be saying their own saying as much as conveying a semantic content; somewhat paradoxically, this is not a contradiction of the song's close kinship with folk lyrics but rather an attestation of this relationship, as traditional songs derive much of their character from the reuse and repurposing of their lyrics in the form of floating verses and the attendent misprisions that result from transmission. What we now call "eggcorns" were a source of creativity in their own right: by the time "Wildwood Flower" got to the Carter Family, the lyrics "And the myrtle so bright with its emerald hue/ The pale emanita and the hyssop so blue" had become "And the myrtle so bright with the emerald dew/ The pale and the leader and eyes look like blue." Fall fans certainly know the difficulty of figuring out lyrics, and the above transcription of "Loadstones" is no doubt itself a testament to the continuing transformative capacity of folk transmission in the absence of official lyric sheets. Like the imbrication of inspiration and discipline, the dynamic interplay of intentionality and accident is another fascination for Mark Smith, as it is for so many artists considered outré or avant garde. When MES releases a song into the world, sometimes it seems as if he is detonating an aesthetic-semantic bomb rather than conveying a message; for MES, the force of words is their power of combination and recontextualization, and one gets the sense that what he dislikes about Left activists and political crusaders is, above all, their pedantry and literal-mindness, rather than their politics per se. Thus, a lodestone is a perfect image for the Fall and, despite its ambiguity, a very precise one, insofar as it serves to precisely convey a certain ambiguity: whether or not it is intended, the connection to Plato's Ion is instructive, as the latter takes the figure of a lodestone to convey inspiration and ecstasy (always, in Plato, associated with madness). However, at the same time a lodestone, in its modern metaphorical usage, is a very strong and direct force that pulls one in a particular direction and corrects any deviation from the path one is on. Thus, if we consider the song as a unity--not merely the lyrics or the music but the song "itself," as indeed it demands to be considered--"Loadstones" is a powerful return to the themes and concerns of "New Puritan," and thus to the central logic, or the central myth of the Fall (indeed, the ambiguity between logic and myth is itself a central Fall theme).  

 

^

3. Here is perhaps a clue to the nature of the loadstones/lodestones (and see note 4 below): the paradox of the dead who, in the form of ancestors, spectres, heroes, gods, or models for behavior have at all times been lodestones for the living. Thus, the way to the future lies not through, but in, the past, as the lodestones that draw us forward lie behind us, and this is expressed as much by the the forging of old-time or folk lyrics and music into an entirely modern phenomenon as by anything that appears on this page. Thus if my interpretation seems fanciful or overworked--and I am admittedly not concerned for a moment with whether it is one MES himself would endorse--I can only insist that I am not trying to give an account of the meaning of the lyrics, but trying to say what it seems to me the song shows, or, better, does. I am aware that this is ultimately an impossible task, by its nature. 

As always, MES is an avid scavenger, and the line "Shoes for the dead" quotes an old spoof advertisement from the Firesign Theater, which ran as follows:

Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead! Shoes for Industry! 

Hi, I'm Joe Beets. 

What chance does a returning deceased war veteran have for that good paying job, more sugar, and the free mule you've been dreaming of? Well, think it over. Then take off your shoes. 

(pause) 

Now you can see how increased spending opportunities means harder work for everyone, and more of it too. So do your part, Joe. Join with millions of your neighbors and turn in your shoes. For Industry!

The source of this line is beyond doubt, since "Gapa" (the proto-"Sir William Wray") included the line "Shoes for industry," and live versions of "Loadstones" itself also include the line. 

Other songs that possibly reference Firesign Theater are "How I Wrote 'Elastic Man" and "I'm Into C.B." (the connection is particularly uncertain in the latter case). 

^

4. Here we must mention the band The Legendary Pink Dots, who were apparently named after a piano in the studio that had pink dots on some of the keys (splattered nail polish or something). For these two lines as a whole, see note 5 below.

^

5. This could just possibly be "Island of white sails/off the Island of Bergen." If it is "Wight," could the song obliquely refer to the legend of Lucy Lightfoot? On 13 June 1831, after a solar eclipse that lasted for a half hour or so ("after dark sunset"), her horse was discovered tied to the gate of St. Olave's church in Gatcombe, on the Isle of Wight, but Lucy was nowhere to be found. Apparently she had for some time been fixated on an effigy of a knight which stood in a recess in the church, representing one Edward Estur, a 13th-century Crusader whose family had built the church. Despite being what is invariably known in stories like this as a "great beauty," Lucy did not have an eye for any of the young men of the region, saving her affection for the wooden statue. On the day in question, she had entered the church to moon over the wooden knight, as was her wont, when a violent storm broke out, which was followed by the eclipse. When the storm abated and the sun returned, Lucy was nowhere to be found. Supposedly, it was later discovered that Estur had had a girlfriend named Lucy Lightfoot; after receiving a head wound on one of his Crusades, he forgot she existed and began dating again, while Lucy wound up marrying a fisherman and living a long life on the Isle before she died.

The effigy clutched a dagger which had a lodestone set in its hilt. After the disappearance, it was discovered that the dagger was shattered and the lodestone was missing. James Evans, erstwhile rector of St. Olave's, has suggested that elemental forces released by the storm and the eclipse interacted with the lodestone to warp time and transport Lucy back to the Crusades, where she carried on with the flesh and blood version of the wooden knight until he was conked on the head and she took up with the fisherman, living out the rest of her days in the 13th century. Odd theologians, these Wightan rectors...

Evans, in fact, made up the story in the 1960s for a pamphlet sold by the church to raise funds. The identity of the knight, who still occupies the alcove, is not known, and Lucy herself apparently never existed. The pamplet was presented as history, or at least in the format of historical writing with footnotes & c., although the rector's intent was probably not to deceive, but merely to entertain. In any case, the story was picked up by a few pulp magazines and is still making the rounds on the internet. "Local lodestones" could perhaps be meant to invoke the phrase "local legends," like the one about Lucy Lightfoot. And a few phrases in the song could possibly be construed as referring to the legend; besides the aforementioned "dark sunset," "The lodestones and their parish/ Revisited island" may refer to the parish on the Isle of Wight that Lucy revisited. If MES did know of the legend, however, it seems more plausible to think that it has inflected some of the lyrics, rather than taking it to be the theme of the song.  

Manchester band and Fall contemporaries Spherical Objects wrote and recorded a song called "Lucy" about the legendary Wightian maid. This, along with MES's taste for weird tales and crackpot pseudohistory, makes it plausible, if not likely, that he is familiar with the legend.

Big thanks are in order to dannyno for drawing my attention to this story.

Bergen, if it existed, was an island that is thought to have stood between where Scotland and Norway now stand, directly at the boundary between the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. It is conjectured that it was destroyed by the same tsunami which separated Britain from continental Europe. Thus, the island of Bergen could be said to mark the precise point in time and space from which Britain emerged.  

From jonder:

"My two cents on this song: lodestones were used by Vikings and Chinese sailors as a primitive compass, and it is believed that the Island of Bergen was also used as a visual reference point for navigating the coastal waters of the North Sea. Bergen is thought to have been located off the submerged landmass called Doggerland, which formed a land bridge between Britain and continental Europe. Doggerland was named by geologists after the Dogger Bank, 'the shallowest, largest sand bank in the North Sea today.' Thus perhaps the 'lochs of lost sand' from 'Defurbish' [the original working title of "Loadstones"]? That's my bleedin' guess."

And Dan points out that the word "wight" can also mean a spirit or ghost.

^

6. See note 5 above.  ^

7. Both transcribers on the Fall online forum hear "thought police" here; I am pretty sure that is not the lyric, but I am unsure what the lyric actually is; suggestions, as always, are welcome. I'm not entirely sure "police" and "badges" are correct at all.

^

8. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes: "Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his blood."

^

More Information

Comments (23)

policetruck
  • 1. policetruck | 04/09/2013
Sounds like "The pill police say that you're in their stupid barges"?
dannyno
  • 2. dannyno | 15/10/2013
"The pill police seen in your,
In their stupid barges"

Feels like MES misreading the line, but leaving the correction in.:

"The pill police seen in your [correction] in their stupid badges"

Dan
bzfgt
  • 3. bzfgt | 15/10/2013
Well, I just tonight changed it to "barges," which it now sounds like to me; here you come back with your "badges." I don;t need your stupid badges!!! Policetruck, despite his name, votes against "badges"...damn it, I see I have to listen to it a few more times.
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 28/12/2016
"Pink dots off the Island of Wight "

Pink dots could be people, but just to note that I had always taken "Island of Wight" to be a reference to the Isle of Wight. And it may be. But "wight" is also a word for an undead creature. so "Island of Wight" could refer to somewhere an eldrich wraith lives.
jonder
  • 5. jonder | 25/08/2017
Just listening to this song again, one of the few highlights of the Re-Mit album, and found my way to this page. I particularly enjoyed your extended footnote #2, and agree completely that Smith's lyrics "have become more impressionistic and less diegetic" over time. I sometimes miss his storytelling songs, like "Winter", "Mithering", "New Face In Hell" and "The NWRA". But as you say, the ambiguity in his more recent songs is purposeful, and part of Smith's longstanding interest in "the dynamic interplay of intentionality and accident" -- (e.g., the cutup method, or the "eggcorns" that you mention above, by which a song is transformed over time as it is shared and learned through oral performance).

The interplay of intentionality and accident also occurs in the listening experience, and can result in "mondegreens" or misheard lyrics. Smith has long been aware of his fans' desire to know "what's it mean, what's it mean"; and the written statement on Hex Enduction Hour to "have a bleedin guess" might be seen as a challenge. As his diction has devolved over recent years, one might imagine that he is trying to conjure these mondegreens into existence through listeners' perception of his songs, and to encourage us to create our own interpretations from his impressionistic lyrics, rather than telling us a story. Or perhaps that is ascribing too much to his intentions as a writer and performer.

My two cents on this song: lodestones were used by Vikings and Chinese sailors as a primitive compass, and it is believed that the Island of Bergen was also used as a visual reference point for navigating the coastal waters of the North Sea. Bergen is thought to have been located off the submerged landmass called Doggerland, which formed a land bridge between Britain and continental Europe. Doggerland was named by geologists after the Dogger Bank, "the shallowest, largest sand bank in the North Sea today." Thus perhaps the "lochs of lost sand" from "Defurbish"? That's my bleedin' guess.
bzfgt
  • 6. bzfgt (link) | 07/10/2017
Good call, I hadn't thought of Wight. And I can't believe we hadn't thought of the Legendary Pink Dots!
bzfgt
  • 7. bzfgt (link) | 07/10/2017
wight, that is. Or more correct would be. Wight, that is. But that would be indistinguishable from Wight...hrmgb.

I am loving this album tonight, jonder (and I always do)! NRR and Victrola Time are towering highlights! But I too would love it if there were another story song to come, preferably a bit more sustained and less impressionistic than "Jetplane," which is the closest thing here. I don't know if he has one in him, and they can't be easy to write. And I do like the lyrics we get...nevertheless.

I'm not so sure that Mithering fits comfortably on that list...

"As his diction has devolved over recent years, one might imagine that he is trying to conjure these mondegreens into existence through listeners' perception of his songs, and to encourage us to create our own interpretations from his impressionistic lyrics, rather than telling us a story"

I think he does and has always done this, although you're right that the diction hasn't been getting any crisper.

Anyway, thanks for the excellent comments, I'll probably just chunk the last paragraph in verbatim.
bzfgt
  • 8. bzfgt (link) | 07/10/2017
In regard to both jonder's comment and "wight": I do not believe, in songs like this one, that MES intends his lyrics to have, or to be taken as having, a narrow semantic range. In that regard, I think all interpretations within reason are relevant.
bzfgt
  • 9. bzfgt (link) | 07/10/2017
Damn it! I was all proud of myself reading note 5--"It's not only Dan who can do a little research, methinks!" Then I got to "Big thanks to Dan for drawing my attention to this story"...
bzfgt
  • 10. bzfgt (link) | 07/10/2017
I just realized he does not say "Pinch!" He just yells "Pink!" referring back to the dots.
dannyno
  • 11. dannyno | 07/10/2017
Comment #9:
Bazhdaddy
  • 12. Bazhdaddy | 20/09/2018
I can't make out if it's Pill Police, Thought Police or Port Police but they're definitely "sailing off in their stupid barges"
Xyralothep's cat
  • 13. Xyralothep's cat | 05/05/2020
Is that first line
-an amber dark sunset- ?

small thing but I think its "pink dots on the Island of Wight"

best song by this line-up, magic!
bzfgt
  • 14. bzfgt (link) | 14/06/2020
I don't hear "amber," it actually tonight sounds to me like "And at the dark sunset..." could be "on," sounds tonight like "of" damn it
dannyno
  • 15. dannyno | 21/07/2021
MES discussed Firesign Theater in his 1983 Greenwich Sound Radio appearance.
bzfgt
  • 16. bzfgt (link) | 07/08/2021
Reading note two, I intuit some ideas in aesthetic theory of rock that I was unaware of at the time.

But I had just finished a doctoral dissertation, and I see now that all those years in university made my writing horrible. I cringe to read this now, it's so fucking wordy.

I'd like to rewrite this for stylistic reasons, I don't think I would write like that today, it is puke-worthy.
Portsmouth Bubblejet
  • 17. Portsmouth Bubblejet | 09/10/2021
Living just across the Solent from the Isle of Wight, I'd always assumed that the 'pink dots off the Island of Wight' referred to The Needles, three stacks of chalk that rise about 30m out of the sea off the coast near Alum Bay.

Though white in colour, not pink, Isaac Taylor's 1764 map of Hampshire which depicts The Needles is pink in colour. Equally, the sands on Alum Bay are uniquely pink and yellow in colour - I've still got a plastic lighthouse from there that children can buy and fill with the multi-coloured sand from the beach.
dannyno
  • 18. dannyno | 04/11/2021
There's an outside chance that "stupid barges" (or "badges", or whatever the hell it is) is vaguely paraphrasing the famous line, "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinking_badges
millichip
  • 19. millichip | 13/03/2022
Apols if mentioned above, just discovered this song. Von Sudenfëd played Bergen in 2008, the Borealis festival. Would he use the word ‘brother’ to describe either of the Mouse in Mars guys?
For the record
  • 20. For the record | 12/06/2022
Some lines from Live @ Catherdral Quarter Arts Festival Belfast 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M1Ekqz8f90;

We met on the beach
Underneath the brown canopy
It was crawling
It was crawling
It was alive with loadstones

In this surreal nightmare
The stones appeared
To the tourists
Running after ape
dannyno
  • 21. dannyno | 15/06/2022
Typo in the second line!

"lodetones"
For the Record
  • 22. For the Record | 14/05/2023
Loadstones spelt this way appears in Smith fave Arthur Machen's The Three Imposters novella. In the first part Adventure of the Gold Tiberius.
"We shall in some way or other be made aware that we are in touch with the unknown criminal...all the while coming nearer and nearer, drawn by an irresistible magnetism, as ships were drawn to the Loadstone Rock in the Eastern tale"
The notes say this in the Third Kalendar's Tale of 1,001 nights.
Rik
  • 23. Rik | 15/11/2023
I’m hearing …an amber dark sunset

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