Middle Class Revolt

Lyrics

Everything you see you want
Dolts, clods
Middle class revolt
Middle class revolt (1)

Put it down
Put it down

B1s hostile (2)
Sublimated enmity to C2s
Bump into each other and jolt
D2s, D1s, bump into each other and jolt (3)   
Middle class revolt

Calorific
Middle class revolt
Everything you see
Middle class revolt
Dolt clods
Crashing into C2s
Middle class revolt

A man
Extremely lazy
Exhumes the cooked pigeon
His words indignant
Because it was cooked wrong
Middle class revolt

Notes

1. "I hate that image of me hating everything that's middle class. I can go on about it all day, mind you, but it's horrible when people are frightened of you because of it. Really they're just other people with their own set of problems. I remember reading an interview with a group who said everybody who went to Eton should be shot. Fuckin hell I thought - I don't envy anybody who had to go to Eton, that's punishment enough, surely. 

But it is amazing when you do college gigs and you get some 19 year old social secretary talking to you like a school teacher. Suddenly everything just boils up - I remember getting one little twat and dangling him out the window. I couldn't believe anyone would still dare talk to people after that. 

A lot of that is a class thing, people telling others what's good for them. I hate it when they're thick as well, there's nothing worse than a thick posh person. 

People go on about Europe and how great it is and they say get rid of the monarchy. But when you have the middle class in charge you've got the germs for a real evil society. People forget that the SS weren't skinhead thugs, they were doctors and lawyers, guys with a grudge. Give me the Queen anyday." 

(NME)  

"MCR" ("Middle Class Revolt") is a common abbreviation for Manchester...

 

^

2. "He wants Homestyle...Calorific...Exhumes the cooked pigeon..." MES seems to be illustrating the self-absorbed greediness of the middle class by imagining them stuffing themselves at a restaurant, all the while complaining. At least, that's how it looks to me...  ^

3. These lines apparently refer to National Readership Survey demographic classifications. The actual categories are as follows:

Grade

Social class

Chief income earner's occupation

A

upper middle class

Higher managerial, administrative or professional

B

middle class

Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional

C1

lower middle class

Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional

C2

skilled working class

Skilled manual workers

D

working class

Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers

E

non working

Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners, and others who depend on the welfare state for their income

 

(Wikipedia)   

MES seems to have learned all this when he interviewed Will Hung of I, Ludicrous for the NME in 1992:

MES: "Your song, 'C2's In Vans' - what are C2s? Is that from the Civil Service?"
WH: "Market research. It's a socio-economic grouping, they're skilled labourer."
MES: "I'm a B summat."
WH: "B is your professional classes, junior management. "
MES: "Oh, I'm definitely not a B then. Although I am a professional."
WH: "C1 is sort of someone who manages their own business and D is an unskilled labourer.
MES: "So what are you beggars, E? Ha ha ha!"
WH: "It's all for advertising. Lager companies aim their advertising at C2s."
MES: "You can see it, thematic C3 advertising. They have a violent film then they have a violent advert. These C2s are getting very clever, gradually taking over. That's why I dress like a policeman, so they don't come up to you. It's getting like that in Manchester - I was brought up not to stare but they stare at you, these workmen. I've just had me house decorated and I'm seriously thinking of becoming a serial killer of bleeding workmen, I think they're a bleeding disgrace. Yelling at women all the time, that's encouraged by adverts.

 

^

Comments (10)

dannyno
  • 1. dannyno | 05/03/2014
"Put it down" is sung twice.

Some of the "middle class revolts" are "A middle class revolt"s to my ears.

Dan
Zack
  • 2. Zack | 22/02/2017
This interview from 1992 appears to be where MES first learned about C2s, et al - http://www.iludicrous.co.uk/interviews/nme/int_nme.html .
Fit and Working Again
  • 3. Fit and Working Again | 07/07/2018
To me "Go to clubs" sounds like "Dolts, clods" in the first instance and "Dolt-clods" in the second. I don't know if these terms have currency outside Britain but they're archaic terms for the dull and stupid. Chosen with care here; Dolts = D class citizens, Clots the C class.

I hear the second verse as beginning "B1s hostile, sublimated enmity"

That interview above about workmen read like the initial spark for D.I.Y Meat in a year or two
bzfgt
  • 4. bzfgt (link) | 22/07/2018
Yes, DEFINITELY no "go to clubs"!
bzfgt
  • 5. bzfgt (link) | 22/07/2018
Yep, I buy your revisions wholesale, I hear them all, definitely a 't' in "enmity," etc.
Michael Liquori
  • 6. Michael Liquori | 10/07/2019
I heard it as "God's claws" and thought that was pretty cool.
joincey
  • 7. joincey | 16/10/2019
I have nothing to add but I love this -

"- I was brought up not to stare but they stare at you, these workmen. I've just had me house decorated and I'm seriously thinking of becoming a serial killer of bleeding workmen, I think they're a bleeding disgrace. Yelling at women all the time, that's encouraged by adverts."

- is this mentioned in the entry for DIY MEAT ?
bzfgt
  • 8. bzfgt (link) | 09/11/2019
Damn it, the interview link is now dead--this is before I discovered the Wayback Machine, and there is a lot of tragedy now from the years before that discovery. I did not then realize exactly how ephemeral the internet is...
bzfgt
  • 9. bzfgt (link) | 09/11/2019
Wait, I just copied in the dead link and searched it and someone else had saved it....I didn't realize you could do that:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110527080639/http://www.iludicrous.co.uk/interviews/nme/int_nme.html

This is revolutionary...
Ian F
  • 10. Ian F | 01/03/2021
I dont expect anyone to agree with me but I've always imagined that here was a group trying to cover Are Friends Electric, although only two of them knew it while the rest improvised. Certainly the singer didn't know the words. The keyboards though - see what I mean?

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