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The Annotated Lyrics
- (Birtwistle's) Girl in Shop
- (Jung Nev's) Antidotes
- (We Are) Mod Mock Goth
- (We WIsh You) A Protein Christ
- 15 Ways
- 2 x 4
- 2nd Dark Age
- 4 1/2 Inch
- 50 Year Old Man
- 986 Generator
- A Figure Walks
- A Lot of Wind
- A Past Gone Mad
- Afternoon Disco
- Age of Chang
- All Leave Cancelled
- Alton Towers
- Amorator!
- An Older Lover Etc.
- And Therein...
- And This Day
- Anecdotes+Antidotes in B#
- Arid Al's Dream
- Arms Control Poseur
- Assume
- Athlete Cured
- Australians in Europe
- Auto Chip 2014-2016
- Auto-Tech Pilot
- Backdrop
- Bad News Girl
- Barmy
- Before the Moon Falls
- Behind the Counter
- Bill is Dead
- Bingo-Master
- Birmingham School of Business
- Birthday Song
- Black Roof
- Blindness
- Blood Outta Stone
- Bo Demmick
- Bombast
- Bonkers in Phoenix
- Bound
- Bournemouth Runner
- Breaking the Rules
- Bremen Nacht
- Brillo De Facto
- British People in Hot Weather
- Bug Day
- Bury Pts. 1+3
- Butterflies 4 Brains
- C'n'C-S Mithering
- C.R.E.E.P.
- Cab It Up
- Calendar
- Can Can Summer
- Carry Bag Man
- Cary Grant's Wedding
- Cheetham Hill
- Chicago, Now!
- Chilinism
- Chino
- Choc-Stock
- City Dweller
- City Hobgoblins
- Clasp Hands
- Clear Off!
- Cloud of Black
- Coach and Horses
- Contraflow
- Copped It
- Cosmos 7
- Couldn't Get Ahead
- Couples vs Jobless Mid 30s
- Cowboy George
- Cowboy Gregori
- Crackhouse
- Craigness
- Crap Rap 2/Like to Blow
- Crew Filth
- Crop-Dust
- Cruiser's Creek
- Cyber Insekt
- D.I.Y. Meat
- Das Boat
- Das Katerer
- Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wai
- Dead Beat Descendant
- Dedication Not Medication
- Deer Park
- Detective Instinct
- Devolute
- Dice Man
- Disney's Dream Debased
- Distilled Mug Art
- Dktr Faustus
- Dog is Life/Jerusalem
- Don't Call Me Darling
- Don't Take the Pizza
- Dr. Bucks' Letter
- Draygo's Guilt
- Dresden Dolls
- Early Days of Channel Führer
- Eat Y'Self Fitter
- Ed's Babe
- Edinburgh Man
- Elf Prefix
- Elves
- English Scheme
- Enigrammatic Dream
- Entitled
- Everybody But Myself
- Everything Hurtz
- Exploding Chimney
- Extricate
- Fall Sound
- Fantastic Life
- Feeling Numb
- Fibre Book Troll
- Fiery Jack
- First One Today
- Fit and Working Again
- Flat of Angles
- Fol de Rol
- Fortress
- Free Range
- Frenz
- Frightened
- Futures and Pasts
- Garden New
- Gentlemen's Agreement
- Get a Hotel
- Get A Summer Song Goin'
- Gibbus Gibson
- Glam-Racket
- God Box
- Gramme Friday
- Green Eyed Loco Man
- Greenway
- Gross Chapel-British Grenadier
- Groundsboy
- Guest Informant
- Guide Me Soft
- Gut of the Quantifier
- H.O.W.
- Haf Found Bormann
- Hands Up Billy
- Happi Song
- Happy Holiday
- Hard Life in Country
- He Pep!
- He Talks
- Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot
- Hey! Fascist
- Hey! Luciani
- Hey! Marc Riley
- Hey! Student
- High Tension Line
- Hilary
- Hip Priest
- Hit the North
- Hittite Man
- Hollow Mind
- Hostile
- Hot Aftershave Bop
- Hot Cake
- Hot Runes
- Hotel Bloedel
- How I Wrote Elastic Man
- Hurricane Edward
- I African Mancunian
- I Am Damo Suzuki
- I Come and Stand At Your Door
- I Feel Voxish
- I Wake Up In The City
- I'm Frank
- I'm Into C.B.
- I've Been Duped
- I've Seen Them Come
- Ibis-Afro Man
- Iceland
- Idiot Joy Showland
- Immortality
- Impression of J. Temperance
- In My Area
- In The Park
- In These Times
- Industrial Estate
- Inevitable
- Insult Song
- Irish
- Is This New
- It's A Curse
- It's The New Thing
- Ivanhoe's Two Pence
- Jam Song
- Janet, Johnny + James
- Jawbone And The Air-Rifle
- Jazzed Up Punk Shit
- Jetplane
- Jim's "The Fall"
- Job Search
- Joker Hysterical Face
- Junger Cloth
- Just Step S'Ways
- Kick The Can
- Kicker Conspiracy
- Kinder of Spine
- Kurious Oranj
- L.A.
- Ladybird (Green Grass)
- Laptop Dog
- Last Commands of Xyralothep Vi
- Last Orders
- Latchkey Kid
- Lay of the Land
- Leave the Capitol
- Levitate
- Lie Dream of a Casino Soul
- Life Just Bounces
- Light/Fireworks
- Live at the Witch Trials
- Living Too Late
- Loadstones
- Look, Know
- Lucifer Over Lancashire
- Ludd Gang
- M5 #1
- Mad.Men-Eng.Dog
- Mark'll Sink Us
- Marquis Cha-Cha
- Married, Two Kids
- Mask Search
- Masquerade
- Medical Acceptance Gate
- Mere Pseud Mag. Ed.
- Mess of My
- Mexico Wax Solvent
- Middle Class Revolt
- Middle Mass
- Midnight in Aspen/Aspen Repris
- Midwatch 1953
- Mike's Love Xexagon
- Mister Rode
- Mollusc in Tyrol
- Monocard
- Mother-Sister
- Mountain Energei
- Music Scene
- Muzorewi's Daughter
- My Condition
- My Door Is Never
- My Ex-Classmates' Kids
- My New House
- Nate Will Not Return
- Neighbourhood of Infinity
- New Big Prinz
- New Face in Hell
- New Facts Emerge
- New Formation Sermon
- New Puritan
- Nine Out Of Ten
- No Bulbs
- No Respects Rev.
- No X-mas for John Quays
- Noel's Chemical Effluence
- Noise
- North West Fashion Show
- O! ZZTRRK Man
- O.F.Y.C. Showcase
- Octo Realm/Ketamine Sun
- Oh! Brother
- Ol' Gang
- Oleano
- On My Own
- One Day
- Open The Boxoctosis
- Oswald Defence Lawyer
- Over! Over!
- Overture From "I Am Curious, O
- Oxymoron
- Pacifying Joint
- Paintwork
- Papal Visit
- Paranoia Man/Cheap Sh*t Room
- Pat-Trip Dispenser
- Pay Your Rates
- Pearl City
- Perverted by Language
- Petty (Thief) Lout
- Pilsner Trail
- Pine Leaves
- Pittsville Direkt
- Pledge
- Plug Myself In
- Ponto
- Pop Stickers
- Portugal
- Powder Keg
- Pre-MDMA Years
- Printhead
- Prole Art Threat
- Proteinprotection
- Psycho Mafia
- Psykick Dancehall
- Psykick Dancehall #2
- Pumpkin Head Xscapes
- Pumpkin Soup and Mashed Potato
- Put Away
- Putta Block
- Quit iPhone
- R.O.D.
- Race Hatred
- Rainmaster
- Rebellious Jukebox
- Recipe for Fascism
- Recovery Kit
- Reece Stick
- Reformation!
- Rememberance R
- Repetition
- Reprise: Jane--Prof Mick--Ey B
- Return
- Riddler
- Ride Away
- Room to Live
- Rose
- Rowche Rumble
- Rude (All The Time)
- Scareball
- Scenario
- Secession Man
- Second House Now
- Segue
- Senior Twilight Stock Replacer
- Serum
- Service
- Session Musician
- Shake-Off
- Shift-Work
- Shoulder Pads
- Sing! Harpy
- Sinister Waltz
- Sir William Wray
- Slang King
- Slates, Slags, Etc.
- Sleep Debt Snatches
- Smile
- Smith and Mark
- Snazzy
- So What About It?
- So-Called Dangerous
- Solicitor in Studio
- Sons of Temperance
- Spectre vs. Rector
- Spencer Must Die
- Spinetrak
- Spoilt Victorian Child
- Squid Lord/ Squid Law
- Stephen Song
- Stepping Out
- Stout Man
- Surmount All Obstacles
- Surrogate Mirage
- Susan vs. Youthclub
- Symbol of Mordgan
- Systematic Abuse
- Taking Off
- Telephone Thing
- Tempo House
- Ten Houses of Eve
- Terry Waite Sez
- That Man
- The 500 Dollar Bottle of Wine
- The Acute
- The Aphid
- The Ballard of J. Drummer
- The Book of Lies
- The Boss
- The Classical
- The Coliseum
- The Container Drivers
- The Crying Marshal
- The Joke
- The Knight, the Devil and Deat
- The League of Bald-Headed Men
- The Littlest Rebel
- The Man Whose Head Expanded
- The Mixer
- The N.W.R.A.
- The Past #2
- The Quartet of Doc Shanley
- The REAL Life of the Crying Ma
- The Reckoning
- The Remainderer
- The Steak Place
- The Usher
- The War Against Intelligence
- The Wright Stuff
- Theme From Error-Orrori
- Theme From Sparta F.C.
- Time Enough At Last
- To Nk Roachment: Yarbles
- Tom Raggazzi
- Tommy Shooter
- Totally Wired
- Touch Sensitive
- Touchy Pad
- Town Called Crappy
- Trust in Me
- Tuff Life Booogie
- Twister
- Two Face!
- Two Librans
- Two Steps Back
- U.S. 80s-90s
- Underground Medecin
- Unutterable
- Van Plague?
- Various Times
- Venice With The Girls
- Victoria Train Station Massacr
- Victrola Time
- Vixen
- W.B.
- W.M.C.--Blob 59
- Way Round
- Weather Report 2
- What About Us?
- What You Need
- Where's the F***in Taxi? C**t
- Whizz Bang
- Who Makes the Nazis?
- Win Fall CD 2088 AD
- Wings
- Winter (Hostel-Maxi)
- Wise Ol' Man
- Wolf Kidult Man
- Words of Expectation
- Wrong Place, Right Time
- Xmas With Simon
- Y.F.O.C./Slippy Floor
- Yes O Yes
- You Don't Turn Me On
- You Haven't Found It Yet
- You're Not Up To Much
- Your Heart Out
- Youwanner
- Zagreb
- Zandra
-
Arranged By Album
- Live at the Witch Trials
- Dragnet
- Grotesque (After the Gramme)
- Slates
- Hex Enduction Hour
- Room to Live
- Perverted by Language
- The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall
- This Nation's Saving Grace
- Bend Sinister
- The Frenz Experiment
- I Am Kurious, Oranj
- Extricate
- Shift-Work
- Code:Selfish
- The Infotainment Scan
- Middle Class Revolt
- Cerebral Caustic
- Light User Syndrome
- Levitate
- The Marshall Suite
- The Unutterable
- Are You Are Missing Winner
- The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click)
- Fall Heads Roll
- Reformation Post TLC
- Imperial Wax Solvent
- Your Future Our Clutter
- Ersatz G.B.
- Re-Mit
- The Remainderer
- Sub-Lingual Tablet
- Wise Ol' Man
- New Facts Emerge
- 2014
- O! ZZTRRK Man
- New Facts Emerge
- Segue
- Ponto
- Smith and Mark
- Afternoon Disco
- Reece Stick
- Home /
- The Annotated Lyrics /
- Ol' Gang
Ol' Gang
Lyrics
Walking down the street
Just the other night
I turned the corner to a fist fight (2)
And I look a-
I look a-
I look around
Old Gang
Old Gang
Not around
Old Gang
Pretty short
Old Gang
Wants to get off home
Old Gang
Management
Programme
Old Gang
I was walking down the street (3)
Just the other night
Old Gang
Old Gang
Walking down the street
Give me small bottle
Went around the corner
Anyhow, Feeling pretty Manc
Where the God damn is the Old Gang?
SaveSaveSaveSave
Notes
1. "Old Gang" is a common trope, perhaps most famously deployed in the barbershop song "Wedding Bells are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine," which was published in 1929, and which MES favorite Gene Vincent recorded in 1956. Here, the blandishments of a straight job ("management programme") rather than the lure of matrimony is blamed for breaking up the gang, but the basic idea is the same. According to MES: "I call it 'married, two kids.' Got married, got a mortgage, can't afford to take risks. I've seen it in the Manchester scene, groups trying to do what someone else has done because it's safer." See also "My Ex-Classmates' Kids."
2. The previous song on the album is a cover of Hank Mizell's "Jungle Rock." That song begins:
I was walking through the jungle just the other night
A-well I heard a big a-rumble and I thought it was a fight
Jon Wayne's "Texas Funeral" also begins similarly:
"I went into a bar just the other night Boy, I got into one hell of a fight"
MES paraphrases Wayne's "But I've Got Texas" in "Greenway" ("I had to jack off the dog just to feed the goddamn cat," only the animals switch positions the first time and "goddamn" becomes "fucking").
John Reardon submits:
"'Sunglasses After Dark' by the Cramps includes the lines: 'Went out last Saturday night/Got myself in a knife fight.' The pause before 'knife fight' is distinctly simillar to MES's before 'fist fight.' The Fall supported The Cramps for a couple of weeks on their 1980 UK tour so maybe this got lodged in MES's skull."
3. This is a favorite line of MES's, who also uses it in "Blindness" and "Jerusalem," and variants pop up elsewhere. The following anecdote is told by Stewart Lee about seeing comedian Ted Chippington open for the Fall:
Ted took the stage to a crowd that weren't expecting him, rooted to the spot in Teddy Boy regalia, scowling and supping a beer. He spent half an hour delivering variations on the same joke, each of which began with the phrase "I was walking down this road the other day," in a flat Midlands monotone, interspersed with listless interpretations of pop hits. A typical joke would run like this "I was walking down the road the other day, this chap came up to me. I said to him, 'Haven't seen you for a while.' He said 'Well, I've just got back from Nam.' I said, 'What, you mean Vietnam?' He said 'No, mate, Chelt'nam.'"
According to Lee this happened on October 28th, 1984, at a place in Birmingham called the Powerhouse. The gigography confirms this date and time, and various sources on the web mention Chippington opening for the Fall. Anyway, it's possible MES's frequent use of the line is a kind of homage to Chippington.
Comments (25)
"I was on a field with Adam, we were looking for Coleridge's birthplace"
Now, Coleridge was born in Ottery St Mary, Devon. But that's a region that this incarnation of The Fall had not visited.
However, is is notable, if not significant, that Coleridge, Wordsworth and the Hutchison sisters, and others, have been referred to as "The Gang" (http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300088191, though this book post-dates the song).
However, see this quote from Coleridge's "A soliloquy of the full moon":
"A Night or two after a worse Rogue there came,
The head of the Gang, one Wordsworth by name"
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/samuel-taylor-coleridge/a-soliloquy-of-the-full-moon-she-being-in-a-mad/
http://thefall.org/gigography/gig99.html
I think I'm sailing off on a wild goose chase with this, but still. Noted.
"Give small bottle...feelin pretty mange"
Is "feeling mange" meaningful in some dialect of English?
"Feeling mad" sounds right but it could be "mank/mange". I always think of "mange" as the scabrous dog condition, and never heard "mank/manky."
This song, like most songs by The Fall, is about The Fall. "MES is a pre-cog" theorists might say that "Ol' Gang" predicted the onstage breakup of The Fall at Brownie's in 1998. But you didn't have to be Nostradamus to know that the group was falling apart in the late '90s and some of the ol' gang wanted to get off home.
"I went into a bar just the other night
Boy, I got into one hell of a fight"
As part of the MES tribute, Marc RIley has just played Beefheart's Tropical Hot Dog Night. There's a big similarity between the way that Beefheat delivers "Like two flamingos in a fruit fight" and MES delivers "I turned the corner to a fist fight". Marc says that Mark played him that album in his flat in Prestwich when he'd just bought it.
Back to the general sense of numbness.
"Small bother" is I think "small bottle"
Could "pretty mad" be "pretty Manc"? It sounds like it but it seems a big semantic shift so I want to check what other people hear.
Never around when you need one.
"Went out last Saturday night
Got myself in a knife fight"
The pause before "knife fight" is distinctly simillar to MES's before "fist fight".
The Fall supported The Cramps for a couple of weeks on their 1980 UK tour so maybe this got lodged in MES's skull.
Just to note that The Cramps played fourteen gigs (including matinee and evening performances at Erics) on that tour. The Fall played with them six times.
Research here: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/gigographical-research-the-cramps-tour-march-1980-t43743.html