Oswald Defence Lawyer

Lyrics

(1)

How could he cope with the flashing-by past 
Through my vid-earphone amp I had to tap
I relate the tract
Oswald defence lawyer
Lawyer!

Oswald defence lawyer
Embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain (2)
 

(Oswald defence lawyer)
How do you think that jury made up of putrid mass (3)
Embraced theory of triangle bullet lines
Turning in circles twice
Then incredible, marvelous, exiting back of mind? (4)

And Oswald's defence lawyer
Embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain
Lawyer!
Oswald defence lawyer
Embraces the scuffed corpse of Walt Whitman
Oswald defence lawyer
Embraces the struffed corpse of Mark Twain

Decent lawyer fishes in buckskin hat
Raccoons drown beneath the embarking man
When he sees CIA ship flying over head fast
Goody goody he looks up
In cloudless sky enhancing theory of zig-zag bulletline  (5)
Oswald defence lawyer
Embraces the scruffed corpse of the Mark Twain
Lawyer!
Oswald defence lawyer 
Embraces the stuffed corpse of the Mark Twain

He's liberal and insane,
He caught the good news horse
His opposite is vain
The cardboard fake in the witness stand
He's got an interview in Spin magazine (6)
He loves the magazine
His mouth is in his brain
The prosecution lawyer
Turns himself to butter
Oswald defence lawyer
Lawyer!

Oswald defence lawyer
Embraces the scruffed corpse of Walt Whitman

(Lawyer)
Oswald defence lawyer
Oswald defence lawyer
Embraces the scruffed corpse of Walt Whitman
Oswald defence lawyer
Oswald defence lawyer

Cheap rifle photo touched up
Drawn on sky
Oswald's head added on a commie tie
While Oswald defence lawyer
Embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain
(Oswald defence lawyer)
Oswald defence lawyer
Embraces watching stuffed corpse of Walt Whitman
(Oswald defence lawyer)
Lawyer!

SaveSave

Notes

1. From Reformation: 

Speaking on Piccadilly Radio on 28 February 1988, MES said of this song was "about this programme I saw on the telly where they actually tried Lee Harvey Oswald for four hours on the TV and found him guilty at the end...[the lawyer] was hopeless."
 
In 1986, a 21-hour mock trial of Oswald aired in the UK. The famous American lawyer Gerry Spence, who has never lost a real case, represented "Oswald" and lost. The prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, later expanded his research for the trial into the book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in which he argues that Oswald was the sole perpetrator of the assassination. 
The real Lee Harvey Oswald, of course, never had to worry about an incompetent attorney, as he was shot dead by Jack Ruby two days after he shot down (or didn't, if that's your trip) President Kennedy. According to Wikipedia (via Orlando),  "H. Louis Nichols (November 7, 1916 – April 25, 2010) was an attorney who resided in Dallas, Texas. He is the only known attorney who visited Lee Harvey Oswald  while Oswald was in custody by the Dallas Police Department after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."
"Oswald Defence Lawyer," which is officially credited to MES and Steve Hanley, was purportedly co-written with the late Dave Luff, as the latter explained in a 2004 post to the Fall Online Forum, although we do not know whether he meant the music, the lyrics, or both (thanks to MandrakeAnthrax):
i am cog sinister.....met mark in 83 in The Loft Berlin we became v.close friends ever since. i brought out a newspaper..Sinister Times with marks lyrics
i designed record label for palace of swords reversed..the thumb print is mine...
wrote two songs with m e s ....oswald defence lawyer...and mike love xexagon.
starred as a cardinal using a cell phone in Hey!Luciani at the riverside...
I also published The Fall Lyrics......
why am i telling you this ? well..i shall be working on the second fall lyrics book over
the winter...provisional title ...V2....
something to look forward to next year....so watch this space with mince pies to be informed up to date.....
respectfully yours
cog sin.
 
See also "Mike's Love Xexagon."
 
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). The relevant riff begins about 23 seconds into Lennon's track.
 

2. MES has claimed the lyric is "stuffed corpse but, as in the case of "Guest Informant," what comes out sounds a bit different; much of the time MES and co. seem to be saying "scruffed corpse," and some of the time it actually comes out more like "struffed corpse," of all things; to complicate it further, it's not always clear that all the singers are rowing in the same direction. The idea is conveyed very well by "stuffed corpse," however; Mark Twain (and later, Walt Whitman) is quintessentially American, and the lawyer is probably trying to paint Oswald, who in fact defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, as an all-American kind of guy.  Both Twain and Whitman were considered more or less patriotic critics of the US from what today would be considered a left-of-center perspective.

In The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise Brix quotes the line as "scruffed corpse." More recently, on Twitter, she has said it is "scruff corpse." Dan suggests that "scruffed" could mean "scruffy". But it seems more likely to me that the original idea was "stuffed corpse," and someone somewhere along the line got bored with it.

Note that "scruffed" also appears in "He Pep!" and "Oxymoron," however, so it's in MES's lexicon.

^

3. Orlando found a couple prior uses of this phrase. The second one is much more likely to have seen by MES:

"By lessening the size of the putrid mass of matter, the fetor is diminished." Samuel Cooper A Dictionary of Practical Surgery (1818), Page 743.

Arthur Machen, The Novel of the White Powder: "There upon the floor was a dark and putrid mass, seething corruption and hideous rottenness, neither liquid nor solid, but melting and changing before our eyes, and bubbling with unctuous oily bubbles like boiling pitch."

MES was a member of the Arthur Machen Society. See "Leave the Capitol" for more.

^

4. Theories about the Kennedy assassination, many of which deal with the suppsed trajectory of the fatal bullet, have of course proliferated since the day after the event, and are too numerous and Byzantine to go into here.  

^

5. Critics of the Warren Report position hold that it was impossible for a single bullet to cause all the damage that occurred.

^

6. Even in a song about a mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, MES manages to get in a swipe at the music press, and the song's setting gives him an opportunity to target the Americans for a change. Spin was founded in 1985 and carved out a niche as a putatively hipper, more youth-oriented alternative to Rolling Stone.  The latter organ, especially at the time, would be a more likely candidate for an interview with Oswald's pretend prosecutor, although whoever it is must have made a name for himself in some other pursuit in order to rate an interview with a national magazine.  

^

More Information

Oswald Defence Lawyer: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1988

Comments (56)

dannyno
  • 1. dannyno | 02/05/2013
So what programme did MES see?

Was it, perhaps, "On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald", produced by London Weekend Television and first aired in 1986? In the programme, Vincent Bugliosi was the prosecutor and Gerry Spence was the defence lawyer. He lost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Spence#Mock_trial:_United_States_v._Oswald
dannyno
  • 2. dannyno | 27/04/2014
The lyrics here are incomplete, particularly towards the end.

Here is what I'm hearing:

"How could he cope with the flashing-by past
Through my vid earphone amp I had to tap
I relate the tract
Oswald defence lawyer
Lawyer

Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain
Oswald defence lawyer

How do you think that jury made up of putrid mass embraced theory of triangle bullet lines turning in circles twice?
Then incredible, marvellous, exiting back of mind?
And Oswald's defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain
Lawyer
Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Walt Whitman
Oswald defence Lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain

Decent lawyer fishes in buckskin hat
Raccoons drown beneath his embarking mass
When he sees CIA shit flying overhead fast goody-goody looks up in cloudless sky, enhancing theory of zig-zag bullet line
Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of the Mark Twain
Lawyer
Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of the Mark Twain

He's liberal and insane, he's caught the good news horse
His opposite is vain
The cardboard fake in the witness stand
He's got an interview in Spin magazine
He loves the magazine
His mouth is in his brain
The prosecution lawyer turns himself to butter
Oswald defence lawyer
Lawyer

Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Walt Whitman
Oswald defence lawyer
Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Walt Whitman
oswald defence lawyer
Oswald defence lawyer
Cheap rifle photo touched-up, drawn-on sky
Oswald's head added on a commie tie
While Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain
Oswald defence lawyer embraces [ ] scruffed corpse of Walt Whitman
Lawyer"

That last [ ] there represents a word or two I can't make out.

Stuffed seems to be "scruffed" to my ears, so that's what I've put. Your mileage may vary.
bzfgt
  • 3. bzfgt | 13/05/2014
I listened to it and out what I heard; I don't think I've ever checked them before, I just transferred it from the LP. I hear "barking mad" rather than "embarking mass," and the [] seems to me to be "watching."
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 06/06/2015
Note 1, you have a typo: "reaearch"
MandrakeAnthrax
  • 5. MandrakeAnthrax | 22/08/2015
According to the late Dave Luff (aka cog sinister), he co-wrote the lyrics to this (and Mike's Love Hexagon as well) with MES:
http://z1.invisionfree.com/thefall/index.php?showtopic=3473&view=findpost&p=1938443
dannyno
  • 6. dannyno | 25/08/2015
Careful.

Dave Luff said that he "wrote two songs with m e s". He doesn't actually say that he co-wrote the lyrics.
bzfgt
  • 7. bzfgt | 05/09/2015
Ok, I'll put in a caveat.
dannyno
  • 8. dannyno | 06/01/2016
I've been looking through Spin magazine, and as far as I can see neither of the lawyers in the TV dramatised trial were interviewed in Spin magazine. If I'm right about that, the reference may just be a way of building a portrait of the character.
Martin
  • 9. Martin | 27/04/2016
In case anyone was wondering, the lyrics were largely in place from the very first performance of the song (25 July 1987; Finsbury Park, London) so anyone searching for relevant references to, for example, Spin magazine, will have to be looking through issues before that date.
dannyno
  • 10. dannyno | 07/05/2016
In The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise, Brix has "Oswald Defense Lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain" rather than "stuffed". I suppose "scruffed" could mean "scruffy". But we don't know whether Brix is writing from memory, or has looked up the line in the lyrics parade.
Martin
  • 11. Martin | 15/05/2016
It could also be a case of the proof reader not doing his or her job well enough, and then the mistake not being seen at the editing stage of the book.
dannyno
  • 12. dannyno | 25/06/2016
"Cheap rifle photo":

A reference to photos like this one?:

Image

Oswald is there holding two Marxist newspapers.
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 25/06/2016
Link to image: http://oakcliff.advocatemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Oswald.jpg

Image
Martin
  • 14. Martin | 15/12/2016
Piccadilly Radio session (recording date unknown, broadcast 25 February 1988; officially unreleased):

Brix (and MES) definitely sing "scruffed" and not "stuffed" on various occasions during the song.
Martin
  • 15. Martin | 15/12/2016
Oh, and while I have absolutely nothing against American spelling conventions, shouldn't "defence" be spelled thus throughout, given that it's one of the words in the actual title?
bzfgt
  • 16. bzfgt | 27/12/2016
Yeah OK, I changed it. Was it that way on the LP? I can't imagine that I changed them all, especially with the title...
futerko
  • 17. futerko | 02/08/2017
I always thought it was "turned himself to barter" - which a dodgy lawyer would do!
bzfgt
  • 18. bzfgt (link) | 16/09/2017
It just could be "barter" but it really sounds more like "butter" to me...I don't know, if more people think it sounds like "barter" I'll change it, but at the moment I still hear "butter."
ted
  • 19. ted (link) | 20/09/2017
The main riff seems copped from John Lennon's "lost weekend" cover of Be My Baby
dannyno
  • 20. dannyno | 29/10/2017
Typo, note 1: "Bugiiosi" should be "Bugliosi".
jensotto
  • 21. jensotto | 04/11/2017
BBC Genome - searching for Trial LHO hints at the 1977 TV-movie with Lorne Greene (Bonanza) as Matt Weldon - Oswald's defense lawyer. One MPFC episode has John Cleese pointing at 'Tight Spot' - also Lorne Greene, while searching Genome for Matthew Weldon results in Fay Weldon and Smoke Screen.....
Bill
  • 22. Bill | 29/01/2018
I always though the lyric was this.....The prosecution lawyer turns himself to fart with MES then adding his characteristic extra syllable. RIP MES.
dannyno
  • 23. dannyno | 29/01/2018
Comment #22. Doesn't sound like it to me, to be honest. Interestingly, the word "fart" doesn't appear in any Fall lyrics up to June 2014. I might have expected it to be a Fall-like word.

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/f.htm
mab
  • 24. mab | 26/02/2018
I agree with the earlier suggestion of "raccoons drowned beneath his embarking mass" - I always thought that was the line.

Also, in my mind, it sounds like 'the prosecution lawyer turns himself to vater' (= 'father' in German, pronounced 'farter'). I never tried to make much sense of it, to be honest, just accepted it!
bzfgt
  • 25. bzfgt (link) | 10/03/2018
Yeah, it's too late for me, but not for you...
bzfgt
  • 26. bzfgt (link) | 10/03/2018
Racoons drown beneath the embarking man
bzfgt
  • 27. bzfgt (link) | 10/03/2018
CIA "ship"
bzfgt
  • 28. bzfgt (link) | 10/03/2018
Added some "scruffed"s, it's too much of a reach to say it's "stuffed" pronounced "scruffed"
Robert
  • 29. Robert | 27/03/2018
Always heard the same as Bill (22) and thought it fit the entire scenario.
Basmikel
  • 30. Basmikel | 20/06/2018
Mr Moody of Oxymoron "fame" is scruffed (up) so we know MES used the word, at least.
bzfgt
  • 31. bzfgt (link) | 15/07/2018
Yeah I want to say there's another one with "scruffed" but now I don't recall what it was EDIT Dan's site to the rescue, it was "He Pep!"
dannyno
  • 32. dannyno | 14/11/2018
Brix says on Twitter that it's

"Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruff corpse of Mark Twain."

https://twitter.com/BrixExtricated/status/1062795355157417984
bzfgt
  • 33. bzfgt (link) | 15/11/2018
Another mystery solved! Of course I have to put that right next to where she says it's "scruffed corpse." But I think my having "stuffed corpse" in the main text is probably not tenable, I need to reverse polarity between text and notes. Not tonight, though...
dannyno
  • 34. dannyno | 16/11/2018
She certainly has a unique way of solving mysteries by deepening them.
bzfgt
  • 35. bzfgt (link) | 21/11/2018
Hmm, I see I had "stuffed" only once, but I switched it anyway. I no longer know what I meant when I said MES "claims" it's "stuffed," but it's not in the lyrics books which leads me to conclude he really did claim it so here I just trusted myself and left it, but it's kind of sloppy without a citation...
Orlando
  • 36. Orlando | 04/04/2019
"By lessening the size of the putrid mass of matter, the fetor is diminished" - A Dictionary of practical Surgery - Page 743 - Samuel Cooper - 1818.
Orlando
  • 37. Orlando | 04/04/2019
H. Louis Nichols (November 7, 1916 – April 25, 2010) was an attorney who resided in Dallas, Texas.[1] He is the only known attorney who visited Lee Harvey Oswald, while Oswald was in custody by the Dallas Police Department after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Orlando
  • 38. Orlando | 06/04/2019
Here is a link to the prog:

http://on-trial-lho.blogspot.com/

Not sure if I can watch all 21 hours although I can get drawn into stuff like this.
Orlando
  • 39. Orlando | 06/04/2019
Better source for "putrid mass."

The Novel of the White Powder Arthur Machen - ‘There upon the floor was a dark and putrid mass, seething corruption and hideous rottenness, neither liquid nor solid, but melting and changing before our eyes, and bubbling with unctuous oily bubbles like boiling pitch. ‘
bzfgt
  • 40. bzfgt (link) | 11/05/2019
Orlando, you are quoting in #37--what is the source?
bzfgt
  • 41. bzfgt (link) | 11/05/2019
Got it, never mind.
bzfgt
  • 42. bzfgt (link) | 11/05/2019
I do not like the comma between "Oswald" and "while," I'm going to edit it out of Wikipedia and then the quote will be acceptable even if someone changes it back...
jensotto
  • 43. jensotto | 23/06/2019
Most associate Oswald with LHO.
I was just reading about US/UK war against the Red Army 1918-1920s around Petsamo, Murmansk, Kola and to the south. Henry Rawlinson was one find (Viv Stanshall), but searching BBC Genome - there was Oswald Mosley discussing the Forgotten War early Sept 1971.

Oswald Mosley became a regular on BBC after "My Life" (68) and there were more attention after his death (80). There is hardly any mention of Mosley on BBC before 1968. Who made him acceptable, how and why?

Roald Dahl's My Uncle Oswald is an intriguing story.
dannyno
  • 44. dannyno | 23/10/2020
Brix, in the sleevenotes to the Beggars Banquet 2xCD/LP 2020 edition of The Frenz Experiment:


I don't think it is that well-crafted because there's not that many parts. There's a few good lines like "Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain". It's like children in the playground taunting each other. "Oswald defence lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Walt Whitman." So, he was really into the American novelists - the classic guys.
dannyno
  • 45. dannyno | 23/10/2020
... which I would point out is in line with The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise but a bit different to her tweet reported in comment #32. Which vindicates my remark in comment #34. Why oh why does she do this to us?!?!!?!?
dannyno
  • 46. dannyno | 24/12/2020
"enhancing theory of zig-zag bulletline"

Do we need a note to explain that the "zig-zag bullet line" is used by critics of the Warren Commission report on the assassination, to mock what they allege to be the "magic bullet theory" that the Warren Commission account requires.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tWTFBjVABck/US_ogL0NKyI/AAAAAAAAA9c/U52rpgX18ZQ/s320/MagicBulletTheory.jpg
bzfgt
  • 47. bzfgt (link) | 27/02/2021
Yes, we should
Ivan
  • 48. Ivan | 30/06/2021
I imagine when Peely played this on the radio he would have mentioned his incredible Lee Harvey Oswald story.

https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/John_F._Kennedy
dannyno
  • 49. dannyno | 04/07/2021
No indication thus far that he did:

https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Fall:_Show_Appearances_(Excluding_Sessions)
dannyno
  • 50. dannyno | 07/10/2021
"He's got an interview in Spin magazine"

From "My Way", a German fanzine, September 1988 (translated with help from Google translate):


MY WAY: Es gibt da eine Zeile in "Oswald Defence Lawyer" in den die am. Musikzeitschrift SPIN vorkommt. Mochtest du deren Artikel über THE FALL nicht?

Mark: Ich hasse ihn! Ich denke das ist ein "Scheißmagazin ". Die meisten amerikanischen Rockmagazine sind wirklich Scheiße.



MY WAY: There is a line in "Oswald Defense Lawyer" in which the American music magazine SPIN appears. Didn't you like their article about THE FALL?

Mark: I hate it! I think this is a "shitty magazine". Most American rock magazines really suck.
dannyno
  • 51. dannyno | 07/10/2021
Oops, "My Way" is currently available in pdf here:

http://tapeattack.blogspot.com/2020/09/my-way-09-88-bergkamen.html
dannyno
  • 52. dannyno | 22/10/2021
It's not clear, by the way, whether "My Way" in saying "didn't you like their article", has a particular article in mind, or if it's a general comment about the magazine in general, in which case "didn't you you like their article?" might then be a jokey rhetorical question (if I've translated it correction, which is a big "if".

In terms of coverage prior to the song/this interview, all I can find in the database of the magazine I have access to is an article on The Fall in vol. 2 iss 3, June 1986, p.16. That's it in terms of anything substantive.

There is no mention that I can find in the magazine of Bugliosi, or Spence, or anything about the Lee Harvey Oswald TV trial.

So perhaps it's not about an actual interview, but applying a dislike of the magazine to attack someone's else reputation, on the grounds that they are the kind of person who would love the magazine.
Jim Smiley
  • 53. Jim Smiley | 27/12/2022
I think one of the reasons for referencing Mark Twain is that he was associated initially with the literary style of telling folksy “Tall Tales”. His collected short stories often come under this title. The lawyer may be tapping into this tradition (an unreliable narrator, stretching the truth) when setting out his defence.
Jim Smiley
  • 54. Jim Smiley | 27/12/2022
… and of course Twain is often credited with the saying “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Muptonian
  • 55. Muptonian | 05/05/2023
I always heard:

The prosecution lawyer
Turns himself to fart

(Not 'to butter'.)

I still do.
Muptonian
  • 56. Muptonian | 05/05/2023
I always heard:

The prosecution lawyer
Turns himself to fart

(Not 'to butter'.)

I still do.

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