Slang King

Lyrics

(1)

Wickwire (2)
Wickwire
Hawk man (3)
Slip down easy
Don't make me a go-between
This is Mr. and Mrs. Smith (4)
To whom you are speaking
Slang King
Words from a cheap man
Part-paid type who got his style 
From a press treatise
2 pound 50
Bottle of Brut and nausea (5)
Magazine
It's no longer a journey down the road for him
It is now escape route (6)
Bright, turn off sign
Swing, 14, turns off, between
Swingo greets lime green receptionist
All here is ace, All here is ace, All here is ace
Escape route
Caca-phony
Slang King
Swoop swoop
Voll media krieg, for his honour's binge (7)
During his Scandinavian stint
He said hi to Horst, the viking (8)
Hi Lo-l-lord Swingo (9)
At his triumphant procession
Down the road of quease
Dropping off, he stopped
At a British shop
Swoop scoop
Slang King 
At a British shop
Take it down easy
During a lull in his attack
3 little girls with only 50 pence
Had to take, had to put
The Curly Wurly back (10)

Swoop swoop, scoop scoop
Slip down easy
Slip away at court or him and his bloody mother
We'll go together
Sugar down
Slip down easy
Hyper Hyper! (11)
Slang King
Watch, the word had right
Biz by word processor
We'll go together, slip down down away
Hyper, with the young designers
The young designers are always there
Always wanted to be there
Slip down, caca-phony
WickwireWickwire
Slip down easy, sugar
Slip down easy, sugar
Slip down away, sugar
Hawkman, Wickwire, Wickwire (12)
Slang King

Notes

1. There is a song by Peter Hammill called "Jargon King"; there are no obvious connections in the lyrics, but MES is known to be a fan of Hammill (thanks to Dan).

The Story of the Fall reproduces this remark about the whimsical organ part: 

According to Dave Thompson's Users Guide to The Fall  "Smith even admitted he tried to persuade Burns to play drums like 70s Disco faves the Moments (of...And Whatnots fame). "And I had this organ tune and this ongoing fable about this historical character. Worked dead well, didn't it?'''

Slang King 2, the version on the B-side of the "Call For Escape Route" single, begins: "You feel depressed 'cause you've missed the day/Then you have to go to the hall."

Dan: Rob Waite's article, "Notebooks Out," in "The Biggest Library Yet" issue #18, January 2000, p6, notes an alleged musical similarity to The Monkees' "Love is Only Sleeping."

Paul Hanley, who plays keyboards, from a listening party on Twitter:


Mark showed me a rough approximation of the chorus riff on kazoo. The verse bit was in A- I insisted the chorus had to be in C as that was the only key where I could play the riff cos that made it all white notes. So really I wrote the chorus!

^

2. Brix, on Twitter (thanks to Dan):


When Mark says Whickwire [sic] he is referring to a character in Rod Stirling’s Twilight Zone.
We were obsessed with that show . Mark thought Rod Stirling was a genius poet.

The reference is to the episode "Elegy." UnVictorian summarizes:

"Mr Wickwire was the robotic custodian of a mortuary inhabiting the entirety of an asteroid in the first season of The Twilight Zone. Three astronauts land on the asteroid and -- being programmed to protect the mortuary from all threats -- [Wickwire] kills the astronauts and preserves them with the mortuary's other 'guests.'"

Dan finds a further Twilight Zone connection in the sleeve notes of The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall:

SLANG King - "... a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience ... But Mr. Hammer has a talent, discovered at a very early age." - Rod Serling. 

This comes from the opening narration, delivered by Serling, of the "Twilight Zone" episode "The Four of Us Are Dying" (Season 1, episode 13, first broadcast 1 June 1960.  In full it is: "His name is Arch Hammer, he's 36 years old. He's been a salesman, a dispatcher, a truck driver, a con man, a bookie, and a part-time bartender. This is a cheap man, a nickel-and-dime man, with a cheapness that goes past the suit and the shirt; a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste, a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience, and a dark-room squint at a world whose sunlight has never gotten through to him. But Mr. Hammer has a talent, discovered at a very early age. This much he does have. He can make his face change. He can twitch a muscle, move a jaw, concentrate on the cast of his eyes, and he can change his face. He can change it into anything he wants. Mr. Archie Hammer, jack-of-all-trades, has just checked in at three-eighty a night, with two bags, some newspaper clippings, a most odd talent, and a master plan to destroy some lives.

^

3. There is a D.C. comics character dubbed "Hawk Man." One of the Hawk Man stories is called "Earth's Impossible Day," which became the title of side 1 of Shift-Work.   

See "More Information" for--well, you know. 

^

4. The song is of course from the Brix era; "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is a 1941 comedy directed by Alfred Hitchcock about a couple who discover they aren't actually legally married, get mad at each other and part, and, of course, eventually get back together. However, according to Brix the source is something else:

Dan: "According to Brix Smith-Start's autobiography, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise, the line 'This is Mr and Mrs Smith to whom you are speaking' is '[...] obviously a direct allusion to us, but he is also sending up the heinous game show, Mr & Mrs, which we would sometimes watch even though we hated it. It was so bad it was good. A kitsch bit of British television history.'"

^

5. Brut is a sparkling dry wine, and nausea is what might happen if you drink it. (It has been pointed out to me that the cologne also called Brut may be what is meant here). As Mike Watts points out, MES pronounces it BRUTT but in both cases the correct pronunciation is BROOT. Pronouncing words according to their spelling is not an uncommon thing for MES; for instance, see his pronunciation of "shoppes" in "How I Wrote Elastic Man," "dept" in "Lie Dream of a Casino Soul," "Victuals" in "I Feel Voxish," "Karaoke" in "Pumpkin Head Xscapes," and "Hyperbole" in "Hot Runes."

^

6. At the Fall online forum, Conway relates:

A non-forum member has emailed me with an interesting connection between this song & The Twilight Zone:

The first season episode of the Twilight Zone called The HitchHiker. I was just watching it and this line of monolog came up:

"Towns go by without names, landscapes without form.
Now it isn't even a trip, it's flight. Route 80 isn't a highway
anymore, it's an escape route."

Compares to MES:

"It's no longer a journey down the road for him
It is now escape route"

Thanks for pointing this out Ted.


^

7. "Voll media Krieg" = full media war.  

^

8. Horst Wessel (1907-1930) was a Nazi Party activist who, after his death, became a hero to the ascendant NSDAP. He wrote the words to "The Flag on High" (Die Fahne Hoche, more commonly known as the Horst-Wessel-Lied or "Horst Wessel Song"), which became the official Nazi party anthem. He was a member of several far-right organizations in his youth, including one called "The Viking Union" (Viking Bund).    

^ 

9. Swingo is a swinger version of Bingo (the prurient among us can easily fill in details in imagination). This may not be what MES means, though; there's also a hotel in Cleveland that used to be called Swingo's, and here is what I learned about it:

If there were an award for the Hotel That Had Been Privy to the Most Debauchery, this Comfort Inn – formerly Swingos Celebrity Inn – would be a contender for the gong. Swingos' notorious reputation began in earnest when Elvis sashayed into the unprepossessing hotel having booked more than 100 rooms over three floors. By the time the King checked out, with a $20,000 bill, the hotel's fate had been decided. With bated breath, the hotel later welcomed the Who's Keith Moon, who checked in dressed as a cop before handcuffing two strangers together. Of its reputation, Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter said: "Swingos was a place you remember checking in and out of, but you can't remember anything in between."     

^

10. A Curly Wurly is a British chocolate bar. Dan has found an ad from 1987 that prices a Curly Wurly at 12p, so they were at least that cheap in 1984. Conclusion? The girls were shopping for more than just Curly Wurlys...

Brix from Twitter again:
 


Once when Mark and I were at our local corner shop, these too little girls really didn’t have enough for a curly Whiley and had to put it back!

^

11. Hyper Hyper is an Australian clothes store with branches in New York and London.

^

12. This mysterious Hawkman also turns up on both of MES's solo albums, The Post Nearly Man and Pander Panda Panzer, as Zack reports. More on our friend the Hawkman below.

^

More Information

Slang King: Fall Tracks A-Z

 

See this thread on the Fall Online Forum, which is a goldmine.

 

Here is a taste of what you'll get--there is much more on the thread, though--as Buy Kurious quotes the following text from DC's Hawkman (taken from Dial B for Blog):

EARTH'S IMPOSSIBLE DAY
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN


"If ponies rode men and grass ate cows,
And cats should be chased to holes by the mouse,
If the mamas sold their babies to the gypsies for half a crown;
Summer were spring and the t'other way around.
Then all the world would be upside down."


In 1781, the British army under Gen. Cornwallis surrendered to Gen. George Washington, ending the American Revolutionary War. On the day of the surrender, the English fife and 
drum corps played a march called “The World Turned Upside Down” (lyrics above).

The declaration of July 4th -- to which America’s Founding Fathers had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor -- had achieved fruition. Despite inconceivable odds and to the complete astonishment of the entire world, a tiny colony had defeated the world’s greatest military power and secured for itself the right to exist as a free and independent nation.

It was IMPOSSIBLE -- as unlikely as ponies riding men, or grass eating cows. It was as impossible as making rain fall upward, hurling lightning bolts, or seeing the invisible. There was just no possible way it could have happened. But it happened anyway.

Remarkably, on distant Thanagar, home of Hawkman, an annual Thanagarian holiday coincides with America's Independence Day. To celebrate it, Hawkman must make rain fall upward, hurl lightning bolts, and see the invisible! IMPOSSIBLE, you say? That's true! There is just no possible way it can happen. But history is not a record of the "possible," it is a record of what happened. To celebrate the "impossible" day America declared her independence, let's do something impossible. Today is the day for it, reader! Because TODAY is --

Earth's Impossible Day!

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Comments (47)

Martin
  • 1. Martin | 25/04/2013
With reference to the word "route" used in the song, it's interesting that MES pronounces it in the American way and not in the "standard" British way. More evidence of where he got the phrase from, I think.
dannyno
  • 2. dannyno | 27/04/2013
MES-fave Peter Hammill has a song called "Jargon King". It's quite Fallesque, but there are no real lyrical correspondences. Here's a bit:

He prescribes the subject
he proscribes outsiders
his terms have a golden ring.
He wants to find some order
quantifying chaos
in words that all the children sing.
He tabulates the lexicon
vocabulary minimised
bow down to the Jargon King.
Robert
  • 3. Robert | 03/05/2013
"Earth's Impossible Day" was the title of side one of Shiftwork, not Bend Sinister.
bzfgt
  • 4. bzfgt | 04/05/2013
Fixed.
Huckleberry
  • 5. Huckleberry | 16/08/2013
I think "Hyper" might be referring to Hyper Hyper, a trendy clothes shop in Kensington whose slogan in the 1980s was "The home of the young designers" or something similar.
Beef Manifold
  • 6. Beef Manifold | 10/01/2014
"Kecks" is northern British slang for pants; Harlequin kecks are checked or multicolored trousers.

You are correct except that kecks can mean either trousers or pants (and in the UK pants means underpants not trousers). So he may be talking about harlequin ys, which sounds particularly lovely.
bzfgt
  • 7. bzfgt | 22/01/2014
What is the difference between pants and trousers? You foreigners never cease to confound me...
bzfgt
  • 8. bzfgt | 22/01/2014
Beef, you got in the wrong song somehow...I'll check "Shoulder Pads."
Martin
  • 9. Martin | 30/01/2014
I'm sure that 50 pence would have been more than enough to buy a curly wurly back in 1984. The girls didn't need to put it back.
bzfgt
  • 10. bzfgt | 15/02/2014
That's interesting information, Martin, but I will leave it down here in the comments...I'd hate to destroy the man's credibility.
dannyno
  • 11. dannyno | 28/02/2014
50p probably would have been enough to buy a Curly Wurly, but where in the song does it say that the girls were *only* buying a Curly Wurly?

There's three of them, so while they *might* have been buying one Curly Wurly to break into three to share, isn't it more likely they were buying a pile of chocolate to share. And their funds didn't stretch to the Curly Wurly. So they put that back but are able to leave the shop with sufficient chocolate for their purposes.
dannyno
  • 12. dannyno | 28/02/2014
In 1981, Curly Wurly's cost 10p:

http://www.sfu.ca/cmns/faculty/kline_s/320/06-spring/resources/sup_readings/adeffective-curlywurly.pdf

Dan
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 18/05/2014
"You feel depressed 'cause you've missed the day
Then you have to go to the hall"

It should probably be clarified that these lines come from Slang King 2, a version which appeared on the B-side of the Call for Escape Route single/EP.
UnVictorian
  • 14. UnVictorian | 02/12/2014
With regards to the Twilight Zone reference, i always thought the first lines in the song were "Wickwire".

Mr Wickwire was the robotic custodian of a mortuary inhabiting the entirety of an asteroid in the first season of the Twilight Zone. Three astronauts land on the asteroid and - being programmed to protect the mortuary from all threats - kills the astronauts and preserves them with the mortuary's other "guests".
dannyno
  • 15. dannyno | 04/05/2016
According to Brix Smith-Start's autobiography, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise, the line "This is Mr and Mrs Smith to whom you are speaking" is ...


[...] obviously a direct allusion to us, but he is also sending up the heinous game show, Mr & Mrs, which we would sometimes watch even though we hated it. It was so bad it was good. A kitsch bit of British television history.
Zack
  • 16. Zack | 24/02/2017
Hawkman also turns up in "Dissolute Singer" on both The Post Nearly Man and Pander Panda Panzer.
dannyno
  • 17. dannyno | 01/03/2017
Earth's Impossible Day - discussion of the Hawkman link, plus images from the comic here:
http://z1.invisionfree.com/thefall/index.php?showtopic=18320&view=findpost&p=11311237

Image
dannyno
  • 18. dannyno | 25/06/2017
A further Twilight Zone connection.

From the sleeve notes to "The Wonderful and Frightening World Of..."


SLANG King

-"... a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience ... But Mr. Hammer has a talent, discovered at a very early age." - Rod Serling.


This comes from the opening narration, delivered by Serling, of the "Twilight Zone" episode "The Four of Us Are Dying" (Season 1, episode 13, first broadcast 1 June 1960 [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_of_Us_Are_Dying[/quote]. In full it is:


His name is Arch Hammer, he's 36 years old. He's been a salesman, a dispatcher, a truck driver, a con man, a bookie, and a part-time bartender. This is a cheap man, a nickel-and-dime man, with a cheapness that goes past the suit and the shirt; a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste, a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience, and a dark-room squint at a world whose sunlight has never gotten through to him. But Mr. Hammer has a talent, discovered at a very early age. This much he does have. He can make his face change. He can twitch a muscle, move a jaw, concentrate on the cast of his eyes, and he can change his face. He can change it into anything he wants. Mr. Archie Hammer, jack-of-all-trades, has just checked in at three-eighty a night, with two bags, some newspaper clippings, a most odd talent, and a master plan to destroy some lives.
dannyno
  • 19. dannyno | 12/08/2017
Rob Waite's article, "Notebooks Out" in "The Biggest Library Yet", issue #18, January 2000, p6, notes an alleged musical similarity to The Monkees' "Love is Only Sleeping".
bzfgt
  • 20. bzfgt (link) | 16/09/2017
That article is not onlineI take it? Man, that thing is leaving scorched earth!
bzfgt
  • 21. bzfgt (link) | 16/09/2017
I'm not sure about this one though.
bzfgt
  • 22. bzfgt (link) | 16/09/2017
I'm not sure about this one though.
dannyno
  • 23. dannyno | 20/09/2017
No, not online.
Mike Watts
  • 24. Mike Watts | 06/12/2017
Regarding 'Brut' - MES mispronounces it BrUT, however both the wine and the men's aftershave is pronounced 'BrOOt'. I can't recall if the wine or the aftershave cost £2.50 at that time - maybe both?

Beef Manifold (above) was right about pants/trousers - in the UK we wear trousers and under the trousers we wear pants. Occasionally we might call them underpants. It's as simple as that.

Beef also pointed out that 'Kecks' is northern english slang for both trousers or pants, MES would use this word as natural vocabulary, in the same way I wouldn't as I'm a southern bastard and proud of it...
bzfgt
  • 25. bzfgt (link) | 09/12/2017
Regarding 'Brut' - MES mispronounces it BrUT

Yes, that's a typical MES move ("shoppies" etc.)
bzfgt
  • 26. bzfgt (link) | 09/12/2017
Having said that, that is the only other example I can think of...
dannyno
  • 27. dannyno | 11/12/2017
bzfgt, comment #26. Also "dept" in []Lie Dream of a Casino Soul[/i]? "Victuals" in I Feel Voxish? "Karaoke" in Pumpkin Head Xscapes? "Hyperbole" in Hot Runes?
bzfgt
  • 28. bzfgt (link) | 16/12/2017
Thank you, Dan! How do you do that?!
dannyno
  • 29. dannyno | 16/12/2017
bzfgt
  • 30. bzfgt (link) | 23/12/2017
The sunglasses are like They Live shades...you see the true world beneath the illusion...
dannyno
  • 31. dannyno | 16/01/2019
The price of a Curly Wurly.

Re: note #10, and comments 9-12.

I commented (#12) that in 1981, a Curly Wurly cost 10p. I've just found an advert in the Daily Mail dated 10 August 1987, where the Curly Wurly is priced at 12p. So while there may have been inflation between 1981 and 1984, we can now confidently state that 50p was plenty for a Curly Wurly. Which is support for the notion that the girls were in fact buying a whole lot of confectionary, and only had to put some back because it took them over their 50p limit.
bzfgt
  • 32. bzfgt (link) | 26/01/2019
Don't be hasty, we don't know that the rest of their haul was confectionary...in any case it was certainly not more Curly Wurlys or this would be modified somehow....not that you claimed it was
dannyno
  • 33. dannyno | 02/04/2020
Note #2

Brix Smith Start, during the @Tim_Burgess curated TWAFWOTF ##timstwitterlisteningparty on 2nd April 2020, said:


When Mark says Whickwire he is referring to a character in Rod Stirling’s Twilight Zone.
We were obsessed with that show . Mark thought Rod Stirling was a genius poet.


https://twitter.com/Brixsmithstart/status/1245824061676163072
dannyno
  • 35. dannyno | 02/04/2020
Note 10:

Brix Smith Start, during the @Tim_Burgess curated TWAFWOTF ##timstwitterlisteningparty on 2nd April 2020, said:


Once when Mark and I were at our local corner shop, these too little girls really didn’t have enough for a curly Whiley and had to put it back!


Note she doesn't say what else they were buying or how much money they actually had, thereby failing to resolve the real mystery here.

https://twitter.com/Brixsmithstart/status/1245824200239206401
dannyno
  • 36. dannyno | 02/04/2020
Brix Smith Start, during the @Tim_Burgess curated TWAFWOTF ##timstwitterlisteningparty on 2nd April 2020, said:


This was my attempt and trying to funk it up.


https://twitter.com/Brixsmithstart/status/1245823243950256128
dannyno
  • 37. dannyno | 02/04/2020
Paul Hanley, during the @Tim_Burgess curated TWAFWOTF ##timstwitterlisteningparty on 2nd April 2020, said


Mark showed me a rough approximation of the chorus riff on kazoo. The verse bit was in A- I insisted the chorus had to be in C as that was the only key where I could play the riff cos that made it all white notes. So really I wrote the chorus!


https://twitter.com/hanleyPa/status/1245823524419375111
dannyno
  • 38. dannyno | 03/04/2020
In the more information section there's a dead link to the FOF.

Correct link is now: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/visual-fall-t18320.html (it's the Visual Fall thread)
dannyno
  • 39. dannyno | 03/04/2020
Just to summarise the Twilight Zone connections to this song, already in the notes of course.

So first of all there's the album sleeve note, quoting from the episode The Four of Us Are Dying, Season 1, episode 13.

Then there's the "escape route" line, quoting from the episode The Hitchhiker, Season 1, episode 16.

Then there's "Wickwire", which is the character "Jeremy Wickwire", from the episode Elegy, Season 1, episode 20.

Notice they are all from Season 1. Season 1 was originally shown in the US in 1960.

However, all three were shown on BBC 2 in the UK in November and December 1983, and so it is likely that Brix and MES sat down to watch them then.

Brix, we know, saw the series on US TV long before meeting MES and was already a fan when she married him. It would have been difficult for MES to have seen many episodes on UK TV before the 1983 repeats - but according to Brix he did know the series (some episodes were shown on Granada TV in 1975).

See research here: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/the-twilight-zone-and-the-fall-t23314.html

I have searched extensively but due to the patchiness of TV listings information about which episodes were seen when, it is difficult to reach firm conclusions. However, let's say there is no evidence I've yet found that any of these three Series 1 episodes was shown anywhere on UK TV until 1983/4. If they were, it was maybe back around 1962, and clearly MES would have been too young to have seen them then. Alternatively, some of series 1 appeared on Granada in 1975, which would be a more likely scenario. It's just it's hard to find out which episodes were shown.
bzfgt
  • 40. bzfgt (link) | 10/04/2020
Should I change it to whickwire, i.e. is she definitely right? I'm going to listen to it and if I can't tell it isn't, or if I can tell it is, I'll change it, but I'll be ready to field and consider objections.
bzfgt
  • 41. bzfgt (link) | 10/04/2020
Yeah I'm pretty sure it's "Wickwire"
Xyralothep's cat
  • 42. Xyralothep's cat | 19/07/2020
4 small suggestions
0:58 "pop-king type who got his style from a pressed tree" i.e. pulp i.e. a magazine
3.41 "to court of him and his bloody mother" Morrissey? his mother was his manager in the early days I believe
4:06 "watch the work hand write"
4:23 "always like to be there"
bzfgt
  • 43. bzfgt (link) | 26/07/2020
Fuck Ihe leans on a consonant and I don't think it's "G", I like "pressed tree" but can't decide what it sounds like....I need more people to evaluate these

Still think I hear "wanted"
Chris
  • 44. Chris | 10/08/2020
Apparently the line is "all here is ace". Until I found this website I thought it was "all hear his aches" i.e. people who bang on about their troubles regardless of whether the person in earshot is interested.
dannyno
  • 45. dannyno | 07/06/2021
dannyno
  • 46. dannyno | 11/01/2023
I realise we've not got a picture of the actual chocolate bar.

https://www.worldofsweets.de/out/pictures/master/product/3/cadbury-curly-wurly-48x21-5g-no3-1521.jpg
A Curly Wurly, yesterday
Alex
  • 47. Alex | 22/04/2023
He says "slip down easy" twice before "this is mr and mrs smith"

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