Spectre vs. Rector

(1)

M.R. James vivat vivat (2)
Yog Sothoth Ray Milland (3)
Sludge hai choi, choi choi son (4)

M.R. James vivat vivat
Yog Sothoth Ray Milland
Van Greenway R. Corman (5)
Sludge hai choi choi choi son

Part one: spectre versus rector
The rector lived in Hampshire (6)
The spectre was from Chorazina (7)
In evil dust in the air
The rector locked his doors

Part two: detective drives through Hampshire (8)
Stops because of the fog there
And thinks a visit to the rector
And meanwhile and meanwhile

Spectre possesses rector
Rector becomes spectre
Sludge hai choi choi choi son
Sludge hai choi choi choi son
Enter inspector
Even as he spoke a dust devil suddenly arose and struck him (9)

Part four: detective versus rector (10)
Detective versus rector possessed by spectre
Spectre blows him against the wall
Says "Die, wretch, this is your fall! (11)
I've waited since Caesar for this
Damn Latin, my hate is crisp! (12)
I'll rip your fat body to pieces"

M.R. James vivat vivat
Yog Sothoth Ray Milland
Van Greenway R. Corman

Scene five, scene five:
Comes a hero  (13)
Soul possessed a thousand times
Only he could rescue rector
Only he could save inspector
And this hero was a strange man
"Those flowers, take them away," he said,
"They're only funeral decorations  (14)
And oh this is a drudge nation
A nation of no imagination
A stupid man is their ideal
They shun me and think me unclean,
Unclean...                                     (15)

"I have saved a thousand souls
They cannot even save their own
I'm soaked in blood but always good
It's like I drunk myself sober,      (16)
I get better as I get older."

M.R. James vivat
Yog Sothoth Ray Milland
Van Greenway R. Corman
Sludge hai choi choi choi son
Sludge hai choi choi choi son

Part six:
That was his kick from life
That's how he pads out his life
Selling his soul to the devil
And the spectre enters hero
But the possession is ineffectual
But the possession is ineffectual
And the possession is ineffectual

And M.R. James vivat
Yog Sothoth Ray Milland
Van Greenway R. Corman
Sludge hai choi choi choi son
Sludge hai choi choi choi son, I said
Sludge hai choi choi choi son

Last scene:
Hero and inspector walk from the scene
Is the spectre banished forever? (17)
The inspector is half insane
The hero goes back into the mountains
The hero goes back into the mountains
He was an exorcist but he was exhausted
An exorcist but he was exhausted 
The rector is dead on the floor

M.R. James vivat
Yog Sothoth Ray Milland
Van Greenway R. Corman
Sludge hai choi choi choi son
Sludge hai choi choi choi son

[...] chosen son
Van Greenway R. Corman
Van Greenway R. Corman
Yog Sothoth Ray Milland
Yog Sothoth Ray Milland

1. In the Church of England, a rector is a kind of parish priest. 

Dan: From the "Dragnet" handout/insert of song explanations:
 

Part of this was recorded in a damp warehouse in M/CR-maybe industrial ghosts are making spectres redundant.

Art points out in the comments below, and I have seen it suggested elsewhere, that the vocal cadences of the song resemble Can's "The Empress and the Ukraine King." While this is true--and MES was known to be a fan of Can--it's not something that could not have been arrived at independently, I don't think. But it is a track MES was most likely familiar with, and it does sound very similar--it then becomes a question of what, in such a case, would consitute a coincidence, and what an influence or borrowing. Dear reader, you decide...

^

2. M.R. (Montague Rhodes) James (1862-1936) was an influential author of ghost stories. In "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book," James tells the tale of a "verger" or "sacristan" who is followed by a demon until he manages to sell the book in which a representation of the demon appears (unlike a rector, a verger is not a priest but a layperson who assists in services. A sacristan is a sexton or church custodian; James' narrator says the word "verger" is in this case more accurate, although he prefers "sacristan.")

It is quite possibly "vivant, vivant"--living, alive (French). One of the sleevenotes to Dragnet reads "IVANT AR CORMAN." The sung passage seems to begin with a 'v,' but this is of course the remainder of the word "vivant"; the version on the sleeve could be a play on words, as it could be both a fragment of "vivant," and a somewhat phonetic rendering of "I want R. Corman." This seemingly refers to Roger Corman (see notes 3 and 5 below), a movie producer and director who is known for B-grade horror movies. Corman, who produced and directed horror movies that are often humorously self-aware of their "B" status, such as Swamp Women and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, has a few seconds to wait before he makes his official appearance in the lyrics (or perhaps several minutes in footnote reading time!), but Dan points out that the title of his movie Premature Burial (which plays an important role in note 3 below) was translated into French as L'Enterré Vivant ("Buried Alive"). 

However, Nairng submits:

"I watched The Haunted Palace last night - directed by R Corman, it is an adaptation of HP Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward story. In it, Vincent Price is trying to bring his old mistress back from the dead by using a Latinate incantation which concludes with a repeated 'vivat...vivat.'"

Dan points out the opening credit sequence of The Haunted Palace seems to be the source of the cover of Dragnet.

"Vivat" in Latin is a cry addressed to someone meaning "life," sort of like "long live!" or "Viva!" So it makes sense as a vivifying chant, and I suspect this could be the lyric. Or, given "Ivant Ar Corman," it could be "vivant" is a misheaing of "vivat."

The Lyrics parade had "be born," and there is still a strong "be born" contingent, but it doesn't have much going for it except, importantly, many people are sure that is what they are hearing.

The chorus seems to function as a sort of incantation, in which case the meaning and the exact formulation of the words is perhaps intended to recede before the repetition of the barbarous sounds derived therefrom, which are presumably intended to induce a trance or to summon a demon (or both, and perhaps these two processes are in some way one and the same). Of course, this is all presented as a sort of joke, if a deadpan one, the way movie monsters or vampires are always, to some extent, humorous--at least, latently so--as evidenced by how easily they become the subject of jokes ("I vant to suck your blood!"; "I vant Ar Corman!").  At the same time, this all nevertheless sounds suitably evil as sung and played by the Fall, in no small part due to the angular, muffled, and slightly off-tune grinding of the guitars and Hanley's ponderous bass line...

^

3. Yog Sothoth, in the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), is an "Outer God" who appears as "a congeries of irridescent globes...malign in its suggestiveness" ("The Horror in the Musem"). He is said to be co-regent with his father Azathoth, head of the Outer Gods, and to be omnipresent, although at the same time he is sometimes said to be locked outside of the known universe. In "The Dunwich Horror," Yog Sothoth impregnates Lavinia Whately, who gives birth to monstrous twins (one of whom is able to "pass," although his abdomen is tentacled; the other is kept in secret). There are magicians who use names from Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos in their rituals, and belief in the reality of the named entities is not considered by all magicians to be a requirement (for instance, among Chaos Magicians).

Initially we had "Rape me lord" rather than "Ray Milland," as the former was the way it was on the old Lyrics Parade. There is good reason to think it is the latter, however. 

Ray Milland (1907-1986) was a Welsh actor with an extemely long career, and many of us remember him from The Lost Weekend, in which Milland's harrowing portrayal of an alcoholic writer was probably largely responsible for the ascendence of the cliché "harrowing portrayal" in movie criticism. Milland became a major star in the afermath of The Lost Weekend, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor (also sweeping Cannes, The National Board of Review, and The New York Film Critics circle). After about a decade at the top of the mountain, Milland became a director, and took on more minor roles as well as major roles in minor (in terms of popularity) films. This brings us to the early 60s, when Milland took the lead role in two films by Roger Corman ("R. Corman," see notes 2 and 5), Premature Burial and The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. 

Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, our very own mister fucking bawbag, driven nearly mad by the refusal of bzfgt, his arch-nemesis, to amend his transcription of the lyrics to "Spectre vs. Rector" to include the words "Ray Milland," spent every day and night between Septermber 13th, 2013 and January 13th, 2014--an almost unbelievable stretch of 122 days--watching Ray Milland movies, frame by frame, his eyes clamped open, Clockwork Orange-style, as his hunchbacked assistant Matt irrigated his eyes. The two of them spent four months in this manner, searching for the evidence that would connect Milland to the Fall and vindicate them once and for all.  As the clock struck midnight on the morning of the 14th, Matt squeezed out the last drop of visine and it seemed the game was up--but, in fact, it was only just beginning. Groggy and half asleep, bawbag and Matt were jolted into awareness by the shocking scene that was unfolding on their computer monitor...

I had to tell you that to tell you this--actually, I had to tell you that to give mister fucking bawbag (who has, since his change in fortune, changed his name to "dj bawbag" and taken to wearing gaudy gold ropes around his neck and driving a Humvee around with Matt riding shotgun, shouting "Yeah, boyee!! Ray fucking Milland!!" at confused pedestrians) credit for the following discovery: in Premature Burial, Milland plays Guy Carrell, a man who cannot get over his morbid fear of being buried alive. In an early scene in the movie, he and his wife, Emily Gault (Hazel Court) are walking in a graveyard, and she picks some flowers with which she proposes to "brighten up that dreary old house" for Carell. She shoves the flowers in Carell's face, demanding "Aren't they lovely?", and but he swats them away from him, commanding her to "Take them away!!" He goes on to avow, "I loathe flowers! You must promise never to bring those sickly funeral decorations into the house!" Gault agrees, but she seems none too happy about it. 

This is clearly the origin of the line in scene five when the "hero" proclaims "Those flowers, take them away," he said,/ "They're only funeral decorations..." (see note 13 below). This seems to corroborate the reading of the line in the chorus as "Ray Milland," and if you listen closely, I think that this is indeed what MES is saying.   

Also, all joking aside, it will be noticed in the comments below that Matt was the first to propose this lyric change here, and mister fucking ("dj") bawbag discovered the scene in Premature Burial, so both of them deserve our thanks for making the discovery. 

^

4. I have not found any antecedents for the phrase "sludge hai choi"; it may just be intended as mumbo-jumbo. At the end, however, the line "chosen son" is substituted, which may suggest that "choi choi son" is a sort of incantatory derivation from "choice" and "son," blurred to enhance its magical trance-inducing power by keeping the meanings of the words from pulling the mind of the magus back to ordinary awareness, whilst leaving the semantic content lurking beneath the surface. 

(Fade to Black)

(Unfade From Black, or whatever the proper cue is)

I wrote the above a couple years ago, and since then I have come to think that these things may be confusing, but they're rarely that vague. Andy Lynes gives us another perspective:

"It may or may not be relevant but it's at least interesting that 'hai ch?i' means 'two players' in Vietnamese and there are two main players in the song."

And, finally, George Henderson gives us some red meat to chew on below!

"Here's a possible choi choi son link
First, in Madame Butterfly, the main character's real name is Ciocio-san, pronounced cho-cho san.
There is also the Chinese pirate Lai Chio San.


Now, how might MES have known these names? And why put it in the song? Well, the only link I can think of is Borges' Universal History of Infamy, which I'm sure MES read but which has a different female pirate in it, Ching Shih."
 

^

5. Peter Van Greenaway (1929-1988) was an English author who wrote thrillers, some of which had elements of horror. (Incidentally, the Fall now have a guitar player named Peter Greenway). Roger Corman (see notes 2 and 3 above) is a movie producer and director who is known for B-grade horror movies, often with elements of humor, such as Swamp Women and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, as well as being the producer of Rock and Roll High School. 

A sleevenote to Dragnet reads "IVANT AR CORMAN." Dan suggests this could be "a phonetic rendering of Yog Sothoth's slobbering stentorian and accented demand, 'I Want R. Corman!'" I like to think the spectre wants his favorite filmmaker to shoot the imminent carnage! But see note one, this could be a garbled rendition of "vivant."

The use of these names in an incantation (presumably voiced by the "hero") is characteristic of the song, which is both humorous and, to my ears at least, genuinely creepy. In magical rituals, names that are thought to possess power are chanted to the point where the practitioner loses consciousness of their semantic content, and in this manner sound supersedes sense (indeed, some purported words of power seem to lack any explicit denotation, such as "abracadabra"). Thus, MES's invocation, while intentionally absurd, is also somewhat plausible as a magical spell or ritual. 

The second Fall lyrics book is typically unhelpful with the chorus, rendering it with the completely unbelievable "M.R. James live on live on. You suffered grief ere long, Than grimly, ah! come on, live on. Than grimly, ah! come on. Sludge hatred T.T. son."

^

6. Hampshire County is in southern England.

^

7. Chorazin was a village in Galillee, cursed by Jesus in the Bible. From the 11th chapter of Matthew:

²¹ “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

²² But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the Day of Judgment than for you.

²³ And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell; for if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

²⁴ But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the Day of Judgment than for thee.”

The first cities named, including Chorazin, were Hebraic cities that Jesus visited, which did not repent, as opposed to the pagan cities names which were never exposed to the gospel. 

In one performance of the song, MES added "Chorazina is the negative of Jerusalem" (Reformation), and from the back cover of Dragnet:

"Chorazina N. - Village.Location unknown.Said to be negative Jerusalem. (from "U.Medecin" by R. Totale XVII)

In M.R. James' short story "Count Magnus," an Englishman with an interest in history is visiting an estate in Sweden built by a Count Magnus in the early 17th century. The Count, a figure of evil repute, was rumored to have gone on something called the "Black Pilgrimage." The protagonist, a Mr. Wraxhall, finds a Latin snippet about the Black Pilgimage in the Count's papers, which reads in English:

"If any man desires to obtain a long life, if he would obtain a faithful messenger and see the blood of his enemies, it is necessary that he should first go into the city of Chorazin, and there salute the prince..."

James' text continues:

"Here there was an erasure of one word, not very thoroughly done, so that Mr. Wraxhall felt pretty sure that he was right in reading it as aëris ('of the air')."

A deacon later tells him that he has heard from a priest that the Antichrist is to be born in Chorazin. Apparently this is actually suggested by several Medieval writers; according to the 13th century Book of the Bee, a compendium of various quasi-biblical legends, "[The Antichrist] shall be conceived in Chorazin, born in Bethsaida, and reared in Capernaum."

Chapter Two of Paul's letter to the Ephesians begins:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

The "prince of the power of the air" is usually considered to be Satan.

An essay examining the sources of James' "Black Pilgrimage," written by Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nichols, recounts a Black Pilgrimage undertaken by Jack Parsons, acolyte of Aleister Crowley and friend and magickal colleague of L. Ron Hubbard:

But whether or not MRJ needed to invent the Black Pilgrimage to Chorazin, it is intriguing to discover that, in the 1940s, a Californian named Jack Parsons actually went on just such a journey, and with disturbing consequences. Early in 1946, Parsons (1914-1952), scientist and sometime leading light of the Californian Lodge of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis, invoked the Thelemic goddess Babalon in the Mojave Desert, utilising the "Enochian Tablet of Air". He had devised the magickal operation in order to "obtain the assistance of an elemental mate" (reminiscent of Count Magnus's "faithful messenger"), an object he claimed to have achieved by following Babalon's instructions, which he later wrote down as The Book of Babalon or the Liber 49. One of the goddess's demands was that: "Thou shalt make the Black Pilgrimage". Babalon did not specify in so many words where the Pilgrimage should be to, but Parsons' Foreword to the Book says:

"I have taken the Oath of the Abyss, and entered my rightful city of Chorazin, and seen therein the past lives whereby I came to this, the grossest of all my Workings. Now it would seem that the further matters of the prophecy are at work; events press on tumultuously, and 'Time is' is writ large across the sky."(15)

Any lingering doubts concerning the destination of Parsons' Pilgrimage are removed by his The Book of Antichrist (1949), where he explains how, during a later invocation in 1948-9:

"...I reconstructed the temple, and began the Black Pilgrimage, as She [Babalon] instructed.
"And I went into the sunset with Her sign, and into the night past accursed and desolate places and cyclopean ruins, and so came at last to the City of Chorazin. And there a great tower of Black Basalt was raised, that was part of a castle whose further battlements reeled over the gulf of stars. And upon the tower was this sign [an inverted triangle in a circle]."(16)

Just like Count Magnus, Parsons "was taken within and saluted the Prince of that place", after which:

"...things were done to me of which I may not write, and they told me, 'It is not certain that you will survive, but if you survive you will attain your true will, and manifest the Antichrist.'
"And thereafter I returned and swore the Oath of the Abyss, having only the choice between madness, suicide and that oath."(17)

Of course, Jack Parsons' pilgrimage was magico-spiritual rather than geographical, but so might Count Magnus's have been. At no point in the story does MRJ specify that his journey was a physical one. It would be interesting, too, to know how Count Magnus died. Parsons was killed when he accidentally dropped some unstable fulminate of mercury, thus fulfilling Babalon's prophecy that he would "become living flame".

^

8. Here we are introduced to a third character, a "detective" or "inspector" who has presumably become aware of a commotion at the scene of the possession.

^

9. Ian Penman's Fall/MES interview/feature All Fall Down, from NME, 5 January 1980, pp6-7:
 

"Oh! Brrr! Grrr - The poor fellow covers his face with his hands and almost tears his eyes out with vicious rubbing. For even as he spoke a dust devil suddenly arose and struck him. His mouth is filled. He spits some out, but swallows more. His eyes are blinded. Poor wretch! In a day or two he will be in hospital, with that terrible ocular disease brought on by the glaring sun and the deadly dust."

- from Cassell's Illustrated History of the Boer War

That was the bit where we normally talk about 'influences,' by the way.

Thanks to Dan for finding this. "That was the bit..." seems to be the interviewer being clever; admittedly he probably helped us more than MES would have, though. 

^

10. Part Three is presumably "Spectre possesses rector/ Rector becomes spectre."

^

11.  Here it is not entirely clear who the spectre has entered; "Detective versus rector possessed by spectre" is ambiguous, although the most natural reading seems to me to be that the rector is possessed.  Dan suggests the spector (now in the rector) blows the detective against the wall, to get him out of the way so as to finish off the rector...if Dan is correct, then it seems he hurls the detective aside and then addresses the rector (from his own mouth?) with the ensuing speech, since it seems the rector is who he really has it in for, as the title of the song would indicate....eh, who the fuck knows? 

^

12.   My first thought, almost certainly wrong, was that the rector is Catholic and is being addressed as "Latin" (in the Catholic Church, a rector refers to a priest in charge of any of various ecclesiastical institutions--unless the spectre is addressing the detective here--see note 11 above).

^

Another possibility is that the spectre just didn't like having to speak Latin, as it's difficult to learn. Aubrey from the Fall online forum suggests perhaps the most plausible explanation, however, which is that the spectre is referring to exorcism with "Damn Latin!"

^

13. Now we have a fourth character, a "hero" who allows himself to be possessed by evil spirits in order to battle them. We soon discover that he has grown weary, cynical, and bitter in his profession, and is perhaps a bit of a megalomaniac.

^

14. The origin of this line is Premature Burial, in which Ray Milland's character responds to the offer of flowers by his wife with ""Take them away!...You must promise never to bring those sickly funeral decorations into the house!" (see note 3 above)

^

15. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, upon discovering that she has been bitten, Mina Murray exclaims:

"Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I ?must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgement ?Day."

A note in the "Literary Touchstone" edition of Dracula connects this speech to Leviticus 13: 45, which in the King James version reads: "And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean!"

^

16. The idea that one can "drink oneself sober" is a persistent myth among drinkers and hence a fairly common phrase. Antoine points out that it occurs in one of MES's favorite books, Under the Volcano:

"Yes, leaning over just like this, drunk but collected, coherent, a little mad, a little impatient - it was one of those occasions when the Consul had drunk himself sober..."

^

17. We will not learn the answer, but in any case the spectre is gone for now, and the rector seems to be dead...

^

Spectre vs. Rector: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1979

K-Punk (Mark Fisher)'s "Memorex For The Krakens"