Surmount All Obstacles

Lyrics

You must retreat into mysticism
To find an origination (1)
Locate the base enclave
Surmount all obstacles
Surmount all obstacles

Heinz is guilty, 
He says "Look, I left the shotgun by accident
I'm a black belt" (2)
His face is full of ex ex ex ex-cruelty
Guilt, blue-eyed
A caring, sharing man
Embarrass them into extinction

Must he retreat into mysticism
Or locate the base and climb?
Surmount all obstacles

(You can surmount all obstacles)
Progress

We can surmount all obstacles

We can surmount all obstacles

Why can't we surmount pointless reflection...

It must have taken 
Hours and hours, that
What an interesting article

Heinz is guilty
On the borders of your imagination

We can surmount all obstacles

Das Richard und das Judy
Are the cobwebs on your couture cuticles (3)

All obstacles 

Notes

1. The ambiguity of this line is remarkable, and indicative of MES's ambivalent attitude toward mysticism and spiritualist phenomena in general; the imperative "you must" is balanced by the word "retreat," which has a connotation that is at least slightly negative, and hints at another, more direct course of action--we learn later that it is to "locate the base and climb"-- that would be preferable but for whatever reason is not possible at the moment.

^

2. "Heinz"  may be, according to Russell Richardson, a featured character on the 1960s Granada TV program The Golden Shot. Heinz was, Richardson recounts, the camera assistant. His role was to take instructions from contestants who "gave instructions to a blindfolded crossbow operator (Heinz) who was aiming his Tele-Bow at a taut string holding a treasure chest of golden coins. The idea was to direct Heinz to guide the bolt to cut the string and win the money at the bullseye of a target. Based on a cheesy version of William Tell, this Heinz had a (fake?) Swiss German accent. After not very long, Heinz was replaced by Bernie, and the catch phrase when the operator loaded the crossbow (a real one, mounted on a TV camera) was 'Heinz, the Bolt!'" (and later, as one might expect, "Bernie, the Bolt!"). "That's who's apologising in the song. I think he did that once, and accidentally shot before being told to."

For the Record suggests "it is probably referencing Joe Meek prodigy Heinz Burt who as Wikipedia tells us 'lived briefly in Meek's flat, further disagreements over royalties saw him move out, leaving some possessions behind including a shotgun. It was this shotgun with which Meek killed his landlady and then himself in 1967, and although Heinz was questioned by police, they concluded he had nothing to do with their deaths.'"

Two more, for the purposes of due diligence:

On June 20, 1913, an unemployed school teacher named Heinz Schmidt entered St. Mary's Catholic School in Bremen (the setting of another Fall song) and opened fire, killing five schoolgirls and wounding 20 other people. And Heinz-Wilhelm Eck was a German U-boat commander who was executed after World War II for ordering his crew to execute the survivors of a Greek ship sunk by the German U-boat under Eck's command. 

^

3. Yes, this last line is unintelligible; according to Samuel Johnson "cuticle" can, aside from its more common meaning as the dead skin at the base of human fingernails, mean "A thin skin formed on the surface of any liquor," so maybe the image refers to a liquid that has been left in the kitchen so long that its cuticle has hardened to the point where it can collect cobwebs. I doubt that much thought went into the phrase, however, and it also may be a play on "kitchen cubicle." 

RIchard and Judy are British television hosts, and mention of them is also made in "A Lot of Wind," "North West Fashion Show," and probably "Is This New." 

^

Comments (25)

Mark
  • 1. Mark | 29/04/2014
I've always heard it as "the base enclave" (en-clarve) and "couture cuticles".
bzfgt
  • 2. bzfgt | 13/05/2014
I think "cobwebs" is right, though.

Can anybody make out what it says right after "Why can't we surmount pointless reflection"?
dannyno
  • 3. dannyno | 21/06/2014
The Rex Sergeant mix has some lyrics about British affection and base swindlers around that point. "British affection" evidently got changed to "pointless reflection", and the base swindlers got buried.
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 21/06/2014
"Shot" suggests guns, but not necessarily, and in context the phrase "I let the shot go by accident" seems to make a tiny bit more sense if you hear it as a goalkeeper's apology. A gun would "go off by accident", wouldn't it?

So now I'm hearing it as a football reference rather than a shooting reference.
Martin
  • 5. Martin | 22/01/2016
I have to say I don't agree with the goalkeeping idea. A goalkeeper would say "I let the shot in...", and not use the particle by or indeed any other particle.
Martin
  • 6. Martin | 22/01/2016
See here for a bit more evidence that the preposition used is "in" (and note also the absence of the verb "go". I can confirm from personal experience that this is very much the construction used for conceding goals in football.)

http://her.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/6/706.full:

"They thought right, stick me in goal and they’d just keep the opposition away from me. It turned out I was rather good at it, cause of the size of me it wasn’t easy for them to get the ball past me. And we won and that was it, I was like a hero, they thought I was great, it were fun. Cause I was thinkin’ ‘if I let a goal in, I’ll get beat up’, you know, that’s literally what it was like, so I didn’t let a bloody goal in."

Manager Luis Felipe Scolari after his team lost to Barcelona:

"We lost 3-0, but it's not much different to what has happened to other big clubs. At least we didn't let in four like Real Madrid."
bzfgt
  • 7. bzfgt | 12/03/2016
They wouldn't ever say "I let the shot go..."? I take it "by" is a non-issue, because it's part of "by accident."
Martin
  • 8. Martin | 14/03/2016
One problem is that we don't know for sure how much football vocabulary MES knows or care (or cared) to use correctly. He's spoken a lot about the game but this doesn't necessarily imply anything at all.

You could say "I let the shot go by" in an instance where the goalkeeper knew the shot was missing ("by" here would here imply "by the post") the goal and was allowing the ball to go out for a goal-kick.

On possibility might be the idea that "I let the shot go [in]", which would be an admission that you allowed a shot by an opposing player to enter into the net for whatever reason (bribery, blackmail, pissed off with your own team's performance, or whatever).

Could it be that MES meant to say (or couldn't be bothered for whatever reason) to say the italicised word in the following phrase: "I let the shot go off by accident"? This would tie in much more neatly with the gun theories expounded in the notes above.
bzfgt
  • 9. bzfgt | 19/03/2016
But he doesn't say "I let the shot go by," that would make grammatical nonsense of the lyric. He says [I let the shot go]//[by accident]
bzfgt
  • 10. bzfgt | 19/03/2016
Maybe with "off" but he doesn't say it so I don't think it safe to assume...
dannyno
  • 11. dannyno | 08/09/2016
If you google "I let the shot go" (add "football" or "soccer" as additional terms), you will find loads of examples of footballers, if not goalkeepers (might have called that wrong), saying "I let the shot go", meaning they kicked the ball at the net, I guess.

Just some examples, not even going to source them:

“Nobody picked me up right away, so I let the shot go,”

"I closed my eyes when I let the shot go, hoping it would go in,"

"I had a nice angle with my left foot so I let the shot go,"

"I take a deep breath and I let the shot go."

etc

So there are real world examples of usage in football, if not exactly what I suggested. Letting a shot go by accident could therefore refer to a mis-kick.

It could still refer to shooting a gun, but this alternative reading does stand up.
bzfgt
  • 12. bzfgt | 15/10/2016
Oh right, like "I just closed my eyes and let the shot go"...makes sense.
Ian F
  • 13. Ian F (link) | 09/04/2018
I can't help much on a line-by-line reading, but I'm getting a generalised supremacist philosophical vibe off the lyrics. Ayn Rand and/or Nietzsche - "Surmount All Obstacles". Hermann Hesse - the retreat into mysticism. The soccer reference - Camus - the ex-ex-ex Algerian goalkeeper. Plenty of Aryan flavouring - "guilt, blue-eyed" - Nietzsche and the Nazi association; Heinz as a symbolic Aryan, perhaps. Richard und Das Judy. It's a sum of allusions - "life should be full of strangeness" after all.
russell richardson
  • 14. russell richardson | 13/04/2018
Heinz...
I have just started digging into the last fall albums I have under-listened to... such is life... (seriously, I blame compilations) but I think I can 100% clear the question of Heinz up... it refers to the camera assistant of the 1960s TV show 'The Golden Shot' from Granada TV, where contestants gave instructions to a blindfolded crossbow operator who was aiming his Tele-Bow at a taut string holding a treasure chest of golden coins. the idea was to direct Heinz (for it was he) to guide the bolt to cut the string and win the money at the bullseye of a target. Based on a cheesy version of William Tell, the Heinz had a (fake?) Swiss German accent. After not very long, Heinz was replaced by Bernie, and the catch phrase when the operator loaded the crossbow (a real one, mounted on a TV camera) was "Heinz, the Bolt".
That's who's apologising in the song. I think he did that once, and accidentally shot before being told to.
Sounds dull and unlikely, but in fact was pretty participatory and exciting. 60s TV, eh?
Don't take my ailing memory for it, though, I have not bothered to correct its miniscule errors that this article sets right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Shot
dannyno
  • 15. dannyno | 28/04/2018
Here's a 1967 clip from "The Golden Shot", in which you can hear Jackie Rae say "Heinz, the bolt!".

https://youtu.be/M1PYPbw_r6w

Heinz was actually the German show creator, Hannes Schmid.

But it doesn't actually seem to have been Heinz's (or Bernie's) job to fire the crossbow. They just loaded it.

Apparently the role of "Bernie" was played by Alan Bailey, Derek Young, and Johnny Baker :
/tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheGoldenShot

The person whose job in the early rounds of the show was to receive instructions while blindfolded was cameraman Derek Chason.

There's a feature/interview about/with Chason in the magazine 405 Alive, issue 35: https://www.bvws.org.uk/publications/405alive/pdf/405_Alive_35.pdf

Another version here, not entirely sure who's copying who: http://lea.hamradio.si/~s56fpw/dir/pdf/cq-tv184.pdf

Anyway, so comment #14 is mistaken in thinking Heinz would ever have let a shot go.
Martin
  • 16. Martin | 05/06/2020
Who is this Danny referred to in the notes?
bzfgt
  • 17. bzfgt (link) | 21/06/2020
Oh, thanks for pointing it out...it was a few years before I realized "Dannyno" means he does not want to be called "Danny," and there are still some "Dannys" floating around on the site...
For the Record
  • 18. For the Record | 03/02/2021
Another Heinz variety?
Check out this live version here at 16:21
"Heinz is guilty, he said "I left the shotgun there by accident”"
So if the LP line is “I left the shotgun by accident”, which I think it is, then it is probably referencing Joe Meek prodigy Heinz Burt who as wikipedia tells us
"lived briefly in Meek's flat, further disagreements over royalties saw him move out, leaving some possessions behind including a shotgun.[5] It was this shotgun with which Meek killed his landlady and then himself in 1967, and although Heinz was questioned by police, they concluded he had nothing to do with their deaths.[4"
For the Record
  • 19. For the Record | 03/02/2021
The entirety of Smith's vocal on this version sums up the contempt less apparent on the lp; "must you retreat into your idea of mysticism, to locate the base enclave in your sludge brains, you can surmount all obstacles"
For the Record
  • 20. For the Record | 03/02/2021
et fin;
A lot of the LP version is blurry due to the doubled vocal - based on the single track "Rex Sergeant" mix I offer these suggestions;

1:04 His face is full of ex ex ex sex-cruelty
1:32 Must you retreat into mysticism
Or locate the base enclave
2:22 When can we surmount the British affection for the base swindler; “what a lad!”
(replacing Why can't we surmount pointless reflection...)
And the sign off;
Mit das Richard und das Judy
On the complex of your couture cuticles
bzfgt
  • 21. bzfgt (link) | 07/03/2021
Yeah I don't think it's "let the shot go." I'll go with "left the shotgun" for now.
bzfgt
  • 22. bzfgt (link) | 07/03/2021
Got to get my hands on the single vocal version, is that released somewhere?
Martin
  • 23. Martin | 08/03/2021
bzfgt
  • 24. bzfgt (link) | 13/03/2021
Thanks, Martin.

Not convinced by "sex cruelty."

Enclave is usually pronounced "en- clayv" so not convinced by that

Definitely "British affection"
bzfgt
  • 25. bzfgt (link) | 13/03/2021
Not sure about the last line yet

Add a comment