Surrogate Mirage

(1)

[Can you give them lights a rest, a bit of a rest for a bit…we’re sweating too much…haven't done any work yet…hullo Karl]

This regards parting, leaving
Because art of bleeding
Raw pumpings of emotion
Your chummy lifestyle sits on my vein
And not that I bother
Surrogates always give up, persistent cracks
11pm is when those people recede
They get you right round the bend
When you ask what cake and to what end

I saw a surrogate mirror
I saw a surrogate mirage
I saw a surrogate vampire

He’s the sort that smokes 60 cigarettes
And none of them his own
He put his head in the basin
He put his head in the basin
He writes letters to his parents
He writes letters through his parents
Since they talk to him

I saw a surrogate mirror
I saw a surrogate mirage
I saw a surrogate vampire

I was left with this surrogate mirror
And thought “who created this monster?”

Take salt in tears and the sun going down
Wide right across the shore
Reminds me of the cause
Of this mental downpour

I saw a surrogate mirror
I saw a surrogate mirage
I saw a surrogate vampire

Everybody's telling me do this, do that
They're running my life for me
I'm gonna tell 'em my time's up
They’ve just given me my last orders (2)
Last orders, Dan, Daaaan.

They [...] his boots from his grave
And through azure chamomile haze
Finish his meal off Bailey
And nightly through the plains
To [...] his grave
And [...]

I saw a surrogate mirror
I saw a surrogate mirage

And when I saw him on the screen
He did not have a beer can
The audience got a quick rap
He looked sleek like an actors own should
He treats his family good
Knowing that he’s made the top prop
Keeping sleek and bud
For the living psy-cog of his ritual bog

Surrogate mirage

1. Thanks are in order to Stevoid on the Fall online forum for transcribing the lyrics. This is a song the Fall played only once, at Leicester Polytechnic on March 24, 1982. There are in fact many more lyrics in the song than the above, but I can't make them out on the atrocious recording I have.

Considering the length of this song and the amount of lyrics it contains, it is remarkable that the band only played it once.

Martin gives us the following information:

27 October 1981 Bierkeller, Newcastle: The NWRA and Cash and Carry both contain the line “I saw a surrogate mirage”, 6 months before the song was performed.

^

2. This stanza is more or less quoted from the earlier song "Last Orders."

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Surrogate Mirage: Fall Tracks A-Z