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The Annotated Lyrics
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- Home /
- The Annotated Lyrics /
- Taking Off
Taking Off
Lyrics
Take off!
6pm, Bonjela complexion (2)
Take it off!
Stress at four is for bed
Silence 6pm
Bonjela completion
True servant
True servant to stress
Take it off!
Too stressed
To Soon on,
To chef
Ersatz! Ersatz!
Invest, G.B.!
8 PM, tidy Italian!
Echoed cameras
By skips
Take off
Grating three-fold
Within a thorough
Lack of paper
Take off
You never told me, Simon (3)
About the forty carat scum
At Newquay train station (4)
Take off at weekends!
Digest, ingest
Taking, success
Sauce, to chef
Digress, ingest
Take off! (5)
In success, respect
Digress, before
Eon, take off
Stop, take off!
SaveSave
Notes
1. The lyrics to this song really seem to be about the sound of the words as much as anything else, which is, I think, rare in a Fall song; not all the songs make a lot of sense, of course, but they seem to be more often composed of semantic units, and the effect of a Fall lyric is usually achieved by the juxtaposition of meanings more so than of sounds alone. Musically, this one slides in smoothly and gains in intensity as it goes. The Story of the Fall speculates that this could be about "taking off layers/masks etc." "Taking off" is a generic enough phrase, but the lyrics are, as usual, anything but.
2. Bonjela is a medication for treating discomfort from oral ulcers and denture sores (so MES, who has false teeth, may well be a consumer of Bonjela). As far as I can tell, there is nothing about Bonjela that would help us understand what a Bonjela "complexion" would look like.
3. Possibly Simon Archer, the former Fall bass player who co-produced Ersatz GB with Mark E. Smith.
4. Newquay station is the end of the Atlantic line; Newquay is a seaside town in Cornwall, in southern England. "Simon" is thought to be Simon Taylor, whom Hanley Played a Fender P on the Fall online forum describes as MES's "one man road crew and personal security"; more than that I do not know about the man.
According to Dan there is an annual scooter rally in Newquay called "run from the scum."
5. Brendan serves up some hot noteworthiness:
In the song "Neon Meate Dream Of A Octafish" from Captain Beefheart's album Trout Mask Replica, I noticed some similar sounding lyrics to the above:
"Injest, incest
Injest, injust
In feast, incest
In specks, in speckled,
Speck-led, speculation"
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More Information
Shameless Wanker has transcribed the studio outtake:
Take it off
Stress is for the bed
It's Simon 6PM
Bonjela Completion
Stress for the devil
The demon chef
Clambouring shamefully Pathe Taylor?
Ersatz GB
GB
Emptying, tidying, echo chambers
Waiting through food within a thorough
THOROUGH!
Lack of paper, lack of reprisals
Take off
Take it off
You never told me Simon at the New Quay train station about the forty character scum at weekends
This is a nice face - Take it off
Take it off
Success, too cheap in the UK,
Injest, reflect defeat and digest
In chef
At respect deafeat in crap and digest
The third ear of take off
The third ear of take it off
Stress is for the bed
Bonjela complex
Bonjela completion
Comments (33)
"According to Dan there is an annual scooter rally in Newquay called "run for the scum." "
Run FROM the scum, my friend...
Dan
By the way, do you hate the way the site looks now? I do.
Taking, success
Sauce, to chef
Digress, ingest"
In the song "Neon Meate Dream Of A Octafish" from Captain Beefheart's album Trout Mask Replica, I noticed some similar sounding lyrics to the above:
"Injest, incest
Injest, injust
In feast, incest
In specks, in speckled,
Speck-led, speculation"
What we need of course is an Annotated addendum, with cover version lyrical variations.
It could well be the ipod being spewed out, though I have no idea what that might mean, either!
I have always also thought Strangetown was "pink ipod."
Also "stress at 4 is for bed" ? Stressed and in bed at 4pm. Could be 4am too.
1:37 "too soon on" not "to Simon"
1:46 "invest GB", not toupee, please not that....
Enter, tidying, tied in! I hear as "8pm, tired, Italian" the latter presumably a restaurant, continuing time/food theme
and then "Ego [pronounced eggo] climbers"?
I saw someone on the FOF say the tinkly end bit is Dead Can Dance c1990 - I know their stuff pretty well but I can't place it, although their album that year was "Aion" and in Taking Off we get "before Eon" just before the end- can't see our man relaxing to a bit of DCD but who knows, perhaps he yelled "take it off" to someone who was... gaaaah, who knows.
-
Any way I'm gonna do like the man says and take-off! Thanks for all the amusement/therapy/consternation this site has provided, keep it up and stay sane!
Someone needs to identify that bit if it's a sample/quote or whatever. Fuck. I can see him using it even if he wasn't a fan, or maybe Eleni is or something...
Take it off
Stress is for the bed
It's Simon 6PM
Bonjela Completion
Stress for the devil
The demon chef
Clambouring shamefully Pathe Taylor?
Ersatz GB
GB
Emptying, tidying, echo chambers
Waiting through food within a thorough
THOROUGH!
Lack of paper, lack of reprisals
Take off
Take it off
You never told me Simon at the New Quay train station about the forty character scum at weekends
This is a nice face - Take it off
Take it off
Success, too cheap in the UK,
Injest, reflect defeat and digest
In chef
At respect deafeat in crap and digest
The third ear of take off
The third ear of take it off
Stress is for the bed
Bonjela complex
Bonjela completion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6a14jNK_T8
27 Thanks, Martin.
29 yes I believe so
Some of the lines sound like the sorts of things MES might have noted down if he ever watched the show.
"Lack of paper, lack of reprisals"
"Injest, reflect defeat and digest"
I note that a 'Simone' (pronounced 'seem on' by GR?) was a HK competitor: https://hellskitchen.fandom.com/wiki/Simone_Hammond
There was a 1971 film called taking off.