The Quartet of Doc Shanley
Lyrics
(Julia): I'm fed up with this world
Pentangle nine
Iadomine penternine (2)
(MES): Question eight Dentist November
(Julia): Question, you need
(MES): The guardian [garbled]
(Julia): If you're like me you're a complete and utter pranny
You'll know what I mean when I say recipe (3)
(MES): Pseudo Hark
(Julia): If you're like me you're a complete and utter pranny
You'll know what I mean when I say recipe
(MES): B.C. Rich Bich guitar (4)
When I was...
(Julia): Question, you need someone to stay with you all the time... You only come round for... I'm fed up with this world... Pentangle nine... (5)
Iadomine penternine
(Julia): If you're like me you're a complete and utter pranny you'll know what I mean when I say recipe
Recipe
(MES): Electronic simulations... Anyone who has recent..
(Julia): Iadomine penternine
(MES): That's a rich...
(Julia): If you're like me you're a complete and utter pranny you'll know what I mean when I say recipe
(MES): ...astute question
(Unidentified Male): If you're like me you're a complete and utter pranny you'll know what I mean when I say recipe (5)
(MES): Wired for the weird (6)
Little wonder
Danny Saber of course
Chris Carter has recently...
...another series Millennium (7)
(Julia): Iadomine penternine
(MES): I must feel like starting on page one-hundred and fifty-four
Notes
1. This song has lyrics, but really what it is about is the bass line played by ("Doc") S. Hanley. Although nobody knew this at the time, this was to be his final album with the band, and a worthy end to a spectacular career with the Fall. And the bass line has one of the oddest sources for a Fall song on record--as Hanley has recently confirmed, and as will be evident to a careful listener, the source is the psychedlic, unhinged, and gloriously ridiculous "Crazy Horses" by the Osmonds...
Mountainoaf points out that there are several layered bass lines which occasionally get out of sync.
Apparently there was an obscure (5 career games in the bigs) shortstop with the St. Louis Browns in 1912 named Harry Root "Doc" Shanley (thanks to Dan). It seems very unlikely that MES knew of him, but it is possible he came across the name and thought of Hanley.
2. According to Julia (Nagle) Adamson, "iadomine penternine" names "ingredients from sudafed or benylin packaging" although I haven't couldn't find anything with that name. Bob J cracks the case: "Iodamine Penternine doesn't exist. After a bit of googling I found Ionamin (Phentermine) which is a stimulant similar to amphetamines."
3. Initially I assumed "pranny" meant something like "foodie," deriving from "prandial" or something, what with the word "recipe" appearing in the next line and all. However, "pranny" is UK slang. Gaz comments that it is short for "prannock" meaning an idiot. However, according to Dan "pranny," an epithet the most literal meaning of which seems to be the female genitals but which, like many such epithets, more generally can be used to mean idiot or to be insulting without taking a precise meaning, probably pre-dates "prannock," which on the available evidence seems to be of recent origin, and may actually be sort of backwardsly-derived from "pranny."
"Recipe" may be reference to the short spoken-word track "Recipe for Facism," which, according to one report, was originally slated to be the title track of the album we now know as Levitate but was ultimately dropped from the album.
4. BC Rich guitars, named for their designer, luthier Bernardo Chavez Rico, are said to be based on the shape of a toilet seat, although this is not entirely evident...the usual BC Rich features humbuckers, do not produce a sound generally associated with Fall guitarists...the "Bich" is in fact a model of BC Rich guitar.
5. An interesting suggestion from antisyzygy:
"I think it's quite likely 'pentangle nine' refers to the nine of pentacles in tarot. Pentacles generally refer to 'dark' people, whether of hair, eyes or skin so Julia would fit that nicely. When reversed the card means lack of stability, financial hardship, etc. Hence 'I'm fed up of this world.'"
Also note the British folk-rock band Pentangle, although there's not much reason to suspect a connection, and there were never nine of them, at least at the same time. "Pentangle" is another word for "pentagram," i.e. a five-pointed star; "pentacle" generally refers to an object, such as a talisman, inscribed with such a star, and is one of the suits in a tarot deck.
6. I'm unsure about this one. According to Martin, Tommy Crooks (who had the original attribution from the Lyrics Parade) denies contributing the vocal here (see comments below). But this repetition sounds like a male voice, and not Julia. It does not sound like the same voice as the narrator of "Hurricane Edward" (i.e. Crooks), however.
7. Note the allusion to "Totally Wired, " which plays on these words, for instance "You don't have to be weird to be wired." Also, according to Dan "'Wired for weird' was the title of a section on the Fortean Times website in the mid-late 1990s. I don't know whether this is significant." Oh, it is, it is...(cue ominosity of all kinds)...nah, probably not, but you never know. (I don't know that "ominosity" is actually a word but "cue ominous music" seems like a cliche so I kind of swerved there)
8. Danny Saber is an American musician and record producer who was for a time a member of Black Grape, which included former members of the Manchester band Happy Mondays. He produced a "Dance Mix" of Bowie's 1997 song "Little Wonder," hence "Little Wonder/Danny Saber of course..." (thanks to the27points for pointing this out!).
Chris Carter was a founding member of Throbbing Gristle, a band that pioneered Industrial music. MES said that 4 1/2 Inch from the same album is so named beacuse it sounds halfway like Nine Inch Nails, a later Industrial band. At the same time, however, another Chris Carter created the television program Millennium, which seems to be the more immediate reference here, so perhaps the Industrial theme is a dead end in this case, but it is possible that MES meant both references to be at work in this line.
Chris Carter is best known for creating The X-Files. According to MES,
"A couple of years ago I got this commission to write six episodes of what was going to be like an X-Files thing. I said I'll do six 25 minute stories. So I spent all this time doing it, and the music, and got all these people to help me with the scripts, got them all ready, went to the TV station, and they said, 'Oh we've changed our minds,' the new directors. It was like four or five months hard work up the spout. Then the last thing I heard was The X-Files had been in contact with the TV station and they said to me could we have a look at your scripts again because we can't find the ones you submitted. I said, 'No fucking way. You'll send them to The X-Files, rip all my ideas off, and then send them back and say you're not interested'. So I burned half of them," he says, laughing, "and I used the ones that were left for bits of [solo album The Post] Nearly Man."
It's not clear what series MES is talking about, or if it was ever aired. The implication seems to be that he was commissioned to write scripts for an X-Files knock-off.
Comments (39)
http://thefall.org/news/990526.html#wire
Millennium - after all these years I still don't hear 'Millennium'. I hear 'Palladium', as if MES is deliberately getting the name of the TV show wrong.
Danny Saber
Bowie's Little Wonder single from early '97 included a Danny Saber remix
Sometimes things that aren't obvious to everyone get by me if they're obvious to me, and this was one such.
"Wired for weird" was the title of a section on the Fortean Times website in the mid-late 1990s. I don't know whether this is significant.
I interviewed Tommy Crooks via email for The Pseud Mag. There was a follow-up question which I asked him that to my memory never made it into publication. The question was:
"By the way, re your answer on the tracks you play on Levitate, you also feature on vocals (at least) on 'The Quartet Of Doc Shanley', singing these lines: "If you're like me you're a complete and utter pranny you'll know what I
mean when I say recipe"...dunno what's it like to have to sing stuff
like that!"
His reply:
"That was that Julia Nagle that sang that.I sang and played on Hurricane Edward."
It's claimed above that MES had been asked to contribute some material to the X-Files series. A link is given. This is the relevant extract:
"A couple of years ago I got this commission to write six episodes of what was going to be like an X-Files thing. I said I'll do six 25 minute stories. So I spent all this time doing it, and the music, and got all these people to help me with the scripts, got them all ready, went to the TV station, and they said, 'Oh we've changed our minds' the new directors. It was like four or five months hard work up the spout. Then the last thing I heard was The X-Files had been in contact with the TV station and they said to me could we have a look at your scripts again because we can't find the ones you submitted. I said, 'No fucking way. You'll send them to The X-Files, rip all my ideas off, and then send them back and say you're not interested'. So I burned half of them," he says, laughing, "and I used the ones that were left for bits of Nearly Man."
It's unclear - to me at least - from this quote whether MES's scripts for meant for a new show unrelated to the X-Files series, or how the X-Files people got hold of the scripts if the first part of the sentence is true. Also, MES talks about 6 25-minute episodes when the average length of an X-Files episode (commercials not included) were 45 minutes.
In any case, MES was evidently watching more than his share of The X-Files back in 1997, as can be seen from these ad-libbed lyrics during a different song:
7 December 1997: Junction, Cambridge:
- "Agent Mulder. Raspberries in tins and strawberries." (amended lyrics to "Spencer Must Die")
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/quartet-of-doc-shanley-t4461-s35.html
Great site etc.
OK I see I have that whole line in there already, just not the first time she says "You need someone..." so now I have to listen to it and see if I missed the line, or if it is just where it is and not where it isn't...
There may be regionalisms here, so you can have your caveats, but I don't think there's much evidence that "pranny" derives from "prannock".
Firstly, the earliest use of "prannock" I can find in Google books is from Punch in 1987. Which isn't evidence it wasn't used before then, but is evidence it wasn't widely used before then.
"Pranny" is better attested before that date, and is usually said to be slang for "female genitals" (coming to mean "idiot" later). That, for example, is what the Oxford Dictionary of English says (while it admits "origin uncertain").
The OED does not have "prannock" at all.
A Dictionary of Historical Slang, edited by Eric Partridge , abridged by Jacqueline Simpson (Penguin 1972), has "prannie"/"pranny" ("Female pudend: low: late C.19-20. A term of contempt among men"). It doesn't have "prannock".
I cautiously suggest "prannock" is actually derived from "pranny", rather than the other way around.
But perhaps a look at some regional dictionaries would be useful.