Theme From Error-Orrori
Lyrics
The conference is over (2)
Peace is the plan
I wonder how long will it last
When Izzy and Bizzy and Boney began (3)
We wondered how long they would last
Chuff had a cough
And cold in his snout (4)
Letter
Horror Error
Error Horror
Horror Error
Horror Error
Man's prog fanatic (5)
Or as Italians say it:
Error Orror
Error Orror
Please take our three morons
and give us old Prussia
And with ... Shakespeare...
Horror Error
Horror Error
Horror Error
Give them our hybrids
Give us the bird
What they moan on about
The Hippocratic Oath (6)
Give them our sun
And we'll take the Shakespeare (7)
Orror Orror
Notes
1. According to Reformation:
The video (see information above) was shot in Venice and Bambino Tostare, writing in the comments section on the website "The Story of The Fall", says:
First of all, “Mistakes and horrors” or “Errors and horrors”, or vice versa, are commonly found phrases in English and Italian in lots of different contexts. For example, the Croatian fascist leader Ante Pavelić published in 1938 an anti-Bolshevik work entitled “Horrors and Mistakes” , i.e, Errori e orrori in Italian – he was living under house arrest in Sienna at the time. Or there’s the Tennyson line, “Life with its anguish, and horrors, and errors – away with it all!” And lots more.
The Shiftwork and Holidays video has footage of posters saying “Errori – Orrori” in Venice (hence the Nick Roeg “Don’t Look Now” girl in red coat reference). MES could well also have come across the phrase elsewhere, but the image in the Shiftwork and Holidays video, and the posters at the top of this thread, are obviously those associated with Ottavio Spagnuolo’s “Venice is not sinking” campaign.
It seems likely the film footage/posters are the proximate inspiration. If you look closely at the posters in the first image in this thread, the phrase to hold onto is “Venice is not sinking.” And then there is the bottom left poster, with the words “progetto Nicolazzi / Errori-Orrori / idrodinamica dimenticata." Translated, the posters read: “Nicolazzi Project / Errors – Horrors / hydrodynamics forgotten” (or "forgotten hydrodynamics" or some such). This is not an advert for a project to save Venice from the sea – it’s actually a protest against such a project.
Franco Nicolazzi is an Italian politician who served as minister of public works until 1987. His name has been attached for decades to what is otherwise known as the MOSE project, an engineering solution to the problem of the flooding of Venice. The particular plan goes back to 1987, but efforts to “save the city” go back at least to the 1966 flood, and were opposed or critiqued by the “Venice is not sinking” slogan, and by environmentalists and others on various grounds.
One of the opponents for four decades was Ottavio Spagnuolo, who died in 2011, and was regarded by some as a bit eccentric (but that is not our concern). There are images of Spagnuolo giving lectures in public, and of his other poster installations. [See More Information below for a photo of one of the posters]
^
I also like John Cale, I really like the album 'Helen of Troy' , particularly one track on it: 'Sudden Death'.
The conference is over and they're calling out the guard
See note 3 below for more speculation about the "conference."
Dan:
But it could also be referring to the Munich appeasement conference, or to the Potsdam conference.
But of course there's no guarantee that the text is a single narrative. There are likely to be multiple unconnected threads here."
4. Dan: "The verse about Chuff’s cough and cold might possibly be referring to Dickens – there is a character called Mr Chuffey in Martin Chuzzlewit, described as having a 'blue nose' and of whom it is said, 'twenty years ago or so he went and took a fever.' But that feels like a bit of a stretch, and perhaps more interesting is the fact that the word 'chuff' meaning cheeks is derived from the Italian 'ciuffo,' meaning “animal’s snout.'"
^
5. "Man" is fanatical about progress, but human fallibility sabotages or gives the lie to the idea of progress! In fact, fanaticism, which is irrational, contradicts the idea of progress if the latter is associated with rationality or Enlightenment, so being a "prog fanatic" is self-contradictory, and more evidence of humankind's proneness to disaster. Of course, "prog fanatic" also means an aficionado of progressive rock, and I think this pun is intentional...also, note that one of the posters discussed in note 1 (see More Information below for the image) reads "progetto Nicolazzi," or Nicolazzi project." So a Nicolazzi himself, with his public works project that is said to be in error, could be the "prog fanatic." And more broadly, this indicates humanity's propensity to screw things up in the name of progress.
6. Or possibly "hypocritic oath." The Hippocratic Oath enjoins doctors to abstain from doing harm. Nicolazzi and the engineers of progress are like doctors that kill the patient?
7. A trade between England and Italy? Also, there may be a suggestion Shakespeare is something worth preserving from the horrorshow of history and "progress."
Dan: "The references to Shakespeare are puzzling, but he wrote 'The Comedy of Errors,' of course, and also 'The Merchant of Venice.'" Dan does on to suggest that this could be a reference to the BBC's Desert Island DIscs, where guests often choose the complete works of Shakespeare to accompany them in their lonely idyll.
What about playwrights? There seems to be an obvious parallel between the use of repetition in Samuel Beckett’s work and in the music of The Fall.
“It’s funny you should mention that, because we’re playing the Royal Exchange tomorrow and I saw ‘Waiting for Godot’ there. We’re the first rock group to play there. Personally I don’t know how much he had an influence. Do you like Beckett?”
I do, yeah.
“All me mates do. They really love him. I can’t see it myself. Although, I did see a version of it where it was set in the Weimar Republic and it was really good. The big bully boy was a Nazi. I like Shakespeare a lot, though. Macbeth, in particular. I think Shakespeare’s very, very underrated. Henry V. Every American film you can see they’ve just nicked bits from it.”
More Information
Comments (42)
- 1. | 13/07/2014
- 2. | 13/07/2014
http://z1.invisionfree.com/thefall/index.php?showtopic=31406&view=findpost&p=12087618
- 3. | 13/07/2014
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xc30bx_the-fall-shift-work-and-holidays-03_music#rel-page-2
- 4. | 13/07/2014
See the FOF here: http://z1.invisionfree.com/thefall/index.php?showtopic=31406&view=findpost&p=22375763
- 5. | 14/07/2014
- 6. | 22/09/2014
Could have been this one: http://www.royalexchange.co.uk/history/1999/Waiting_for_Godot.htm
- 7. | 22/09/2014
1980: http://www.royalexchange.co.uk/history/1980/WAITING%20FOR%20GODOT..htm
- 8. | 01/02/2016
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr
- 9. | 01/02/2016
- 10. | 06/04/2019
Please take our free morons
And give us old Prussia
- 11. | 06/04/2019
What they moan on about
The hippocratic oath
Give them our sun
And we'll take the Shakespeare
Ever so slightly obsessed with this song
- 12. | 08/06/2019
I also like John Cale, I really like the album 'Helen of Troy' , particularly one track on it: 'Sudden Death'.
I tracked the source down, it's from the German monthly music magazine Sounds (1966-1983). It was originally published under the title Pink Proleten und psychologischer Purpur in issue #149, July 1981.
See my comment #83 in the entry for "New Puritan" here on Annotated Fall for some further info/images re magazine, and my comment #38 on "And This Day" for not entirely convincing suggestion of a lyrical echo.
But here, now I'm much more confident.
The first line of Cale's "Sudden Death" is:
The conference is over and they're calling out the guard
Given MES's stated liking for the song, for him to begin this song with the same words surely cannot be coincidence. Well, it can. But I don't think so!
The conference is over
Peace is the plan
- 13. | 21/06/2019
- 14. | 21/06/2019
- 15. | 21/06/2019
- 16. | 21/06/2019
- 17. | 21/06/2019
"Please take our three morons
and give us old Prussia"
Izzy Bizzy and Boney are the three I'll wot
- 18. | 21/06/2019
- 19. | 21/06/2019
- 20. | 21/06/2019
- 21. | 21/06/2019
- 22. | 21/06/2019
Dan points out that Shakespeare wrote The Comedy of Errors and The Merchant of Venice, either of which may be connected, if obliquely, to the lyrics of this song.
MES on Shakespeare and Beckett:
What about playwrights? There seems to be an obvious parallel between the use of repetition in Samuel Beckett’s work and in the music of The Fall.
“It’s funny you should mention that, because we’re playing the Royal Exchange tomorrow and I saw ‘Waiting for Godot’ there. We’re the first rock group to play there. Personally I don’t know how much he had an influence. Do you like Beckett?”
I do, yeah.
“All me mates do. They really love him. I can’t see it myself. Although, I did see a version of it where it was set in the Weimar Republic and it was really good. The big bully boy was a Nazi. I like Shakespeare a lot, though. Macbeth, in particular. I think Shakespeare’s very, very underrated. Henry V. Every American film you can see they’ve just nicked bits from it.”
Shakespeare, by the way, was an obscure English playwright.
- 23. | 21/06/2019
- 24. | 28/08/2019
- 25. | 07/01/2020
http://thefall.org/gigography/image/errori.jpg
The FOF link in my comment #4 is dead. Here it is again (has full explanation):
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/theme-from-error-orrori-t31406-s6.html
More on Ottavio Spagnuolo: https://web.archive.org/web/20200107081011/http://www.veneziadoc.net/Storia-di-Venezia/Ottavio-Spagnuolo.php
- 26. | 07/01/2020
Can all be read here now: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/theme-from-error-orrori-t31406-s6.html
I posted earlier, but it went into moderation.
- 27. | 07/01/2020
Spagnuolo: https://web.archive.org/web/20200107081011/http://www.veneziadoc.net/Storia-di-Venezia/Ottavio-Spagnuolo.php
- 28. | 07/01/2020
Nicolazzi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Nicolazzi
- 29. | 07/01/2020
- 30. | 07/01/2020
- 31. | 07/01/2020
- 32. | 04/09/2020
Whether or not it is "-cratic" or "-critic", it might also be "Hippo-" rather than "Hypo-".
- 33. | 06/09/2020
- 34. | 06/09/2020
Fuck this was a mess but I got it into shape a little more I think.
- 35. | 06/09/2020
- 36. | 06/09/2020
- 37. | 06/09/2020
- 38. | 06/09/2020
- 39. | 06/09/2020
- 40. | 13/09/2020
This conference.
I think I've previously made a connection to the conference (which was technically a peace conference) that led to the reunification of Germany (which was in the air at the time the song was written, and the first few lines indisputably refer back to the history of the original unification of Germany of course). I think that holds up, at least for parts of the text. Perhaps there's an expression of fear of reunification here.
But it could also be referring to the Munich appeasement conference, or to the Potsdam conference.
But of course there's no guarantee that the text is a single narrative. There are likely to be multiple unconnected threads here.
- 41. | 20/09/2020
- 42. | 20/09/2020
You ask: "But who are Izzy, Bizzy and Boney?"
That's actually easy.
Boney is a common nickname for Napoleon Bonaparte III.
In which case "Bizzy" would be Otto von Bismarck.
And "Izzy" would then be Queen Isabella II of Spain.
The Franco-Prussian war, of course, had its origins in a Bismarck-manufactured crisis over the succession to the Spanish throne.