Totally Wired

Lyrics

(1)

I'm totally wired
Totally wired (totally wired)
I'm totally wired (can't you see?) 
Totally wired

Can't you see?
A butterfly stomach round ground (2)
I drank a jar of coffee, and then I took some of these (3)

And I'm totally wired
Totally wired (totally wired)
I'm totally wired (can't you see?)
Totally wired

Life leaves you surprised.
Slaps you in the eyes.
If I was a communist, a rich man would bail me (4)
The opposite applies.
The morning light.
Another fresh fight.
Another row, right, right, right, right.

 

And I'm totally wired
Just totally wired (totally wired) (5)
I'm totally biased
Totally wired
You don't have to be weird to be wired

You don't have to be an American brand
You don't have to be strange to be strange
You don't have to be weird to be weird (6)

 

But I'm totally wired totally wired (totally wired)
I'm totally wired (can't you see?) 
Totally wired

My heart and I agree
My heart and I agree (7)
I'm irate, peeved, irate, peeved,
Irate, bad state
Bad state.

I'm totally wired totally wired (totally wired)
I'm totally wired (can't you see?) 
Totally wired

 

And I'm always worried
And I'm always worried
And I'm always worried
And I'm always worried (8)

Notes

1. This is a pretty straightforward song by Fall standards, and may be the only time Mark E. Smith has expressed chagrin at a song not becoming a hit (from Reformation):

MES in an interview with Adrian Deevoy in International Musician and Recording World (May 1983): "I know Totally Wired was a good song. I wrote the drum beat and the chorus and they were very accessible and very catchy. I knew it was commercial and it should have been number one but it wasn't so what can you do? I'm not going to degrade myself and do smoother and smoother Totally Wireds which is what people are doing, man, and don't tell me that's not true." 

On the other hand, it is very bass-heavy by pop standards. 

Dan submits:

In 2018, for Marc Riley's BBC 6 Music show, Peter Hook and The Light covered this song as a tribute to MES.

When the performance was reposted to the "Mark E Smith & The Fall: It's Not Repetition, It's Discipline" Facebook page on 24 January 2020, Julia Adamson replied with this:

MES told

Julia AdamsonMES told me this was his least favourite Fall song, he hated singing it.

^

2. Dan reminds us that "ground round" is a kind of ground beef. The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" refers to a case of nerves.

^

3. "These" apparently refers to some kind of speed.

^

4. Jon in the comments suggests that this may refer to Friedrich Engels' financial support of Karl Marx. Engels ran his father's factory in Manchester, and thus the demise of the bourgeoisie was plotted with the help of surplus value milked from the proletariat...now I'm going to find an animal rights demo so I can accuse everyone of wearing leather shoes.

In any case, Dan has found something that seems like a more direct source for this puzzling line:

Frederick Vanderbilt Field was an American millionaire [Vanderbilt!] and left wing civil rights activist who was trustee and secretary of the Civil Rights Congress bail fund.
 


Field refused to reveal who had put up bond for eight Communist Party officials, who had jumped bail and disappeared after being convicted by the Truman administration Department of Justice for violations of the Smith Act. Convicted of contempt of court since he would not provide the names of any of his Communist friends, Field served two months of a 90-day sentence in federal prison at Ashland, Kentucky, in 1951.

^

5. One popular account of why Roger Daltrey stuttered on "My Generation" is that he was trying to sound like a speedfreak, although this may not be true. In any case, since this is a song about speed with a stuttering vocal, and since that story, whether true or not, is a very well-known one, MES's stutter is either an intentional allusion or a notable coincidence.  

^

6. A Part of America, Therein:

You don't have to be weird to be wired
?You don't have to be a died hair punk funk shit-hot fucked up tick-tock pad
?You don't have to be strange to be strangled
?When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

This last line (which strikes me as a bit corny by Fall standards) is a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, a writer for whom MES has expressed appreciation, and who is the subject of "Midnight in Aspen."

Dan provides the details:

For the sake of completeness, it comes from "Fear and Loathing at the Superbowl" (Rolling Stone #155, 28 Feb 1974, reprinted in The Great Shark Hunt (originally Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time), first published in 1979.



In context: 
 


When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Who said that?

I suspect it was somebody from the Columbia Journalism Review, but I have no proof ... and it makes no difference anyway.
 

"You don't have to be weird to be wired" is a variant of the lyric above, a quote of Captain Beefheart, who, in a 1973 interview, gives a pretty good account of the "New Puritan" ethic (capitalization as in original):

"i write a hundred and fifty pages a day. today i only did thirty." "how do you do all that and work?", i ask. "wórk?", he says flinching, "it's all play.... some people think it's a terrible thing being a human being," he says ... "but you don't have to be weird to be weird."
 

Link

According to The Jukebox Rebel, "Beefheart's 1973 interview phrase 'you don't have to be weird to be weird' was used as the caption in press adverts for his Unconditionally Guaranteed LP in 1974, aside the image of the Captain clutching two fistfuls of dollars. The chances seem high that MES would have picked up on this via the Melody Maker or such like."

I have no idea what a "tick-tock pad" (or tic-tock pad?) might be. Dan points out that there is a character in there is a character in L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz books named Tik Tok. He also mentions that this reminds him of an electronic drum pad, which is worth considering. A reader suggests it may be a time sheet used at a place of employment.

^

7. This line may be a quote from Ornette Coleman's "All My Life" (1975, composed by Coleman and sung by Asha Puthli), which is sung to the same melody in the original song. However, the latter in turn quotes "Stella by Starlight," a jazz song by Victor Young for which Ned Washington wrote lyrics in 1946, which include the lines "My heart and I agree/She's everything on this earth to me."

^

8. The concern here with drug-induced or drug-enhanced stress and fear is reminiscent of "Frightened," from Live at the WItch Trials.

^

Comments (50)

John
  • 1. John | 02/08/2013
"bale" makes no sense. "Bail" does, as in bail out of prison. Why would a rich man bail a Communist out prison? Now that would be a surprise.

This is another fave lyric track. All these ways of pronouncing the letters in "wired": wired, weird, worried, and of course biased in the electrical sense.
bzfgt
  • 2. bzfgt | 02/08/2013
Yeah, "bale" does make no sense. I'll revisit this soon.
Pessoa
  • 3. Pessoa | 31/01/2014
The " My heart and I agree" line sounds copied from the song 'All My Life' on Ornette Coleman's album 'Science Fiction' (1971). Even the melody seems the same.
Jon
  • 4. Jon | 05/02/2014
Hi,

I always thought "bail" could be a reference to Engels financing Marx?

MES to Shane MacGowan:

" Engels – he was a factory owner in Manchester exploiting 13 year-old girls. Learn your history, pal, learn your history"

Excellent resource btw, Cheers.
bzfgt
  • 5. bzfgt | 12/02/2014
I changed it to "fail" at some point because it sounds more like it sometimes, maybe makes sense, and whatever. But I should probably at least have a "bail" note or change it back and do the reverse, since I've heard covers with "bail" in the lyrics and everyone has it that way. With all the live versions of this one I should be able to figure it out...

Pessoa: what are the lyrics to "All My Life?" Is it the same exact line? I should listen to it on youtube and stop being lazy.
bzfgt
  • 6. bzfgt | 12/02/2014
Oh, yeah--got it! Great catch.
bzfgt
  • 7. bzfgt | 12/02/2014
I seem to hear "bail" now so I'm rejoining the mainstream. If I'm wrong everyone else is too, whereas changing it to "fail" seems an unjustified intervention on the conventional wisdom if it's indistinct. So I'll get a little Engels in there, Jon.
dannyno
  • 8. dannyno | 14/03/2014
Ornette Coleman.

MES was a fan of Ornette Coleman, see this 1983 interview: http://www.visi.com/fall/gigography/image/83apr_trulyneedy.pdf

"
TN: You seem to have, sort of, by the departure of the keyboard player, backed into a phenomenon that's happening in American jazz drumming. I don't know if you are familiar with harmelodic music, that certain musicians around Ornette Coleman, particularly a drummer named Ronald Shannon Jackson is doing. Do you ever listen to that sort of music?

MS: It's funny, because, yeah. I like that. I like Ornette Coleman. That's about it really. I'm not a great jazz fan. It's funny, because the drummer definitely don't listen to jazz. It's just that I rather like the drum part. With people like Ornette Coleman, they just used to do it. I mean, I have to tell my drummers what to do. But I'm not thinking at all. "This is going to sound like Ornette Coleman". I'm just trying to find a beat that goes with the song....<snip>"
israel
  • 9. israel | 15/06/2014
After around 10 successive listens to that line, I'm absolutely sure that it's "fail".

Fight the mainstream. Hold your ground.
bzfgt
  • 10. bzfgt | 15/06/2014
Crap, Israel. I'll pull out a couple of live versions and see what happens there...maybe something clearer.
bzfgt
  • 11. bzfgt | 15/06/2014
Fuck, Live to Air in Melbourne sounds like a definite 'f', and A Part of America sounds distinctly like a 'b.' Anyone else want to go digging around these? I swear those both sound clear to me, in opposite directions.
dannyno
  • 12. dannyno | 15/07/2014
I've only ever heard "fail".

I can't hear the butterfly stomach line properly, it sounds like "ground grounds" to me at the moment.

"I drank a jar of coffee, and I took some of these" should be "and then I took some of these", followed by "And I'm totally wired".

And it's "If I was a communist", not "were a communist".

And at least on the single version, I can't hear any stuttered "J": "J-j-just totally wired". Nope.
rob
  • 13. rob | 31/12/2014
I always heard it as 'tick tock parrot' not 'pad' which makes sense to me

great website
duncan
  • 14. duncan | 17/08/2016
I was kicking around the site, looking at stuff, & trying to remember which fall song had this lyric in it.... eventually resorted to google.... absolutely convinced I'd heard MES utter this at some point, but no.... it's etched into the run-out of the 7" I have of TW.
but it does sound like a classic MESism, does it not?

"the only reason you know this is that it was well documented"

bzfgt
  • 15. bzfgt | 25/08/2016
Perfect.
The Jukebox Rebel
  • 16. The Jukebox Rebel (link) | 14/10/2016
Beefheart's 1973 interview phrase "you don't have to be weird to be weird" was used as the caption in press adverts for his "Unconditionally Guaranteed" LP in 1974, aside the image of the Captain clutching two fistfuls of dollars. The chances seem high that MES would have picked up on this via the Melody Maker or such like.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=Bz0pAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT258&dq=you+dont+have+to+be+weird+to+be+weird+Captain+Beefheart&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjG_viZjNvPAhXpDMAKHc5OCLkQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=you%20dont%20have%20to%20be%20weird%20to%20be%20weird%20Captain%20Beefheart&f=false
bzfgt
  • 17. bzfgt | 15/10/2016
Thanks, TJR. I can't believe my original note called the variant a "near-quote" while forgetting that the line I was annotating was an exact quote! So it's good you called my attention to that shoddy note.
dannyno
  • 18. dannyno | 15/10/2016
"You don't have to be strange to be strange".

Compare, NME 25 February 1978, p31. Interview with Split Enz by Monty Smith.

Tim Finn is quoted:


"... compared to a lot of things I guess we do play it strange. You don't have to play that strange to be strange in rock 'n' roll. Most people still play it pretty basic.
dannyno
  • 19. dannyno | 17/10/2016
Here's part of an advert than ran in the NME of 13 April 1974:

Image

The line possibly originally comes from an interview with Captain Beefheart in ZigZag, 1973:
http://www.freewebs.com/teejo/argue/farout.html
dannyno
  • 20. dannyno | 17/10/2016
Oops.Try again.

Here's part of an advert than ran in the NME of 13 April 1974:

Image

The line possibly originally comes from an interview with Captain Beefheart in ZigZag, 1973:
http://www.freewebs.com/teejo/argue/farout.html
dannyno
  • 21. dannyno | 22/10/2016
"Tik tok" is a character from the Wizard of Oz books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tik-Tok_(Oz).

I was looking because in my head I thought a "tik tok pad" was some kind of electronic drum machine, that maybe you tap on with your fingers or something. But I can't find any actual evidence that such a thing exists with that name outside my head.
dannyno
  • 22. dannyno | 22/02/2017
"If I was a communist, a rich man would bail me"

Here's something: Frederick Vanderbilt Field was an American millionaire [Vanderbilt!] and left wing civil rights activist who was trustee and secretary of the Civil Rights Congress bail fund.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Vanderbilt_Field


Field refused to reveal who had put up bond for eight Communist Party officials, who had jumped bail and disappeared after being convicted by the Truman administration Department of Justice for violations of the Smith Act. Convicted of contempt of court since he would not provide the names of any of his Communist friends, Field served two months of a 90-day sentence in federal prison at Ashland, Kentucky, in 1951.
dannyno
  • 23. dannyno | 22/02/2017
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"

This is seldom properly sourced to the work of Hunter S. Thompson. So for the sake of completeness, it comes from "Fear and Loathing at the Superbowl" (Rolling Stone #155, 28 Feb 1974, reprinted in The Great Shark Hunt (originally Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time), first published in 1979.

http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/features/fear-and-loathing-at-the-super-bowl-19740228

In context:


When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Who said that?

I suspect it was somebody from the Columbia Journalism Review, but I have no proof ... and it makes no difference anyway.
bzfgt
  • 24. bzfgt | 25/02/2017
Dan, that is fantastic!! That line has always bugged the shit out of me since it seems so senseless. I think I even tried to convince myself for a while that it is "fail me," even though that makes up for its greater coherence with its total lameness. This is a sterling discovery!
dannyno
  • 25. dannyno | 25/02/2017
Comment #14:

"The only reason you know this is that it was well documented" is a line from Putta Block, of course.
Dr X O'Skeleton
  • 26. Dr X O'Skeleton | 02/11/2017
The tick tock line I always heard as "Tick Tock Pan" - as in "I laughed at the Great God Pan" - the punk musician as oversexed deity, doing a sort of clockwork dance (tick tock), being received opinion's idea of the weird at the time.
bzfgt
  • 27. bzfgt (link) | 11/11/2017
On A Part of America, Therein he really enuncuates the 'd' in "pad," in the stereotypical MES way--
"pad-duh!"
dannyno
  • 28. dannyno | 18/11/2017
"A butterfly stomach round ground"

"Ground round" is a particular cut of meat, for example beef from near the rump. Maybe that helps us look at the line anew...?
dannyno
  • 29. dannyno | 18/11/2017
Nah, probably just refers to a churning, fluttering tummy.
bzfgt
  • 30. bzfgt (link) | 02/12/2017
Well I always thought of ground round so not new for me, but it should be noted.
Tony
  • 31. Tony | 14/02/2018
Hunter S Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.


Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
dannyno
  • 32. dannyno | 17/02/2018
Comment #31, Tony:

Information already in note 6.
Mike E. Smith
  • 33. Mike E. Smith | 30/01/2019
PAD - sounds to me like a typical Northern English ad hoc insult, along the lines of pillock, pill, etc. etc. Although I did see a reference to PAD as "Posh and Dirty" - a rich woman slumming it....

All I know is that if someone in Manchester calls you any sort of common noun, its an insult.
bzfgt
  • 34. bzfgt (link) | 16/03/2019
Ha!

Yeah, the problem with an ad hoc insult is it's ad hoc...i.e., there's no evidence of it having been ever used. Do people just improvise random noun-insults?
bzfgt
  • 35. bzfgt (link) | 16/03/2019
I'd like to find some kind of evidence of the first recorded use(s) of P.osh A.nd D.irty...closest thing we have to an insult yet...

The search /"posh and dirty" pad origin -drip/ yields one result--this page. "-drip" I had to include because otherwise a 2013 song by "Drip Dry Man & The Beat Revolver" called "Posh and Dirty" accounts for at least the first page of results.

Note this is evidence that "Posh and Dirty" is a thing, but I can't find 1. it in PAD form, or 2. anything older than 6 years on it.

To compensate, for your delectation, I will now reproduce the most amusing near-miss from Urban Dictionary:

Urban DIctionaryPad hunter
One who seeks out Maxi Pads in trash cans used by women you are highly attracted to. This is followed by masturbation using the maxi pad.
going on a pad hunter mission: Visiting a friend you are attracted to and seeking out her used maxi pads in her bathroom waste basket.
bzfgt
  • 36. bzfgt (link) | 14/09/2019
Shouldn't it be "tic-tock pad"? Or is either one correct?
dannyno
  • 37. dannyno | 31/01/2020
In 2018, for Marc Riley's BBC 6 Music show, Peter Hook and The Light covered this song as a tribute to MES.

When the performance was reposted to the "Mark E Smith & The Fall: It's Not Repetition, It's Discipline" Facebook page on 24 January 2020, Julia Adamson replied with this:

MES told
Julia AdamsonMES told me this was his least favourite Fall song, he hated singing it.
dannyno
  • 38. dannyno | 31/01/2020
Which of course seems contradict what he says as recorded in note 1
dannyno
  • 39. dannyno | 31/01/2020
Note 6 includes reference to Beefheart album adverts using the "don't have to be weird" quote.

See my comment #20 for a sourced example.
bzfgt
  • 40. bzfgt (link) | 01/02/2020
Doesn't seem to contradict it at all, he doesn't say anything in note one about liking to sing it. Even if he did, he could have liked doing it then got sick of it.
bzfgt
  • 41. bzfgt (link) | 01/02/2020
OK I see I read it too fast, least fave tout court, sorry. Yes, it does I guess but doesn't seem that odd, not that you said it was.
Hexen Blumenthal
  • 42. Hexen Blumenthal | 11/03/2021
An episode of 80s US sitcom Square Pegs features a parody new wave band Open 24 Hours singing Totally Tired, it's pretty B52s apart from the lyric which is a spoof of Totally Wired. Weirdly, John Densmore out of The Doors is on drums.
dannyno
  • 43. dannyno | 03/07/2021
Comment #42:

The episode can be viewed here:



I can buy the lyric (well, the chorus really) as partly being based on Totally Wired, though the music and other lyrics seem to borrow liberally from other sources. You wouldn't say it was a spoof of TW as a whole. Wonder who wrote it?
dannyno
  • 44. dannyno | 03/07/2021
For anyone looking, the relevant song starts c21:31
dannyno
  • 45. dannyno | 03/07/2021
Some Stranglers in there, no?
Tony G
  • 46. Tony G | 13/09/2021
My Heart and I agree...

I just took this as
Well, I feel wired

(feels heart beating a mile a minute)

My heart knows too!
Enno de Witt
  • 47. Enno de Witt | 04/03/2022
you don't have to stink
to be a punk
november 1980, blue note club, derby
Mark Oliver
  • 48. Mark Oliver | 27/08/2023
I always heard the line as 'A butterfly stomach grounds grounds', which I vaguely interpreted as referring to coffee filtered through a metal mesh- some of the finer grounds slip through and are ingested with the drink. 'Grounds' #1 is the past tense of 'grinds', so there's the sense of churning them in the stomach.
Mark Oliver
  • 49. Mark Oliver | 27/08/2023
OK, more accurately, 'Ground' is the past tense of 'Grind' (no 's')..maybe the fact that I got a metal-filtered coffee machine at around the time the single came out, and experienced this coffee sludge phenomenon first-hand, influenced me in this thinking.
Sneedy
  • 50. Sneedy | 01/12/2023
Has anyone worked out what's being sung/spoken over the line 'You don't have to be an American brand'? It sounds like two different voices, but primarily I hear someone who seems to be doing a Brian Eno impression.

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