U.S. 80s-90s

Had a run-in with Boston Immigration
And to my name had an aversion
Nervous droplets
Due to sleeping tablets (1)

No beer
No cigarettes
Slam, spikes, gin, cigarettes (2)
Beer in van

The cops are tops  (3)

Welcome to the 80s 90s
Welcome to US 80s 90s

I'm the big-shot original rapper   (4)
But it's time for me to get off this crapper

Welcome to the US 80s 90s

No beer
No cigarettes
Spikes, gin, cigarettes
Whisky

Like cones of silence (5)

Welcome to the US 80s and 90s
Welcome to the US 80s/90s
Welcome to the 1890s

Kentucky dead keep pouring down
Kentucky dead keep pouring down
By death stadium  (6)
Monroe used dressing room
My ambition, but one chance in three million Jack
Like cones of silence

Cast aside over-inflation theory of the panicists
Welcome to the US 80s 90s
Look at page 19, small column, lower right-hand side
Welcome to the 1980s  

(7)

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1. Max points out the obvious, which obviously should have been in my notes. Why deny the obvious child?

Actually, I didn't know about this, although, like you, I must have read about it in one of the books and forgotten it:

"This probably seems totally obvious to everyone else, but i just realised that the whole "no beer, no cigarettes, spikes, gin, whiskey" probably refers to US Immigration confiscating a load of booze and cigs off Mark, along with a penknife (spike) or similar."

Dan points out below that "spikes" is more likely to mean hypodermic needles.

And from Dan:

MES quote from the pilot issue of LM magazine (given away free with Crash, December 1986), dated January 1987, p.25: "US Eighties And Nineties is about America and how it's changed over the years. When I've been there before it was the freest place I'd ever been to in my life, but the last few times I've been it' s been a very oppressed place – as bad as Russia or somewhere." 

And finally, Brix's memoir:

In The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise, Brix Smith-Start confirms that the song was inspired by the group's experiences at customs: "we practically had stickers on our foreheads saying 'Search me'... we would always get tormented by security and feel like we were entering a police state." She recounts an incident at Boston immigration, where the group were questioned about sleeping pills given to Mark and Brix by her mother - the prescription was in her mother's name, hence the problem. However, see note 2 below.

Brix says that this was "our version of a hip-hop track."

rIchincleveland: ""80s-90s" (for me anyway) also seemed to be a veiled reference to traveling across the US. If you want to drive from Boston to Chicago, for example, you'd eventually end up on I-80, the Ohio Turnpike. And you'd likely be in some highway named I-90 eventually."

Routes 80 and 90 span the US from east to west, with 90 being the northern route and 80 being south of it, more in the middle of the north/south axis.

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2. To "slam" is to shoot drugs, and "spikes" in this context means hypodermic needles. 

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3. Dan: "NY cops are tops" was a pro-police slogan in New York from the 1960s. There is a reference here, for example, to Pete Townshend wearing a button badge with the slogan. 

Cop cars wore the slogan.

I think it's used quite commonly elsewhere too, for example Canada and Australia.

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4. Shawn Swagerty comments: I always took the lines "I'm the big-shot original rapper But it's time for me to get off this crapper" as a slap at Lou Reed, who had a rather lame single called "The Original Wrapper" in 1986.

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5. A reference to the classic 1960s Mel Brooks/Buck Henry sitcom "Get Smart." Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, would always insist on using a device called the "Cone of Silence" when the Chief had something top secret to impart, much to the latter's annoyance. Everthing they said would be completely inaudible within the Cone, but could be easily heard from outside.

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6. Memorial Coliseum at the University of Kentucky in Lexington was built as a memorial to soldiers from Kentucky who had died in the two World Wars and the Korean conflict, and later added the names of all the Kentucky dead from Vietnam. As far as I can tell, the Fall never played there, or anywhere else in Kentucky, at least as of 1985. If this refers to an actual incident, I haven't discovered it.  

Dan:

There were two football stadium disasters in 1985 - Heysel and Bradford. I wonder if they are in mind here at all?

"Kentucky dead". Possibilities might include the 1876 Kentucky meat shower, however to me it looks like an Elvis reference.

In Elvis's song "Kentucky Rain", is the following:

"Kentucky rain keeps pouring down
And up ahead's another town
That I'll go walking thru
With the rain in my shoes,
Searchin for you"

Also perhaps worth noting that the film "The Return of the Living Dead" was released in 1985, and was set in Kentucky. It features a deadly rain.

On the other hand, nkroached points out that the line on the Peel version seems to be "Kentucky death keep pouring down," which s/he takes to refer to bourbon. It does sound like "death" on Peel, although not definitely; it seems to me to be kind of in between "death" and "dead," maybe even "debt," but my ears aren't the best...

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7. Blarny:

There is a version from Roskilde with variants:

My ambition is to walk to work
Not one chance in one million jack

Welcome to the Euro/ US 80s 90s
Blackcurrant
Welcome to the only iron curtain country Britain

^

U.S. 80s-90s: Fall Tracks A-Z