Track four of
The Fall's brilliant 1980 album
Grotesque (After The Gramme). (Track eight on the
Castle Communications re-issue)
This seven and a half minute song outlines the Fall's trip to North America, and the
perverted fast food money orientated
music scene that
Mark E. Smith believes is there, and based largely in
California. The song features acoustic guitar instead of the usual electric and is largely subdued, but is a powerful rant. On the original issue of the record, this track leads straight onto the next song;
Container Drivers, but on the Castle re-issue a gap of about 4 seconds is present (may be just my equipment). A different version of this song appeared on 1981's
A Part Of America Therein, however it stops at "This was going to be called crap rap fourteen, but it's now Stop Mithering" and it's called
Cash 'N' Carry.
C'N'C'-S MITHERING
Three days
Three months
Three days
Three months
A treatise
A treatise
To explain these
First was
cash 'n' carry house
dance
In
Lancashire they're A
In King Nat Ltd. empire
Kwik Save is there
The scene started here
Then was America
Then was America
We went there
Big A&M Herb
(1) was there
His offices had fresh air
But his rota was mediocre
US purge, rock 'n' pop filth
Their material's
filched
And the secret of their lives
Is...
All the English groups
Act like
peasants with free milk
On a route
On a route to the loot
To candy mountain
Five wacky English
proletariat idiots
Californians always think of sex
Or think of death
Five hundred girl deaths
A Mexico revenge, it's stolen land
They really get it off on
"Don't hurt me please"
Rapist fill the TVs
And the secret of their lives
Is S.E.X..
I have dreams, I can see
Carloads of negro
Nazis
Like
Faust with beards
Hydrochloric shaved weirds
((Applause from audience at
Cyprus Tavern))
((Here the song speeds up, and Mark's voice takes on a sharper, angrier edge))
This was going to be called crap rap fourteen,
but it's now Stop
Mithering.
The things that drain you off and drive you off the hinge.
Boils, dirty socks, the ceilings collapse.
The Sunday morning loud lawn mower,
the upstairs Jewish girl damn hoovering every thirty minutes,
from valium cig withdrawal.
She wants communal, fluent flat household.
I want privacy.
The bastard dentist doctors surgery,
Clip, clop, ring, knock, ring
Stop mithering
The estates stick up like stacks
The estates stick up like stacks
The residents keep wild dogs
And on that father's bedroom closet top,
electric blanket boxes
Surplus jonnies, demob pictures
To their children they sing
Stop mithering
You think you've got it bad with thin ties,
miserable songs
synthesized, or circles with A in the middle
(2).
Make joke records, hang out with
Gary Bushell,
Join round table. "I like your single yer great!"
A circle of low IQ's.
There are three rules of audience.
My
journalist acquaintances, go soft, go places,
on record company expenses.
I lose humor, manners become bog writers, don't know it.
The smart hedonists, same as last verse, allusions with
H in electronics, on stage false histrionics,
Corpse mauling dicks, pose through a good film, him, him
Stop mithering
I'm not joining conventional rock band.
The conventional is experimental, the conventional is now
experimental
(3),
And is no way noble, and I'm no chock stock thing.
So stop mithering.
Engineers save up for cars.
I try to let down their tyres with matches to make them molten.
Ouch! Ouch!
They say I rip off
Johnny Rotten
They always strike for more pay.
They say "See yer mate..Yeh...see yer mate"
To their mothers they sing
Stop mithering
He even did fail the penile tissue test.
He hangs out for sex.
He enters
magazine contest.
White tan horror in the mirror.
Spotty exterior hides a spotty interior.
He's not your enemy.
He's not your enemy, his name is not Harry.
The secret of
Cash and Carry.
(1): Big A&M Herb = Herb Alpert
(2): 'Circles with A in the middle = Anarchy symbol. A reference to all the bullshit in music that's popular there; 'thin ties' and synthesizers sound like cop-outs in style and sounds.
(3): Literally, a
rehashing of old ideas.
Mark E. Smith writes this about C'n'C in the Lough Press book:
"C'N'C Stop Mithering contains references to i.e. free adverts
for Kwik Save and King Nat Ltd, an area of cash and carry
warehouses near Manchester town centre--see we advertise free
for these, so don't try the anti-commercial crap bit on us,
sonny boy. It's post-Hollywood, a place described by actor
Robert Donat as one big Ideal Home Exhibition."
Cheers to
Fall Lyrics Parade," by Jonathan Kandell & Jeff Curtis, still the best place for Fall lyrics