"Hotel Bloedel" by the Fall

blödel apparently means stupid fool in german, don't know if that's significant

Let us consulteth ye lyrics parade:

And it's painless
Sitting in subterranea
Ancient reference
To Mesopotamia

And it's quiet again
Hidden fragments, surface now
Repetitious history
One more time for the record

2013 Philippsburg Confederate graves
Are uncovered, throwing new light on
This 19th century conflict, sparking a repeat
These southern spectres were disease ridden, dusty, organic
And psychic

Rebellious mistakes
Occur again
Everything moving
In a circular fashion

Our words return in patterns
Our minds, encapsulating time

Gregoror, satiated walking thru' capitol
Stumbles on two thousand dead Thai monks in SS uniforms
Then fled to Hotel Bloedel, outside Nuremberg
A long way south, to a reasonable smell of death

And it's quiet again
Hidden figments, surface now
Repetitious history
One more time for the record

there's def a ref to "repetition" ...

Right noise.
We're gonna get real speedy
You gotta wear black all the time
You're gonna make it on your own.

Cos we dig
Cos we dig
We dig
We dig repetition
We dig repetition
We've repetition in the music
And we're never going to lose it.

All you daughters and sons
who are sick of fancy music
We dig repetition
Repetition on the drums
and we're never going to lose it.

This is the three R's
The three R's:
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

Oh mental hospitals
Oh mental hospitals
They put electrodes in your brain
And you're never the same
You don't dig repetition
You don't love repetition

Repetition in the music and we're never going to loose it

President Carter loves repetition
Chairman Mao he dug repetition

Repetition in China
Repetition in America
Repetition in West Germany
Simultaneous suicides

We dig it, we dig it,
we dig it, we dig it

Repetition, repetition, repetition
Repetition, repetition, Regal Zonophone

There is no hesitation
This is your situation
Continue a blank generation
Blank generation
Same old blank generation
Groovy blank generation
Swinging blank generation

Repetition, repetition, repetition....

Thanks electricsound. That's actually a big help...

sexyDancer, I think the references to Repetition that you mention ("Everything moving in circular patterns" "Reptitious history") are part of the original song that Brix wrote for Banda Dratsing, "One More Time for the Record."

MES's part (spoken part, that is: he plays viola on this track as well) are the two parts, one that starts "2013 Phillipsburg Confederate graves..." as well as "Gregoror, satiated, walks thru capital..." the latter of which I believe is a direct reference of the excerpt I posted (from Alternative Ulster).

Do you think the "2000 Thai monks" part makes the comparison between the suicidal protest of certain Buddhist monks and the suicidal "protest" of Hitler and many of his followers during the Fall of Berlin???

Also, check this out, from the Daily Reckless's The Story of the Fall:

'It is a ghost story inspired by a stay at a "real" hotel outside Nuremberg by MES and BES. They entered the hotel room very late at night to find there was an unpleasent smell in the air. MES freaked out thinking the room was haunted so they lit candles to try and fight both the spectres and the smell. In the morning they awoke to find the source of the smell was more prosaic; there was a slaughterhouse right behind the hotel.That, I assume, is the meaning of "reasonable smell of death".'

Doesn't quite answer any of my questions so much but sheds light on at least a couple of lines...

this is one of my favorite Fall songs. also one of the most inscrutable. I think the two are related.

it's not that inscrutable, really...I think the first part, that starts out "2013 Phillipsburg..." (btw I listened last night and I think that Phillippsburg = Vicksburg) refers possibly to something MES said in an interview with J Neo Marvin about visiting old Civil War sites:

"I believe that things leave vibrations, you know. America's good for that, you go to all the Civil war places where they had the battles...the atmosphere is incredible. You can really reach out and feel it."

from http://www.jneomarvin.com/words/thefall1.htm

I think "Second Dark Age", for instance, is more inscrutable. I'm trying to get some perspective on that as well. If things go well with this one, maybe I'll start a thread on that...

2nd Dark Age seems to be about the increase in government control and "family values" following the (second) 70s oil crisis, with connections made to the Roman Empire, Nazi Germany, etc. The second half of the song finds MES in wandering "time spirit" devil mode.

...or maybe I won't, sexyDancer. Thank you! I wasn't really around in the late 70s so I didn't know really about that. What specifically did the gov't do to increase the control?

I was mostly hung up on the last two lines: "I am Roman Totale the seventeenth, the bastard offspring of Charles I (Charlemagne) and the Great God Pan."

Charlemagne being coronated as the Holy Roman Emperor was seen as the end of the first Dark Age. Britannica says that the first Dark Age (A.D. 476-800) was "marked by frequent warfare and a virtual disappearance of urban life." (See: "The city is dead. Bust. Ghost-dance rite. Tepid.")

But wasn't the Great God Pan male??? How can two guys father offspring??

(No need to answer that last question. I have Machen's Great God Pan downloaded on my PC, I just need to read it.)

Also => connections made to Nazi Germany? Where? ("A mediocre anti-Jew?")

Lightbulb on!

sleeve, I just got yr post...the mystery of many of the Fall's lyrics is one of the band's primal appeals, I agree. I'm sorry if I am ruining the song for you...I just was taken aback by that line I read from MES dated early 1979, flashing immediately to the 2000 Thai monks with SS uniforms alluded to in this song, and I was just wondering...was there something to this? is it just a short story that MES wrote? an oblique slag at the Nazis' (and the Buddhists', I guess) expense? or is there documentation on some sort of mysterious phenomenon that happened during the Fall of Berlin?

(I should prolley rent the movie Downfall--that kind of covers that period, right?)

well it's all coming around again, so you didn't miss much!

Fat conference women
Clap return of glass house
And the Arabs have it made
Oil is women in veils, eyes glazed

Here MES registers his distaste with a feminized, unvirile government described as the fragile "glass house," similar to Foucault's "panopticon" prison of total surveillance. The oil czars of Arabia are seen as winners through dominance of women (and the rest of the world).

And the commune crapheads sit and whine
While the common near my birthplace is now a police college

More death of the individual on the Left, while parks are replaced with cops... If you need more info on the Punks (individs) vs. the Police (state) in late 70s, see any Clash LP, Brixton, etc

MES alter-ego "Roman Totale XVII" is a personification of what PKDick was on about with "The Empire Never Ended," generations of pagan dominance. The double father detail solidifies the anti-female bent of slavery. XVII = crucified female force (ex-victory), individuality doubled (eye-eye).

The mediocre anti-Jew line shows MES attitude that the new generation is lamer than the last, that the "New Puritan" facist movement isn't even "great" like Hitler... it's yet another MES put-down.

remember, it's WE are The Fall.

nice work, SD.

I'm living it!
...
but the 2000 "simultaneous suicides" detail is something MES prob cribbed from _Morning of the Magicians_ but it ties in to the idea of repeating fragment/figments of history (2013 Civil War graves) and the idea of death leaving an continuing imprint (repetition) and history being the product of secret societies with mystical powers (Nazis, Monks, The Fall).

whoa! sexyDancer :D

but I never really imagined MES having an anti-feminist bent, ("oil is women in veils, eyes glazed") I hadn't thought he admired the Arabs' dominance of women... (the 'eyes glazed' mirroring the corrupt psycho-mafia's exploitation of women with Valium as detailed in "Rowche Rumble" "thousand of wives around the world/are given them by doctors, who think they're little girls")

also I always thought that "the New Puritan" was MES's self-description of his own work-ethic (as opposed to lazy, trendy faux-hippie London postpunkers): MES trying to define his own stance, hence "tied to the Puritan ethic," etc.

I wrote some very long exegesis pieces on "eat y'self fitter" and "neighbourhood of infinity" on the fallnet listserv like 10 years ago... was gonna do the whole album but interest waned, inertia waxed, etc etc

dig it up!
xp: well, MES does play "roles" in lyrics, and revels in double-meanings, so trying to pin down MES politics is a bit of a fool's errand. He's an ironic observer, clouded in Modernism, he. The New Puritans were a Nazi-like movement in fave MES comic book _Adventures of Luther Akwright_ and I assume he was having a bit of personal fun equated them with the Rough Trade teaboys, etc.

MES alter-ego "Roman Totale XVII" is a personification of what PKDick was on about with "The Empire Never Ended"

sexyDancer are you k-punk?

w/r/t "New Puritans"/Luther Akwright: no kidding! Had no idea. You're a treasure trove of awesomeness!

We are the Fall, indeed!

(prhaps, oil czars are seen (by corrupt unvirile gov't) as winners bcz of dominance of women...don't mind me folks!)

dig it up!

I'll have to try some forensic computing. this was back in the day before everything anyone wrote on the worldwide internet computah was logged and stored for all time.

yeah Edward that sounds freakin amazing!

I am not k-punk, but checking out his blog I found an aprop riff on hotels: http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/2005_10.html
(scroll down to oct 4, 2005)

"We must not look for hidden depths, either. There are no depths here, the effect of depth is an illusion to which we must learn not to succumb. If there are things hidden, they must have been secreted here on the surface."

are you implying that our intent here runs against the grain of MES's creative ambitions?

(abt MES feminist/antifeminist...I kind of get it, and it prolley doesn't matter much, it just seemed that MES was turning into Dave Sim right before my eyes and it threw me off balance for a moment...(no offense to Cerebus fans.)

)

no need to imply it:

"The temptation, when writing about The Fall’s work of this period, is to too quickly render it tractable...To confidently describe songs as if they were ‘about’ settled subjects or to attribute to them a determinate aim or orientation (typically, a satirical purpose) will always be inadequate to the vertiginous experience of the songs and the distinctive jouissance provoked by listening to them."

But there's also this...

"If it is impossible to make sense of the songs, it is also impossible to stop making sense of them – or at least to it is impossible to stop attempting to make sense of them. On the one hand, there is no possibility of dismissing the songs as Nonsense; they are not gibberish or disconnected strings of non sequiturs. On the other hand, any attempt to constitute the songs as settled carriers of meaning runs aground on their incompleteness and inconsistency."

from http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/009039.html

i have never given this much thought to any MES lyrics, I think if I were to start doing that, I would disappear into a very deep crevice

personally sexyDancer, not only have you gotten more from MES's lyrics than I ever could hope to, you got more than I thought would be possible for anyone (which might mean the same thing)...which is why I don't want to kill this thread for at least a little while longer.

xpost: akm it's not nearly as scary as you seem to think it is.

Favourite lines from Fall tracks

I spent the Summer digging Finnegans Wake, so am kinda prepped for the Mod dive into the (wonderful/frightening) crevice... one thing occured to me identifying MES' tag of surveillance as feminine--he names the wire-tapping "Telephone Thing" as a "nosy, matron type."

oh, right on.

still haven't read Great God Pan, so I'm not all the way filled in, but I think I get the basic plot of "2nd Dark Age": sorcerer from barbarous times sees modern times, spits with contempt that it reminds him of the dark ages...the mediocre anti-Jew I think is actually Hitler himself...despite the images of pure evil that crop up whenever his name is mentioned, Hitler is certainly mediocre compared to (one of) Totale's pappy Charlemagne, who managed to conquer and unite all of Europe like Hitler (and others: the Kaiser, Napoleon) wanted to but could not pull off...Charlemagne killed prolley a whole lot more people than Hitler dreamed of, as well...this does seem in keeping with MES, slagging off Nazism for its failure instead of its atrocities (as I said, my impression is that Hitler's atrocities could not hold a candle to Charlemagne's)

as far as the rest of it goes, I'm still working on it...prolley will never stop. Don't quite get the ABBA rip but it doesn't matter...what are scooter cabbages though?

"The Empire Never Ended": k-punk thought that Dick & M.E.S. both saw history as a battle between the Holy Roman Empire (mainstream empiricism) and occult forces (secret societies with mystical powers) which is prolley true, but I was going to email/annoy him about which side R. Totale stood on (his name is Roman after all!)...but I get it: double individuality, Totale can personify the conflict while at the same time channel both sides. Is this why The N.W.R.A. turns out wrong? (tomorro I will find those lyrics)

btw, sexyDancer, how come you know so much about the Fall anyways, hmmm?

just a record listener
I think you're right about the Hitler ref. ABBA, at the time, was in the Guiness Book of World Records as the world's most popular group. Goes along with the success = world dominance theme. Scooter cabbages? A scooter is a failed motorcycle, cabbage, the traditional food of the poor.
Roman Totale: also french for "story" ... MES as the whole story?

"groups can change the world" just look at ABBA!...hahaha!

the lyrics as a whole (with the pray-peace group spying on Norway) always conjures up the image of Bjorn and Benny as Scandinavian spies, infiltrating the Continent via cheesy pop songs (sidenote: ABBA rules!) which, from what I've gathered here, is exactly the point.

between the words "as" and "Scandinavian", insert the words "disarmingly magnanimous"

At Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5woqCVd0NEY
The history book on the shelf is almost repeating itself

hahaha... this thread is becoming as weird and trippy as an actual Fall song...

I just posted a couple of comments over at Freaky Trigger about "Waterloo" a few weeks ago, one where I compared ABBA to Alpha Flight...

The Canadian X-men??
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/2/25/250px-Alpha.gif

lol..yeah...mostly the point was that ABBA was mostly notable (in certain circles) for the peculiarity of their native land.

speaking of Marvel Comix, I pulled this off of k-punk's website a while ago...

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h279/juicyfrt/pan1.jpg

Why Charles I as Charlemagne, and not Charles I of England? Serious question - I've always taken it as the latter (Smith alter-ego as anti-Puritan, in fact descended from king executed by 'puritans' crossed with primal nature-terror spirit), but I'm not up on details, theories & backgrounds enough to say.

Charles I is a piddly little figure though, compared to Charlemagne, hardly heroic

Charles I as Charlemagne, and not Charles I of England?

I'm still unconvinced that MES=anti-puritan tho...certainly the "New Puritans" may refer to prole-punk's fuck-everything sneer (see mark s->Concrete, so as to self-destruct w/r/t Subway Sect's "Ambition"="VILE EVILS ARE VILE EVILS"...link forthcoming), MES lampooning them as parody-Nazis, but from what I have gathered it seems that he agrees more than disagrees with the original puritans...

Yep, I'm guessing MES would have been right been on the frontline alongside Cromwell's boys.

of course, he does hold quite a bit of sympathy for Catholicism, so I don't know...

xpost: yeah, never mind me..."Live at the Witch Trials"...duh.

of course, he does hold quite a bit of sympathy for Catholicism, so I don't know...

Really? Where? He's all seemed a right dyed-in-the-wool Proddy to me

i'm not up on anything woof (apparently) I was looking up Charles I and saw that it was another name for Charlemagne so I gravitated towards him, since he was the Holy Roman Emperor, but of course as sexyDancer pointed out, "roman totale" is French for story...(but Charlemagne was Franch...hmmm)

Tom D. I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, and where, but...

I can't find it right now, but there's an article wher MES says he thinks that Catholicism is one of the most beautiful religions...and then totally lambastes Pope John Paul II. I know that Totale in N.W.R.A. said he was sworn to defend the clergy ("though they had done wrong") but that might be part of his Charlemagne heritage...

Isn't "Hey! Luciani!" an attempt to depict the Catholic Church as another "secret society with mystical powers" maybe? (a bit like a pulp-modernist Da Vinci code, 15 years before the fact)

I'm not sure...but I'm now thinking that in Puritans vs. witches, MES sides along with the witches...

but there's an article wher MES says he thinks that Catholicism is one of the most beautiful religions...

Are you sure MES isn't being the sarcastic one here?

MES in contradictory character traits shockah!

Alright we're going to go back
to 1940
No money
And I live in Berlin
I think I'll join up
Become a camp guard
No war for me
An old Jew's face dripping red

I hate the prisoners
I hate the officers
There's no fight
I think I'll join,
The red rose,
Leave Belsen
I'll go to Switzerland
A human resistor
Don't think, ask him

Present :
I don't like them
said Ian*
in his black-out threats
I think I'll drop out
Become a no-man
And live my rules
But I'm the sort that gets
out of the bath with a dirty face

Everyone I meet's the same now
No brains or thought
A good case for the systems we like - we get
Human race
Various times
Don't think, ask him

Future:
1980
Black windows
And smokey holes
My head is full of lead
And the beer is so weak
Since they got rid of time around here

Dr. Doom fresh from Salem
And the witch trials
The Lathe of Heaven
Time mistaken
Three places at once
Human race
Don't think, ask him
Ask him
Ask him

*is this Ian Curtis? or just a name? anybody know?

I don't know - could be Ian McCulloch as well, who roadied for them, but my guess is that it's just a name, or an unspecified acquaintance. Got to go and listen to Various Times now and then maybe Putta Block.

It's Ian McCulloch

I was gonna ask abt McCulloch, but I figured this song came out eary 79, way too early for the Fall to be snarking about E&BM...I had known that they McCulloch before, but I had forgotten/did not know he had roadied for them.

It's not a snark really

Repetition in West Germany
Simultaneous suicides

Surely this is reference to the Baader-Meinhof suicides in Stammheim Prison, not to the Nazis?

first part: ???

second part: there are parallels, but I figured itreferred explicitly to those hari-kari'd Nazi soldiers mentioned in "Hotel Bloedel" and the quote above (which is from some MES letter in 1978)

West Germany is the giveaway though? Stammheim suicides towards end of 1977, fairly current

Also there was a lot controversy at the time about how Baader and the rest managed to commit suicide "simultaneously" when they, supposedly, had no way of contacting one another

hold on, first:
(which is from some MES letter to a fanzine in 1978)

second: you're right Tom D. For some reason, I thought that Berlin was in West Germany, but I was wrong.

Also, I thought the "repetition in China" refered to some nondescript Buddhist protest I thought I remembered hearing about, but actually it fits this far better.

xpost really?

The suicide story was viewed rather suspiciously. Fassbinder phoned one of his friends when he heard about the suicides and was crying over the phone, "They killed our friends!", to which his friend replied, "They weren't any friends of mine!"

perverted by language is a concept album about time

where history is something that happens all at once, simultaneously

man's soul as wormhole

also, I really don't want to fall back into the whole "What do the Fall mean? You got to tell me!" schtick, but how is this--

Present :
I don't like them
said Ian
in his black-out threats
I think I'll drop out
Become a no-man
And live my rules
But I'm the sort that gets
out of the bath with a dirty face

not a snark? I thought this was like the punk-baiting in "Repetition" (You gotta wear black all the time/You gonna make it on your own)(not to mention the Richard Hell diss)(but then again Idk...)

perverted by language is a concept album about time

is this part of yr exegesis, Edward III?

But is dropping out and becoming a no-man and living your rules necessarily a bad thing? And couldn't the bit about getting out of the bath with a dirty face be MES talking about himself, somehow it sounds like that on the record...

Julian Cope is mentioned on that album too!

no i guess not...I tend to get 70s punk confused with 90s alt-rock (the good stuff), which is what I grew up with...in a post-grunge world, becoming a no-man and living your rules does seem like it's been discredited a bit...

actually i thought that part abt the bath was the puncholine of the diss, like Ian admitting "Hey, my ideas are all half-baked, I don't really think things through!" Could be MES talking abt himself, though.

Julian Cope is mentioned on that album too!

oh yeah, in Two Steps Back, a song I haven't heard...

was he a big dealer back in the punk days?

Apparently not, they corresponded a fair bit. JCope said something about this recently in Uncut(?)

is this part of yr exegesis, Edward III?

ha ha, sort of. I did go trawling through some old hard drives to see if I could find it but no dice, man. the archaeology of finding something posted to a list-srv 10 years ago; not a chance, fan.

I should probably contact stefan @ the fall site to find out if anybody's got a fallnet archive.

He was a fan who followed them round and hung out with them, wasn't he? (xp)

yeah, i got the impression that Cope used to be a fan of the Fall...were they the ones who introduced Julian to Krautrock? (highly unlikely but I figured I'd ask)

was he a big dealer back in the punk days?

Wasn't he a woodwork teacher or something at the time?

i dunno, it's just in Two Steps Back, Julian is asking how the gear is.

(visi.com footnote says gear=drugs)

so I thought maybe he was some kind of drug dealer to the punk band or something like that.

I should probably contact stefan @ the fall site to find out if anybody's got a fallnet archive.

yeah do it! I've been wanting to read it for some time now.

I'm just amazed that people know this much or can figure out this much about what M.E.S. is on about. Ian McCulloch? Julian Cope? Jeez, the things you learn from ILM. Also, I'd always assumed he was singing "A Human Relic-ah".

Re: xpost Drugs A Money, the Marvel Comic with 'I laughed at the great God pan'
Does this predate Leave the Capitol?
I'd always read that line as a kind of parody sunday tabloid headline, an expose of suburban pagans or something.
This is a great thread btw. MES lyrics are so weirdly fascinating.

It's from Tales to Astonish! 6, 1959, Jack Kirby and Christopher Rule, the original source being The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen - all the stuff about exiting the Roman shell and the Welsh camp caravan masquerade is very much Machen subject matter.

thanks for that. I'd heard that smith was influenced by Machen, but I haven't read him, and didn't know to what extent his ideas were incorporated

"M.R. James vivant vivant..."

... or whatever it is

If you can be arsed Dr X, I wrote a far-too-long, probably horrifyingly boring essay about the two of them, which is here -

http://theidiotandthedog.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/arthur-machen-and-the-fall/

The actual extent to which Machen's specific ideas are incorporated is fairly limited considering The Fall's total output, the influence is more diffuse and to do with spiritual approach, I think.

thanks, i've read about 1/3 of it and it interests me. will finish later at home.

I don't have the link right now, but you can download the complete text of The Great God Pan on the Internet. Maybe it's in the Gutenberg Project???

Here's the Gutenberg:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=389
Also a few pdf versions up.
Lots more Machen.
Did not know you'd posted your essay, Gamaliel, excited to read it.

Hmmm. Calm yourself woof - something's gone wrong with the formatting and it reads - possibly better off going for the version on Splinters,

http://www.spikemagazine.com/unholy-terrors-the-horror-writings-of-arthur-machen.php

which cuts down on the Fall element, but is on the whole less (s)crappy and a bit tighter.

Incidentally - The Fall PSYCHEDELIC ROCKED last night. So good.

cooool! are they still touring the Imperial Wax Solvent stuff...that album is so face-meltingly great!!!

Yep, set list included Wolf Kidult Man, 50-Year-Old Man (brilliant), and an amazing I've Been Duped. Tommy Shooter and Latch-Key Kid as well. Also, Reformation, Fall Sound, a great cover of Jack the Ripper.

In fact Wings was the weakest number, until the last 30 seconds or so, when it just became a sort of clenched mire.

It was pulsating - I was jigging up and down in my seat like I'd wet myself. The Hackney Empire suited them perfectly. Going again tonight. Bound to be shit of course.

Gahhhhh..... Why Don't I Live in England?

re: Fallnet archive - I don't have one, wish I did. I think Older Brother Gert kept one while he was on Fallnet but I've lost track of him. It's too bad, he was a really great guy (we met at the Coney Island High shows in 1998). Of course if there's a post you're looking for while Fallnet's been on Yahoogruppen, you can search the archives there.

Damnit! I was just thinking of a particular Fall lyric the other day. I'll have to think about it, I can't remember right now. NO I got it!

"A HOOP NOW TRYIN' TO FIND
A BELT IN THE EARLY MORN
WHEN YOUR HOME IS A TRASH MOUNT
...OVER BUT YOUR RIGHT OUT"

It's one of those songs on "Wonderful & Frightening World Of The Fall", you know. Can't remember the damn title right now.

Some beautiful person will have to fill in the ellipses in that lyric. Maybe a British person knows what he's saying.

If the road to hell is paved with Republicans, then the road to heaven is paved with Fall fans...

bimble u are thinking of "No Bulbs"

Going again tonight. Bound to be shit of course.

And, of course, they were nowhere near as good last night. Perfectly solid, but the magic was missing. The guitarist looked like he'd been told he was going to be executed directly after the gig finished, although Mark E Smith put a consoling arm around him during 50-Year-Old Man, so I'm sure everything's ok...

oh, and

Calm yourself woof - something's gone wrong with the formatting and it reads - possibly better off going for the version on Splinters,

should be 'and it reads badly/oddly/uncomfortably' or some such derogatory term.

Wolf Kidult Man was the best thing last night, I think.

may be this is it:
http://uk.hrs.com/booking/en/germany/nuremberg-bayern/gruener-baum-424332.html

Grüsse aus Nürnberg
Falckenstein

If the road to hell is paved with Republicans, then the road to heaven is paved with Fall fans...

;_;

fuck

Brix's book sheds a lot of new light on this song, e.g. an early version of it was one of the first songs she wrote, and MES added the violin bridge later.

(and some lyrics iirc)

Brix and the Extricated do a great version of this and in fact there's a recording of it on their new album!

SOLD

it's a good album.