C'n'C'-S Mithering

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