Mick Middles in his book assumes M5 is a reference to the motorway.

I always thought it was the central Manchester postcode. that would make more sense with the lyrics.

What do you reckon?

yeah it would really :huh:

For some reason I always thought it was about the motorway during evening rush hour, i.e. M5 6-7PM....

Guess I was right after checking the lyrics here :)

Must be about the only time I guessed right, mind...

I'd say the lyrics relate more to the M5 motorway.


You'll never see me trying to raise Cain
You'll never see me wear a suit of green
There's a slip-road up right ahead
leading to the agragarian
But I'm city born and bred
Too many car-fumes in my head
Just a well-read punk peasant.

But you'd think a country man would understand
the devil makes work for idle hands.
M5 6-7 pm

And the man who pretends he knows it all
is destined to a Mighty Fall.
Gets into your house with cheer,
then proceeds to take all you've got to offer.
This is not an autobahn
It's an evil roundabout
That leads to the Haywain
And you'll never see good trains again.

In late 60s, my daddy said to me,
you'll never see trams and clogs again.
Now they roam the city.

Can these people not understand
The devil makes work for idle hands
M5 6-7 pm
The devil makes work for idle hands.

M5 to the country straight ahead
It's stuffed to the gills with crusty brown bread
Can they not understand
there's nothing worse than a bored man?

M5, 6-7 PM

This is not an autobahn
It's an evil roundabout
:huh:


is it not one of those songs about how technology is meant to set us free but somehow it only ends up makin things inadvertantly worse

MES seems to have a phobia about roundabouts doesn't he?

In late 60s, my daddy said to me,
you'll never see trams and clogs again.
Now they roam the city.



this bit could be the other m5 though....


the postcode one....


but does seem more words about motorways in the end

he likes roads though eh?

adam n joe show springs to mind....


contraflow is pretty much m5 in a lot of ways i guess

I don't remember seeing that. What happened?

he says he likes roads.... and then seems a bit drunk ...and pretends to drive using a steerin wheel from a games console orsth....to the sound of truckin gr8s

This is not an autobahn
It's an evil roundabout
That leads to the Haywain

The Haywain is in Devon, just off the M5 motorway.

he should do m6 . m1 and m62 some time.....i look fwd to them on later albums B)

Cheers for the info Dave.

I read somewhere that MES doesn't drive and never wants to? Is this true? Maybe he is protesting about those new-fangled mini-roundabouts that have cropped up everywhere in the last five years?

Not forgetting the M25 of course - that's ripe for a few MES gripes that bitch... :banghead:

the m5 runs nearly down to torquay from the birmingham ring road ...it's gr8 :applaud:


except when there r accidents on it though.....u crawl along...all them caravans i guess goin on hols :(

Thanks for clearing that line up for me. I did often wonder why the song was called M5 but the lyrics were about the M567. The PM bit just meant "afternoon" to me.

So for me it was "M567 afternoon".

What are your thoughts on Bazdad/Stick Cog/Analyst?

Any road up.. it's one of their best songs of that era

Car n't argue with you there

Bastard Street Cog Analyst is what I always thought, but I don't think we'll ever know for sure.

Either which way it makes no bleedin' sense - I may need to analyse those lyrics again, possibly when I'm pissed or very drowsy (it's a well-known fact that Fall lyrics tend to make more sense when in a non-fully conscious state :P)

It's definitely contraflow and not country folk, by the way - I'm with Conway on that one (stands back 10 paces after lighting blue touch paper....) B)

I haveta say this discussion on M5 is fascinating
And the lyrics are actually really great on paper
Sheer genius ich glaube
One of my favorite songs.

A lot of the lyrics on MCRevolt are very good. M5 probably the most.

I personally think M5 is the most autobiographical song Mark E.'s written in years.

My other half thinks it's about criminal types travelling from the countryside up the motorway to go on a thieving spree in the city. It's her favourite Fall song coincidentally.

My thoughts are that it's partly at least about people's predictions of how society is going to change versus how it ends up. So you get the narrator's dad's off-the-mark predictions about clogs and trams, which undermines the narrator's own prediction ('You'll never see good trains again').

HR

i always thought it said 'trams and clubs'.....in fact i just listned to it on headphones and i'm sure of it!!! :o

Int:Mm-hmm. What are some of your favorite songs of yours? Are they mostly newer ones at this point? Like which are the ones that you’re really proud of.

MES: I like… I like the first four on the new LP very much. I’m quite proud of them. I put a lot of craft into them. Might not sound like it, but I did.

Int:(laughs) A few minutes ago, I played “M5” on the air.

MES: Mm-hmm?

Int:What is th –

MES: That’s one of the tracks I mean, yeah. I think that’s really great.

INT:What is that song about? What is that song to you? ‘Cuz I just hear it say “M5, 6, 7 PM”…

MES: Yeah well, M5 is like a motorway route in England. It’s like into the country from the industrial part. And that’s the way Britain is trying to go in a false way, you know. Like an agragarian way.

INT: Oh really?

MES: Yeah.

Int: Hmm. I don’t –

MES: It’s all, it’s all a fallacy, this farm stuff, isn’t it? A bit of hype. It’s like whole brown bread and all that. It never existed anyway, did it?

Found this from online somewhere- i think it's at markprindle.com

well i did too.... but still dont alter the point...... so i quoted it as it was

ie the postcode

but clogs would fit the return to simpler ways stuff on antlers quote.....unless we r talking caveman clubs.

it's "tramps in clogs" isn't it? like levellers/new model army people

I always assumed it was Trams simply because Manchester had just reinstalled the tram system around that time.

I used to think it was tramps and clubs but now am sure that it is trams and clubs. It's not clogs. I know this to be true. I used my ears.

But clubs don't roam the city. Clogs do. :nahnah:

trannies in the cubs again i think it might be

At the risk of being a bit over literal here, there is actually a roundabout on the M5 – south of Worcester at the junction where the M5 joins the M50 (which heads off towards Ross-On-Wye and South Wales), and when the motorway is busy, it is kind of an evil thing to negotiate…

I use the M5 regularly and I’d certainly advise anyone to avoid it at 6 – 7pm, especially where it joins the M6 at Walsall…

any trams near it?

Conspicuous by their absence…

I have considered this.
I still say it's clubs. :nahnah:

The number "5" itself occurs a lot (3x?) on this record: 15 Ways, $500, M5, (others?)

Ideas? Sorry if this has been mentioned elsewhere?

not to distract from the topic, but speaking of trams... i wonder what MES thought of Dublin's lovely new superduper light rail transport system "The Luas" which passed by the venue The fall were playing at last Saturday, personally, i just couldn't stop waving at the passengers going by, it's just brought something out in my that buses never could