We all know how much Mark hates it when people plagiarize him, but what are some of his..um, homaged lyrics and titles?

So far I have:

Bend Sinister (Nabokov book)
New Face in Hell (60's made for TV UK movie)
Gentlemen's Agreement (old film remade various times throughout 30's-50's)

Then there's the "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" which is Hunter S Thompson
and also "you don't have to be weird to be weird" is Beefheart right? (Jouster? You're the one who cued me in on that one).

Anything else?

I think I mentioned it before but; 'All that's fantastic leagues against me' from Elves is taken from 'The Warhound and the World's Pain' by Michael Moorcock.

Someone once told me 'Those flowers, take them away, they're only funeral decoration' was taken from something or other but I've forgotten what.

'Dice Man' is from the Luke Reinhardt book of that name but he credits it on the sleeve notes

How about his vocal style (from Johnny Rotten Lydon-ah)? Has this been discussed?

Dunno if the title was conceived for the ballet or album first, but I Am Kurious Orange seems like a sly homage to an old Sexploitation movie called I Am Curious (Yellow.)

Not just the wonderful Jerusalem, but this is W. Blake too:

The selfish smiling fool,& the sullen,
frowning fool shall be thought wise,

MES 'perverts' it slightly, but borrowed it is.

Ages ago, somebody somewhere claimed the "summer of malcontent / winter of your mind" bit from Free Range had something to do with Shakespeare. Like Frank Zappa, "I can't stand The Bard"... and a brief online search produced no evidence to support the allegation. I did stumble across some guy's CD collection because he quoted those lines I was searching for. I thought his lil intro to his collection was quite amusing.

http://www.pigdog.org/the_vault/pig/cd.html

By none other than MES himself during C n C.S Mithering - Grotesque.

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

You can't say Smith's ripped-off anyone, really (Action Records and Henry Rollins aside...) - he makes scattergun references but never steals. He's the most original figure rock's ever given voice to, fer Chrissake!!

I'm pretty sure "Got my last clean dirty shirt out of the wardrobe" is a ref to a line in "Sunday Morning Coming Down" by that guy over there on the left.

Stefan

"Sunday Morning Coming Down" by -- Kris Kristofferson, but otherwise yes, a rather egregious theft from Mr. Smith.

"The meek shall inherit the earth"
Poem by Charles Bukowski (original source being the bible- Matthew 5:5)

My mistake - I thought JC wrote it. A great song nonetheless.

Stefan

Interesting. I missed that one because I have the early stuff on compilations (Psykick Dancehall, Totally Wired, Hip Priests and Kamerads), and that song is one of the ones form Grotesque that I don't have. Sue me, tell me I'm not a real fan, but at some point I will get the albums (CDs). I am waiting to see how the Sanctuary re-issues are configured. Ideally I'd like to have the Slates stuff together with Roug Trade singles so I don't have to pay for a whole CD for those six songs (and I don't really like mixing studio/live the way it was released with ...America Therein). If I was adept at burning CDs I would make my own CDs in chronological order from the comps.

what worries me about this theft is...not so much as mark uses em to integrate into his own ideas.... and to show where he's comin from [maybe]......the prob for me is that some of these lines r 'his' best lines...n they r not even his....


good job he's a highly skilled atonal singer :P

He's nicked a couple of twilight Zone titles for songs "what you need" and "time enough at last"

Theres also a Twilight Zone episode called "Nervous Man in Four Dollar Room" which might have influenced the mighty "Paranoia...."

Milan Kundera titles "The Joke" and "Immortality" (themes - party systems, hatred, perception of art by differing generations)...

Probably shitloads of "nicked" stuff in his lyrics but like many a great lyricist these snippets help to complete his own bizarre vision....

Not related I know but the new Mogwai album rocks......

'by hook or by crook' i guess is his latest off sparta......but i guess it borders on a commonly used phrase....but the idea in my mind will always be machiavelli

Someone emailed me that "safe and warm" was on a Clinic song a few months before Susan vs Youthclub was recorded. But that's also a fairly common phrase.

Wow! I'm on someone else's computer & can post again! I don't know why, but mine just won't let me (Where's the cursor? Where's the eraser?)

Anyway, I think you'll find that "Free Range" is a ref to Shakespeare, if not a direct steal:

"Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York...", if I recall.


Blake is a common source, eg "The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom", which is riffed on at the start of "lost in music"



I seem to remember a Velvets line "You're a good boy, here is a dollar", which corresponds to "Music Scene".


I also saw a ropy looking paperback in the charity shop the other day called "The Love Hexagon"...


The thing is, in (perhaps desperate) defence of MES, I don't think his thefts are indicative of a lack of ideas, or an attempt to borrow kudos from greater artists, as with lesser bands who throw Kierkegaard or "Clockwork orange" qoutes into their choruses; I'd say that he builds up a skein of references, to place his characters within certain settings, to make them specific (a range of refs) yet w/ a hint of everyman (anyone can collect said refs). Perhaps the nearest analogue would be Morrissey, but I'm sure that MES wouldn't like that!

ANyway, perhaps he's just petty thief, I'm just enjoying my one chance to post

I recently discovered that the line "where chewing gum is chewed, the chewer's pursued"(antidotes) is from the Marx Bros. movie Duck Soup. WHoo

Spotted a few MES lines-to-be on Big Youth's "Natty Cultural Dread" the other day, haven't seen anyone mention these before...

In 'Wolf in Sheep's Clothing':
"Time is running and passing and passing and running and running and passing"
(as in 'Get a Hotel')
There's also a reference to butter in there.

In 'Keep your Dread':
"You cannot walk the streets at night in peace"
(as in 'City Hobgoblins')

In 'Jim Squashey':
"You spit in the sky it fall in your eye"
(as in 'Rebellious Jukebox' / 'Why are people so grudgeful?')
(although hasn't this has been used in other reggae songs?)

plus in 'Hell is for Heroes' the horns keep sounding like they're about to launch into the Kurious Oranj keyboard riff, but go in a different direction after the first 3 notes... a bit tenuous, but undeniably similar.

Greetings from Canada. In Quebec at the moment - like France, but friendly.

Further to Four foot vauxhall carlton's list - the line 'The four of us are dying' from Butterflies 4 Brains is also the title of an episode from The Twilight Zone. :ph43r:

in everything hurtz mes says, "I was borne" and it always reminded me of the way Damo sang it on Mushroom; very remorsefully. I know that they are friends or aquantinces or something right?

no specific lyrical reference here, but i think lydon and MES both sound a little like Robert Calvert. a lot of those late 70's-80's punk-post-punk-yadda-blah-and, etc bands had singers that pulled a bit off the Calvert era Hawkwind stuff.

"if oceans was whiskey,
and i was a dove,
i'd dive into it,
and never come up."

is sure close to:

"And if the river were whiskey,
and ah was a duck,
ah'd go down to the BOTTERN
and ah'd never come up."

from Ultramarine by Malcolm Lowry, published 1933.
i think it's an old traditional song.

and then there's "victoria," which is a kinks cover. i'm sure you all knew that, but it givesme an excuse to mention local punk legends nomeansno's reworking of the tune. the lyrics can be viewed at:
http://www.no-means-no.de/lyrics_OneDownAnd.html
you'll have to scroll down a bit.
and you'll learn a bit about my home town. it's all true. within 12 hours of my first visit here i was being maced and beaten by cops for nothing worse than having a few beers in a friends yard.
and then there's that frank zappa cover on cerebral caustic.

Aren't we forgetting though that MES uses cut-ups for lyric writing a la william burrough and D.Bowie (who permeates car parks as we know).

So as with any "collage" he takes from what passes in front of him, mixes em up in his head, and hey bingo out pop the mad titles and lyrical associations you could never get if you actually sat down with a blank piece of paper.

he could be looking at the tv listing page (for today) "the assassination bureau" (bbc2 1.40pm)
-thats a nice title for a song, or line, or any of listing -

instant MES song (from BBC1 listing only):

"Cleverly Plotted Thriller"

experts, experts,
judge poor tourist attractions-uh,
from the attic, with cash in hand-uh.
no win, no fee,
you got a pg rating -
cos your clevery plotted thriller,
had dinosaurs in every scene-uh

Roger moore, you are not,
your fake tan is less than adequate-uh,
to hide the marks on your shabby skin-uh,
and the bargains you hunt,
are of a suspect shade, my friend-uh.

Cleverly plotted thriller
Cleverly plotted thriller in our midst-uh
Cleverly plotted thriller
Cleverly plotted thriller in our midst-uh

"

cheers :)
:applaud: 'uncleverly potty fellah' will be appearing soon on a certain mp3 site

it's a piece o piss this songwriting innit?

Which mp3 site would that be? I'm new around here.

well since u asked... current songs are a bit below average...but i am on with other stuff
my home page

well how about Fall "karaoke" nights?
Fall music backing tracks on which you can freewheel-uh your fall-like riffs-uh....


talking of those remix things - the strokes+ christina aquilera etc.,
who would be an interesting mix to put under MES words?
Fall+ ?

i think that coldcut team-up was pretty good, that was one of the first MES tracks i ever heard. more stuff like that would be good. maybe with pan sonic or perhaps ruins. matmos even. or merzbow or negativland or k. k. null.

and NewFace, i think mr. mark smith (that interesting hack) learned a lot about writing from Lowry. i think i detect a henri michaux influence too but i can't prove it.

autechre remix of telephone thing, mildly reverbed granular synthesis imitating dial tone purgatory.

V/VM remix of WMC/Blob 59, a whole 45 minutes of lo-fi scrunch and mumble

um..."why are people grudgeful" is a lee perry tune, mate...

um..."why are people grudgeful" is a lee perry tune, mate...

Whatever happened to KingFameThrowa, eh?

Was savage pencil really savage pencil?

Dunno, but he's possibly wrong about Grudgeful - it's written by Joe Gibbs (performed by The Pioneers) about his sacking by Lee Perry, according to Dave Thompson....

That's correct. Lee Perry did Kimble.

Coincidentally, although Perry is a genius (and once 'proved' to a friend of mine that he is God*) Kimble and Why Are People Grudgeful are the two worst Fall songs.

(*absolutely true)

why are people grudgeful is a fantastic song. i used to use the "all over the world diff-ur-ense, diff-ur-ense" line as my signature. kimble is only ok tho.

Eww, no. He sounds like a first-round Pop Idol reject in it. I'd rather gnaw off my own leg than hear it even one more time...

:lol: :lol:
tis good enuff for me lad