The Comedy of Errors: The Fall - Ed’s Babe/Pumpkin Head Xscapes (12 June 1992)

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For reasons which I’ll elaborate on in the next blogpost, John Peel was in cracking form for his show on 12/6/92.  He had spent the past week having a fantastic time at the Isle of Man TT motorcycle races.  Flying back into London that evening feeling “tanned and refreshed.  Greek Gods look like very small beer next to me.” and arriving at the Radio 1 offices at 8.30pm, he found the cherry on the cake of a wonderful week for him, sitting on his desk: a new EP by The Fall called Ed’s Babe.  “Could I possibly ask for anything more?”.

If Free Range was the Fall song of the spring on the Peel show, then the title track of Ed’s Babe held that function over the summer of 1992.  It trades in the electronica sound of Free Range for an acoustic guitar line of substantial ferocity by Craig Scanlon, but augmented by a six note keyboard refrain which keeps popping up at the end of most lines like a little fanfare.  It all seems a little lyrically vague, even by Fall standards, though it is widely believed that Scanlon rather than Mark E. Smith wrote the bulk of the lyrics for what appears to be a cautionary tale of a local lothario with girls dotted all over the place finding himself, literally left holding the baby.  Note the contrast between the chorus refrain of “Ed’s babe” (the child) and “Ed’s babies” (the women that Ed picks up while working nights - 21 Prestwich virgins, ready to be deflowered...).

For Pumpkin Head Xscapes, all I can say is take a bow to the Fall’s rhythm section who cook up such a wonderfully funky and danceable groove it virtually reduces Smith to a stranger in his own song, wandering about chipping in non-sequiturs and leaving you to wish that he’d get out of the way.  Although he does still land some lyrical punches on the laziness of musicians, the tendency to write
exclusively about the artist’s experience “full autobiograph self pity crap”, the KLF who get written off as senile.  Meanwhile the “We’re coming, we’re coming Leo” refrain suggests that Smith or one of the band had recently been watching Ace in the Hole, Billy Wilder’s 1951 film which takes the rescue of a man trapped in a cave as its centrepiece. And if, like me you haven’t seen it, you’ve probably seen the Simpsons episode that it inspired.    I’m grateful to The Annotated Fall for making these links,
especially the reference to the fact that the song is inspired by Scanlon’s cat going missing, which perhaps helps put the title of the track into full context.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.
Videos courtesy of Kevin Kriel.