Hit The North (Version One) Lyrics
My Cat says eeeee-ack
Hit the North
95% of [hayseeds or corn-pone], guaranteed [1]
Computers infest the hotels
Cops can't catch criminals
But what the heck, they're not too bad, they talk to God [2]
Hit the North
Manacled to the city, manacled to the city
All estate agents alive yell down nights in hysterical breath
There's no lights so pretty
Those big big big wide streets
Those useless MPs
Savages...
Hit the North (Manacled to the system)
Eastender and Victoria's lager, the induced call, mysterious,
comes
forth - Hit the North
(Savages)
Hit the North
I remember not getting to see the Fall when they came to Boston and played at the Channel (a long-time venerable Boston venue where I saw both small local acts as well as headliners like the Fall able to pack the place well past the local fire codes!) around 1987 or 88, but thank God, WFNX, our major Boston-area "new music" commercial station at 101.7 FM, ran a live radio simulcast of their show. During much of the Fall's set and encores, the audience for the most past was quiet and subduded, as if we all, either at the show or in radioland, were in church and Mark E Smith & co. held High Mass. But when several key songs, "Hit the North" for one, were played, the crowd suddenly got psyched, loud, and sang key phrases--the crowd's cue on this song was to shout, yell, etc. "Hit the North!!" like the Fall WROTE this song just for us New Englanders, of course, located in the NORTHeasten part of the US!! "Hey Luciani" and "Cruiser's Creek" also got the crowd to make much noise--all in all we at the show or stuck at at home had good times!!!
It's "those northern lights so pretty" and not "there's no light so pretty".
Always thought the start of the last verse was: "From the back of my psyche / A venereal Eastender / And his Tory master"
I really don't know why. Great tune though, really swimming against the current in the '80s. Really like MES' quote about this time, that he felt his only artistic equal was Michael Jackson!