Depressed Beyond Tablets is as depressing as you’d expect from the title – as one reviewer once wrote: “I do hope it’s not too autobiographical” but it does seem personal enough that it might just be the case. The song always reminds me of 4AD3DCD, which isn’t nearly as glum. Thanks to Paul
See lyrics to Depressed Beyond Tablets
Patrick
Chris/Paul: Isn’t it ‘cloud base’ (a recognised meteorological term) as opposed to ‘cloud face’? Nearly at 100! How many songs are there in total in the HMHB canon?
20 June 2008
chris
It is “cloud base”, of course. Thanks. And how I wish we were nearly at 100 (we’re at 79 at the time of writing), because then we’d be over halfway there. We’re not halfway yet though! Still, the second half should be easier, lots of old songs which have been published lots of times before, all I’ll have to do is to come to a consensus on the bits where people differ.
20 June 2008
Grimsdale
At the end I think it’s “I’m DBT GBP” (as in Depressed Beyond Tablets Gone Beyond Pills).
Keep up the great work!
21 June 2008
chris
My typo count increases as senility approaches.
21 June 2008
dj
i hear “other results of…” as “oh the results of…”
25 June 2008
Alan
Thanks for providing the lyrics to this song, I knew most of them but
couldn’t work out the odd few. This album is amazing and this song
is one of my favourites on it. How come stuff as witty and intelligent
as this is never played on the radio? HMHB and Frank Zappa are two
of the most overlooked artists on the planet.
Thanks again.
27 November 2009
Norbert D
“And maybe four more without the numerous frills”
This can’t be right – it doesn’t make any sense for a start, and it really doesn’t sound like Nigel’s singing “four more”.
I have no idea what he does say, unfortunately, so I’m no help.
18 February 2010
dagenham dave
I thought it was ‘fills’ rather than ‘frills’, perhaps an instruction to the drummer…?
18 February 2010
Ben
@ Norbert D, that line’s always bothered me – the first bit sounds like “And maybe Paul Morley…..”
18 February 2010
Norbert D
Heh, I thought “Paul Morley” at first, but it’s not that. Definitely an “f” sound at the start. Listening again it does sort of sound like “four more”, but I can’t see what that’s supposed to mean, and the rest of the lyric is so polished that surely the last line wouldn’t just be gibberish?
@ Ben – I reckon it’s “fills” too. Stephen Stills was a bugger for widdly guitar fills all over every track he ever played on, so it could still relate to him I suppose.
19 February 2010
Norbert D
NB57 wasn’t asked about this “four more” line during that recent chat, was he? I was listening to this song today, and that line’s still driving me mad, in the way that only such tiny concerns can.
15 March 2010
Charles Exford
I’m guessing there’ll be a few of us who’ve previously googled “Caverns and abysmals”, suspecting ‘Blakey’ not to be the only poetic reference in this song. I know I did so a few years go, to no avail. But maybe literary people have recently been learning C.T.Siteowner-style tricks to get their stuff higher up in the google results, ’cos sure enough, the vital line is now at numbers seven and eight on the results page for “caverns and abysmals”, preceded by a mere six versions of these song lyrics from this site.
It turns out to be from a letter written by that adopted son of Birkenhead, Wilfred Owen.
After the poet’s epic recovery from shell-shock and about to embark for the final time back to the front in 1918, he wrote one of many letters to his mentor Siegfried Sassoon. Commenting on Shelley’s 1819 poem ‘Stanzas written in Dejection near Naples,’ which he’d been discussing with Sassoon, Owen declared:
“Serenity Shelley never dreamed of crowns me. Will it last, when I shall have gone into caverns and abysmals such as he never reserved for his worst daemons?”
(Or, if you like, “Oi Shelley you old moody chops! Never mind moping around in despair on a nice Italian beach, how am I going to cope with going back into the trenches? Holiday in Naples ? Holiday in Cambodia more like it!”) Well Ok, maybe he didn’t say that last bit. Owen was fond of borrowing archaic phrasings from the romantic poesy of yore, though I’m sure he’d have cited Jello Biafra if he could. The “caverns and abysmals” and “daemons” aren’t actually in that particular Shelley poem, but Shelley’s work is full of such stuff and Owen must be citing some similar piece somewhere.
You all know how the story ends. Within a couple of weeks Owen was back at the front. His serenity did last, his DBT days behind him, and he was transformed into the kind of soldier he had determined to be. He “fought like an angel” and won the Military Cross for his heroism. But of course a few weeks later, just a week before the Armistice, he was killed in action. The telegram to his parents in Shrewsbury arrived, famously, as the Armistice bells pealed out.
28 February 2011
Robin Bussell
oooh! I hadn’t noticed that “Blakey” could be Willam Blake as well as the character from “on the busses” Brilliant!
Thanks.
1 March 2011
S.G.D A SHROPSHIRE LAD
i haver never been too keen on Birkenhead trying to claim our Shropshire Lad but today’s ” breaking news” might help:
http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/news/2011/03/birkenhead-will-welcome-the-countrys-first-tribute-to-wilfred-owens-work
p.s. does anyone else think that we need a forum for when these threads go off topic?
2 March 2011
Walkleyblade
Now here’s a thing (which has to be coincidence, surely?): I’ve just read that, at Glasto 2008, Amy Winehouse (RIP, troubled soul), sang the slightly re-worked words “Now Blakey, I’ll go back to black”, referring to her husband Blake Fielder-Civil, but eerily echoing a couple of lines of Depressed… This was on June 29th, a mere 9 days after these lyrics were posted. Was the poor girl (who could certainly be derpessed beyond tablets) a HMHB/Chris Rand fan…?
26 July 2011
MIKE IN COV
Track 6. I don’t follow this genre, are they a grindcore outfit?
5 July 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
Search for “intervals of depression” in this long article, rather oddly dated 30th July. Much respect for The Boss.
27 July 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
Following up Exxo’s post 12: “The deepest abyss of these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary that we should visit”, A Defence Of Poetry And Other Essays, is the only abyss/cavern conjunction I can find in Shelley.
If there is any precedent for the “universe … darkness” passage, I can’t find it.
7 August 2012
John Burscough
Owen was probably making a general comment about Shelley’s predilection for caverns and abysmals, possibly referring to Yeats’ ‘The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry’ (1900) which lists a dozen examples of rivers flowing through caves in the section on ‘His Ruling Symbols’.
‘Alastor: Or, the Spirit of Solitude’ includes the lines “The boat pursued the windings of the cavern (…) Shall it sink down the abyss?”
“You know your Shelley, Bertie.”
“Oh, am I?” (The Code of the Woosters)
7 August 2012
John Burscough
Incidentally, any reason why “Stern-Faced” should be capitalised? The band’s name (Einstürzende Neubauten) means ‘Collapsing New Buildings’, nothing to do with with the sternness or otherwise of their visages.
They started out rehearsing in a cellar on the Langenscheidtstrasse in the boondock of Schöneberg, Berlin, before moving to a clothes shop called Eisengrau (after which their label was named) meaning ‘Iron-grey’, in reference to the bleak décor and stock.
8 August 2012
vendor of quack nostrums
Likewise “Dark Satanic Mills”?
8 August 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
I think the caps are worth keeping – SFN sounds like a tribute band.
Has anyone other than Peel ever played EN on the radio? His taste for them could explain why the English Wikipedia article looks more thorough than the German.
@John, I agree with your Shelley point. All the Romantic poets had a greater or lesser fascination with caverns, abysses, caves, chasms, grottoes and the like, but your Yeats reference looks spot on for Owen’s source. I was especially struck by a phrase Yeats says is from Alastor, “an abysmal chasm” – because it isn’t in the poem!
8 August 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
I second VoQN: lowercase for “dark satanic mills”.
I was mildly surprised to discover that, in the John Peel’s Record Collection series, E is for East Of Eden. I’d have guessed either Einstürzende Neubauten or Extreme Noise Terror.
8 August 2012
John Burscough
His Records Box (143 of his favourite singles) contained three by Eddie & Ernie, one by Eazy Teeth (artwork by Don van Vliet) and one by Electro Hippies.
It also contained two by Medicine Head, one by Pavement, and “On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at” by Bill Oddie, with “Harry Krishna” on the B-side.
No HMHB, unfortunately.
8 August 2012