Bass Releases Gigs Lyrics Comments

Details

Author
Robyn Hitchcock
According to our records, Robyn has played this song 179 times, most recently at The Central Bar on October 25, 2025. He first performed it at Ronnie Scott's on February 02, 1986, 39 years and 8 months earlier.

Releases

Loading releases...

Gigs

Loading gigs...

Comments

From Robyn on Patreon in 2023
In early autumn 1985 I found myself in the small seaside town of Lytham St Anne’s, on the West Coast of Northern England. It was still sunny and one afternoon I sat on the promenade, gazing out to sea with a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich. The seagulls ignored the cheese sandwich and flocked towards the horizon - what could be out there? I was 32, feeling ancient as usual - I was due to start touring the USA with my hot new band the Egyptians, although my first attempt had been scuppered by a post-operative illness. Roger Jackson from the Egyptians was with me, we’d come to advise in the editing of the Gotta Let This Hen Out footage, shot that spring at the Marquee in London by a company named Jettisoundz that was based up coastal Lancashire.

But I was staring out to sea by myself that afternoon. Antiquated shapes were forming on the horizon - sea-creatures, flying boats, the conning towers of a submarine. I fell into a reverie digesting my sandwich: the hot strong tea seemed to heighten my senses and put me into a trance simultaneously. Suddenly a host of fishes appeared before me, parading on the beach before me in semi-human form like creatures from Alice In Wonderland. The Tench, the Barbel, the Bream, the Chubb and more flippered their way over the sand and the debris of summer up onto the promenade.

The Barbel and the Tench wore striped blazers and straw hats, like a grotesque vaudeville duo from some Edwardian end-of-pier show. Ebony canes jutted incongruously from their fins. The Bream dodged around behind the other fishes, picking their pockets and then waving their wallets in the air, leering gleefully. The Mullet came right up close to my face - too close - and gurned at me. The Flounder and the Chubb came on like renegade security heavies, menacing where they should protect…

…and ruling over them all was the Bass, a dodgy British school-teacher with a penchant for the unspeakable. But they all made their moves so cheerfully - shameless cartoon characters who mocked what remained of my ancestral Victorian boundaries. These fishes were grooving, baby, and if I was too uptight to groove with them, that was my loss.

I came back to consciousness as the sun sank into the sea, my empty cup beside me. In my notebook were the words to “Bass” more or less as I’ve sung them ever since. All that remained was for me to go back down south again and put a jaunty tune to the lyrics I’d written. When I took it to the Egyptians they made it more percussive, even coming up with a sampled deep-voiced “BASS!” for Morris to trigger when we played that song opening for REM on their “Green” tour a few years later. And it all began in Lytham St. Anne’s…

Lyrics

We're overheating in a small town world
We're overeating in a small town world
I hear the sound of several different crimes
The distant eel and the silver chimes
Lieutenant Hodges often said to me
"I see a shoal of them far out to sea"

A distant cormorant above the grey
It wheels in dots and then it falls away
A feather biro in a knotted clump
Performs a vixen with a feline hump
I wanna hold you in a solar globe
The way your body is beneath a robe

Bass, bass

The juicy flounder and the tender chub
Will swim around you when you leave the pub
Their mouths are open and they will not shut
Unless you kiss them all behind the hut
But don't go messing with a guy like Reg
He'll leave you gurgling behind the hedge

Bass, I'm talking about bass
Let me tell you about bass
You wanna ooze with a bass

The looming mullet and the wily bream
Are at the window with a quiet scream
The feisty barbel and the gruesome tench
Are decomposing on a yellow bench
There's something fluttering upon the sand
And all I wanna do is hold your hand

Bass, talking about a bass
Let me tell you about a bass
I wanna function with a bass

Because
He'd never make love to a loaf of bread
Unless of course he found one in his bed
Now frogs are reproducing on your back
And bubbles keep emerging from a crack
It's not a cormorant it's not a shag
It's only something in a plastic bag

<alternates>
Are decomposing on a wooden/broken/empty bench  26a
I wanna fuck you with a bass                   31a
So don't go cycling around the town            31.1a
He'll interfere with you and hang around       31.2a
I know it's nasty what the papers said         31.3a
But information happens to be read             31.4a
Now things go in and out of him like eels      31.5a
A bass responds to you the way he feels        31.6