Saturday Night Palsy

This article is about the song by TISM. For the medical condition, see Radial neuropathy.
"Saturday Night Palsy"
Single by TISM
from the album Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance
B-side Pus
Released January 1989
Format 7" single
Recorded May 1987-March 1988, Platinum Studios
Genre Alternative rock
Length 03:21
Label Musicland/Elvis Records
Writer(s) TISM
TISM singles chronology
I'm Interested In Apathy
(1988)		 Saturday Night Palsy
(1989)		 Martin Scorsese Is Really Quite A Jovial Fellow
(1989)

Saturday Night Palsy is a single by TISM. It was released off Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance (1988). It was their second single to have a film clip.

The title of the song is not an amalgam of the film Saturday Night Fever (1977) and medical condition palsy, but is a reference to radial neuropathy, commonly known as Saturday Night Palsy, a condition akin to falling asleep on your arm.

Song

The song seems to focus on one man who has the inability to decide on matters, particularly, in which manner to harm himself. The song continues through with various opposing scenarios offered by the man, but at the end nothing has been resolved. It is one of the more nonsensical songs offered by TISM which surprisingly became a wide hit.

The version of this song currently available differs from the recording originally released on vinyl and cassette in 1988. At some point before the song was released as a single, the lead vocal was mostly re-recorded. During this process the second line of the first verse was altered from the original "I want to shoot heroin through the eye" to "I want to shove a red-hot poker through the eye". All subsequent releases of the album (and all CD releases) contained the re-recorded version of the song.

Video

A video was made by Peter Bain-Hog which featured a handsome man spending his day getting ready to go out dancing. Eventually he finds himself outside of a TISM concert and denied entry, at the end of the video, he is so dejected by the experience that he commits suicide by hanging himself in a nearby alley.

The video was intended to parody other similar video clips of the time which showed good looking people dressing up, going out and enjoying themselves, however the final scene was cut from many broadcasts "in a superb act of bowdlerisation, thus rendering the clip exactly the same as every other slickly produced clip of groovy models having a good time."[1]

Trivia

When the song was released, TISM were invited to perform the song on popular Australian variety show Hey Hey It's Saturday. As the song began, the seven members performing the song were joined by seven more and before the song ended, a further fourteen, for a total of 28 so-called band members.[1]

Track list

Side A

  1. "Saturday Night Palsy"

Side B

  1. "Pus"

References

  1. 1 2 TISM - The History of This Is Serious Mum (1989) (2000). Archived on 2000-12-06 by the Internet Archive. Retrieved on 2007-10-16.

External links

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