RIP Mark E. Smith

i think he, they get it? i mean they would have got and did get far far worse.

grotesque so otm as an album.

“The grotesque peasants stalk the land
And deep down inside you know everybody wants to like big companies...”

Cheers for the heads up Neil S

Jesus Christ, "C n' C/ Stop Mithering"!!!!!!! You could be here all night quoting from that one.

"ted rogers brains burn in hell"

posted on the other thread

as someone who always feels a little bit weird abt public grief over celebrities I have to say I feel fucking devastated and honestly don;t know what to do with myself

an inferno of a human being and a monster poet who shaped my perspective from a young age and more than any other artist hot wired my brain and inspired me to keep moving sideways

I'm so full of gratitude to him for refusing to ever rest in peace. I hope that now he can.

Fucking Echo + the Bunnymen never put Ted Rogers brains in hell.

Currently blasting Bend Sinister and marvelling once more at how brilliant it is.

a new face in heaven

haha are you sure? he might be having more fun in hell

always amused at the anecdote about Mark blasting James Murphy for basing "Losing My Edge" off a Von Sudenfed track (even though the VS track came out a few years later), when in reality it was LCD ripping off Killing Joke who were inspired by The Fall

i can't believe there is never going to be another fall record

what the fuck

Fucking Echo + the Bunnymen never put Ted Rogers brains in hell.

i can't believe there is never going to be another fall record

what the fuck

― Empire Burl Ives (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:16 (fifty-six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

think they have another record in the can actually

also may he live on in an endless run of spuriously sourced live recordings released on labels no one has ever heard of, as above so below

This recent interview was bit of the balm I needed

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/24/final-interview-with-mark-e-smith-the-fall-people-still-cross-the-road-from-me

hating Elton John until the end, good man

I thought he'd live another 20 years in spite of the reports. This blows.

yeah obv he has looked so awful for the past year and I get it that we should have seen it coming but I just figured he would ride out what ever this illness was and keep doing his thing

that philip k dick bit hahaha

"Arnie gets it"

Might be time to retire the display name.

"You wouldn't even know the sun was up unless there was a press release on it"
was just getting into this site too
http://annotatedfall.doomby.com/

"whaddaya mean what's it mean?"

LOLz. MES was so hilarious.

Not much I can say, I'm in a weird space. Just checking in. But all that work survives and will, and Neil S "the best thing this terrible country has produced in the last 60 years" otm, otm otm for fucking ever.

Is it important for you to remain angry?
Yeah. People still cross the road from me; I’ve still got that. I can clear a pub when I want to. It’s a talent.

scrolled through his discography wondering what to play. eventually got to 'frightened'. it has to be this

LOLz. MES was so hilarious.

xxp "hate's not your enemy, love's your enemy"

Why didn't you take better care of yourself, Mark?? I knew this was coming. My favorite band ever. Even love the crappy Fall records. No more Fall records! No more concerts! No more interviews! I will miss you horribly. I feel like it's the end of my youth. :(

I come and stand at every door
But no-one hears my silent plea
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead for I am dead
I need no fruit nor even rice
I need no meat nor even bread
And I need nothing for myself
When children die they do not grow
I woke one day to ash in light
My eyes grew dim my eyes grew bright
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And scattered swirling in the wind
I need no fruit nor even spice
I need no sweet or even bread
And I need nothing for myself

https://img.discogs.com/1RBrttjKInfUguZxH7kn1RD8I1M=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/A-9457-1220655566.jpeg.jpg

xxp murder all bush monkeys

Why didn't you take better care of yourself, Mark?? I knew this was coming. My favorite band ever. Even love the crappy Fall records. No more Fall records! No more concerts! No more interviews! I will miss you horribly. I feel like it's the end of my youth. :(

xxp murder all bush monkeys

An Easy Rider coot
Grabbed the edge of my coat
Said: 'You're too smart for here'
I said: 'I'll see the manager'

The young black kids get screwed up the worst
They go over to the Hampstead houses
In the English system they implicitly trust
See the A&R civil servants
They get a sex thrill out of a sixteenth of Moroccan

An Easy Rider coot
Grabbed the edge of my coat
Said: 'You're too smart for here'
I said: 'I'll see the manager'

Comic timing is perfect.

that thread about best musical experiences of 2017, btw. i gave some answer about a busker but this is the real answer

Listening to The Fall's 'Dedication Not Medication' I stumble across the Freemasons' Central Lodge and gaze up at it in horror

— Louis Jagger (@louisjagger) June 13, 2017

just listened to it again. it is lore

from Killdozer via FB

"Mark E. Smith once told Killdozer that our live set was too long, and advised the following formula: "there are three of you, so you should play nine songs."

R.I.P., Wise One."

His downfall was a blonde girl
But that's none of your business

Sometimes life is like a new bar,
Plastic seats, beer below par,
Food with no taste, music grates,
I'm living too late.
I'm living too late.

Once talking was my favourite while,
But now I know a conversation's end before it's done.
Maybe I'm living too long.

Thanks, Mark.

A great anecdote from Roy Montgomery

True story:
(fanboy nobody me somehow gets himself invited to RAK studios early 1982 while The Cure are recording Pornography and this conversation takes place)
Robert Smith: If you aren't doing anything next weekend come to a party. Siouxsie will be there. I think you should meet her.
Me: I can't. I'm going to see The Fall play in Bristol.
RS: Fair enough.

http://thefall.org/news/980222.html

He saw The Verve and concluded: "God help us if there's a war." At the Phoenix Festival the other year, he looked on as his band were introduced to Lou Reed, and he just thought: sad. What Mark E Smith does is move on, away from the past. You should just get over it. Recently, he went to an exclusive do at the Kensington Roof Gardens, and while the rest of his party mingled, Mark went over to the fountain and began bowing and paying homage. Someone asked what he was doing, and so he told them: this was the very spot, in 1972, where Lou Reed kicked the shit out of David Bowie.

how old are the stars really?

"I come and stand at every door"

nice but he didn't actually write any of that, that's a poem by a Turkish poet that Pete Seeger worked on.

that’s true. his austere delivery is beautiful tho.

that entire violent album (levitate) is extraordinary.

I loved that song he did w/ Mouse on Mars as Von Sudenfed with the lyric about Sven Vath pissing his bed. Flooded it was called.

sending the best to ilxors who will be much more upset than me and i am fucking gutted so...

what a fucking hero.

I loved that song he did w/ Mouse on Mars as Von Sudenfed with the lyric about Sven Vath pissing his bed. Flooded it was called.

Tom D made me read all of ...Stop Mithering. Jesus Christ, what a mind he had.

Mark, not Tom lol

that entire violent album (levitate) is extraordinary.

― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:04 (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it is one of my favourite albums of all time and i've only ever heard it off youtube, low-quality and fragmented (like the album itself tbf). i think he got closer to representing the madness and magic of existence than any other musician i can think of

wish they'd reissue it mind

watching perverted by language bis. what a beautiful and fucking funny correct man.

Didn't he once have a violent altercation with some pretentious twat from a Creation indie band. And he called them a bunch of "crusty cunts". This is from deep memory, but I remember thinking thank fuck he exists.

Didn't he once have a violent altercation with some pretentious twat from a Creation indie band. And he called them a bunch of "crusty cunts". This is from deep memory, but I remember thinking thank fuck he exists.

what’s a computer.

only saw the Fall twice ('85 and '92), but I'm sure I bought all the records '83-94 or so. RIP you wacko.

it was important to me that they were contemptuous of gender as a notion. who cares? smith seemed to say. and not in a good way.

It has just come to me, it was that guy from The House of Love, but not the one that looked like a paedophile supply teacher, the one looked a typical goth.

*sigh*

He was an absolute fucking titan in my musical world. i dont want to go to be for work tomorrow, i just wanna listen to The Fall all night

Terry Bickers, and his band was Levitation.

current playlist:

c'n'c-s mithering
winter
winter 2
Shift-Work
Bill Is Dead
Various Times
Dr. Buck's Letter
Paint Work

o god, winter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnwgjoTq1PM

You're history
You've quit existation
You're green grub

xp that's a good list sleeve

RIP. so many people have already said anything i would try to say, but far better than i would have. I was just listening to This Nation's Saving Grace this morning. Can't even be coherent about this right now. Fuck.

Checklist:

I never leave home without: (5)
1. Sunglasses - I wear them all year around, and seem to need them more often, it’s a habit
Music - cassettes, CDs
3. Palm Pilot - it’s my lifeline. I think it’s my P.A.’s computer, (6)
She rules my diary and I download it
4. Mobile phone
5. Amex card - they made such a fuss about giving it to me but I spend more time getting it turned down!

I was in the realm of the essence of Tong.

you don't deserve rock and roll

hey mark

livin' too late

https://youtu.be/6m2lfk4Bm34

It hasn't hit yet, but it's starting

This is a good listen even if you're quite familiar imo

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052r0l5

hey mark

Barbara Manning did a great cover of that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxv1w-x21pY

An academic kneaded his chin
Sat in the dust of some cheap magazines
His academic rust could not burn them up

A small alteration of the past can turn time into space
Small changes can alter more than a mere decade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpWVk3h2SA8&feature=share

he looks so wonderful there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMJJmdlZoPw

that's my number one LBI

maybe... of course

Oh goes without saying!

I can stumble through yt till the sun comes up. Probably asleep before that. But damn.

just listened to Garden, now cranking "Two-Face!"

All the English groups
Act like peasants with free milk
On a route
On a route to the loot
To candy mountain
Five wacky English proletariat idiots
Californians always think of sex
Or think of death
Five hundred girl deaths
A Mexico revenge, it's stolen land
They really get it off on
"Don't hurt me please"
Rapist fill the TVs
And the secret of their lives
Is S.E.X..

50,000 fall fans cant be wrong.

fuck, i'm just seeing this news.

i started reading the fall just the other night; weird timing (not sure if that's what the band are named after anyway). and i've been listening to the big singles compilation a lot lately, listening to a lot of the fall era that i'd always neglected ('86 - '02). so he has been on my mind quite a bit recently. RIP Mark E Smith.

<3

Trying not to be too sentimental because MES would have hated that. Thanks for the music, fuckface.

Mark would want us all on the Sting should retire thread instead

My favorite band... somehow the thought of whatever posthumous new Fall product emerges fills me with sadness, because I'll buy it knowing that's it (except for whatever live shows/old tapes Cherry Red or whoever decides to dredge(r) up), where with all the other albums that could be the last one you didn't know.

I loved the directness with which he ground a path through the preciousness and anxiety of indie music making in the UK. Like he was the only one who actually knew what he wanted, while everyone else nervously looked at each other for some kind of reaction or validation.

excellent point MK.

it's true that he made the world a better place when he called Mumford & Sons a "mongoloid Irish folk band."

Karl it's always been my understanding that he did in fact take the band name from the Camus book, but I don't have a primary source for that at hand

we need a thread with just MES stories imo

It was clear in the window eye
The brick outlined the blue sky
And I had to go round the gay graduates in the toilets
And Good King Harry was there
Fucking Jimmy Savile

"that entire violent album (levitate) is extraordinary."

yeah I really loved that album. it felt like they were on some other plane there, and to an extent I don't feel like they ever really got back there musically. it's an abstract, weird album; missing winner kind of sucked, marshall was pretty good, everything since has been good but definitely the same musical template to a degree. Maybe Levitate was fueled by some other weird drugs. I don't know.

Mat Osman‏ @matosman

I have a Mark E Smith story actually. Back in the day Suede got asked to support The Fall on a couple of dates. To a man we were massive fans and VERY excited to be asked. Everyone told us he could be rough on support bands but he was great. Lots of time to soundcheck. (1)

He was friendly, helpful, told us to come straight to him with any problem. The shows were great, his crowd were great, The Fall were great. On our way home in the van we were listening to Richard Skinner and he had an interview with Mark. We listened in intently. (2)

Especially when Skinner asked, "Do you like any of the new bands who are calling you an influence." Mark said "Like who?" Skinner asked "Well, like Suede." There was a perfectly timed beat. "Never heard of them."

loooool

It was just me
The hoover
And the OAP

Btw that living too late verse quoted itt, those words go through my mind all the time

Tony Friel was reading The Fall and took the name from the title. My favourite band; this hasn't sunk in properly yet. Had been expecting/dreading it for years, tbh.

The Fall were everything to me

Can't bring myself to listen to any records yet somehow, but following on in the spirit of Mark being funny as fuck, anyone who hasn't already should check out the gigography section of thefall.org. Many many shows include various intros, asides and changed lyrics. And the later ones are just as amazing and strange as the ones from 81 or whenever.

A few choice ones:

"If only you could come from the Nynex gymnasium in your baseball jacket and comprehend. If only." (amended lyrics to "10 Houses of Eve")

"This is the last time you will ever see me reading lyrics again. Don't trust me. I love the carpet of Astoria 2. It's the only carpet that's worse than my house." (amended lyrics to "Spencer Must Die")

"I am Mark E Smith, these are my folk festival boys. Looking out for a grant. One! From the state culture 2000 of Suffolk."

"You walk into glass crystal mazes as the S.S. Viking regiment did. Into black. Into space. Into (...). You walk down into valley of kings. Out of glass. Out of space. In seventies disco lights." (amended lyrics to "Way Round")

"Now, who wrote the GM Vauxhall advert? Was it a, Neville Wilding? Was it 2, Julia Nagle? Or was it c, Richard and Judy? Or was it d? And the answer is e and f put together." (amended lyrics to "Touch Sensitive")

RIP

mes was on a coldcut record over acid house, right? the fall also covered a trucking song. he slagged it all but he quietly loved a lot too. music anyway.

Aw, MES. The Coldcut record is below. Friend who posted it said ‘oh look, he invented LCD Soundsystem!’

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gOmwVOTfh8g&t=64s

Andy Zax @andyzax
I would never ordinarily advocate or endorse such a thing, but I feel as if the best tribute one could pay to Mark E Smith tonight would be to find a band playing in a club somewhere, wander onstage, and turn the guitarist’s amp down.

Priory – that's a superb topic / thought. One of the things that were very important to me were how their live shows were often nothing like the records. I still feel aggrieved when groups make every effort to sound exactly like their record releases. The shifting and improvised lyrics were a hilarious and brilliant aspect of that. He was doing it in Manchester last year – commenting at the audience. Can't remember what it was, but i seem to have given myself a massive hangover by staying up till half three drinking and watching Fall vids.

Now up eating cereal and listening to Last Orders and Stepping Out on Live at the Electric Circus.

'Everyone's in prison or in the army, all sincere, all phoney'

a good thing – i'll still be working out and being delighted and astonished by his lyrics till the day i die.

"I think I'll drop out
Become a no man
And live my rules

But I'm the sort that gets out of the bath with a dirty face."

Ha ha, from the same song ('Various Times')

'A good case for
the systems
we like
we get'

(that from 'The Present' - the past is a camp guard in berlin, The future - 'the beer is so weak, since they got rid of time round here' aaaand, 'The Lathe of Heaven', Smith's ref to UKlG, who pre-deceased him by a day)

Pink press threat!

MAN WITH CHIP: I'm riding third class on a one-class train.
I'm set at nought like a wimpey crane.

I'm a pink prole threat.

GENT IN SAFE-HOUSE: Get out the pink press threat file
and Um-brrrptzzap the subject.

MAN WITH CHIP: It's de-louse, recluse time

(now v. bitter) When I get to the safe house
Hanging rhyme
Hang this crummy blitz trad. by its neck

Pink press threat
I escaped the pink prole effect

GENT IN SAFE-HOUSE: It's a new prole art threat,
So it's recluse, safehouse time

NARRATOR: Then the clan began
Give them nail files soon
Then the clan began
Agenda Item One

Pink press threat
Get out the pink press threat file
New prole art, the subject
It's safe-house, safe-house time

Everybody hears the hum at 3 a.m.
But in the safe-house, it's not around

Pink press threat
Get out the wet lib file
New prole art, the subject
Safe-house, safe-house tone

That clan has got away with 100 years of sheer brilliance until now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAob4ONlBmo

now listening to the post-nearly man. hanging out with the grand fella

can’t believe i didn’t post this earlier:

https://youtube/wygQmJ59E4Q

and slates is amazing.

shouldn't have listened to 'bill is dead' today, too much

it just goes to show what an amazing artist he was that all the FB posts about his death on my feed have a completely different song attached. more than anyone, he was persistently brilliant.

modernity, moderninity
water lane zero one seven one fifty five double nine
dream sat may
tents and tomatoes at Blackpool
where Jimmy Bloomfield has been brought back to host
Jousts In Moderninity
one of the many football grounds
have been converted to hold this revived sport

NTS doing an MES tribute show this morning https://www.nts.live/ currently playing "Service" which is making me feel sad

Fizzles's link fixed (for me at least): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wygQmJ59E4Q

Always loved this bit from Winter 2:

The mad kid had 4 lights, the average is 2.5 lights
The mediocre has 2 lights, the sign of genius is three lights
There's one light left, that's the one light
That's the science law

listening to that track right now, the Peel session version is also great

I live in the same suburb of Manchester as MES, feels appropriate to share some sightings "in the wild"...

A few years back I was having lunch in a local Italian restaurant with my wife and parents and spotted Mark with Elena on the pavement outside, animatedly admiring an immaculate 1980 type Honda Civic.

He was also a regular in The Foresters Arms pub just up the road, owned by nearby brewery Joseph Holt. This determinedly local boozer has invitingly frosted windows and a big sign next to the front door: "NO CHILDREN, NO EXCEPTIONS".

The last time I saw him was about 8 months ago, alone in another pub, sitting at a tall table with his notebook just having a drink and writing. I had my daft/lovely medium format film camera with me and was *this close* to asking if I could take his picture, but didn't want to disturb his train of thought (or get a telling off).

a thing i loved about that song is the line

“two white clouds cross the sky
look like krakens”

which with extraordinary economy and strangeness conveys the world of a frozen submarine and subterranean landscape.

xpost about winter.

bill those are lovely sightings/observations - thanks.

(and thanks for fixing the link, tim)

the fall have the unique distinction of being the only band i can't start playing and have on in the background while i try to do something else - i just have to listen to mark and his lyrics, it just feels wrong not to pay attention

rip you hilarious brilliant arsehole

listening to that track right now, the Peel session version is also great

It's the best version.

Just picking up on Mark Riley's show last night via iplayer - pretty much broke on his show around 8:30 so its well yeah.

xp that session is, for me, the highlight of what is pretty much uniformly pure gold, the Complete Peel Sessions box set:

2-1 Deer Park 4:26
2-2 Look, Know 5:05
2-3 Winter 8:03
2-4 Who Makes The Nazis? 2:54

https://www.discogs.com/The-Fall-The-Complete-Peel-Sessions-1978-2004/release/530824

It's funny, in the past few weeks, I've been listening to the later and "lesser" Fall albums and have been really enjoying them, after not having listened to the Fall for a long time. I'm liking the more casual vibe on them, where there doesn't seem this pressure to make "great" albums. Lord knows I've listened to Hex and This Nation's too many times. I really like The Real New Fall LP.

my one sighting of MES in the wild was him going into a bookies on the lower broughton road in salford ca 1989

My one sighting, of the whole lot of them, they were walking down the Great West Road in the direction of Island's Peter Square studios (they might not have been going there, just I knew where that was as I'd done some work here in the past).

Anyway, it looked exactly like the first bit of the "Eat Yrself Fitter" video. I went "Blimey, it's the Fall" but I was alone so hey.

St Peter's Square.. But you knew that, right?

I once served MES when I was working at the Music and Video Exchange bookshop in Notting Hill. He bought a copy of Rudolph Grey's oral biography of Ed Wood, Nightmare of Ecstasy. He was incredibly polite.

Had a piss alongside him once.

go on...

There's not much more to the story tbh!

well there goes my hope of writing the first anatomically-correct mark e smith erotic fiction :(

i am damo suzuki's wang

i was once being served next to him in a pub in derby, and I nodded, and after saying 'all right' he said 'i love derby, you know - there's nothing to do here.'

MES OTM

Perfect.

When I'm stuck in traffic or simply trying to walk along a pavement somewhere, I often think about something he once said in an interview about pavements and roads in England - in comparison to the US and Europe I think - and how they were 'designed for 15th century dwarves'.

lol fizzles that is awesome

yes

It's funny, in the past few weeks, I've been listening to the later and "lesser" Fall albums and have been really enjoying them, after not having listened to the Fall for a long time. I'm liking the more casual vibe on them, where there doesn't seem this pressure to make "great" albums. Lord knows I've listened to Hex and This Nation's too many times. I really like The Real New Fall LP.

― Fake Sam's Club (I M Losted), Thursday, January 25, 2018 5:56 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel like I've read in a couple different places, the Hanley book was one of them but feel like there was an interview at some point too that confirmed that there was really never the pressure to make great albums but that the steady flow of releases could be looked at sort of like diary entries, like whether or not the inspiration was 100% there, his work ethic was such that every period would be documented. Not that there wasn't also some financial reason behind it but I think he just had this endless flow of words and ideas that was to some extent beyond his control and he was going to get them on record no matter what.

"Real New Fall LP" is really the last one I spent a lot of time with. It's really good. "Sparta" is such a jam. "Recovery Kit" probably one of my favorite Fall tunes full stop. Plus it's got "Green Eyed....ahhhhhhhhh Loco Man"

suppose I should check out the ones after that as well ??

Listening to YFOC this morning and tempted to post so many lyrics.

He is the only lyricist whose lyrics I can read for pleasure independent of the music, one of few lyricists I would describe as a poet, and almost definitely the one lyricist who would be most upset at being called a poet.

I had two broken bottles
And I had two brown bottles
And a white nose as I entered
Five years of confinement
This is the story that enfolded
As it went on into the sea
Of unseen footage
And unseen facts
Unseen refinement
Unseen extension
Chicory tip in a shopping center
With a soundtrack again

xpost frogbs absolutely, there is so much greatness after Real New Fall LP. Like I know it comes off as challops but a lot of his late work is on par with the best of the "classic" era.

I feel like imago has done a POX or two of late-era stuff on the main Fall thread that were very much OTM as a general best-of. "Loadstones" and "Weather Report 2" are top tier, just brilliant stuff. "Jetplane", "Couples vs. Jobless mid-30s". Just so much great stuff.

stuff...stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBUiPs1PxKo

YFOC is too great to really split up but here's my post-YFOC mixtape, updated to include NFE

Fol De Rol
Taking Off
Dedication Not Medication
Greenway
Couples vs Jobless Mid 30s
Mister Rode
Monocard
No Respects Rev.
Auto Chip 2014-2016
Jetplane
Jam Song
Loadstones

^^^all incredible. "this is new, fresh!"

by the way, in terms of all-time all-fucking-time greatest lyrics, death juxtaposed with the blackest of humor:

I look to the past then the left
The whirlpools cascade over my face
And I watched Murder She Wrote
At least five times

this song is killing me right now

why am I listening to this today, at work

that's one song i've not been able to listen to yet, see also Bonkers In Phoenix for some reason

WR2 is undoubtedly among his greatest works though yeah, and a completely unprecedented piece of music in general

WR2 is fantastic, and so is Bonkers, though they're both on different plains all together. Former quite a tough listen today.

gonna be a while before I can listen to Bonkers

well the thing about Bonkers is that Smith's presence on it is that of the mischievous wraith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOZOAeQKlJk

"Dr Boring had a relationship with the drug company too
And I'm half-associated with the Softness Group PLC
On TV today somebody claimed their dog
Had been molested by a textile chemist

But life just bounces so don't you get worried at all
Sometimes life just bounces so don't you get worried at all"

what is the story behind Bonkers in Phoenix anyway. why does it sound like that

brix and the gang wrote a heartbreakingly beautiful ballad and mark e smith rambled about festival parking over the top of it while messing around with the equaliser

i.e. it's the best thing ever

the sound fx are genuinely amazing and perfect

he always fuckin knew what he was doing

i'm listening to it now obv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNjlAwEkZ7s

xp :)

xps

'Always different, always the same,' as their champion in radio land, John Peel, described them - but there is plenty of room for variation within that. Brix has brought her sense of melody back with her, even if it is sabotage by her ex on the albums wierdest track, Bonkers In Phoenix, in which her part is speeded up and dive bombed by volleys of ugly synthesizer. The song is about rock festivals and Smith just wanted to get across, 'what it's actually like at them for someone like me anyway. It's always bands playing at half-pace with people shouting'. Already, and perhaps this could only happen in the wonderful and frightening world of The Fall, a folk group has asked permission to do an a cappella version.

http://www.thefall.org/gigography/95mar15.html

That's perfect, thx sleeve

he always fuckin knew what he was doing

Obviously there are countless examples of this in action but listening to "Hotel Bloedel" right now and honing in on his violin playing and this thought is really resonating.

“If it’s me and yer granny on bongos, it’s The Fall.”

somehow never ran across this quote

his music brought me so much pure FUN and joy.

and a break from cold crappy reality

this feels sad and unreal. glad i got to see the fall back in 2005 or so. i wasn't sure what to expect but they sounded as great as they'd ever sounded to me on any of their records. easily one of the 10 best shows i've ever seen. still vividly remember buying my first album in my late teens -- wonderful & frightening -- and just not knowing what to make of it. many, many listens later, i still don't, really. MES's lyrics feel as deep and rich and worthy of study as any pop lyrics i can think of. he was way ahead of us all. rip.

From the beginning up to Bend Sinister is where the real gold is for me, and the two albums after aren't too bad. There's been some very good stuff from 2000-present, but the '90s were pretty weak for 'em - particularly 1995-1998.

rong :)

I can hear MES's voice in some of today's newspaper front page headlines:

- Furore Over Groping Scandal
- Trump Hails New Churchill
- Cop Probe Urged
- Cloned Macaques Make History
- Eat Curry To Beat Dementia

that last one accompanied by a derisory chuckle

I once served MES when I was working at the Music and Video Exchange bookshop in Notting Hill. He bought a copy of Rudolph Grey's oral biography of Ed Wood, Nightmare of Ecstasy. He was incredibly polite.

Ah man, hero -- that's one of my favorite books.

I was a big Nick Cave and Pogues fan when this Cave/McGowan/MES interview came out, but I was in possession of Bend Sinister and still trying to figure out what to make of it.

http://thequietus.com/articles/09277-mark-e-smith-nick-cave-shane-macgowan-nme-interview

And this little sub-rant crystallized his work for me -

NC: And your songs are very deceptive Mark, in the way they're sung. They may appear at times like streams of consciousness but that's deceptive.

MES: One thing that really annoys me is that stream of consciousness thing. I wouldn't let on to it normally, but it annoys the shit out of me. I put a lot of hard sweat into them, I think about them. They have an inner logic to me so I don't really care who understands them or not. I see writing and singing as two very different things. My attitude is if you can't deliver it like a garage band, fuck it. That's one thing that's never been explored, delivering complex things in a very straightforward rock 'n' roll way. My old excuse is if I'd wanted to be a poet, I'd have been a poet.

"if you can't deliver it like a garage band, fuck it" is one of those slogans that's repeated in my head ever since. Made me respect the possibilities for what could be communicated with a song, beyond the classic themes.

I love that interview, arguing w/McGowan abt Nietzsche lol

I can hear MES's voice in some of today's newspaper front page headlines:

- Furore Over Groping Scandal
- Trump Hails New Churchill
- Cop Probe Urged
- Cloned Macaques Make History
- Eat Curry To Beat Dementia

Dragnet For Gun Blast Man.

man those headlines are really good
i have been enjoying reading the tidbits and interviews that show how singular MES was, lyrics too

i never really got into the fall when i was young because i found their catalogue impenetrable without help and no one to ask in the dark ages. i got 458489 B Sides at some point and enjoyed it but then kinda drifted from rock music and never went back to find more about their catalogue until recently. i have been sent playlists that i know are probably excellent (thanks jon!) and dipped my toe in but i am not a regular spotify user and therefore i still feel stymied about where to begin! is this the essential nature of the fall and MES? seems like it :) RIP

i think the greatest hits are a fine place to start. that two-disc the fall rough trade compilation (the one with the red cover) is the one that got me into them. the 50,000 fall fans can't be wrong compilation (also two discs) is also good and maybe easier to find.

note: i am not asking for help now because i think everyone has their own experience with a band like this
mine is a very long journey apparently

i always figured there would be fall CDs out there for me to buy since so many people loved them so much and liked different parts of their catalogue

50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong was my gateway after years of not quite getting it

That was a sort of good gateway era, you had the Totally Wired comp and also around that time a really great new album (Real New Fall LP)

The Fall is like a Magic Eye poster, you stare at it forever and it looks like a big mess then suddenly some form pops out at you and you become obsessed

Derisive YouTube comment that accidentally encapsulates everything I love about the Fall:

"The Fall aren't so much a band, more a well-intentioned 1970's Manchester Council unemployment initiative that has snowballed out of control."

— Tobi Haslett (@TobiHaslett) January 24, 2018

this radio tribute right now is going well

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/77083

The Fall is like a Magic Eye poster, you stare at it forever and it looks like a big mess then suddenly some form pops out at you and you become obsessed

*wild applause*

I don't want to get too sentimental about him, and I don't want to forget how cruel he could be (that part of Prince has already been written out of history)

but I think the reason that so many people like myself who have been big fans and dabbled in making underground music react so strongly to him is the sheer guts he had.
i've been in a few bands, i've written professionally as an entertainment journalist and always meant to try something more personal and substantial

but the fact is that i never had the guts, the real nerve it takes to fully devote myself to something the way Mark E Smith did, to forgo a stable life, stable relationships, having a child, my health, sanity or whatever else he sacrificed in pursuit of his vision of The Fall (the band as an idea, a principle to him)....Can you imagine what it took in these last years? To the point where he was doing shows in a wheelchair? How much of his life he ruined because of The Fall?

It's one thing to be Phish or the Dead, living in 4 star hotels and planes and buses, but for the Fall (or Pere Ubu) it's still shuffling into vans, loading into shitty clubs all over the world, getting enough scratch to make it through the next six months....

(not to mention i wouldn't have been capable of anything that great, but that's another issue)

D Wolk wrote sumthin

https://pitchfork.com/features/afterword/the-glorious-savagery-of-the-falls-mark-e-smith/

i am a proud Brix-era Fall fan. that's my Fall. Perverted to Oranj/Frenz. i fell so hard for Cruisers Creek. it was everything i ever wanted in a song. it felt like a gift. since it came out i have played that song a thousand times. it's funny cuz i bought that Speed Trials comp in 1984 to hear Swans/Sonic Youth/Live Skull and the thing that sounded the weirdest to me out of all those New York scuzz bands was the Fall doing "Tempo House". and obviously that was worlds away from what i would hear in "Cruisers Creek" a year later. but that five year run of records and singles...that's the best band for me. the 12-inch version of "No Bulbs" is some sort of rock pinnacle for me. it really and truly does not get any better than that. and its a friggin' high standard which is why i don't get excited by a lot of stuff i hear now and get cranky like MES and just end up wanting to listen to Can and Eddie Cochran records.

will love MES forever for saying this in that quietus interview:

I respect Dylan. The only good thing I've heard of his is that LP he did with George Harrison and Roy Orbison.

pic.twitter.com/fVMznDerWq

— Brix Smith Start (@Brixsmithstart) January 25, 2018

xxp scott if you ever feel like it you should check out Cerebral Caustic and Light User Syndrome, the two albums they made when Brix returned briefly to the fold

scott that was gen my period as well

Oh! The Fall... I only have this excerpt:
Have you ever fallen in love, slowly, measure by measure, without realizing it until you were over the moon? And, surprisingly, the object of your love was once hated and dismissed? That's my relationship with The Fall.

I was 17 when I first heard a Fall song, and I absolutely couldn't stand it. "What is this racket?", I thought, and didn't think twice. Staring at the cover of "The Wonderful And Frightening World" at Al Bum's in Amherst, MA, I just wasn't ready to process what I was hearing. I was just starting to become the man whose head and music tastes expanded, but I was far from being in a place where I could appreciate what Mark was doing. And so I retreated to my safe world of college rock. Along the way, I ran into many references to The Fall, such as the Jazz Butchers' "Southern Mark Smith" and Barbara Mannings' "Mark E Smith & Brix", and comments in interviews, reviews and books. The Fall was a hovering presence in my world, just out of my vision but always in the back of my mind.

Fast forward a decade and my dear friend, a rabid Fall fan, was determined to sway me. She made me a tape of the "458489 A Side" compilation and I played it in my car, as I commuted to work and ran errands. It wasn't nearly as strange as I remembered. Ever so slowly, the tape crept into my regular listening pattern and my thinking began to change. "I like these singles", and off I went to acquire the CD. It was a bit like the first drink of an alcoholic. "I don't need more than this", and yet within a few months I found myself picking up the Beggars Banquet catalog. So many gems beyond the singles - album cuts! b-sides! So many strange sounds but all packaged in a veil of familiar tropes. "But the early stuff is really challenging", thought I, and my dear friend gave me a tape of "Palace Of Swords Reversed". Again, at first I found a few things I enjoyed, but there was the nagging persistence to play it again and again, until I had to find a copy for myself. "I don't need more than this, well, except maybe another compilation from the same era ("Hip Priests And Kamerads"), and maybe a live album ("The Legendary Chaos Tape")". That last one introduced me to the brilliance that is "Spectre Vs Rector", and then I found that the first two albums were tough to find on CD at the time. Which made them more appealing to my collector-scum side. So I tracked them down, and then slowly filled in the rest of the back catalog.

I stopped at "Extricate" because I had found the 90s albums inconsistent. But over the next few years I found more I liked, such as "The Chiselers" single, and I started to trade for tapes of the Peel sessions containing songs that blew my mind like "Glam Racket Star", and my heart grew three sizes that day. And then I saw them perform at the Middle East in Cambridge, the night before it all blew up in New York City. I picked up the 90s compilations "A Past Gone Mad" and "A World Bewitched" and realized just how wrong I had been about that decade's work. That was the final blow, I was just mad for them to the point where they eclipsed everything else. Days passed where I just listened to The Fall. When I met people who appreciated the Fall, I instantly liked them a whole lot more.

Strong albums in the 00's followed, along with an excellent reissue series full of fascinating previously unreleased material. "Room To Live" got the expanded release it deserved! "Fall In A Hole" out on CD without the pops and clicks! I saw The Fall again in 2003, when Mark was at the height of his powers. "Blindness" came out, every bit as great, driving and relevant as the early singles. I learned more about Mark's influences - 50s rockabilly, 60s garage rock and, in recent years, krautrock. Hearing the source material in no way diminished my view of the unique amalgam of sounds that The Fall create. The only artist I can compare with Mark is James Brown - both were able to mold any backing band into their vision, both treated voice-as-instrument, both unyielding in their views.

I'm listening to the Red Box compilation, the only one that does justice to the breadth and depth of Mark's work. I still find things I missed in all my previous listening, and expect to do so the rest of my life.

will love MES forever for saying this in that quietus interview:

I respect Dylan. The only good thing I've heard of his is that LP he did with George Harrison and Roy Orbison.

The Fall is like a Magic Eye poster, you stare at it forever and it looks like a big mess then suddenly some form pops out at you and you become obsessed

50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong is probably my favorite compilation title ever

Adding myself to the list of people who never fully got the Fall. I'd honestly been kicking around the idea of diving back in recently. Guess this will have to be that time. It's been good to read everybody's memories on this thread.

50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong is probably my favorite compilation title ever

but what about the elvis one

that's what makes the Fall one so good

"bill is dead" as incidental music on The One Show just now

frogbs gets it

i wonder what normal people are making of this, how a singer with a band with 3 top 40 singles is getting so much coverage.

(two are obvious, i had to look up the third - Telephone Thing snuck in at number 40)

((also, probably more people know the car advert music and the final score music without knowing who it is))

normal people :)

Was waiting for Geeta's piece

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/01/25/580606173/mark-e-smith-was-an-uncompromising-and-essential-voice-from-musics-fringe

i always thought it was funny "blindess" was car commercial since one of the first lyrics is i was walking down the street

I don't want to get too sentimental about him, and I don't want to forget how cruel he could be (that part of Prince has already been written out of history)

but I think the reason that so many people like myself who have been big fans and dabbled in making underground music react so strongly to him is the sheer guts he had.
i've been in a few bands, i've written professionally as an entertainment journalist and always meant to try something more personal and substantial

but the fact is that i never had the guts, the real nerve it takes to fully devote myself to something the way Mark E Smith did, to forgo a stable life, stable relationships, having a child, my health, sanity or whatever else he sacrificed in pursuit of his vision of The Fall (the band as an idea, a principle to him)....Can you imagine what it took in these last years? To the point where he was doing shows in a wheelchair? How much of his life he ruined because of The Fall?

It's one thing to be Phish or the Dead, living in 4 star hotels and planes and buses, but for the Fall (or Pere Ubu) it's still shuffling into vans, loading into shitty clubs all over the world, getting enough scratch to make it through the next six months....

(not to mention i wouldn't have been capable of anything that great, but that's another issue)

too tired (and sad) to flesh this out right now but "put energy above form" isn't quite right i don't think: he had a ferocious (if highly idiosyncratic and self-evolved) sense of form

(two are obvious, i had to look up the third - Telephone Thing snuck in at number 40)

it was free range that hit 40, not telephone thing.

Was gonna say..

"he had a ferocious (if highly idiosyncratic and self-evolved) sense of form"

just reading the lyrics on a page without the music and you definitely see that right away.

i rly like the balance of geeta’s piece - it contains the cruelty, which was important and good. he was an extraordinarily funny and often very kind and polite man, generous too. but yes. things broke down and “difficulty” could also be “damage”.

on another note, i disagree that there were any absolute failures (obv i do), a thought process that led to this:


i remember a friend and i pissing ourselves to the sketchiest live performance of funnel of love you can imagine. mind you constant laughter through a track is common. not just the lyrics, but the *manner*.

too tired (and sad) to flesh this out right now but "put energy above form" isn't quite right i don't think: he had a ferocious (if highly idiosyncratic and self-evolved) sense of form

speaking for myself, i'd rather listen to the fall than read beckett or stein...

Please keep posting good links, I am on the road for a couple of days and will be glad to have them to follow up later

UMS your last post made me tear up a little ;_;

My stepsister’s got a horrible growth

Byron Coley
‏ @ByronColey1
9h9 hours ago

just last saturday was talking to steve berlin about a fall/flesheaters/blurt show at myron's ballroom in '81. remembering how much mark e smith wanted to go see compton; also, how he and richard meltzer kept praising the work of cw mccall. so long, man.

i fell so hard for Cruisers Creek. it was everything i ever wanted in a song. it felt like a gift. since it came out i have played that song a thousand times.

: )

just on categories the way the not amazing imperial wax solvent album explicitly reintroduced character led songs again for the first time in a decade.

> it was free range that hit 40, not telephone thing.

gah, i looked it up and forgot it in less than a day 8(

(by normal people i mean the people i work with, or my parents, people who listen to radio 2 rather than 6.)

Front Row podcast (the extended download-only version) includes Grayson Perry's thoughts on MES - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09nrsg1

WFMU continues to play a lot....

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/77089

and i'm catching all the sneering Mark-critic quotes, eg "I don't sing I just shout," in "Your Heart Out."

Good work from Nate here

https://www.stereogum.com/1980231/wonderful-and-frightening-remembering-andor-rediscovering-mark-e-smith-and-the-fall/franchises/sounding-board/?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

you can call it a bubble or whatever but i kinda dig that its like a head of state dying on my facebook. this massive response. we make our own worlds.

xxp one of my favorite lines

?? nate famously hated the fall i thought "mingering shit" iirc

Read on!

i did and it was pointless

sorry that was mean, music nerd hand-wringing does seem kinda pointless tho, the fall had plenty of catchy tunes

if someone didn't know where to start i would tell them to buy i am kurious oranj. so much fun and such an awesome rock record and tons of hooks/great songs. it's like the last great post-punk record. r.i.p. 1980s.

it's weird but the fall were never a band that i ever really picked apart or analyzed or dissected. i never wondered what MES was listening to. i knew he liked krautrock and 50s rock and garage rock and i guess that's all i needed to know! the clang was there. the beat. the roughness. pretty self-explanatory. it DID take me years to realize what a good writer he was. which is strange. but i just let the words wash over me and for a long time it never dawned on me how hard it must have been to write stuff like that. i just saw him/them as a force of nature. raising a ruckus. such cool sounds.

“If it’s me and yer granny on bongos, it’s The Fall.”

somehow never ran across this quote

This was, IIRC, in response to being challenged about a Reading festival performance where they pulled up backstage, MES having drunkenly sacked the drummer halfway up the motorway, and asked if anyone knew how to play drums. The Chemical Brothers' manager had not played since he was a teenager, and didn't know any of the Fall's songs, but went on and played them to tens of thousands of people.

the chemical brothers should have played drums! they had that big beat.

xp that's amazing, never heard the backstory there

i should also say that ned has a lot of reviews of fall albums on allmusic and they are great reading again

I think that Reading festival show was one of the 2 times I saw the Fall, although I only watched a few songs before wandering off because it was pretty bad.

xpost Too kind. As always I'd probably like to rewrite them but I'd like to rewrite pretty much everything I've ever done anyway.

loll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2euHrKaRW4

Beautiful. Are those saucepans in the foreground part of the instrumentation?

J0hn D0lan:

"MES meant a lot to me. A reckless courage that was beyond my imagining, bloody-minded persistence immune to attacks of conscience, and muttered backhands that could floor a target while barely brushing them with a knuckle:

'She consigns them all to Hell,
She's the Littlest Rebel...'"

probably not - this was for Ginger Wildheart's album and probs a home studio lol

xpost

That Reading/Fall story shows up in that Guardian piece from 2006 where the writer tries to track down every single former The Fall member:

One of the strangest entrances is that of Nick Dewey, who attended the 1999 Reading festival as the manager of the Chemical Brothers and ended up on stage with the Fall. "This drunk man [guitarist Neville Wilding] came backstage asking if anyone played drums," he says. "The band had had a fight and left the drummer at motorway services." Dewey hadn't played for 10 years, but once a Chemical Brother put his name forward, Wilding refused to take no for an answer. Dewey was led to a darkened tour bus to meet Smith, "passed out with his shirt off. The guitarist had to punch him in the face to wake him up. Then they began fighting over whether or not they should teach me the songs. Mark said no!" With a blood-covered Smith offering occasional prompts, Dewey pulled it off.

I tried to ask Wilding about this incident but his neighbour said he was "in Guadalajara". The neighbour is Adam Helal, who also appeared in the Fall, playing bass from 1998 to 2001.

I just ordered "The Fallen", looking forward to it

The neighbour is Adam Helal, who also appeared in the Fall, playing bass from 1998 to 2001.

omg haha

how many posters in this thread have played in the Fall

MES quote from the liner notes to the 2CD reissue of Shift-Work:

"I'm trying to chop off all the esoteric bits, the unnecessary bits, all the time."

been a fan of the fall for nearly 30 years and only realizing there are barely any songs about girls in the trad rock sense. and it’s hard to know the few that might be love songs. maybe none of them are love songs.

not a shocking thing generally — esp in darker genres — but for 32 albums?

when you’re driving around looking for parking, cursing non stop, there’s no more appropriate soundtrack than pretty much any fall album.

I remember working as a temp first few year and a half when I finally got out of college in the mid-90s working in the bowels of telephone, insurance and local government offices usually in big monolithic file rooms, cleaning up and filing with a discman listening often to The Fall. While now it seems some guy with a set of headphones doing some dead end job is kinda normal now, I think it was kinda strange to the stiffs at the time. The Fall seemed to really fit the circumstances, stop MITHERING.

grooving really hard on Extricate & related tracks this evening

with your daft African pop
and the wine that you call Bull's Blood
Hillary
oh oh Hil-uh-ray

Keep me away from the fest-i-val....

MES, the New Puritan after all, could have been mistakable for a second-wave feminist. No lechery whatsoever in his words, and plenty of criticism for 'male slags' and those with overactive libidos in general. I guess there is that 'An Older Lover etc' song, but isn't that sarcastic?

oh the etc is on 'Slags, Slates', whoops

Anyway, this is possibly his most tender moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VUnbPG8i3A

MES, the New Puritan after all, could have been mistakable for a second-wave feminist

well there was the hilarious time he punched and strangled julia nagle but let's not talk about that eh

yeah and then he wrote her the above song

it was a chaotic and shitty time for sure (punctuated by some amazing music) but apart from that fight i think he showed generally good credentials in that department. also iirc she fully forgave him (i know this doesn't absolve him completely)

obviously i don't want to make light of domestic abuse, but it was definitely a single aberration. not that kind of player guv

Maxine Peake
Every Friday in my mid-teens, I used to go to a psych and 60s R&B night at a club in Manchester called the Brickhouse. I remember seeing Mark E Smith there on regular occasions propping up the bar. I never had the courage to go over and tell him how much I admired him; to approach him would take a lot of courage from the steeliest of nerves. Many years later, I went to see the Fall perform at the Cartoon Club in Croydon and I found myself in the tiny dressing room after the gig, face to face with Mr Smith. I was starstruck. Just as I was about to pluck up the courage to say something, Mark turned to Steve Trafford, his then bassist, and said: “What does that slapper want?” For a split-second my heart was broken, but then I thought, “Hey, at least he noticed me.”

yeah ok i said second-wave haha

if anything, that anecdote adds deeper resonance to that eccentronic research council album she narrated a couple of years ago

sub-lingual tablet is sounding really good to me today

this picture also really got to me

http://thefall.org/news/pics/2017-11-04_MES-photo-sm.jpg

29 Truly Excellent and Typically Weird Stories About Mark E. Smith

so now I sleep in ditches

hoooow bad are english musicians?

lol

In 2010, Smith guested on the great Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, despite having no clue who or what Gorillaz was. "I actually thought Gorillaz were some kiddie rap, like helping out Dizzee Rascal or something," the bandleader said in a subsequent interview with Clash. "Where I live in Manchester, Gorillaz mean jack shit, honestly."

um, yeah?

damon got his terrible revenge by naming the next gorillaz album 'the fall'

"That's a fucking drum riff I wrote"

From the Newsweek(!) piece sleeve posted, talking about Pavement.
True though, he/ the fall wrote drum riffs that were amazing - fantastic life, no bulbs, container drivers... loads more where the drum figure was the hook.

As a huge Pavement fan, can anyone point me to the most obvious lifts?

as a fan of both i always felt like the whole thing was pretty overplayed honestly

i don't think i've ever thought about the fall listening to pavement.

I think the most commonly mentioned is "Conduit for Sale" and "A New Face in Hell".

to me the most "Pavement" sounding Fall album is Middle Class Revolt but that's from 1994 when Pavement was well established already

Right yeah. How can I how can I xp

xxp yep, that one for sure, there's a couple more as well but it's been years since I listened to Slanted & Enchanted

I think the most commonly mentioned is "Conduit for Sale" and "A New Face in Hell".

― jmm, Friday, January 26, 2018 12:51 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha yeah wow that never occurred to me but totally

Our Singer has kinda a Hip Priest beat happening ... the similarities between the two bands are overstated though, yeah.

There are more, if you want to hear it. 'Hit the plane down', 'Chesley's Little Wrists', arguably 'Two States'

'No life singed her'

Compare the artwork of say "Slanted & Enchanted" to "This Nation's Saving Grace"...

i feel like pavement was a much more conventional band than the fall ever was, though they had their idiosyncrasies they ultimately (esp in their maturity as a band) wrote rock songs

ultimately, so did The Fall

i can't remember what pavement's actual fall cover sounded like. i used to have that single. probably sounded like pavement.

sure you aren't thinking of their REM cover, "Camera"? I don't recall an actual Fall cover

They’re pretty different sounding bands, Pavement loose and ambling, The Fall more tightly wound, but no doubt Malkmus and co. lifted occasional musical bits and the influence in song/album titles, artwork, lyrics seems fairly clear.

Even these kinds of freakish fantasies have their roots in the world from which Smith came. My friend, the writer Steve Hanson, once told me his Lancashire high school classroom was “full of little Mark E Smiths” evolving their own bizarre slang and tall tales. This collective propensity to daydream and experiment with language has a long working-class history. It’s an implicit challenge to the pressure of speaking “properly” and settling into the drudgery of your expected role.

https://theconversation.com/northern-white-crap-that-talks-back-the-falls-mark-e-smith-spoke-for-weird-manchester-90710

Enjoyed this appreciation from David Wilkinson.

pavement did the classical in '97 or thereabouts (during a Peel Session iirc) xp

it was on their major leagues single. a peel session track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_STY9g7-YPA

xpost xpost

oh cool! thanks y'all

Tons of Drag City-era Pavement aped The Fall pretty hard, this one notably:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k67p7DN-SWo

i feel like pavement was a much more conventional band than the fall ever was, though they had their idiosyncrasies they ultimately (esp in their maturity as a band) wrote rock songs

― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 26, 2018 1:09 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ultimately, so did The Fall

― circa1916, Friday, January 26, 2018 1:11 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

okay maybe i didn't word it right but put it this way, i think esp post-crooked rain, i think pavement wrote a lot of songs w/chord changes melodies etc that were pretty conventional, much more so than, like all recent fall albums which are often one weird punishing riff with synth gurgles and mark e declaiming on them...

like you could cover a lot of pavement songs with an acoustic guitar and they would still seem like the song, whereas (obviously not 100% of the time) often i don't think you can easily separate fall songs from their arragement, instrumentation and smith's delivery...

Are these Blaney albums any good? I'd never even heard of them.

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/ed-blaney

Seems Mark featured prominently on all of them.

"In the early days of the Fall, he financed the band by giving Tarot readings to local housewives" hahaha

That Fall influence was super evident in Pavement's early days—extending to the sleeve art as mentioned and a lot of the aesthetic, the two-drummer run, I remember thinking abt Malkmus this guy even dresses like MES and shares some mannerisms. I say this as a fan of Pavement

i thought that whole Peel session was Fall covers tbh but i might be misremembering

Sonic Youth did that, don't know about Pavement.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/e4e1b6929eb947f11bb2274f8297c5d1/tumblr_inline_nd2tug8k6q1qhyw63.gif

I find those Blaney records to be kind of lifeless, though they did a good "Transfusion" together

xxp

oh right, i was misremembering then

has an actual cause of death been announced? it doesn't seem like they were even sure why he was sick recently.

bout ten years ago, there was an ad on tv for I think like a fancy car or something that licensed a Fall tune…it was in UMS' phrasing "one weird punishing riff with synth gurgles and mark e declaiming on them..." and this brontosaurus, swaggy groove…does anyone know what the name of the tune is?

Blindness, great song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVnsmADFCIg

rock 'em sock 'em, UMS!

lord knows everyone here should watch this…saw it a few years ago and he is of course magnificent in the interviews…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InXwZc4RS7M

The UK had this one more recently, which ended up in court...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=89yWGa-ibjs

(^ car ad, touch sensitive)

I was listening to someone on The Last Word (R4 obit show) talking about MES earlier. He was saying he was like an inverse of the classic Con-man psyche, who'd possess an intuitive talent for saying what you want to hear. In his case he had a gift for zoning in on people's insecurity and doing the exact opposite.

Wonderful work by Jes Skolnik

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/the-ugly-truths-of-loving-the-falls-mark-e-smith/

yeah I just read that, really good

^ me too, although I think because I saw the link on Ned's FB. I think it sums up how I look at him much better than I could.

that was really well done

Reading that made me think that with MES, maybe the long-term hagiography will be less than with Prince or Bowie or all the others. In part because the nasty side is so integral to his image. But following from that, unlike most famous people he really didn't feel like he was looking for adoration. I'm sure at some level he appreciated it, but it was matched by an instinct to bury it, like it would interfere with his secret formulas.

Exactly right. I know Brix a little and made sure to offer her my condolences before going on to say anything about MES elsewhere.

That Jes Skolnik obit is very good.

I Haven't actively listened to The Fall much in the last 10 years, but I've realised this week how deeply Mark E. is ingrained in my psyche, how many of his tics have been absorbed into the way I write and think since the first time I heard "Living Too Late" 30-odd years ago. For better and worse he's one of the few people I could consider a role model, because he taught me another way to look at my own class and how it informed my sense of myself.

Mortality can get fucked imo.

Prince has really been sanitized, he really went out of his way to ruin a guy I used to work with who was his videographer and director in the 90s, and he had actual money behind him to do it unlike MES who mostly just seemed done with ppl when they were out

There was always a strong element of hilarious and angry class consciousness that MES was constantly preaching, not just in his music, in his interviews and the usual ephemera like that, that I always treasured, even if I wasn't listening to the music.

That's beautiful and poignant NV. If anything, timewise, it's been the other way around (listened to them more and more over time, and started late), but the outcome is more or less as you describe.. In that he's become one of the few 'role models' (for lack of a better word, and I'm reaching here), or someone I've internalized and admired because he wasn't a saint, because he had his stinking feet in the mud like all of us, and didn't pretend to be anyone other than he was. That "informed my sense of self" like rarely any other, to use your words.

Hey that made me cry a little, geez. Xpost

Reading that made me think that with MES, maybe the long-term hagiography will be less than with Prince or Bowie or all the others. In part because the nasty side is so integral to his image.

You mean like Lou Reed, Beefheart and other heroes of Mark E. Smith?

btw Martin Bramah's guitar playing on the first album is fkn great.

I think my ultimate Fall heroes apart from Smith are Scanlon and Steve Hanley, who stretch all the way from Dragnet into the late '90s. Amazing contributions all along the way.

Steve Hanley MVP

Elena's synth was really crucial to the band in the latter days. she really had a knack for pulling out really infectious yet primitive lines that went well with the bands more streamlined approach

Although I’d dabbled in The Fall for years it was reading Steve Hanley’s book a couple of years ago (after seeing Brix and the Extricated) that properly opened up a route in; MES is the constant, but I got really interested in whatbthe different line-ups/eras brought to The Fall. It’s a really good book.

btw Martin Bramah's guitar playing on the first album is fkn great.
Tom D's post

ha, was playing the same album, yes MB set the standard, but I hate the production on Witch Trials, everything sounds isolated, boxed in, whereas Dragnet was immediately their sound, piercing yet murky garage played inside a hollow volcano disguised as a disused cinema

Yes, I think they recorded the first album in a day, to be fair. However the drums are too loud and Karl Burns is overplaying hideously.

Songs are great though.

Witch Trials has a very 70s sound

and definitely feels like whoever was producing was trying to make them sound like a "real band"

It's like the producer thought the singer can't sing, the band can't play but the drummer's pretty good I'll push him up in the mix.

See, I prefer Witch Trials to Dragnet. It's one of my favourite Fall albums.

I like it a lot

I think my ultimate Fall heroes apart from Smith are Scanlon and Steve Hanley, who stretch all the way from Dragnet into the late '90s. Amazing contributions all along the way.

― timellison, Saturday, January 27, 2018 12:12 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, although I never considered MES a hero. I don't care what John Peel said, when Scanlon and then Hanley left they were never the same.

Up till about 83 there was this frenzied, mad invention on every record. Take Slates; nothing else sounds like those songs, from the creeping menace of An Older Lover to the newsflash/pulp radio drama of Pink Press Threat, and the bouncing groove of Leave the Capitol. It's just stunning. And they followed it with Hex. That degree of creativity had to dissipate somewhat, and as the 80s wore on, they more often resembled a rock band, a very fine and unique one, but less terrifyingly alien than the earlier entity.

pretty sure MES would have nothing but justifiable contempt for the 'early stuff is better' POV

Levitate & the Marshall Suite Peel Session are pretty fuckin' alien, not to mention "Weather Report 2"

^^^^^^

I don't care what John Peel said, when Scanlon and then Hanley left they were never the same.

― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Saturday, January 27, 2018 11:47 AM

this is the point of changing

Are there any good essays or pieces out there about The Fall and "Northerness" specifically? There's some good stuff in "Mark E. Smith and the Fall: Art, Music and Politics" (incl. Mark Fisher). Anything else?

seen this?

http://theconversation.com/northern-white-crap-that-talks-back-the-falls-mark-e-smith-spoke-for-weird-manchester-90710

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8P6DDCZZhw

thx sleeve!

Witch Trials probably my least favorite in the catalogue up until early 90's Shift-Work, Cerebral Caustic, somewhere in there....and then it ramps up again for another great run!

pfft Shift-Work is awesome, in my top 5

IMO (speaking as someone who was avidly buying their records at the time) "27 Points" lost the 90's plot a bit, along with that ridic "Touch Sensitive" box and the flood of stupid Receiver label outtake discs, all of a sudden there was a lot of superfluous product out there. "Cerebral" is hit & miss, but I love everything after that up to the AYAMW/Reformation period which is my least favorite even though there are stil great tracks scattered in.

(by "everything" I mean "the proper studio albums", not the bazillion random live discs from the last 20 years)

i love shift work too. Idiot Joy Showland, The War Against Intelligence, Edinburgh Man, You Haven't found it yet, White Lightning, High Tension Line. all completely awesome.

It's funny cuz I dig most of those tracks but that period for me—save for the blast of fresh air that is Infotainment Scan—is where things go a little beige, or at least the left turns are fewer. But after that I''l rep for the five record run of Levitate through TRNFLP as shoulder to shoulder w/ pick 5 from Rough Trade/Beggars years

The Unutterable despite being CD-era overstuffed is just a completely WTF amazing record

Shift Work, Code: Selfish, and The Infotainment Scan are this awesome little hidden, pastoral era.

I only ever saw the Fall during this time, on their American tour when they were first on Matador (Infotainment). They had this set with, if I remember correctly, these painted clouds suspended from something.

I love the run from Shift Work up though Cerebral Caustic. Annoyed that I never did get to see The Fall.. sigh

i am pleased to report that Bargain Booze in Prestwich now has a Mark E Smith tribute in the window https://t.co/UYBuKJFQxv

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) January 26, 2018

that tribute in full:

Cheers to Bargain Booze in Prestwich, who let me leave a tribute to Mark E. Smith on their hallowed turf pic.twitter.com/IqZFkV47Lm

— Red Robbo (@Orwell_Fan_Fan) January 25, 2018

I sat and drank
For three decades.
I'm forty five.

would perhaps be more suitable there

i saw the fall only once in 2003. it looked like mes was sleepwalking but he definitely didn’t sound like he was sleepwalking. his voice was in the red non stop and there were no pauses between songs. a mix of new and older stuff, mainly mid to late 80s if older. the band was solid and on pure nerves. mes only turned down one amp. there were no fights. very fun night.

Saw them only once on the Main Stage at Phoenix 96 and they were great, MES on very much his best behaviour. They released the set as a stand alone CD iirc so MES must have thought it was a good gig. The mid-late 90s were crazy; just looking at the poster and that same weekend across that same stage you had Neil Young, Bowie, Bjork, Massive Attack, Sex Pistols, Alanis Morisette, Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Beck, Gza, Prodigy, Stereolab..

I was at that. Iirc it was a different year they released on cd, phoenix 95 maybe

Looked it up, it's both years but mostly 95, 4 songs from 96

I was there too in 96, first time I'd seen them and all I knew by them was This Nation's Saving Grace. I remember it was in the middle of the afternoon, which felt weird, and the cameraman spent the whole gig filming Brix and ignoring the rest of the group.

I was aware of the Fall then but all I'd heard was Why Are People Grudgeful because it was on one of those Indie Top 20 CDs. I did like that set though. I was a bit daunted by the huge discography, and this was around the time they put out all those dodgy compilations, so I didn't actually take the plunge and buy something by them for a couple of years when I bought Perverted By Language on CD, it was the version with the singles on it so it had Wings which quickly became my favourite song by them and has remained so.

It's a pity that Phoenix festival wasn't successful because it was only about 25 miles from my home town, I went with my sister in '96 and my grandma drove us there, she had aunts who lived in a village near the festival site so she knew all the back roads and we skipped all the traffic.

I saw 'em around that time, too... I remember them playing 'The Chiselers' and Karl Burns looking terrified during his bit.

I saw them once but got so drunk I don't remember a thing about the gig, which I guess is at least kinda appropriate.

Saw The Fall on the 1993 tour (w/ Scanlon/Hanley) and then again in 2001 when he had the young rockabilly backing band, lots of turning down the amps on that show. MES looked especially tired the 2nd time, as opposed to drunk (semi-functioning alcoholism?) the first time. Some setlists c/o the webz:

1993:
M5
Ladybird (Green Grass)
Glam Racket
Lost in Music
Why Are People Grudgeful
I'm Going to Spain
Big New Prinz
The Mixer
Free Range
The League of Bald-Headed Men
Paranoia Man in Cheap Shit Room
Idiot Joy Showland
Strychnine
War
Hit the North
Deadbeat Descendent
A Past Gone Mad
High Tension Line

2001:
The Joke
Cyber Insekt
Two Librans
And Therein
Touch Sensitive
Crop-Dust
Bourgeois Town
Kick The Can
F-oldin' Money
Mr. Pharmacist
Sons of Temperance
My Ex-Classmates' Kids
Enigrammatic Dream
I Wake up in the City
Reprise: Jane - Prof Mick - Ey Bastardo
Way Round
I Am Damo Suzuki

The Hearts DJ played 'Edinburgh Man' nice and loud at half time. The best part of the game for me.

xp I really like My Ex-Classmates' Kids (which is why I don't think Are You Are Missing Winner is that bad really)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42EfHW5npko

i had a riot watching this tonight.

The Hearts DJ played 'Edinburgh Man' nice and loud at half time. The best part of the game for me.

Now that is cool.

That's really cool!

it is. and it's worth pointing out to non-scots that Hearts = Heart of Midlothian football club.

Xpost:mojo video. So nice to see him laughing and enjoying himself so much. Such a character. Man, I don't think I'll ever stop missing him. I haven't stopped blasting The Fall since Wednesday. Sometimes I think Peel was right, they really are all you need.

xp I really like My Ex-Classmates' Kids (which is why I don't think Are You Are Missing Winner is that bad really)

beginning to feel my way slightly, probably best expressed by messages to another fall fan (obv all getting in touch with each other):

hey! likewise. it’s hit me harder than i expected and tbh media reports/social media/personal reminiscences don’t really help. there’s something v central about them, and at the moment i don’t know how to represent that. feel it’s best done through small observations or categories of stuff than grand statements. will let you know how it goes as i would like to put something together but it will need to be different from anything else out there that i’ve seen.

yes, same here. paul hanley put it well just now i thought:

“I’m not one for crocodile tears and hagiography, but the thought that this is now a finished piece of work has made me genuinely sad.

Well, that was tearful. I've updated the 2017 Fall Gigography page, including videos from the last Fall outing on 4 November at QMU in Glasgow. Thanks to Mike Ritchie for those. And thank you to the immortal MES. https://t.co/hzJpQ16zaL

— Fall news (@fallnews) January 27, 2018

I’m not one for crocodile tears and hagiography, but the thought that this is now a finished piece of work has made me genuinely sad. https://t.co/ZgU39qldr4

— Paul Hanley (@hanleyPa) January 28, 2018

BBC6 has a concert available for a limited time from 1995 Roadhouse and lots of tributes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry06oPMtB20

i hate the guts of shakin' stevens.

Hey little singer come on up
Show us your house and show us your cock

the working class has been shafted
so what are the fuck you staring at?
your philosophy in life it seems
living out some ad man’s dream

Finally felt up to listen to something and ended up going with New Facts Emerge for whatever reason. No real stereo setup at home so cranked it up in the car, incidentally the same setting that i’d first heard it back in the summer. Anyway, it’s not an original thought but it’s just impossible not to be affected by Nine Out of Ten; by the song itself and its position as the last song on (presumably) the last Fall album.
It reminds me a bit of Job Search, which has that similarly forlorn feel, pared-back, no drums. (At the time I was amazed at how close it came to the tones and colors of Perverted By Language)
But also of Ol’ Gang. Both songs use a backing track that repeats—on Ol’ Gang Smith lets it play out once and only starts singing the second time around. Nine Out of Ten flips that to devastating effect.

“Then I was older…”

The sound of the guitar absent Smith’s voice is so close to how death actually feels: (they were -just- here, they can’t be gone)

Just got the dvd of that Hacienda gig (includes 3 other gigs as well) and though it was a bit expensive (about $50)I'm very glad I did, as it's shit hot! MES is absolutely on fire, making an effort to get the lyrics right and in sync with the change-ups. Not often the case with many live shows. Sweetheart was prone to this as well. Anyway the dvd is outstanding and definitely recommended to whomevers inclined. Also was listening to that "red box" comp. from a few years back and was nearly in tears during last minute or so of O! Brother. Anyone who ever sex The Fall were a "one note/idea" proposition, just aren't really listening. I was overwhelmed by the poignancy of those last few verses and Mark's vocals are quite well...gorgeous.

Beefheart not fucking sweetheart. Fucking spell check on kindle sucks!!!!!

And "says" not "sex". For Christ sake man. Sorry folks!

*pogos furiously to oh brother bassline*

Beefheart not fucking sweetheart. Fucking spell check on kindle sucks!!!!!

Captain Sweetheart :)

At school, q Captain Beefheart concert had a surprising cameo in a history project. The teacher mistakenly read his name out as Captain Beefeater, annoying my friend Owain. Captain Sweetheart is better though.

Captain Sweetheart is my fav thing :)

But also of Ol’ Gang. Both songs use a backing track that repeats—on Ol’ Gang Smith lets it play out once and only starts singing the second time around. Nine Out of Ten flips that to devastating effect.

“Then I was older…”

The sound of the guitar absent Smith’s voice is so close to how death actually feels: (they were -just- here, they can’t be gone)

I was thinking what a good final track for... everything... 9 out of 10 was, but that's a really nice observation about the doubling up. It's also nice that his voice is so raw and exposed in the mix.

Great live clip of "Words Of Expectation" interspersed with MES talking about the group, and then Kay Carroll yelling at Tony Wilson on the phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtUI7KSXZ68

btw research on the Gigography site reveals the first of the two Fall shows I saw required me to rush from home, TV-watching the Mets' miraculous World Series Game 6 win. So best night ever, or at least top 10.

Saturday, 25 October 1986 Ritz, New York City, New York

Barmy / City Hobgoblins / Living too Late / U.S. 80s-90s / Terry Waite Sez / Riddler / Mr. Pharmacist / Lucifer over Lancashire / Shoulder Pads / Gut of the Quantifier / Gross Chapel-GB Grenadiers / Bombast / Prole Art Threat // R.O.D. // L.A. / Cruiser's Creek

housemate borrowed me his signed copy of renegade. enchanting.

my 2-hour radio tribute:

https://spinitron.com/radio/playlist.php?station=kwva&month=Jan&year=2018&playlist=43814#here

no audio archive, sorry.

I am sure I was at that show, Morbs!

this is the first fall gig i went to during my first term at university:

Wednesday, 14 December 1988 Ritz, Manchester

Carry Bag Man / Wrong Place, Right Time / Hit the North / Bad News Girl / Dead Beat Descendant / Jerusalem / Van Plague / Yes, O Yes / Big New Prinz / Cab It Up / Squid Law / Totally Wired / Guest Informant / Bremen Nacht / Tuff Life Boogie / Mr. Pharmacist

first time i was really aware of the fall though was because of a smash hits panini sticker album in 85/86, kind of crazy that they were in it in hindsight

well, they do love pop-stock stickers...

in other news, copies of The Fallen have disappeared from Amazon except for the ones that are now priced at $50-200 or more :(

had two separate orders cancelled by sellers, really a drag

This band need more than a book, they require a fucking encyclopedia. Now that there's a definite end to the band, someone'll research and write the ultimate book on this band without feeling like they're shovelling snow while it's still snowing.

Don't even mean thus argumentatively but imo endless snow-shovelling is a good thing especially re Mark E. Can't demarkate that stuff

housemate borrowed me his signed copy of renegade. enchanting.

anyone else? an ebook at my library.

Don't think this has been linked here yet, a selection of MES/Fall articles from the archives of The Wire:
https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/the-portal/archive-portal-marke-smith-the-fall

oh cool, cheers!

The Marshall Suite is really fun

Thanks for heads up on The Wire Fall archive. Some good stuff in there.

:)

Ian Cusack on MES

Not sure who Ian Cusack is but that was the single best post-death piece on Mark i've read yet.

fucking hell the live version of middl. mass on 'a part of america, therein' is incredible.

that whole album is really great, also has my favorite version of "Totally Wired"

Yeah, agreed, the CD with Slates/A Part of America... was my introduction to early Fall, and what an introduction it was.

I was just thinking about an essay I read in a book which analysed 'I Am Damo Suzuki' in depth - I read it round 1997 or so, it was in an anthology with all kinds of articles about pop music, some dating back to the very early 50s, and I'd really like to get hold of it again. Does anyone have any idea what it could be?

been listening to the comp - A Past Gone Mad

comp of 90s Fall material, very good listen....assembled by the comedian Stewart Lee

anyway seems to be a pretty good overview of the era

Man, Brix and the Extricated doing "Hotel Bloedel" sure is sweet.

LOL

You recently played in London with 60s American surf rock legend Dick Dale. How did that go down?

It was all right (laughs). All you heard all night was Dick Dale. He was on before us and we couldn't get away from him. Everywhere you went back stage at the QEH—twas Dick Dale this, Dick Dale that. We went to the hotel and all his people were there. You turned on the radio and it was talking about Dick Dale. Everywhere you went he was there. According to Dick Dale he Invented Link Wray, The Beach Boys, psychedelic Frank Zappa muslc, Elvis Costello. Dick Dale Invented every sort of music, according to him.

Did you meet Dick Dale?

(Laughs) I didn't want to meet him. We were all trying to avoid him. He was Dick Dale!

^from that Wire trove, one of the Invisible Jukeboxes

Brix and the Extricated doing "Hotel Bloedel" sure is sweet.

I was so glad I got to see Brix and the Extricated late last year. It now seems...fitting. Great gig, too.

I hope MES got to hear the Longmont Potion Castle call to Dick Dale.

arid al's dream!

very good track, underrated compilation obscurity

xxxp sounds like MES learned a trick or two from Dick Dale about claiming to have invented various types of music!

Arid Al is possibly top 10 fall for me

i was listening to a dad's army radio episode when falling asleep last night and, half-awake, was surprised upon hearing captain mainwaring say "i love you all but cannot embrace you all" -- the last words in MES's final message. turns out the captain was dreaming about being napoleon and those were his words. maybe this is common knowledge?

not to me, thanks for that!

oh cool! jesus, he knew he was done

Righteous mes Easter egg

Good spot - I had no idea where that phrase came from - but he'd been using it as a sign off for some of his irregular dispatches for quite a while. He issued this statement via VISI.com in 2009 (but obviously has extra poignancy in his final usage):

HEREWITH annual May missive message from I, Mark E. Smith on this day of celebration/reformation:

ANOTHER year has passed - rapidly for some, too slowly for I, one-legged yet again. And yet, things re: The Fall improve, our new label, although young, are coping just about with 'The Fall". Yea, in a Castleford studio built on gravel the group cracked down some odd things. The main concern to avoid the much-ripped off already 'Imperial'. Our next record will be something that scum like that choke on. We will not be playing 'I.O.W.' 'FEST' either but will play the Mojo sick-trio.

STICK ENEMIES IN FRONT OF DAYTIME T.V. AVOID GERMAN-BERT'S MOCK ART EXHIBITION IN L.S.W.

I love you all but i cannot embrace you all/ -As of last year, your dearest pal-

MARK E. SMITH for 'The Fall' 2009

As I type this in the swirling gales of consequence I wish you, my pals, all the very best. MAY THEIR INSIDIOUS RAPPINGS DISINTEGRATE INTO THE FOREGROUND

Although... now that I say this. If this was written during the period he was in his wheelchair, he did become so ill *I believe* that he nearly died.

I interviewed him not long afterwards told him I was glad to see him on two feet and looking well because I'd heard he'd become so ill at one point he had nearly joined the majority and he said something along the lines of: "Yeah, that's right but this isn't fucking Loose Women John, why don't you ask me about the album?"

Don't want to put two and two together and come up with five though. Kind of depends how many other times he's used the phrase I guess.

Nope. He used it quite a lot it seems. Here's a variation from 2008:

ANNUAL BULLETIN FROM THE DESK OF M.E.S. May-14-08

Dearest Friends:

The Real Mark E. Smith here:

1)Your contempt for the squirrel thing.

2)Your support for the tour of "L.P. that wasn't out yet.".

3)Your toleration of ghost-writer Collings absurd chapter titles.

--TO YOU I GIVE MY GREATEST THANKS.

I LOVE YOU ALL, MEIN COMRADES, But I cannot embrace you all-
because, in the main, I have pulled out the lap-top lead to use as a handy throttling device for mediaists, activists, groupies and Alan Wise(show not on ever).

From all this, dear friend, there are two things.

1) Beware, Big Dave from Duesseldorf is out of hospital and planning a new book- it is good.
2)BUT the main perogative is "The Fall" group and always will be.

Your pal,
Mark E. Smith
May 2008

Quoting Captain Mainwaring? That is so perfect!

Just watched the Decline of Western Civilization, and spotted an MES sticker on the door of Slash magazine's office

more details plz! did it just say "Mark E Smith?"

hah okay here's a screenshot, I think it's MES though I could be wrong

https://www.instagram.com/p/BetgpvBB2BR/

Decline of Western Civilization I? it odes look a bit like him but MES really didn't dress anything like that in 1979/1980

(also i'd be surprised if slash were up on him quite that early: he only got his first UK press coverage to speak of in 1979)

s/b does

Think I read something in one of the older MES articles/interviews that made the rounds again that he very much liked Claude Bessy of Slash, at least at the time.

p sure bessy arrived in the UK in 1980 (and worked for rough trade) after slash ceased publication?

I don't know anything about Slash other than what I just watched, but the editor was a Brit and I saw they had a Joy Division article in an issue they were prepping on screen, so it's possible by analogy that The Fall might have reached LA by 1980?

Ha, more than that -- key information here:

http://thefall.org/gigography/gig79.html

Scroll down to the dates starting December 5. VERY much not only played LA by then, but were on a bill with the Germs!

Christ all those LA gigs in that run sound insanely great. And X was on that Germs bill too! Good lord!

So suffice to say yes, I could easily see MES and Claude having met in December 1979, so.

oh nice one! X too, good gig

hah xp

(And the Skip King mentioned in various entries is a long-time friend, you can vouch for the stories and provenance in general.)

I love how small history gets sometimes, mentioning another band on a different bill:

"The Nu Kats -- a horrid skinny-tie/spiky-hairdo "new wave" band -- was fronted by Freddie Moore, who was the husband at that time of one Demi Moore (who has retained his surname to this day). They had a huge following for a brief moment and then disappeared shortly thereafter, mercifully never to be heard from again."

(editor was claude bessy wasn't it? french not british, tho he moved to the uk when he quit LA)

also we can check if slash covered the fall: you can download the entire run here! http://www.circulationzero.com

all the same, this is how he dressed then:
http://thefall.org/gigography/79dec14_flyer.jpg

Ah, no need -- this story from Chris D. of the Flesheaters confirms it:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1816055401738951&set=a.101240486553793.2754.100000035277218&type=3&theater

I can't remember how I became friendly with Mark Smith, but it had to have had something to do with my writing for Slash magazine and the positive reviews Claude'Kickboy'Bessy and I always gave The Fall's records. In fact, everybody who wrote for Slash loved The Fall. I know I was already working at the record company in '81 when The Flesh Eaters opened up for The Fall and Blurt at Myron's Ballroom in downtown L.A. in that summer. I'm pretty certain that was the last live gig for the "Minute to Pray..." line-up until our 2006 shows. Below is a photo taken by Gary Leonard after everyone had played their sets. A dour Fall frontman and an unusually cheerful Flesh Eaters frontman. We were all shitfaced, but Mark, per usual was way ahead of all of the rest of us. I kept in touch with Mark through postcards and letters. I have the image emblazoned in my mind of a beautiful card he sent me of a snow-covered church in Iceland with a volcano spurting lava a mile or so behind it in the background pasted to my Slash Records office wall until I left the job in early 1984. Surprisingly Divine Horsemen got on the bill with the Fall (w/ Mark's approval) when they played the Palace in Hollywood in, what was it? 1985? -'86? Brix had joined the band and was singing backup as well as playing keyboards, if I'm not mistaken. Believe it or not, the bands meshed surprisingly well together. I was a big fan of The Fall and especially Mark's brilliant, surreal, absurdly funny lyrics, from "Bingo Master's Breakout" (one of my favorite song titles ever) and "Psycho Mafia" onward. I played the LPs "Live at the Witch Trials,""Hex Enduction Hour," "Grotesque," and "Dragnet" incessantly, though kind of lost touch with Mark and his music in the early 1990s. We saw each other for the last time in 1997 or '98 when Lydia Lunch kindly asked me to join her and Mark at a poetry/prose reading at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood. I was newly sober. I may have been paranoid, but I had a feeling my sobriety may have caused some uneasy moments between us. As always with Mark, it was hard to tell. We were both socially awkward. I'd been reading about his health problems in recent years, and I knew this day was probably coming sooner than later. It makes me sad I did not get to ever talk to him again. I hope he's resting easy. A brilliant, funny, acidic, cantankerous, sometimes-impossible-to-get-along-with person.

Said '81 photo:

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/26904566_1816055401738951_8790473706108392726_n.jpg?oh=c73902f4c96fc99dd5171e4ff80dc1b7&oe=5AE5A41B

xxxp you're right re. the editor, I stand corrected. The Brit was a woman who I think was senior editor or co-publisher or similar. I've switched off the DVD now so can't check.

my favourite fact from watching and reading up on Decline... (apart from he MES sticker of course) was that Exene Cervenka was married to Viggo Mortensen. But I'm sure everyone knows that apart from me!

So do I think the sticker is him, not really, but did they know the Fall back then, oh heck yes.

wow they did shows with Monitor! a Joe Carducci favorite

http://disasteramnesiac.blogspot.com/2013/04/monitor-st-world-imitation-1980-reissue.html

also wow would i love to have heard Mark's reaction to the Germs lol

Don't think it's MES on the sticker, but this has turned into a great story all the same

This is a fantastic detail from the show of 15th September 79:

"Supporting were Methodisch Tune (writer Ian Penman's band - that's not a typo!), Scritti Politti (in the days when they were experimental and before Green decided to become a pop star). In the audience were Peter Purvis from 'Blue Peter' and Mike Robinson from 'Fingerbobs'."

also important and relevant:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0c3rgsIUAAmN5X.jpg

No, sorry, I'm not buying Peter Purves.

<3 Viggo

My next best guess for the identity of sticker person: Joan Jett

xp, yeah. More John Noakes' thing I suppose.

Quoting Captain Mainwaring? That is so perfect!

no, he's quoting napoleon. sorry i wasn't clearer there.

Mainwaring/ Napoleon, same thing.

Mainwaring/ Napoleon/Smith, same thing :)

"don't panic!"

https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/d/j/x/7/j/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.620x349.1dg7oq.png/1471913713286.jpg

"Stupid boy" surely?

also: re the fall in slash magazine, there's a LOT (which still surprises me but it turns out that's my parochialism projected onto slash): mentioned on 56 pages in 29 issues

(most of them are capsule reviews on a larger page with other stuff but even so)

Is that the infamous "happy" photo of Riley arriving in NZ, which got printed in the local papers (Lie Dream of a Casino Soul was top 20 there!), and so hacked off MES that he fired him?

Yes, though I don't think that was the only reason. MES claimed that Riley wanted to wear a stetson when he played "Container Drivers", for instance.

Well, there was the incident earlier on that tour (shortly after arriving in Australia) where the band were drunkenly dancing to Rock The Casbah in some nightclub, so MES slapped them all. And Riley hit him back. They did an interview on TV the next morning, MES w/black eye.

The version I read said it was dancing to Deep Purple that was beyond the pale

The full details.

http://static.stuff.co.nz/1471318288/188/15625188.jpg

what was their Top 20 hit in New Zealand?

love the stetson hat story the most out of all these details (if true, even if not it's very funny)

also love the historical detour into the relationship the band had with the Slash scene

That poster that mark s. posted is A+.

"Lie Dream of a Casino Soul" got to #17 in NZ.

Great pair of pics.

I don't know about MES being bothered about Riley getting the magpic, he did make a joke about it on that live album. Which has the same photo on the front. Which did get MES approval until he found copies in UK shops before he'd received personal copies, at which point he insisted it get withdrawn.

Still, the MES photo would have been better - he looks a bit like Steve Marriott there.

The story I heard from Chris Knox or whichever NZ musician is that the music mags got distributed to NZ months before the actual songs being pumped up by the NME or whatever got distributed, which is why Joy Divison has a couple of top 5 hits in NZ

drunkenly dancing to Rock The Casbah

TO BE FAIR they were not slapped hard enough for this

Slapped hard with bonuses maybe

Still, the MES photo would have been better - he looks a bit like Steve Marriott there.

― Mark G, Saturday, February 3, 2018 9:53 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Feargal Sharkey, more like.

Marc Riley has a joker hysterical face

This should be a poll surely?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUeU4l7XcAARuZy.jpg:large

Harsh on Telly Savalas imo

Yes, a lot of that list deserves to be hated but not Kojak.