deserves its own thread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQMP0G0-hQM
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:50 (six years ago) link
the fire has fallen
― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:51 (six years ago) link
The day I've been dreading. "It is with deep regret that we announce the passing of Mark E. Smith. He passed this morning at home.... 1/2— Fall news (@fallnews) January 24, 2018
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:51 (six years ago) link
He certainly does deserve his own thread.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:51 (six years ago) link
i found this out just now while grocery shopping. it is a weird walk home now. this one hurts a lot
― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:53 (six years ago) link
I can't believe he was only 60. RIP
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:54 (six years ago) link
RIP iconoclast.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:54 (six years ago) link
holy shit this sucks
― hoooyaaargh it's me satan (voodoo chili), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:55 (six years ago) link
to say he was one of a kind doesn't begin to cover itrest in peace mark
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:57 (six years ago) link
God motherfucking damnit man
This really hurts.
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 19:58 (six years ago) link
I feel like I was ready for this one, at least
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:03 (six years ago) link
Yeah, I knew this was coming.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:05 (six years ago) link
It was coming. But still.
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:06 (six years ago) link
Shit didn't catch this in time. But as I say on previous thread. This is a major loss for me. I will his presence very very much. Godspeed MES! You were one of the greats. much as he disliked such things I am So glad that he was recognized in his lifetime. He was a total one off. Ok now to play that Live at Hacienda 83-85 dvd and remind myself once again what an amazing man he was.
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:06 (six years ago) link
Wtf happened? Had he been ill?
― treeship 2, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:07 (six years ago) link
yes
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:08 (six years ago) link
https://paulroland.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/markesmith_2.jpg
You beautiful man
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:09 (six years ago) link
The greatest lyricist in musical history, to such an extent that the word ‘lyrics’ is unfit to describe what he did. Other than miles, probably the greatest assembler-of-performers-into-something-unforeseeable there ever was. Like Scott Walker his effect on me spreads way beyond music and art. At his frequent best he was onto source code for whatever this is we are all part of here. Vale Mark E. Smith I will never forget you.
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:10 (six years ago) link
I haven't bothered with the Fall for well over 20 years but he is still the single most important figure in my musical life. Was.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:13 (six years ago) link
fuck
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:13 (six years ago) link
RIP hip priest. he was damo suzuki
― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:13 (six years ago) link
xxp their later work is shockingly strong, check out The Unutterable, Our Future Your Clutter, and "The Real New Fall LP" for proof
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:14 (six years ago) link
He was Dylan, Beefheart and Lou in one for me. I used to joke that he was my Bob Dylan.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:15 (six years ago) link
RIP Mark, thanks for being the best thing this terrible country has produced in the last 60 years
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:16 (six years ago) link
First saw him/them when I was still at school, they played in Paisley, in a venue that is now a tapas bar - Paisley version - where me, my mum and my sister went for a meal when I was up for Christmas!
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:19 (six years ago) link
The Blue Orchids played there around the same time.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:20 (six years ago) link
My missus just said the P4k obit describes him as coming from a "middle class background"!
― calzino, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:24 (six years ago) link
LOL 'mericans.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:25 (six years ago) link
woah this is crazy, did not see this coming
RIP MES
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:25 (six years ago) link
im eternally grateful
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:26 (six years ago) link
this just going round in my head now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9zTSvEpt_8
― faust apes (NickB), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:27 (six years ago) link
well fuck this
fuck death
― Dinsdale, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:34 (six years ago) link
The obit on the guardian is such a mess, clearly a draft they had ready but didn't check, deserves better
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:34 (six years ago) link
Was it removed? Can't find anything about it on their site
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:37 (six years ago) link
RIP.
Although I've been preparing myself for this news for months. In some ways, I find it remarkable that he made it to 60.
― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:38 (six years ago) link
This one (actually not an obit) https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/24/mark-e-smith-lead-singer-with-the-fall-dies-aged-60
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:38 (six years ago) link
Oh shit huge loss RIP
― kornrulez6969, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:38 (six years ago) link
RIP Mark
heaven can now have killer sessions again, they are back together
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtIPlWzM84c
― Van Horn Street, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:40 (six years ago) link
A bit gobsmacked by this, although I knew he'd been unwell. RIP MES. Thanks for the legacy.
― Jeff W, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:42 (six years ago) link
His death was previously wrongly announced by the BBC in March last year, on his 60th birthday.
Nice way to end your obit, Graun, real classy
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:42 (six years ago) link
i always felt like the fall had so much vitriol, so unrelenting, that when he did have the rare moment of tenderness it was so much more affecting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbMG1v7qDqs
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:42 (six years ago) link
yeah know what you mean, gutted
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:43 (six years ago) link
xp Marc Riley is playing this right now on 6Music <3
Shit news but not unexpected after recent events.
RIP
― groovypanda, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:44 (six years ago) link
absolutely
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:47 (six years ago) link
(thanks for the tip on 6music Neil)
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:48 (six years ago) link
This song was my Fall gateway. Intro'd here by Tony Wilson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wygQmJ59E4Q
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:52 (six years ago) link
Thinking of Fizzles the Chimp, sorry for your loss.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:54 (six years ago) link
ah bollocks. :c RIP.
― Ludo, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:55 (six years ago) link
Up here in the North there are no wage packet jobs for usThank ChristWhile young married couples discuss the povertiesOf their self-built trapsAnd the junior clergy demand more cashWe spit in their plate and wait for the ice to melt
― the girl with the rub-on tattoo (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:57 (six years ago) link
man, shit.
― andrew m., Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:57 (six years ago) link
I can never tell if “Bill is Dead” is genuinely tender or totally vicious satire. Maybe both, who knows.
― JoeStork, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:58 (six years ago) link
not
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:58 (six years ago) link
They obviously had their differences but Marc Riley seems properly rattled and emotional right now
― groovypanda, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 20:58 (six years ago) link
text a v good friend and fall fan (we used to get stoned as teenagers and listen to their records):“I know you said when you saw the Fall last he looked like he was ill. And that it was one of their best ever performances you'd seen”
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:01 (six years ago) link
I was playing 'Fortress/deer park' in the car on the way home today (thanks to an Uncut freebie - worth the money for once but anyway) and wondered how long he had left.
Having said that, I'm never more than a month away from having played some Fall, and I made a point of playing that Singles (a's and b's) before he goes..
So, bring on the tribs. Including the News at ten..
― Mark G, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:13 (six years ago) link
he may have ended with his most challenging record to date (New Facts Emerge) which is really fucking saying something
"Couples vs. Jobless Mid 30s" is such an insane piece of work
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:14 (six years ago) link
"Couples vs. Jobless Mid 30s"
speaking of which, greatest song/album title-r in rock history??
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:15 (six years ago) link
yep :) to both your posts
― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:15 (six years ago) link
Man City team must surely wear black armbands on SUnday as he was the only famous person who admitted to supporting them for about 30 years or so.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:16 (six years ago) link
even his crap albums were called things like Are You Are Missing Winner, making them actually not-crap. and then you listen and realise they were never crap
― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:17 (six years ago) link
there's them gallaghers but totally agree that they should xp
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:17 (six years ago) link
Just chuckling away at "Cary Grant's Wedding" right now.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:21 (six years ago) link
Literally chuckling.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:22 (six years ago) link
someone on facebook said he wrote a note to be read to the crowd at the last cancelled show? is there a link to it?
― scott seward, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:23 (six years ago) link
Is the Fall's 'Bill is dead' the most romantic song ever written?
Going to go with genuinely tender.
― Dan Worsley, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:23 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:23 (six years ago) link
Np YFOC really fuckin loud
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:24 (six years ago) link
xxpost Scott, here
A Message to All, to All. From Mark E. Smith/The Fall group. As I, like Pr Rupert leave Bristol with my tail between my legs, I wish to give my great apologies to everybody. This idiotic idea to do both shows was purely my idea, against the advice of Pamela and The Fall group, agent & promoter. Hope to replace shows within 4 - 6 weeks. In the interim we have eight new songs ready to go and will try and let you hear a few before Christmas. From head patient to you, the patients. I love you all but cannot embrace you all, Mark E. Smith
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:24 (six years ago) link
just said to a friend:i'm not interested in sentimentality about this. they always reached beyond, into and around death, mocking and laughing and vicious. idk. memorialise, feel sad, but stand up.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:25 (six years ago) link
OT M
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:25 (six years ago) link
Hard to be sad listening to them, he was so fucking funny.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:26 (six years ago) link
YFOC such a classic album xp
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:26 (six years ago) link
yes to Fizzles, proper response here is "LOL fuk u death" IMO
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:26 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBUiPs1PxKo
this will never not cheer me up
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:27 (six years ago) link
Completely gutted and fucked right now. Someone queue up a the live vers of "NWRA" from the Part of America Therein at brain bleeding volumes and I'll take a Laphroaig and Peroni while yr up.
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:27 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:27 (six years ago) link
The great palimpsest
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:28 (six years ago) link
Yarbles. To. Even.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:30 (six years ago) link
ilx0r: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/arts/music/mark-e-smith-the-fall-best-songs.html
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:31 (six years ago) link
We need an interview with MES talking abt the recently passed MES and how he, MES, never really was much of a fan of MES, though he was certainly aware of him and was a proper frontman, not dancing about
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:32 (six years ago) link
Gotta blast “Garden” when I get home, that song contains so much.
He’s the young generation dancing troupe, trying to perform country and western(Do a dance here)
He knew the evil of the phoneHe knew the evil of the phoneThe bells stopped on Sunday when he rose The bells, stopped, on Sunday, when HE rose!
― JoeStork, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:33 (six years ago) link
"feel sad, but stand up."
in smoking and drinking years he had to be about 400, no? which is why i'm not shocked i guess. though i don't know what his final illness was.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:34 (six years ago) link
xp to LBI Gideon Coe playing lots of Fall on 6Music now, public service broadcasting...
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:36 (six years ago) link
A magnificent rebus, like Dylan on the wrong meds. (and a brief nod to Von Südenfed, one of my great faves)
― attention vampire (MatthewK), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:36 (six years ago) link
yes that Von Südenfed album is fantastic
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:38 (six years ago) link
"I will leave this fucking dump".
Sorry it's impossible to listen to the Fall and not quote every other line.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:38 (six years ago) link
I really need that Von Südenfed record, thanks for reminder
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:39 (six years ago) link
xxxp - part of the charm. almost felt like he'd conquered death, the way he lived
was always surprised by how *young* he was, compared to the way he looked
hard to process this one. dude was so brilliant, can't think of another lyricist quite like him, and I was always amazed how seamlessly The Fall were able to transition from one era to the next
― frogbs, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:39 (six years ago) link
Even if your granny shows up with some bongos, it still won’t be The Fall. R.I.P.
― spastic heritage, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:39 (six years ago) link
http://open.spotify.com/user/bentelec/playlist/7tbIoONKtyQtSsrsnzD0VQ
A spotify playlist, from the ILX tracks/ballot
― Mark G, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:41 (six years ago) link
"I will leave this fucking dump".Sorry it's impossible to listen to the Fall and not quote every other line.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:44 (six years ago) link
xp Neil, ta, blasting it now
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:46 (six years ago) link
The greatest lyricist in musical history, to such an extent that the word ‘lyrics’ is unfit to describe what he did. Other than miles, probably the greatest assembler-of-performers-into-something-unforeseeable there ever was.
These are close to my exact thoughts (expressed better than I could have done). He was a true "visionary" -- as overused as that term may be -- who realized his vision over & over, in a way that made both the expression, and the intent behind the expression, seem entirely sui generis.
I hope he's walking back among us soon, in an expanded / remastered / dodgy-label 2CD version. RIP forever...
― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:46 (six years ago) link
The longer late album cuts, like Couples vs. Jobless, Weather Report, Blindness, 50 Year Old Man, Dr. Bucks' Letter are probably my favorite mode of MES songwriting. Those songs are tunnels to get lost in. You emerge at the end and it's a different day.
― Mungolian Jerryset (bendy), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:47 (six years ago) link
xP.S. -- if indeed "There are twelve people in the world / The rest are paste" -- I think we were just left with only 11...
― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:48 (six years ago) link
"Stop eating all that chocolate. Eat salad instead. In fact, you're a half-wit."
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:50 (six years ago) link
He was the first To wear an idiotic jacket In the pub
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:50 (six years ago) link
From the "Record Collection Rock" thread, 2018.
the fall were maybe the pioneers in this field, they obviously borrowed from a whole host of cool but also not-so-cool influences, but then again they don't really fit because it never seemed like just a shallow exercise in showing off what hip records they were into
MES, "New Puritan", 1980.
I curse your preoccupationWith your record collectionNew puritan has no time It's only music, John
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:51 (six years ago) link
“i’m at the barrier between writer and singer” printhead
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:51 (six years ago) link
typical of course for him to see it gleefully as a barrier.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:54 (six years ago) link
Who tells you whatTo tape on your vid. chipHow do you know the progs you missAre worse than those you single out?And what'll you do when the rental's up?And your bottom rack is full of vidsOf programs you will nay look atThe way they act is, oh, sheer delightCardboard copyrightMake it right
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:54 (six years ago) link
poetry FFS
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:55 (six years ago) link
mystical magical ranter, rest in peace.
― brimstead, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:58 (six years ago) link
More from Riley tomorrow on M6 I hear. Have to feel for the lad a bit, he did a proper job earlier tonight. MES said this about him in his last interview:
"Years ago you told me you were offered a BBC 6Music show, would you like to do one yet?No, I’d love to do radio but think of the politics involved. I mean they have Guy fucking Garvey on, don’t they? It’s the kiss of death. Imagine having to say hello to Marc Riley every day. "
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:01 (six years ago) link
how flair is punished
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:02 (six years ago) link
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 landAnd deep down inside you know everybody wants to like big companies...”
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:03 (six years ago) link
Cheers for the heads up Neil S
― piscesx, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:06 (six years ago) link
Jesus Christ, "C n' C/ Stop Mithering"!!!!!!! You could be here all night quoting from that one.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:07 (six years ago) link
"ted rogers brains burn in hell"
― calzino, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:07 (six years ago) link
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.
― Empire Burl Ives (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:07 (six years ago) link
Fucking Echo + the Bunnymen never put Ted Rogers brains in hell.
― calzino, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:09 (six years ago) link
Currently blasting Bend Sinister and marvelling once more at how brilliant it is.
― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:10 (six years ago) link
a new face in heaven
― J. Sam, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:12 (six years ago) link
haha are you sure? he might be having more fun in hell
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:13 (six years ago) link
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
― frogbs, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:13 (six years ago) link
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 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:17 (six years ago) link
― 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
― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:18 (six years ago) link
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
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:21 (six years ago) link
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
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:26 (six years ago) link
hating Elton John until the end, good man
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:28 (six years ago) link
I thought he'd live another 20 years in spite of the reports. This blows.
― trife's rich padgett (rip van wanko), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:30 (six years ago) link
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
― Empire Burl Ives (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:36 (six years ago) link
that philip k dick bit hahaha
― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:38 (six years ago) link
"Arnie gets it"
― JRN, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:38 (six years ago) link
Might be time to retire the display name.
― righteousmaelstrom, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:39 (six years ago) link
"You wouldn't even know the sun was up unless there was a press release on it"was just getting into this site toohttp://annotatedfall.doomby.com/
― Dr X O'Skeleton, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:40 (six years ago) link
"whaddaya mean what's it mean?"
― Dr X O'Skeleton, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:43 (six years ago) link
LOLz. MES was so hilarious.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:44 (six years ago) link
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.
― woof, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:45 (six years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:46 (six years ago) link
scrolled through his discography wondering what to play. eventually got to 'frightened'. it has to be this
― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:47 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:48 (six years ago) link
xxp "hate's not your enemy, love's your enemy"
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:48 (six years ago) link
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. :(
― Fake Sam's Club (I M Losted), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:49 (six years ago) link
I come and stand at every doorBut no-one hears my silent pleaI knock and yet remain unseenFor I am dead for I am deadI need no fruit nor even riceI need no meat nor even breadAnd I need nothing for myselfWhen children die they do not growI woke one day to ash in lightMy eyes grew dim my eyes grew brightDeath came and turned my bones to dustAnd scattered swirling in the windI need no fruit nor even spiceI need no sweet or even breadAnd 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
― Empire Burl Ives (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:50 (six years ago) link
xxp murder all bush monkeys
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:50 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:51 (six years ago) link
An Easy Rider cootGrabbed the edge of my coatSaid: 'You're too smart for here'I said: 'I'll see the manager'
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:57 (six years ago) link
The young black kids get screwed up the worstThey go over to the Hampstead housesIn the English system they implicitly trustSee the A&R civil servantsThey get a sex thrill out of a sixteenth of Moroccan
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:57 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:58 (six years ago) link
Comic timing is perfect.
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:58 (six years ago) link
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
― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:58 (six years ago) link
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."
― sleeve, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 22:58 (six years ago) link
His downfall was a blonde girlBut that's none of your business
― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 23:03 (six years ago) link
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.
― anatol_merklich, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 23:12 (six years ago) link
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.
― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 23:31 (six years ago) link
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.
― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 23:49 (six years ago) link
how old are the stars really?
― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 24 January 2018 23:52 (six years ago) link
"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.
― akm, Thursday, 25 January 2018 00:40 (six years ago) link
that’s true. his austere delivery is beautiful tho.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:04 (six years ago) link
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.
― calzino, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:05 (six years ago) link
sending the best to ilxors who will be much more upset than me and i am fucking gutted so...
what a fucking hero.
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:08 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:09 (six years ago) link
Tom D made me read all of ...Stop Mithering. Jesus Christ, what a mind he had.
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:09 (six years ago) link
Mark, not Tom lol
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:10 (six years ago) link
― 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
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:12 (six years ago) link
watching perverted by language bis. what a beautiful and fucking funny correct man.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:21 (six years ago) link
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.
― calzino, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:25 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:27 (six years ago) link
what’s a computer.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:28 (six years ago) link
only saw the Fall twice ('85 and '92), but I'm sure I bought all the records '83-94 or so. RIP you wacko.
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:29 (six years ago) link
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.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:30 (six years ago) link
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.
― calzino, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:30 (six years ago) link
*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
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:31 (six years ago) link
Terry Bickers, and his band was Levitation.
― calzino, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:31 (six years ago) link
current playlist:
c'n'c-s mitheringwinterwinter 2Shift-WorkBill Is DeadVarious TimesDr. Buck's LetterPaint Work
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:39 (six years ago) link
o god, winter
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:41 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnwgjoTq1PM
You're historyYou've quit existationYou're green grub
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:42 (six years ago) link
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.
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:49 (six years ago) link
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 habitMusic - cassettes, CDs3. Palm Pilot - it’s my lifeline. I think it’s my P.A.’s computer, (6)She rules my diary and I download it4. Mobile phone5. 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.
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:50 (six years ago) link
you don't deserve rock and roll
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:50 (six years ago) link
hey mark
― mookieproof, Thursday, 25 January 2018 01:56 (six years ago) link
livin' too late
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:06 (six years ago) link
https://youtu.be/6m2lfk4Bm34
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:09 (six years ago) link
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
― mor frog bs (S-), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:11 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:13 (six years ago) link
Barbara Manning did a great cover of that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxv1w-x21pY
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:15 (six years ago) link
An academic kneaded his chinSat in the dust of some cheap magazinesHis academic rust could not burn them up
A small alteration of the past can turn time into spaceSmall changes can alter more than a mere decade
― eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:15 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpWVk3h2SA8&feature=share
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:16 (six years ago) link
he looks so wonderful there
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:17 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMJJmdlZoPw
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:22 (six years ago) link
that's my number one LBI
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:29 (six years ago) link
maybe... of course
Oh goes without saying!
I can stumble through yt till the sun comes up. Probably asleep before that. But damn.
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:35 (six years ago) link
just listened to Garden, now cranking "Two-Face!"
All the English groupsAct like peasants with free milkOn a routeOn a route to the lootTo candy mountainFive wacky English proletariat idiotsCalifornians always think of sexOr think of deathFive hundred girl deathsA Mexico revenge, it's stolen landThey really get it off on"Don't hurt me please"Rapist fill the TVsAnd the secret of their livesIs S.E.X..
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:36 (six years ago) link
50,000 fall fans cant be wrong.
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:44 (six years ago) link
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.
― Karl Malone, Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:47 (six years ago) link
<3
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:51 (six years ago) link
Trying not to be too sentimental because MES would have hated that. Thanks for the music, fuckface.
― lingereffect (Kent Burt), Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:55 (six years ago) link
Mark would want us all on the Sting should retire thread instead
― del griffith, Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:01 (six years ago) link
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.
― eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:02 (six years ago) link
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.
― attention vampire (MatthewK), Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:24 (six years ago) link
excellent point MK.
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:29 (six years ago) link
it's true that he made the world a better place when he called Mumford & Sons a "mongoloid Irish folk band."
― del griffith, Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:30 (six years ago) link
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
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:35 (six years ago) link
we need a thread with just MES stories imo
― mookieproof, Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:38 (six years ago) link
It was clear in the window eyeThe brick outlined the blue skyAnd I had to go round the gay graduates in the toiletsAnd Good King Harry was thereFucking Jimmy Savile
― Van Horn Street, Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:48 (six years ago) link
"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.
― akm, Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:53 (six years ago) link
Mat Osman @matosmanI 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."
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."
― Empire Burl Ives (Hadrian VIII), Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:55 (six years ago) link
loooool
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 04:00 (six years ago) link
It was just meThe hoover And the OAP
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Thursday, 25 January 2018 04:24 (six years ago) link
Btw that living too late verse quoted itt, those words go through my mind all the time
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Thursday, 25 January 2018 04:27 (six years ago) link
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.
― albvivertine, Thursday, 25 January 2018 04:40 (six years ago) link
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")
― Priory, Thursday, 25 January 2018 04:58 (six years ago) link
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.
― barreras, Thursday, 25 January 2018 05:28 (six years ago) link
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
― kim jong deal (suzy), Thursday, 25 January 2018 06:02 (six years ago) link
Andy Zax @andyzaxI 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.
― new noise, Thursday, 25 January 2018 06:48 (six years ago) link
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'
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 08:34 (six years ago) link
a good thing – i'll still be working out and being delighted and astonished by his lyrics till the day i die.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 08:46 (six years ago) link
"I think I'll drop outBecome a no manAnd live my rules
But I'm the sort that gets out of the bath with a dirty face."
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 08:55 (six years ago) link
Ha ha, from the same song ('Various Times')
'A good case for the systemswe likewe get'
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 08:56 (six years ago) link
(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)
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 08:57 (six years ago) link
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 fileand Um-brrrptzzap the subject.
MAN WITH CHIP: It's de-louse, recluse time
(now v. bitter) When I get to the safe houseHanging rhymeHang this crummy blitz trad. by its neck
Pink press threatI 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 beganGive them nail files soonThen the clan beganAgenda Item One
Pink press threatGet out the pink press threat fileNew prole art, the subjectIt'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 threatGet out the wet lib fileNew prole art, the subjectSafe-house, safe-house tone
That clan has got away with 100 years of sheer brilliance until now
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 09:18 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAob4ONlBmo
― Ludo, Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:06 (six years ago) link
now listening to the post-nearly man. hanging out with the grand fella
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:16 (six years ago) link
can’t believe i didn’t post this earlier:https://youtube/wygQmJ59E4Qand slates is amazing.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:17 (six years ago) link
shouldn't have listened to 'bill is dead' today, too much
― Shitpost in Opposition (King Boy Pato), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:17 (six years ago) link
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.
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:19 (six years ago) link
modernity, moderninitywater lane zero one seven one fifty five double ninedream sat maytents and tomatoes at Blackpoolwhere Jimmy Bloomfield has been brought back to hostJousts In Moderninityone of the many football grounds have been converted to hold this revived sport
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:22 (six years ago) link
NTS doing an MES tribute show this morning https://www.nts.live/ currently playing "Service" which is making me feel sad
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:27 (six years ago) link
Fizzles's link fixed (for me at least): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wygQmJ59E4Q
― Tim, Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:27 (six years ago) link
Always loved this bit from Winter 2:
The mad kid had 4 lights, the average is 2.5 lightsThe mediocre has 2 lights, the sign of genius is three lightsThere's one light left, that's the one lightThat's the science law
― Steve Reich In The Afternoon (Against The 80s), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:30 (six years ago) link
listening to that track right now, the Peel session version is also great
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:33 (six years ago) link
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).
― that mustardless plate (Bill A), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:39 (six years ago) link
a thing i loved about that song is the line“two white clouds cross the skylook like krakens”which with extraordinary economy and strangeness conveys the world of a frozen submarine and subterranean landscape.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:39 (six years ago) link
xpost about winter. bill those are lovely sightings/observations - thanks. (and thanks for fixing the link, tim)
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:41 (six years ago) link
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
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:41 (six years ago) link
It's the best version.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:43 (six years ago) link
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.
― Mark G, Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:44 (six years ago) link
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 4:262-2 Look, Know 5:052-3 Winter 8:032-4 Who Makes The Nazis? 2:54
https://www.discogs.com/The-Fall-The-Complete-Peel-Sessions-1978-2004/release/530824
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:47 (six years ago) link
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, 25 January 2018 10:56 (six years ago) link
my one sighting of MES in the wild was him going into a bookies on the lower broughton road in salford ca 1989
― faust apes (NickB), Thursday, 25 January 2018 10:57 (six years ago) link
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.
― Mark G, Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:06 (six years ago) link
St Peter's Square.. But you knew that, right?
― Mark G, Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:07 (six years ago) link
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.
― Agharta Christie (Ward Fowler), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:10 (six years ago) link
Had a piss alongside him once.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:12 (six years ago) link
go on...
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:14 (six years ago) link
There's not much more to the story tbh!
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:20 (six years ago) link
well there goes my hope of writing the first anatomically-correct mark e smith erotic fiction :(
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:27 (six years ago) link
i am damo suzuki's wang
― (the blues version in his Broadway show) (crüt), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:29 (six years ago) link
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.'
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:51 (six years ago) link
MES OTM
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:51 (six years ago) link
Perfect.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:53 (six years ago) link
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'.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:57 (six years ago) link
lol fizzles that is awesome
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:58 (six years ago) link
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:59 (six years ago) link
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
― 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.
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:24 (six years ago) link
"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 ??
― frogbs, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:29 (six years ago) link
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 bottlesAnd I had two brown bottlesAnd a white nose as I enteredFive years of confinementThis is the story that enfoldedAs it went on into the seaOf unseen footageAnd unseen factsUnseen refinementUnseen extensionChicory tip in a shopping centerWith a soundtrack again
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:34 (six years ago) link
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.
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:36 (six years ago) link
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.
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:40 (six years ago) link
stuff...stuff
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:41 (six years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:47 (six years ago) link
YFOC is too great to really split up but here's my post-YFOC mixtape, updated to include NFE
Fol De RolTaking Off Dedication Not Medication GreenwayCouples vs Jobless Mid 30sMister Rode MonocardNo Respects Rev. Auto Chip 2014-2016JetplaneJam SongLoadstones
^^^all incredible. "this is new, fresh!"
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:50 (six years ago) link
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 leftThe whirlpools cascade over my faceAnd I watched Murder She WroteAt least five times
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:52 (six years ago) link
this song is killing me right now
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:53 (six years ago) link
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
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:55 (six years ago) link
WR2 is undoubtedly among his greatest works though yeah, and a completely unprecedented piece of music in general
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 14:56 (six years ago) link
WR2 is fantastic, and so is Bonkers, though they're both on different plains all together. Former quite a tough listen today.
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:03 (six years ago) link
gonna be a while before I can listen to Bonkers
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:06 (six years ago) link
well the thing about Bonkers is that Smith's presence on it is that of the mischievous wraith
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:08 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOZOAeQKlJk
"Dr Boring had a relationship with the drug company tooAnd I'm half-associated with the Softness Group PLCOn TV today somebody claimed their dogHad been molested by a textile chemist
But life just bounces so don't you get worried at allSometimes life just bounces so don't you get worried at all"
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:10 (six years ago) link
what is the story behind Bonkers in Phoenix anyway. why does it sound like that
― frogbs, Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:12 (six years ago) link
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
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:13 (six years ago) link
i.e. it's the best thing ever
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:14 (six years ago) link
the sound fx are genuinely amazing and perfect
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:15 (six years ago) link
he always fuckin knew what he was doing
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:16 (six years ago) link
i'm listening to it now obv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNjlAwEkZ7s
xp :)
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:18 (six years ago) link
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
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:19 (six years ago) link
That's perfect, thx sleeve
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:20 (six years ago) link
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.
― cwkiii, Thursday, 25 January 2018 15:34 (six years ago) link
“If it’s me and yer granny on bongos, it’s The Fall.”
somehow never ran across this quote
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 25 January 2018 16:51 (six years ago) link
his music brought me so much pure FUN and joy.
― brimstead, Thursday, 25 January 2018 16:53 (six years ago) link
and a break from cold crappy reality
― brimstead, Thursday, 25 January 2018 16:54 (six years ago) link
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.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 16:55 (six years ago) link
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.
― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:13 (six years ago) link
rong :)
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:14 (six years ago) link
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
― mike t-diva, Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:14 (six years ago) link
that last one accompanied by a derisory chuckle
― #TeamHailing (imago), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:15 (six years ago) link
Ah man, hero -- that's one of my favorite books.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:17 (six years ago) link
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.
― Mungolian Jerryset (bendy), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:21 (six years ago) link
I love that interview, arguing w/McGowan abt Nietzsche lol
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:25 (six years ago) link
Dragnet For Gun Blast Man.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:36 (six years ago) link
man those headlines are really goodi 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
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:48 (six years ago) link
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.
― na (NA), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:53 (six years ago) link
note: i am not asking for help now because i think everyone has their own experience with a band like thismine is a very long journey apparently
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:58 (six years ago) link
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
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:59 (six years ago) link
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
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 25 January 2018 17:59 (six years ago) link
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
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:02 (six years ago) link
this radio tribute right now is going well
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/77083
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:03 (six years ago) link
*wild applause*
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:06 (six years ago) link
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)
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:07 (six years ago) link
D Wolk wrote sumthin
https://pitchfork.com/features/afterword/the-glorious-savagery-of-the-falls-mark-e-smith/
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:12 (six years ago) link
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.
― scott seward, Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:16 (six years ago) link
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 Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:18 (six years ago) link
pic.twitter.com/fVMznDerWq— Brix Smith Start (@Brixsmithstart) January 25, 2018
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:19 (six years ago) link
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
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:19 (six years ago) link
scott that was gen my period as well
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:21 (six years ago) link
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.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:26 (six years ago) link
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.
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:40 (six years ago) link
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:42 (six years ago) link
50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong is probably my favorite compilation title ever
― frogbs, Thursday, 25 January 2018 18:43 (six years ago) link
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.
― how's life, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:02 (six years ago) link
but what about the elvis one
― kurt schwitterz, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:09 (six years ago) link
that's what makes the Fall one so good
― frogbs, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:12 (six years ago) link
"bill is dead" as incidental music on The One Show just now
― koogs, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:12 (six years ago) link
frogbs gets it
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:14 (six years ago) link
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))
― koogs, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:15 (six years ago) link
normal people :)
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:15 (six years ago) link
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
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:16 (six years ago) link
i always thought it was funny "blindess" was car commercial since one of the first lyrics is i was walking down the street
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:17 (six years ago) link
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 substantialbut 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)
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:23 (six years ago) link
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
― mark s, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:31 (six years ago) link
it was free range that hit 40, not telephone thing.
― new noise, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:35 (six years ago) link
Was gonna say..
― Mark G, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:35 (six years ago) link
"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.
― scott seward, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:47 (six years ago) link
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*.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:49 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:53 (six years ago) link
speaking for myself, i'd rather listen to the fall than read beckett or stein...
― scott seward, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:53 (six years ago) link
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
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:53 (six years ago) link
Byron Coley @ByronColey19h9 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.
― dow, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:54 (six years ago) link
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.
― eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:56 (six years ago) link
: )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.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 25 January 2018 19:58 (six years ago) link
> 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
― koogs, Thursday, 25 January 2018 20:57 (six years ago) link
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."
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 25 January 2018 20:58 (six years ago) link
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
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:00 (six years ago) link
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.
― scott seward, Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:01 (six years ago) link
xxp one of my favorite lines
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:02 (six years ago) link
?? nate famously hated the fall i thought "mingering shit" iirc
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:04 (six years ago) link
Read on!
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:06 (six years ago) link
i did and it was pointless
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:14 (six years ago) link
sorry that was mean, music nerd hand-wringing does seem kinda pointless tho, the fall had plenty of catchy tunes
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:16 (six years ago) link
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.
― scott seward, Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:24 (six years ago) link
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.
― scott seward, Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:34 (six years ago) link
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.
― Haribo Hancock (sic), Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:45 (six years ago) link
the chemical brothers should have played drums! they had that big beat.
― scott seward, Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:51 (six years ago) link
xp that's amazing, never heard the backstory there
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:52 (six years ago) link
i should also say that ned has a lot of reviews of fall albums on allmusic and they are great reading again
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 25 January 2018 22:32 (six years ago) link
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.
― Colonel Poo, Thursday, 25 January 2018 22:48 (six years ago) link
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.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 25 January 2018 22:52 (six years ago) link
loll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2euHrKaRW4
― kurt schwitterz, Thursday, 25 January 2018 22:55 (six years ago) link
Beautiful. Are those saucepans in the foreground part of the instrumentation?
― mick signals, Thursday, 25 January 2018 23:18 (six years ago) link
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...'"
― etc, Thursday, 25 January 2018 23:22 (six years ago) link
probably not - this was for Ginger Wildheart's album and probs a home studio lol
xpost
― kurt schwitterz, Thursday, 25 January 2018 23:25 (six years ago) link
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 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.
― ヽ(´ー`)┌ (CompuPost), Thursday, 25 January 2018 23:39 (six years ago) link
I just ordered "The Fallen", looking forward to it
― sleeve, Thursday, 25 January 2018 23:42 (six years ago) link
The neighbour is Adam Helal, who also appeared in the Fall, playing bass from 1998 to 2001.
omg haha
― Patton Oswalt Defense Lawyer (Hadrian VIII), Thursday, 25 January 2018 23:43 (six years ago) link
how many posters in this thread have played in the Fall
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 January 2018 00:54 (six years ago) link
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."
― sleeve, Friday, 26 January 2018 00:55 (six years ago) link
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.
― barreras, Friday, 26 January 2018 01:07 (six years ago) link
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.
― earlnash, Friday, 26 January 2018 01:39 (six years ago) link
grooving really hard on Extricate & related tracks this evening
― sleeve, Friday, 26 January 2018 02:06 (six years ago) link
with your daft African popand the wine that you call Bull's BloodHillaryoh oh Hil-uh-ray
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 02:32 (six years ago) link
Keep me away from the fest-i-val....
― Fine Toothcomb (sonofstan), Friday, 26 January 2018 14:50 (six years ago) link
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?
― imago, Friday, 26 January 2018 14:55 (six years ago) link
oh the etc is on 'Slags, Slates', whoops
― imago, Friday, 26 January 2018 14:56 (six years ago) link
Anyway, this is possibly his most tender moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VUnbPG8i3A
― imago, Friday, 26 January 2018 14:57 (six years ago) link
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
― faust apes (NickB), Friday, 26 January 2018 14:58 (six years ago) link
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)
― imago, Friday, 26 January 2018 15:01 (six years ago) link
obviously i don't want to make light of domestic abuse, but it was definitely a single aberration. not that kind of player guv
― imago, Friday, 26 January 2018 15:02 (six years ago) link
Maxine PeakeEvery 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.”
― Agharta Christie (Ward Fowler), Friday, 26 January 2018 15:03 (six years ago) link
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
― imago, Friday, 26 January 2018 15:06 (six years ago) link
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
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 15:10 (six years ago) link
29 Truly Excellent and Typically Weird Stories About Mark E. Smith
― sleeve, Friday, 26 January 2018 15:10 (six years ago) link
so now I sleep in ditches
― the girl with the rub-on tattoo (Noodle Vague), Friday, 26 January 2018 15:11 (six years ago) link
hoooow bad are english musicians?
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 15:13 (six years ago) link
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."
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 15:32 (six years ago) link
um, yeah?
― Mark G, Friday, 26 January 2018 15:43 (six years ago) link
damon got his terrible revenge by naming the next gorillaz album 'the fall'
― imago, Friday, 26 January 2018 15:55 (six years ago) link
"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.
― Fine Toothcomb (sonofstan), Friday, 26 January 2018 18:27 (six years ago) link
As a huge Pavement fan, can anyone point me to the most obvious lifts?
― kraudive, Friday, 26 January 2018 18:48 (six years ago) link
as a fan of both i always felt like the whole thing was pretty overplayed honestly
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 18:49 (six years ago) link
i don't think i've ever thought about the fall listening to pavement.
― scott seward, Friday, 26 January 2018 18:49 (six years ago) link
I think the most commonly mentioned is "Conduit for Sale" and "A New Face in Hell".
― jmm, Friday, 26 January 2018 18:51 (six years ago) link
to me the most "Pavement" sounding Fall album is Middle Class Revolt but that's from 1994 when Pavement was well established already
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 18:53 (six years ago) link
Right yeah. How can I how can I xp
― kraudive, Friday, 26 January 2018 18:54 (six years ago) link
xxp yep, that one for sure, there's a couple more as well but it's been years since I listened to Slanted & Enchanted
― sleeve, Friday, 26 January 2018 18:54 (six years ago) link
― 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
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 18:55 (six years ago) link
Our Singer has kinda a Hip Priest beat happening ... the similarities between the two bands are overstated though, yeah.
― tylerw, Friday, 26 January 2018 18:57 (six years ago) link
There are more, if you want to hear it. 'Hit the plane down', 'Chesley's Little Wrists', arguably 'Two States'
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 26 January 2018 19:00 (six years ago) link
'No life singed her'
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 26 January 2018 19:01 (six years ago) link
Compare the artwork of say "Slanted & Enchanted" to "This Nation's Saving Grace"...
― EvR, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:08 (six years ago) link
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, 26 January 2018 19:09 (six years ago) link
ultimately, so did The Fall
― circa1916, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:11 (six years ago) link
i can't remember what pavement's actual fall cover sounded like. i used to have that single. probably sounded like pavement.
― scott seward, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:13 (six years ago) link
sure you aren't thinking of their REM cover, "Camera"? I don't recall an actual Fall cover
― sleeve, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:17 (six years ago) link
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.
― circa1916, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:18 (six years ago) link
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.
― Alba, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:18 (six years ago) link
pavement did the classical in '97 or thereabouts (during a Peel Session iirc) xp
― tylerw, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:19 (six years ago) link
it was on their major leagues single. a peel session track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_STY9g7-YPA
― scott seward, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:20 (six years ago) link
xpost xpost
oh cool! thanks y'all
― sleeve, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:23 (six years ago) link
Tons of Drag City-era Pavement aped The Fall pretty hard, this one notably:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k67p7DN-SWo
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, 26 January 2018 19:51 (six years ago) link
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 26, 2018 1:09 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― 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...
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 20:08 (six years ago) link
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.
― afriendlypioneer, Friday, 26 January 2018 20:30 (six years ago) link
"In the early days of the Fall, he financed the band by giving Tarot readings to local housewives" hahaha
― Nabozo, Friday, 26 January 2018 20:36 (six years ago) link
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
― Patton Oswalt Defense Lawyer (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 26 January 2018 20:37 (six years ago) link
i thought that whole Peel session was Fall covers tbh but i might be misremembering
― hard to be a spod (Noodle Vague), Friday, 26 January 2018 20:37 (six years ago) link
Sonic Youth did that, don't know about Pavement.
― koogs, Friday, 26 January 2018 20:39 (six years ago) link
https://78.media.tumblr.com/e4e1b6929eb947f11bb2274f8297c5d1/tumblr_inline_nd2tug8k6q1qhyw63.gif
― Patton Oswalt Defense Lawyer (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 26 January 2018 20:39 (six years ago) link
I find those Blaney records to be kind of lifeless, though they did a good "Transfusion" together
― Patton Oswalt Defense Lawyer (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 26 January 2018 20:40 (six years ago) link
xxp
oh right, i was misremembering then
― hard to be a spod (Noodle Vague), Friday, 26 January 2018 20:41 (six years ago) link
has an actual cause of death been announced? it doesn't seem like they were even sure why he was sick recently.
― akm, Friday, 26 January 2018 20:43 (six years ago) link
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?
― veronica moser, Friday, 26 January 2018 20:54 (six years ago) link
Blindness, great song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVnsmADFCIg
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 20:57 (six years ago) link
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
― veronica moser, Friday, 26 January 2018 21:00 (six years ago) link
The UK had this one more recently, which ended up in court...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=89yWGa-ibjs
― koogs, Friday, 26 January 2018 21:02 (six years ago) link
(^ car ad, touch sensitive)
― koogs, Friday, 26 January 2018 21:03 (six years ago) link
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.
― calzino, Friday, 26 January 2018 21:03 (six years ago) link
Wonderful work by Jes Skolnik
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/the-ugly-truths-of-loving-the-falls-mark-e-smith/
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 26 January 2018 21:27 (six years ago) link
yeah I just read that, really good
― sleeve, Friday, 26 January 2018 21:34 (six years ago) link
^ 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.
― Colonel Poo, Friday, 26 January 2018 21:40 (six years ago) link
that was really well done
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 22:11 (six years ago) link
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.
― Mungolian Jerryset (bendy), Friday, 26 January 2018 22:22 (six years ago) link
Exactly right. I know Brix a little and made sure to offer her my condolences before going on to say anything about MES elsewhere.
― kim jong deal (suzy), Friday, 26 January 2018 22:22 (six years ago) link
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.
― hard to be a spod (Noodle Vague), Friday, 26 January 2018 22:35 (six years ago) link
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
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 26 January 2018 22:57 (six years ago) link
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.
― calzino, Friday, 26 January 2018 23:03 (six years ago) link
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.
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 26 January 2018 23:09 (six years ago) link
Hey that made me cry a little, geez. Xpost
― albvivertine, Friday, 26 January 2018 23:12 (six years ago) link
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?
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Friday, 26 January 2018 23:38 (six years ago) link
btw Martin Bramah's guitar playing on the first album is fkn great.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Friday, 26 January 2018 23:46 (six years ago) link
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, 27 January 2018 00:12 (six years ago) link
Steve Hanley MVP
― Patton Oswalt Defense Lawyer (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:15 (six years ago) link
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
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:22 (six years ago) link
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.
― michaellambert, Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:28 (six years ago) link
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
― Dr X O'Skeleton, Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:30 (six years ago) link
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.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:36 (six years ago) link
Songs are great though.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:39 (six years ago) link
Witch Trials has a very 70s sound
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:40 (six years ago) link
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.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:41 (six years ago) link
See, I prefer Witch Trials to Dragnet. It's one of my favourite Fall albums.
― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:43 (six years ago) link
I like it a lot
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:45 (six years ago) link
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
― 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.
― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Saturday, 27 January 2018 00:47 (six years ago) link
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.
― Dr X O'Skeleton, Saturday, 27 January 2018 01:06 (six years ago) link
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"
― sleeve, Saturday, 27 January 2018 01:15 (six years ago) link
^^^^^^
― imago, Saturday, 27 January 2018 01:24 (six years ago) link
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
― Haribo Hancock (sic), Saturday, 27 January 2018 01:46 (six years ago) link
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?
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Saturday, 27 January 2018 01:50 (six years ago) link
seen this?
http://theconversation.com/northern-white-crap-that-talks-back-the-falls-mark-e-smith-spoke-for-weird-manchester-90710
― sleeve, Saturday, 27 January 2018 01:59 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8P6DDCZZhw
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Saturday, 27 January 2018 02:23 (six years ago) link
thx sleeve!
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Saturday, 27 January 2018 03:01 (six years ago) link
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!
― Patton Oswalt Defense Lawyer (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 27 January 2018 04:07 (six years ago) link
pfft Shift-Work is awesome, in my top 5
― sleeve, Saturday, 27 January 2018 04:09 (six years ago) link
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.
― sleeve, Saturday, 27 January 2018 04:12 (six years ago) link
(by "everything" I mean "the proper studio albums", not the bazillion random live discs from the last 20 years)
― sleeve, Saturday, 27 January 2018 04:15 (six years ago) link
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.
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Saturday, 27 January 2018 04:26 (six years ago) link
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
― Patton Oswalt Defense Lawyer (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 27 January 2018 04:52 (six years ago) link
The Unutterable despite being CD-era overstuffed is just a completely WTF amazing record
― Patton Oswalt Defense Lawyer (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 27 January 2018 04:57 (six years ago) link
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.
― timellison, Saturday, 27 January 2018 06:00 (six years ago) link
I love the run from Shift Work up though Cerebral Caustic. Annoyed that I never did get to see The Fall.. sigh
― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, 27 January 2018 07:04 (six years ago) link
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
― mark s, Saturday, 27 January 2018 10:00 (six years ago) link
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
― mark s, Saturday, 27 January 2018 10:01 (six years ago) link
I sat and drankFor three decades.I'm forty five.
would perhaps be more suitable there
― koogs, Saturday, 27 January 2018 11:25 (six years ago) link
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.
― barreras, Saturday, 27 January 2018 15:56 (six years ago) link
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..
― piscesx, Saturday, 27 January 2018 16:56 (six years ago) link
I was at that. Iirc it was a different year they released on cd, phoenix 95 maybe
― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 27 January 2018 17:07 (six years ago) link
Looked it up, it's both years but mostly 95, 4 songs from 96
― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 27 January 2018 17:09 (six years ago) link
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.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 27 January 2018 17:56 (six years ago) link
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.
― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 27 January 2018 18:39 (six years ago) link
I saw 'em around that time, too... I remember them playing 'The Chiselers' and Karl Burns looking terrified during his bit.
― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Saturday, 27 January 2018 18:42 (six years ago) link
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.
― albvivertine, Saturday, 27 January 2018 21:05 (six years ago) link
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:M5Ladybird (Green Grass)Glam RacketLost in MusicWhy Are People GrudgefulI'm Going to SpainBig New PrinzThe MixerFree RangeThe League of Bald-Headed MenParanoia Man in Cheap Shit RoomIdiot Joy ShowlandStrychnineWarHit the NorthDeadbeat DescendentA Past Gone MadHigh Tension Line
2001:The JokeCyber InsektTwo LibransAnd ThereinTouch SensitiveCrop-DustBourgeois TownKick The CanF-oldin' MoneyMr. PharmacistSons of TemperanceMy Ex-Classmates' KidsEnigrammatic DreamI Wake up in the CityReprise: Jane - Prof Mick - Ey BastardoWay RoundI Am Damo Suzuki
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Saturday, 27 January 2018 21:17 (six years ago) link
The Hearts DJ played 'Edinburgh Man' nice and loud at half time. The best part of the game for me.
― call me by your name..or Finn (fionnland), Sunday, 28 January 2018 00:20 (six years ago) link
xp I really like My Ex-Classmates' Kids (which is why I don't think Are You Are Missing Winner is that bad really)
― Colonel Poo, Sunday, 28 January 2018 00:35 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42EfHW5npko
i had a riot watching this tonight.
― meaulnes, Sunday, 28 January 2018 00:43 (six years ago) link
Now that is cool.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Sunday, 28 January 2018 00:54 (six years ago) link
That's really cool!
― khat person (jim in vancouver), Sunday, 28 January 2018 04:17 (six years ago) link
it is. and it's worth pointing out to non-scots that Hearts = Heart of Midlothian football club.
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Sunday, 28 January 2018 04:30 (six years ago) link
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.
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Sunday, 28 January 2018 06:42 (six years ago) link
― Fizzles, Sunday, 28 January 2018 07:18 (six years ago) link
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
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
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
― Fizzles, Sunday, 28 January 2018 08:19 (six years ago) link
BBC6 has a concert available for a limited time from 1995 Roadhouse and lots of tributes.
― EvR, Sunday, 28 January 2018 09:03 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry06oPMtB20
i hate the guts of shakin' stevens.
― meaulnes, Sunday, 28 January 2018 18:51 (six years ago) link
Hey little singer come on upShow us your house and show us your cock
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Sunday, 28 January 2018 22:34 (six years ago) link
the working class has been shaftedso what are the fuck you staring at?your philosophy in life it seemsliving out some ad man’s dream
― Fizzles, Monday, 29 January 2018 03:20 (six years ago) link
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)
― Priory, Monday, 29 January 2018 03:43 (six years ago) link
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.
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Monday, 29 January 2018 03:47 (six years ago) link
Beefheart not fucking sweetheart. Fucking spell check on kindle sucks!!!!!
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Monday, 29 January 2018 03:51 (six years ago) link
And "says" not "sex". For Christ sake man. Sorry folks!
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Monday, 29 January 2018 03:52 (six years ago) link
*pogos furiously to oh brother bassline*
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Monday, 29 January 2018 04:25 (six years ago) link
Captain Sweetheart :)
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Monday, 29 January 2018 09:51 (six years ago) link
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.
― Alba, Monday, 29 January 2018 10:18 (six years ago) link
Captain Sweetheart is my fav thing :)
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 29 January 2018 13:40 (six years ago) link
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.
― Fizzles, Monday, 29 January 2018 13:50 (six years ago) link
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
― city worker, Monday, 29 January 2018 14:32 (six years ago) link
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
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 30 January 2018 02:13 (six years ago) link
housemate borrowed me his signed copy of renegade. enchanting.
― meaulnes, Tuesday, 30 January 2018 02:19 (six years ago) link
my 2-hour radio tribute:
https://spinitron.com/radio/playlist.php?station=kwva&month=Jan&year=2018&playlist=43814#here
no audio archive, sorry.
― sleeve, Tuesday, 30 January 2018 02:22 (six years ago) link
I am sure I was at that show, Morbs!
― kim jong deal (suzy), Tuesday, 30 January 2018 10:59 (six years ago) link
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
― faust apes (NickB), Tuesday, 30 January 2018 11:05 (six years ago) link
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
― faust apes (NickB), Tuesday, 30 January 2018 11:08 (six years ago) link
well, they do love pop-stock stickers...
― koogs, Tuesday, 30 January 2018 12:55 (six years ago) link
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
― sleeve, Tuesday, 30 January 2018 15:21 (six years ago) link
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.
― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Tuesday, 30 January 2018 21:01 (six years ago) link
Don't even mean thus argumentatively but imo endless snow-shovelling is a good thing especially re Mark E. Can't demarkate that stuff
― bizarrer Gandhara (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 30 January 2018 21:05 (six years ago) link
anyone else? an ebook at my library.
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 30 January 2018 21:15 (six years ago) link
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
― willem, Wednesday, 31 January 2018 10:30 (six years ago) link
oh cool, cheers!
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Wednesday, 31 January 2018 11:46 (six years ago) link
The Marshall Suite is really fun
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 31 January 2018 14:04 (six years ago) link
Thanks for heads up on The Wire Fall archive. Some good stuff in there.
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Wednesday, 31 January 2018 19:26 (six years ago) link
:)
― mark s, Wednesday, 31 January 2018 19:28 (six years ago) link
Ian Cusack on MES
― EvR, Wednesday, 31 January 2018 19:52 (six years ago) link
Not sure who Ian Cusack is but that was the single best post-death piece on Mark i've read yet.
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Wednesday, 31 January 2018 21:19 (six years ago) link
fucking hell the live version of middl. mass on 'a part of america, therein' is incredible.
― meaulnes, Thursday, 1 February 2018 17:25 (six years ago) link
that whole album is really great, also has my favorite version of "Totally Wired"
― sleeve, Thursday, 1 February 2018 17:27 (six years ago) link
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?
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 1 February 2018 17:31 (six years ago) link
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
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 1 February 2018 20:30 (six years ago) link
Man, Brix and the Extricated doing "Hotel Bloedel" sure is sweet.
― timellison, Friday, 2 February 2018 01:21 (six years ago) link
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!
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!
― Pumpkin Soup and Mandy Patinkin (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 2 February 2018 03:37 (six years ago) link
^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.
― Grandpont Genie, Friday, 2 February 2018 14:08 (six years ago) link
I hope MES got to hear the Longmont Potion Castle call to Dick Dale.
― Mungolian Jerryset (bendy), Friday, 2 February 2018 14:40 (six years ago) link
arid al's dream!
― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, 2 February 2018 17:44 (six years ago) link
very good track, underrated compilation obscurity
― sleeve, Friday, 2 February 2018 17:47 (six years ago) link
xxxp sounds like MES learned a trick or two from Dick Dale about claiming to have invented various types of music!
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Friday, 2 February 2018 17:48 (six years ago) link
Arid Al is possibly top 10 fall for me
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Friday, 2 February 2018 18:01 (six years ago) link
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?
― new noise, Friday, 2 February 2018 18:01 (six years ago) link
not to me, thanks for that!
― sleeve, Friday, 2 February 2018 18:04 (six years ago) link
oh cool! jesus, he knew he was done
― imago, Friday, 2 February 2018 18:16 (six years ago) link
Righteous mes Easter egg
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Friday, 2 February 2018 19:59 (six years ago) link
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
― Doran, Friday, 2 February 2018 20:46 (six years ago) link
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.
― Doran, Friday, 2 February 2018 20:54 (six years ago) link
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. SmithMay 2008
― Doran, Friday, 2 February 2018 21:03 (six years ago) link
Quoting Captain Mainwaring? That is so perfect!
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Friday, 2 February 2018 22:20 (six years ago) link
Just watched the Decline of Western Civilization, and spotted an MES sticker on the door of Slash magazine's office
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Friday, 2 February 2018 22:22 (six years ago) link
more details plz! did it just say "Mark E Smith?"
― sleeve, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:24 (six years ago) link
hah okay here's a screenshot, I think it's MES though I could be wrong
https://www.instagram.com/p/BetgpvBB2BR/
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Friday, 2 February 2018 22:30 (six years ago) link
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)
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:37 (six years ago) link
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.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:39 (six years ago) link
p sure bessy arrived in the UK in 1980 (and worked for rough trade) after slash ceased publication?
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:42 (six years ago) link
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?
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Friday, 2 February 2018 22:43 (six years ago) link
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!
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:44 (six years ago) link
Christ all those LA gigs in that run sound insanely great. And X was on that Germs bill too! Good lord!
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:45 (six years ago) link
So suffice to say yes, I could easily see MES and Claude having met in December 1979, so.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:46 (six years ago) link
oh nice one! X too, good gig
hah xp
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Friday, 2 February 2018 22:46 (six years ago) link
(And the Skip King mentioned in various entries is a long-time friend, you can vouch for the stories and provenance in general.)
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:47 (six years ago) link
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."
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:48 (six years ago) link
(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
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:51 (six years ago) link
all the same, this is how he dressed then: http://thefall.org/gigography/79dec14_flyer.jpg
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:54 (six years ago) link
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.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:55 (six years ago) link
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!
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Friday, 2 February 2018 22:55 (six years ago) link
So do I think the sticker is him, not really, but did they know the Fall back then, oh heck yes.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:56 (six years ago) link
wow they did shows with Monitor! a Joe Carducci favorite
http://disasteramnesiac.blogspot.com/2013/04/monitor-st-world-imitation-1980-reissue.html
― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 2 February 2018 22:57 (six years ago) link
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
― Le Bateau Ivre, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:57 (six years ago) link
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'."
― Dan Worsley, Friday, 2 February 2018 22:59 (six years ago) link
also important and relevant: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0c3rgsIUAAmN5X.jpg
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 23:02 (six years ago) link
No, sorry, I'm not buying Peter Purves.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Friday, 2 February 2018 23:04 (six years ago) link
<3 Viggo
My next best guess for the identity of sticker person: Joan Jett
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Friday, 2 February 2018 23:04 (six years ago) link
xp, yeah. More John Noakes' thing I suppose.
― Dan Worsley, Friday, 2 February 2018 23:06 (six years ago) link
no, he's quoting napoleon. sorry i wasn't clearer there.
― new noise, Friday, 2 February 2018 23:15 (six years ago) link
Mainwaring/ Napoleon, same thing.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Friday, 2 February 2018 23:17 (six years ago) link
Mainwaring/ Napoleon/Smith, same thing :)
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 23:23 (six years ago) link
"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
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 23:26 (six years ago) link
"Stupid boy" surely?
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Friday, 2 February 2018 23:30 (six years ago) link
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
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 23:42 (six years ago) link
(most of them are capsule reviews on a larger page with other stuff but even so)
― mark s, Friday, 2 February 2018 23:43 (six years ago) link
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?
― Michael Jones, Friday, 2 February 2018 23:58 (six years ago) link
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.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Saturday, 3 February 2018 00:01 (six years ago) link
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.
― Michael Jones, Saturday, 3 February 2018 00:10 (six years ago) link
The version I read said it was dancing to Deep Purple that was beyond the pale
― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 3 February 2018 00:25 (six years ago) link
The full details.
http://static.stuff.co.nz/1471318288/188/15625188.jpg
― everything, Saturday, 3 February 2018 00:31 (six years ago) link
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
― sleeve, Saturday, 3 February 2018 02:27 (six years ago) link
That poster that mark s. posted is A+.
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Saturday, 3 February 2018 02:32 (six years ago) link
"Lie Dream of a Casino Soul" got to #17 in NZ.
― timellison, Saturday, 3 February 2018 08:19 (six years ago) link
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.
― Mark G, Saturday, 3 February 2018 09:53 (six years ago) link
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
― Isi, Saturday, 3 February 2018 10:10 (six years ago) link
drunkenly dancing to Rock The Casbah
TO BE FAIR they were not slapped hard enough for this
― mark s, Saturday, 3 February 2018 12:42 (six years ago) link
Slapped hard with bonuses maybe
― albvivertine, Saturday, 3 February 2018 14:00 (six years ago) link
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
― Mark G, Saturday, February 3, 2018 9:53 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Feargal Sharkey, more like.
― Full of bile and Blue Nile denial (Turrican), Saturday, 3 February 2018 14:38 (six years ago) link
Marc Riley has a joker hysterical face
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 3 February 2018 16:53 (six years ago) link
This should be a poll surely?https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUeU4l7XcAARuZy.jpg:large
― Stevie T, Saturday, 3 February 2018 18:30 (six years ago) link
Harsh on Telly Savalas imo
― Master of Treacle, Saturday, 3 February 2018 18:39 (six years ago) link
Yes, a lot of that list deserves to be hated but not Kojak.
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Saturday, 3 February 2018 18:46 (six years ago) link
he is a tit tho
― mark s, Saturday, 3 February 2018 18:59 (six years ago) link
There's an article on Mark E Smith in the Waitrose free paper.
― djh, Saturday, 3 February 2018 20:09 (six years ago) link
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TuUOgzcfOeg/V2XBRTTzvrI/AAAAAAAAE2s/f4eB_81C0IIXhThpD3KpbGVAtUys9iaBQCLcB/s1600/Tina%2Bvs%2BErich.gif
― calzino, Saturday, 3 February 2018 21:20 (six years ago) link
Regarding L.A. 1979 gigs - there was an official CD release of the AntiClub gig - one of my fave Fall live recordings.
https://www.discogs.com/Fall-Live-From-The-Vaults-Los-Angeles-1979/release/994907
― lingereffect (Kent Burt), Sunday, 4 February 2018 01:25 (six years ago) link
Wow, with a Pascal le Gras cover, no less.
― timellison, Sunday, 4 February 2018 07:11 (six years ago) link
The wonderful and frightening documentary is on bbc4 next Saturday
― koogs, Sunday, 4 February 2018 11:48 (six years ago) link
Xxxxpost not sure what he exactly "did" on it.but Claude Bessy gets a prominent thank you, literally, it says "TANK: Clde BESSY" on box for the Perverted by Language DVD. Didn't Catholic Discipline do the colorfully named punk chestnut "decadent jew"? I so, thats a rather Mark E Smithian title. Though he would more likely insert it into a line, rather than the title/chorus. Also, Big Thanks to the redoubtable Mr. Raggett on the awesome zine dls. Those are awesome to have around. And that pic of MES w/Chris D is classic!! Chris d smiling is pretty unusual. And MES looks so wasted, holy shit man. The pulled out pant pocket is a nice touch. Gives him thatch "just been rolled" look. Lol. Love you, Mark!! And will really miss catching new interviews and stuff, which often are more interesting than the later records. However, i can always dance to his vibrations for the rest of my crazy days. Thank you again and again Mr Smith.
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Monday, 5 February 2018 02:24 (six years ago) link
Decadent Jew was by the Nuns.
― Colonel Poo, Monday, 5 February 2018 06:49 (six years ago) link
The Nuns! O.k. Thanks. I figured someone here would correct me on that. Well, in that case, Catholic Discipline really didnt have ANY good material,I'm into C.B., as a human being/writer, but his band. Yeesh! BTW in the MES tribute at the world's finest Fall website theyve started posting DLable mp3s of various radio shows about MES, from BBC and other sources. Some great listening there.
― VyrnaKnowlIsAHeadbanger, Monday, 5 February 2018 08:02 (six years ago) link
Claude Bessey directed the "Kicker Conspiracy" and "Wings" vids.
― Mark G, Monday, 5 February 2018 11:49 (six years ago) link
I'm into C.B.
well done
― Dumpster Fire Walk With Me (Hadrian VIII), Monday, 5 February 2018 13:25 (six years ago) link
MES seemed to have a pretty strong fascination with LA/West Coast early on, Claude, Richard Meltzer (Meltzer talks about he & MES ditching the "musicians" to go drink at some bar), Chris D, & MES, seemed to all be fast friends/drinking companions, which jesus christ seems like some serious trouble.
Mark apparently wanted to visit Compton and there's some early zine interview where he claims that Mexican dudes in low riders were all big Fall fans, which seems like his claim that only plumbers & working men came to their gigs in England.
― chr1sb3singer, Monday, 5 February 2018 18:20 (six years ago) link
Einar and MES, a match made in hell but they'll take you to heaven first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5q5J67Mrv0
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 6 February 2018 14:46 (six years ago) link
seen on FB: "in the 15 years since The Fall released their greatest hits collection “50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong,” it has sold 48,700 copies."
― sleeve, Tuesday, 6 February 2018 15:33 (six years ago) link
Brian of WFMU about 30 mins into a 3-hr tribute, listen now or later
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/77281
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 6 February 2018 20:36 (six years ago) link
the hip priest he just played was terrific
― adam, Tuesday, 6 February 2018 20:39 (six years ago) link
Is this the zine interview, chr1s?
http://jneomarvin.com/interviews-of-our-times/the-fall-unpublished-1981/
MES' West Coast fascination is pretty scrupulously documented in "C & C/ S. Mithering"
― the man from P.O.R.L.O.C.K. (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, 6 February 2018 21:04 (six years ago) link
"in the 15 years since The Fall released their greatest hits collection “50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong,” it has sold 48,700 copies."
fans already had those songs
― Haribo Hancock (sic), Tuesday, 6 February 2018 21:15 (six years ago) link
I bought it anyway
― Neue Jesse Schule, Tuesday, 6 February 2018 23:07 (six years ago) link
Too fast to writeToo fast to work
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Tuesday, 6 February 2018 23:21 (six years ago) link
As of today I have finally reached the stage where I am ready to just listen to tons and tons of fall for a long time
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Tuesday, 6 February 2018 23:22 (six years ago) link
yeah, I've been revisiting some of the less familiar albums
― sleeve, Tuesday, 6 February 2018 23:34 (six years ago) link
also, boy do I have a lot of issues with this Ian Cusack piece:
http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.in/2018/01/mark-is-dead.html
the dismissal of the later records is so obstinate, he admits that he basically never listened to them but.... still hates them?
I think his timeline of the decline is more or less accurate, but he underrates everything after 1994 so comically that it undercuts the piece imo
― sleeve, Tuesday, 6 February 2018 23:39 (six years ago) link
Listened to Von Sudenfed today, so freakin' good. I'll be honest, I don't think I'd ever bother with Mouse On Mars if Mark wasn't fronting them. Mark did that alot, such a presence he had that anything he was on became his.
"The Rhinohead" - is Mark being auto-tuned? He kinda sounds like Colin Newman does these days.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 6 February 2018 23:47 (six years ago) link
It's a great record all the way through
― Entrepreneurial Jism Unshackler (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, 6 February 2018 23:51 (six years ago) link
xxpostI really loved that piece because it was so personal but yeah calling later Fall a Killing Joke ripoff was a bit much, I got the sense he couldn't separate his feelings about MES's self destructiveness from the music
― It's not delivery, it's Adorno! (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 04:00 (six years ago) link
Yeah agreed
I've been starting from the beginning, listening to Live 77 a lot & Bingo Master's Break-Out, along w the earliest Witch Trials songs etc
― the man from P.O.R.L.O.C.K. (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 04:12 (six years ago) link
Von Sudenfed is great, like several MoM records are
― Haribo Hancock (sic), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 07:51 (six years ago) link
I've got 384 Fall songs (currently) on my iPod and just shuffling through them all day at work and being doing it for last week straight
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 16:35 (six years ago) link
My best friend is a big fan from the early days, doesn't like some of the mid-period stuff (eg Frenz Experiment), and insists last year's album is real good.
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 17:14 (six years ago) link
it is!
― sleeve, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 17:18 (six years ago) link
I love the last record but my favorite Fall era is 1978-2017 so yr mileage my vary.
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 17:19 (six years ago) link
sounds like the funereal was something
― It's not delivery, it's Adorno! (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 18:40 (six years ago) link
my favorite Fall era is 1978-2017
gets it
― sleeve, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 18:40 (six years ago) link
As much as I love the Brix era, I'm currently still stuck on listening to 1978-83, sometimes poring over the Annotated Lyrics site as I go.
A track that kind of passed me by until now and now sounds like one of the best things they ever did was Hard Life in the Country.
And (slightly arbitrarily of course) for a long time I've said English Scheme is my favourite Fall track I found this version of it from Glasgow's Plaza Ballroom in 1981 where the recording is pretty ropy but the band is just on fire.
― Alba, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 19:13 (six years ago) link
oh man hard life in country is so great
D. BOWIE lookalikes permeate carparksIt GETS a bit de-pres-sing
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 19:19 (six years ago) link
I'm currently still stuck on listening to 1978-83, sometimes poring over the Annotated Lyrics site as I go.
Haha yep this is me
― the man from P.O.R.L.O.C.K. (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 19:36 (six years ago) link
about to spin the live Reykjavik album for the first time in years. Highly recommended as it captures the lineup right after Riley expulsion. You've got the lone Scanlon in pitched battle against double drummers and Hanleysaurus. Also it has some really really great MES lyrical revisions
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 20:02 (six years ago) link
Yeah that weird silver of time right after Riley and before Brix where there is no "lead" instrument just this storming rhythm section making this huge cavernous noise and MES being MES (and occasionally rolling his knuckles over a keyboard) is awesome
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 20:07 (six years ago) link
That's about as close as they come to being harmolodic rock band
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 20:08 (six years ago) link
I have no idea if the video links on the WFMU playlist i posted yesterday are in this thread, ck out if not
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 20:09 (six years ago) link
Jon do u mean that Austerbaijao album or whatever it's called? Great stuff.
― sleeve, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 20:11 (six years ago) link
yes austerbaijarbo
SNOW on easter sundayJESUS CHRIST in reverse
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 20:12 (six years ago) link
the vers of "Backdrop" on there is so amazing
Who put the yellow pills inThe-a-ah Gordon's gin?
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 20:14 (six years ago) link
it also has the best The Classical sales pitch (elephant... HOUSE... odor)
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 20:16 (six years ago) link
WPRB in Princeton put together a huge post about Mark and the Fall with audio interviews (with Craig Scanlon in 86 and later with MES in 94), clips from radio shows about the Fall, an on-air accounting of the 1998 Philadelphia show (just before the Brownie's show), a letter from Mark to one of the DJs, pictures of the WPRB library's Fall lps (with DJ notes written on the covers) and other ephemera.
http://www.wprbhistory.org/mark-e-smith-wprb-fall/
― city worker, Thursday, 8 February 2018 22:36 (six years ago) link
As a huge Pavement fan, can anyone point me to the most obvious lifts?― kraudive, Friday, January 26, 2018 10:48 AM (one week ago)
― kraudive, Friday, January 26, 2018 10:48 AM (one week ago)
I don't know if it's a lift, but "Forklift" sounds a heck of a lot like a Wonderful and Frightening World-era Fall tune.
― timellison, Friday, 9 February 2018 00:02 (six years ago) link
The early Pavement singles/ep & S&E are sort of spiritually in the same realm, scattered, ratty, cryptic, singer sounds like he's trapped in a speaker box at a fast food drive through, but the similarities between the bands is more aesthetic than musical and even then it's a bit trumped up.
Weed vs speed basically.
Also Pavement never had a rhythm section that was in even in the same country as the Fall's (any of 'em).
― chr1sb3singer, Friday, 9 February 2018 15:08 (six years ago) link
otm
― sleeve, Friday, 9 February 2018 15:13 (six years ago) link
Yeah that always seemed the crucial thing. The Fall ca. Dragnet/Totales Turn were a killer dance band
― the man from P.O.R.L.O.C.K. (Drugs A. Money), Friday, 9 February 2018 19:01 (six years ago) link
Well, of course.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/brawl-breaks-out-fall-singer-11994398.amp
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 9 February 2018 19:10 (six years ago) link
Some more clarification from Pritchard he mentions “parasites and vultures, who have only been around a couple years physically attacking people asking why they were at the funeral.
― It's not delivery, it's Adorno! (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 9 February 2018 19:45 (six years ago) link
Gary Young could have played drums in the Fall.
― timellison, Friday, 9 February 2018 22:55 (six years ago) link
it always seemed to me like the Fall's shambolic quality came more from Mark and whoever is playing keyboard/guitar, and that any Fall drummer wld have to be able to hold down a motorik beat for a long time, Gary Young does not strike me as that guy
― Entrepreneurial Jism Unshackler (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 10 February 2018 16:15 (six years ago) link
Also MES only allowed for one unreliable drunk in the band at a time
― Entrepreneurial Jism Unshackler (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 10 February 2018 16:18 (six years ago) link
Statement from his sisters on the "official" Fall site
We would like to thank family, friends and fans for all their kind words, condolences and memories about our brother Mark.
Also, the N.H.S and staff who treated Mark throughout and Mark’s partner Pam who loved, cared and cherished our brother.
Mark fought a long and hard battle after his diagnosis of terminal lung and kidney cancer. He took every treatment going, which could be brutal at times and left Mark with some horrible side effects. Mark was such a strong man and hated letting his fans down and tried to carry on regardless against all advice.
Mark had a great life and loved and lived it to the full and always by his own rules and we, as his sisters were privileged to be part of it too.
Mark is at peace now and pain free, but we, his three sisters have been left heartbroken and will miss our big brother very much.
Barbara, Suzanne and Caroline.
― chr1sb3singer, Monday, 12 February 2018 16:03 (six years ago) link
;_;
― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Monday, 12 February 2018 16:05 (six years ago) link
Aw man.
― Entrepreneurial Jism Unshackler (Hadrian VIII), Monday, 12 February 2018 16:20 (six years ago) link
I can't believe he played those last shows
― It's not delivery, it's Adorno! (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 12 February 2018 16:46 (six years ago) link
yeah it really is a testament to his force of will
very touching, thanks for posting that
― sleeve, Monday, 12 February 2018 16:49 (six years ago) link
One of the things I think that gets overlooked when people talk about the Fall and all the records/songs and all the touring and continuing despite turnovers and illness & etc. is that I don't think you can look at them like a "band" exactly. You need to think about them as a small business, like a plumbing service (MES's dad was a plumber). MES never seemed to wait for creative inspiration or the mood to strike to write songs, they were constantly writing because that's what bands do, they write songs and put out records. That's how you make money.
People quit or get fired you don't close up shop, you find replacements. You might be sick but you press on cuz that's just what you do.
In Hanley's book he points that right from the start (or least from when Bramah & Friel exit) the group was organized from the top down, MES & management in charge and controlling the purse strings and everyone else was essentially an employee, drawing a wage, going to the boss when gear needed to be replaced etc.
― chr1sb3singer, Monday, 12 February 2018 16:58 (six years ago) link
And like a small business owner MES sort of equally loves & hates "the lads" and berates them when they fuck up but when Hanley's son is born premature they basically give him six months paid leave (though I suspect that was more Brix then MES)
― chr1sb3singer, Monday, 12 February 2018 17:01 (six years ago) link
I just finally watched the videos of that final Glasgow show yesterday Fuckin hell.
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Monday, 12 February 2018 17:11 (six years ago) link
There is a 'tribute' column in Private Eye this week, a sort-of message from the afterlife. It's touching that they did it, it's not something they've done often if at all before. Obviously it's terrible, but hey.
― Mark G, Monday, 12 February 2018 18:56 (six years ago) link
"Re-Mit", which I probably haven't listened to since it was released really sounding good this AM.
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 14 February 2018 14:08 (six years ago) link
This person’s posthumous top 20 is really well chosen and really really well written. http://hippriestess.tumblr.comLa Lechera if u want another fall playlist...
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 14 February 2018 18:34 (six years ago) link
As a mark of respect for the great Mark E Smith we’ve displayed Grayson Perry’s ‘My Heroes’ with MES’s portrait to the fore. In Studio Ceramics, Room 142, The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Gallery, V&A. #markesmith #markesmithrip #TheFall #GraysonPerry #ceramics @V_and_A @Alan_Measles pic.twitter.com/jhRNuxhfZc— Alun Graves (@alun_graves) February 14, 2018
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Thursday, 15 February 2018 09:18 (six years ago) link
Barry Sheen is on the other side iirc. (April Ashley and Aubrey Beardsley also, according to Wikipedia)
There's one of Johnny Vegas' teapots in the same room.
― koogs, Thursday, 15 February 2018 10:13 (six years ago) link
it actually looks a bit more like Mick than Mark IMO
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Thursday, 15 February 2018 10:49 (six years ago) link
Indeed. Lips too sumptuous
― Winter. Dickens. Yes. (Jon not Jon), Thursday, 15 February 2018 14:52 (six years ago) link
listing Grotesque on Ebay...
https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/32089895_10156857634282137_5340684110501249024_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=05d24c05f3899b8cdff18f56635f8a49&oe=5B89CB0E
― scott seward, Monday, 7 May 2018 15:34 (five years ago) link
nice
― sleeve, Monday, 7 May 2018 15:39 (five years ago) link
ha ha yes
― DACA Flocka Flame (Hadrian VIII), Monday, 7 May 2018 16:17 (five years ago) link
golden
― when worlds collide I'll see you again (Jon not Jon), Monday, 7 May 2018 17:20 (five years ago) link
p sure The Real New Fall LP covers the rest
― imago, Monday, 7 May 2018 17:39 (five years ago) link
Expanded and slightly rejiggered version of "50,000 Fall Fans Can't be Wrong":
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/the-fall-58-golden-greats-58-original-tracks-including-all-the-hits-3cd-boxset/
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Wednesday, 22 August 2018 17:30 (five years ago) link
Huh, track list drops "Green Eyed Loco-Man" - which seems like a real loss!
― BlackIronPrison, Wednesday, 22 August 2018 17:45 (five years ago) link