RIP Mark E. Smith

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

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

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

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

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

a thing i loved about that song is the line

“two white clouds cross the sky
look like krakens”

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

xpost about winter.

bill those are lovely sightings/observations - thanks.

(and thanks for fixing the link, tim)

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

rip you hilarious brilliant arsehole

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

It's the best version.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Had a piss alongside him once.

go on...

There's not much more to the story tbh!

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

i am damo suzuki's wang

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

MES OTM

Perfect.

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

lol fizzles that is awesome

yes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

stuff...stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

this song is killing me right now

why am I listening to this today, at work

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

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

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

gonna be a while before I can listen to Bonkers

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

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

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

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

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

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

i.e. it's the best thing ever

the sound fx are genuinely amazing and perfect

he always fuckin knew what he was doing

i'm listening to it now obv

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

xp :)

xps

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

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

That's perfect, thx sleeve