RIP Mark E. Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

stuff...stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

this song is killing me right now

why am I listening to this today, at work

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

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

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

gonna be a while before I can listen to Bonkers

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

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

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

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

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

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

i.e. it's the best thing ever

the sound fx are genuinely amazing and perfect

he always fuckin knew what he was doing

i'm listening to it now obv

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

xp :)

xps

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

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

That's perfect, thx sleeve

he always fuckin knew what he was doing

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

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

somehow never ran across this quote

his music brought me so much pure FUN and joy.

and a break from cold crappy reality

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

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

rong :)

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

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

that last one accompanied by a derisory chuckle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dragnet For Gun Blast Man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Tobi Haslett (@TobiHaslett) January 24, 2018

this radio tribute right now is going well

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

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

*wild applause*

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

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

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

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

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

D Wolk wrote sumthin

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

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

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

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