RIP Mark E. Smith

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

Blindness, great song

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

rock 'em sock 'em, UMS!

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

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

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

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

(^ car ad, touch sensitive)

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

Wonderful work by Jes Skolnik

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

yeah I just read that, really good

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

that was really well done

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

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

That Jes Skolnik obit is very good.

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

Mortality can get fucked imo.

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

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

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

Hey that made me cry a little, geez. Xpost

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

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

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

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

Steve Hanley MVP

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

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

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

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

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

Songs are great though.

Witch Trials has a very 70s sound

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

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

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

I like it a lot

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

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

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

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

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

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

^^^^^^

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

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

this is the point of changing

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

seen this?

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

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

thx sleeve!

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

pfft Shift-Work is awesome, in my top 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) January 26, 2018