RIP Mark E. Smith

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

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

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

Hey that made me cry a little, geez. Xpost

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

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

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

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

Steve Hanley MVP

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

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

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

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

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

Songs are great though.

Witch Trials has a very 70s sound

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

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

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

I like it a lot

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

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

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

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

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

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

^^^^^^

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

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

this is the point of changing

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

seen this?

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

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

thx sleeve!

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

pfft Shift-Work is awesome, in my top 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) January 26, 2018

that tribute in full:

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

— Red Robbo (@Orwell_Fan_Fan) January 25, 2018

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

would perhaps be more suitable there

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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