RIP Mark E. Smith

^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.

I hope MES got to hear the Longmont Potion Castle call to Dick Dale.

arid al's dream!

very good track, underrated compilation obscurity

xxxp sounds like MES learned a trick or two from Dick Dale about claiming to have invented various types of music!

Arid Al is possibly top 10 fall for me

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?

not to me, thanks for that!

oh cool! jesus, he knew he was done

Righteous mes Easter egg

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

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.

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. Smith
May 2008

Quoting Captain Mainwaring? That is so perfect!

Just watched the Decline of Western Civilization, and spotted an MES sticker on the door of Slash magazine's office

more details plz! did it just say "Mark E Smith?"

hah okay here's a screenshot, I think it's MES though I could be wrong

https://www.instagram.com/p/BetgpvBB2BR/

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)

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.

p sure bessy arrived in the UK in 1980 (and worked for rough trade) after slash ceased publication?

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?

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!

Christ all those LA gigs in that run sound insanely great. And X was on that Germs bill too! Good lord!

So suffice to say yes, I could easily see MES and Claude having met in December 1979, so.

oh nice one! X too, good gig

hah xp

(And the Skip King mentioned in various entries is a long-time friend, you can vouch for the stories and provenance in general.)

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."

(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

all the same, this is how he dressed then:
http://thefall.org/gigography/79dec14_flyer.jpg

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.

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!

So do I think the sticker is him, not really, but did they know the Fall back then, oh heck yes.

wow they did shows with Monitor! a Joe Carducci favorite

http://disasteramnesiac.blogspot.com/2013/04/monitor-st-world-imitation-1980-reissue.html

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

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'."

also important and relevant:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0c3rgsIUAAmN5X.jpg

No, sorry, I'm not buying Peter Purves.

<3 Viggo

My next best guess for the identity of sticker person: Joan Jett

xp, yeah. More John Noakes' thing I suppose.

Quoting Captain Mainwaring? That is so perfect!

no, he's quoting napoleon. sorry i wasn't clearer there.

Mainwaring/ Napoleon, same thing.

Mainwaring/ Napoleon/Smith, same thing :)

"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

"Stupid boy" surely?

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

(most of them are capsule reviews on a larger page with other stuff but even so)