RIP Mark E. Smith

Claude Bessey directed the "Kicker Conspiracy" and "Wings" vids.

I'm into C.B.

well done

MES seemed to have a pretty strong fascination with LA/West Coast early on, Claude, Richard Meltzer (Meltzer talks about he & MES ditching the "musicians" to go drink at some bar), Chris D, & MES, seemed to all be fast friends/drinking companions, which jesus christ seems like some serious trouble.

Mark apparently wanted to visit Compton and there's some early zine interview where he claims that Mexican dudes in low riders were all big Fall fans, which seems like his claim that only plumbers & working men came to their gigs in England.

Einar and MES, a match made in hell but they'll take you to heaven first:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5q5J67Mrv0

seen on FB: "in the 15 years since The Fall released their greatest hits collection “50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong,” it has sold 48,700 copies."

Brian of WFMU about 30 mins into a 3-hr tribute, listen now or later

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/77281

the hip priest he just played was terrific

Is this the zine interview, chr1s?

http://jneomarvin.com/interviews-of-our-times/the-fall-unpublished-1981/

MES' West Coast fascination is pretty scrupulously documented in "C & C/ S. Mithering"

"in the 15 years since The Fall released their greatest hits collection “50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong,” it has sold 48,700 copies."

fans already had those songs

I bought it anyway

Too fast to write
Too fast to work

As of today I have finally reached the stage where I am ready to just listen to tons and tons of fall for a long time

yeah, I've been revisiting some of the less familiar albums

also, boy do I have a lot of issues with this Ian Cusack piece:

http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.in/2018/01/mark-is-dead.html

the dismissal of the later records is so obstinate, he admits that he basically never listened to them but.... still hates them?

I think his timeline of the decline is more or less accurate, but he underrates everything after 1994 so comically that it undercuts the piece imo

Listened to Von Sudenfed today, so freakin' good. I'll be honest, I don't think I'd ever bother with Mouse On Mars if Mark wasn't fronting them. Mark did that alot, such a presence he had that anything he was on became his.

"The Rhinohead" - is Mark being auto-tuned? He kinda sounds like Colin Newman does these days.

It's a great record all the way through

xxpost

I really loved that piece because it was so personal but yeah calling later Fall a Killing Joke ripoff was a bit much, I got the sense he couldn't separate his feelings about MES's self destructiveness from the music

Yeah agreed

I've been starting from the beginning, listening to Live 77 a lot & Bingo Master's Break-Out, along w the earliest Witch Trials songs etc

Von Sudenfed is great, like several MoM records are

I've got 384 Fall songs (currently) on my iPod and just shuffling through them all day at work and being doing it for last week straight

My best friend is a big fan from the early days, doesn't like some of the mid-period stuff (eg Frenz Experiment), and insists last year's album is real good.

it is!

I love the last record but my favorite Fall era is 1978-2017 so yr mileage my vary.

sounds like the funereal was something

my favorite Fall era is 1978-2017

gets it

As much as I love the Brix era, I'm currently still stuck on listening to 1978-83, sometimes poring over the Annotated Lyrics site as I go.

A track that kind of passed me by until now and now sounds like one of the best things they ever did was Hard Life in the Country.

And (slightly arbitrarily of course) for a long time I've said English Scheme is my favourite Fall track I found this version of it from Glasgow's Plaza Ballroom in 1981 where the recording is pretty ropy but the band is just on fire.

oh man hard life in country is so great

D. BOWIE lookalikes permeate carparks
It GETS a bit de-pres-sing

I'm currently still stuck on listening to 1978-83, sometimes poring over the Annotated Lyrics site as I go.

Haha yep this is me

about to spin the live Reykjavik album for the first time in years. Highly recommended as it captures the lineup right after Riley expulsion. You've got the lone Scanlon in pitched battle against double drummers and Hanleysaurus. Also it has some really really great MES lyrical revisions

Yeah that weird silver of time right after Riley and before Brix where there is no "lead" instrument just this storming rhythm section making this huge cavernous noise and MES being MES (and occasionally rolling his knuckles over a keyboard) is awesome

That's about as close as they come to being harmolodic rock band

I have no idea if the video links on the WFMU playlist i posted yesterday are in this thread, ck out if not

Jon do u mean that Austerbaijao album or whatever it's called? Great stuff.

yes austerbaijarbo

SNOW on easter sunday
JESUS CHRIST in reverse

the vers of "Backdrop" on there is so amazing

Who put the yellow pills in
The-a-ah Gordon's gin?

it also has the best The Classical sales pitch (elephant... HOUSE... odor)

WPRB in Princeton put together a huge post about Mark and the Fall with audio interviews (with Craig Scanlon in 86 and later with MES in 94), clips from radio shows about the Fall, an on-air accounting of the 1998 Philadelphia show (just before the Brownie's show), a letter from Mark to one of the DJs, pictures of the WPRB library's Fall lps (with DJ notes written on the covers) and other ephemera.

http://www.wprbhistory.org/mark-e-smith-wprb-fall/

As a huge Pavement fan, can anyone point me to the most obvious lifts?

― kraudive, Friday, January 26, 2018 10:48 AM (one week ago)

I don't know if it's a lift, but "Forklift" sounds a heck of a lot like a Wonderful and Frightening World-era Fall tune.

The early Pavement singles/ep & S&E are sort of spiritually in the same realm, scattered, ratty, cryptic, singer sounds like he's trapped in a speaker box at a fast food drive through, but the similarities between the bands is more aesthetic than musical and even then it's a bit trumped up.

Weed vs speed basically.

Also Pavement never had a rhythm section that was in even in the same country as the Fall's (any of 'em).

otm

Yeah that always seemed the crucial thing. The Fall ca. Dragnet/Totales Turn were a killer dance band

Well, of course.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/brawl-breaks-out-fall-singer-11994398.amp

Some more clarification from Pritchard he mentions “parasites and vultures, who have only been around a couple years physically attacking people asking why they were at the funeral.

Gary Young could have played drums in the Fall.

it always seemed to me like the Fall's shambolic quality came more from Mark and whoever is playing keyboard/guitar, and that any Fall drummer wld have to be able to hold down a motorik beat for a long time, Gary Young does not strike me as that guy

Also MES only allowed for one unreliable drunk in the band at a time

Statement from his sisters on the "official" Fall site

We would like to thank family, friends and fans for all their kind words, condolences and memories about our brother Mark.

Also, the N.H.S and staff who treated Mark throughout and Mark’s partner Pam who loved, cared and cherished our brother.

Mark fought a long and hard battle after his diagnosis of terminal lung and kidney cancer. He took every treatment going, which could be brutal at times and left Mark with some horrible side effects. Mark was such a strong man and hated letting his fans down and tried to carry on regardless against all advice.

Mark had a great life and loved and lived it to the full and always by his own rules and we, as his sisters were privileged to be part of it too.

Mark is at peace now and pain free, but we, his three sisters have been left heartbroken and will miss our big brother very much.

Barbara, Suzanne and Caroline.

;_;

Aw man.

I can't believe he played those last shows