RIP Mark E. Smith

deserves its own thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQMP0G0-hQM

the fire has fallen

The day I've been dreading.

"It is with deep regret that we announce the passing of Mark E. Smith. He passed this morning at home.... 1/2

— Fall news (@fallnews) January 24, 2018

He certainly does deserve his own thread.

i found this out just now while grocery shopping. it is a weird walk home now. this one hurts a lot

I can't believe he was only 60. RIP

RIP iconoclast.

holy shit this sucks

to say he was one of a kind doesn't begin to cover it

rest in peace mark

God motherfucking damnit man

This really hurts.

I feel like I was ready for this one, at least

Yeah, I knew this was coming.

It was coming. But still.

Shit didn't catch this in time. But as I say on previous thread. This is a major loss for me. I will his presence very very much. Godspeed MES! You were one of the greats. much as he disliked such things I am So glad that he was recognized in his lifetime. He was a total one off. Ok now to play that Live at Hacienda 83-85 dvd and remind myself once again what an amazing man he was.

Wtf happened? Had he been ill?

yes

https://paulroland.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/markesmith_2.jpg

You beautiful man

The greatest lyricist in musical history, to such an extent that the word ‘lyrics’ is unfit to describe what he did. Other than miles, probably the greatest assembler-of-performers-into-something-unforeseeable there ever was. Like Scott Walker his effect on me spreads way beyond music and art. At his frequent best he was onto source code for whatever this is we are all part of here.
Vale Mark E. Smith I will never forget you.

I haven't bothered with the Fall for well over 20 years but he is still the single most important figure in my musical life. Was.

fuck

RIP hip priest. he was damo suzuki

xxp their later work is shockingly strong, check out The Unutterable, Our Future Your Clutter, and "The Real New Fall LP" for proof

He was Dylan, Beefheart and Lou in one for me. I used to joke that he was my Bob Dylan.

RIP Mark, thanks for being the best thing this terrible country has produced in the last 60 years

First saw him/them when I was still at school, they played in Paisley, in a venue that is now a tapas bar - Paisley version - where me, my mum and my sister went for a meal when I was up for Christmas!

The Blue Orchids played there around the same time.

My missus just said the P4k obit describes him as coming from a "middle class background"!

LOL 'mericans.

woah this is crazy, did not see this coming

RIP MES

im eternally grateful

this just going round in my head now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9zTSvEpt_8

well fuck this

fuck death

The obit on the guardian is such a mess, clearly a draft they had ready but didn't check, deserves better

Was it removed? Can't find anything about it on their site

RIP.

Although I've been preparing myself for this news for months. In some ways, I find it remarkable that he made it to 60.

This one (actually not an obit) https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/24/mark-e-smith-lead-singer-with-the-fall-dies-aged-60

Oh shit huge loss RIP

RIP Mark

heaven can now have killer sessions again, they are back together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtIPlWzM84c

A bit gobsmacked by this, although I knew he'd been unwell. RIP MES. Thanks for the legacy.

His death was previously wrongly announced by the BBC in March last year, on his 60th birthday.

Nice way to end your obit, Graun, real classy

i always felt like the fall had so much vitriol, so unrelenting, that when he did have the rare moment of tenderness it was so much more affecting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbMG1v7qDqs

yeah know what you mean, gutted

xp Marc Riley is playing this right now on 6Music <3

Shit news but not unexpected after recent events.

RIP

i always felt like the fall had so much vitriol, so unrelenting, that when he did have the rare moment of tenderness it was so much more affecting

absolutely

(thanks for the tip on 6music Neil)

This song was my Fall gateway. Intro'd here by Tony Wilson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wygQmJ59E4Q

Thinking of Fizzles the Chimp, sorry for your loss.

ah bollocks. :c RIP.

Up here in the North there are no wage packet jobs for us
Thank Christ
While young married couples discuss the poverties
Of their self-built traps
And the junior clergy demand more cash
We spit in their plate and wait for the ice to melt

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

yeah it really is a testament to his force of will

very touching, thanks for posting that

One of the things I think that gets overlooked when people talk about the Fall and all the records/songs and all the touring and continuing despite turnovers and illness & etc. is that I don't think you can look at them like a "band" exactly. You need to think about them as a small business, like a plumbing service (MES's dad was a plumber). MES never seemed to wait for creative inspiration or the mood to strike to write songs, they were constantly writing because that's what bands do, they write songs and put out records. That's how you make money.

People quit or get fired you don't close up shop, you find replacements. You might be sick but you press on cuz that's just what you do.

In Hanley's book he points that right from the start (or least from when Bramah & Friel exit) the group was organized from the top down, MES & management in charge and controlling the purse strings and everyone else was essentially an employee, drawing a wage, going to the boss when gear needed to be replaced etc.

And like a small business owner MES sort of equally loves & hates "the lads" and berates them when they fuck up but when Hanley's son is born premature they basically give him six months paid leave (though I suspect that was more Brix then MES)

I just finally watched the videos of that final Glasgow show yesterday

Fuckin hell.

There is a 'tribute' column in Private Eye this week, a sort-of message from the afterlife. It's touching that they did it, it's not something they've done often if at all before. Obviously it's terrible, but hey.

"Re-Mit", which I probably haven't listened to since it was released really sounding good this AM.

This person’s posthumous top 20 is really well chosen and really really well written.

http://hippriestess.tumblr.com

La Lechera if u want another fall playlist...

As a mark of respect for the great Mark E Smith we’ve displayed Grayson Perry’s ‘My Heroes’ with MES’s portrait to the fore. In Studio Ceramics, Room 142, The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Gallery, V&A. #markesmith #markesmithrip #TheFall #GraysonPerry #ceramics @V_and_A @Alan_Measles pic.twitter.com/jhRNuxhfZc

— Alun Graves (@alun_graves) February 14, 2018

Barry Sheen is on the other side iirc. (April Ashley and Aubrey Beardsley also, according to Wikipedia)

There's one of Johnny Vegas' teapots in the same room.

it actually looks a bit more like Mick than Mark IMO

Indeed. Lips too sumptuous

listing Grotesque on Ebay...

https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/32089895_10156857634282137_5340684110501249024_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=05d24c05f3899b8cdff18f56635f8a49&oe=5B89CB0E

nice

ha ha yes

golden

p sure The Real New Fall LP covers the rest

Expanded and slightly rejiggered version of "50,000 Fall Fans Can't be Wrong":

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/the-fall-58-golden-greats-58-original-tracks-including-all-the-hits-3cd-boxset/

Huh, track list drops "Green Eyed Loco-Man" - which seems like a real loss!