Terry Waite Sez what?

Any Brits still lurking this afternoon?

I'm home and copying CDs for club sussed so can answer your question. Terry Waite was the Archbishop of Canterbury's Special Envoy - i.e. a Church diplomat who was sent out into the Middle East to seek peace and got kidnapped. He was famous before the kidnapping though, in a mild know-the-name way.

No idea about "My New House" though!

my new house (on this nation's saving grace) came out before terry waite sez (on bend sinister), or at least that's the sequencing on my fall albums - my cd version of this nation's svaing grace has a sick number of extra tracks mixed in.

slightly off topic: is shoulder pads #1 not the best fall single of all time ever? why does it always get dismissed as a toss off (looking at an amg writer named ned)? surely it's as good as louie louie.

*grumbles through headache* What, where? Did I call it a tossoff or the equivalent? Been a while since I heard it.

I looked at the lyrics & guess I was mistaken about My New House. No mention of Terry Waite in there anywhere.

Bend Sinister is one of my faves - I don't know why - I'll admit it's not their best... but I also like Frenz, Kurious Oranj, Infotaiment & Middle Class Revolt ... no one seems to think any of those are real winners either... and I'm not happy about the extra tracks on 'Saving Grace' either. Sometimes less is more. Don't fuck with perfection.

I believe the song wasn't about *the* Terry Waite, but just some bloke Mark E. Smith got talking to in a pub. I seem to recall him saying that in an interview somewhere (or possibly a Fall obsessed friend telling me), though I'm not sure how true that is.

None of the 3 diff versions of Shoulder pads was ever a single, great track though........

"Jesus didn't know he was Jesus until he'd been chained to the radiator for some time" (Brass Eye, 1997)

Jonathan - I said that on ILM once so maybe it was me. I read him saying that when he was asked about it in LM magazine (no, not Living Marxism) shortly after it was released. He said it was about some bloke he knew. A lorry driver or something. But he did add that he did dislike the 'real' Terry Waite. Can't remember if that was pre or post the kidnapping. But in an interview for Volume many years later he brought up the track and said he felt bad about what happened to Waite after he wrote the song and made no mention of it being about a namesake, so I don't know what the truth is. God, I sound like a real Fall freak. For some reason those facts just stuck in my mind. I'd never even heard a Fall record when I read the LM interview. Although it made me buy one.

Maybe Waite should write a new version of the song to replace the existing 3?