Perverted by Language: Fiction Inspired by the Fall ...

Don't think this has been talked about yet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A24242456

"A collection of short story “covers” of songs by The Fall, pound for pound the most original British band of the last 30 years, Perverted By Language is the brainchild of Peter Wild, writer, editor and, as you might expect, serious Fall fan. Not that he’s hoping to create a literary version of his favourite band. “People have commented that the stories aren’t like Fall songs, which seems a bit mad to me,” he says. “Fall songs are songs, these things are short stories. It’s a bit like asking why wardrobes aren’t fish.”

With nearly 60 personnel changes since 1976, it might be tempting to take on the story of the band itself, but any writer worth the name must slaver at the inventiveness of frontman Mark E Smith’s lyrics. As Wild says, “a writer takes a song they like and sees where it takes them.” Thus Michel Faber takes 1982’s Fortress/Deer Park - a song about, amongst other things, cult author Colin Wilson, hash-fuelled sexual urges and (a recurring theme) brain-dead record company PR departments - and turns it into a baroque account of power brokers meeting at a Bavarian estate to slaughter virtually quiescent deer. What makes the collection work so well is the realisation that Smith, the most polymathic of lyricists, could just as easily have written a song about the latter.

Elsewhere, Rebecca Ray renders I Can Hear The Grass Grow as a mournfully erotic plea, and Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul becomes, via Nick Johnstone, a superbly claustrophobic account of final demands, red-top sleaze and coke abuse in Notting Hill. It’s fitting that a band who regularly cover other artists should be involved in a project like this, but what does Smith think about it? “Mark was very positive at the beginning of the process,” Wild explains, “but he’s a little less positive now. It’s quite likely you won’t like every story in the book. Short story anthologies are just built that way.” That’s true enough, and Perverted By Language wouldn’t be authentically Fall-like if it didn’t hit the odd bum note, but mostly the collection maintains an unusually high standard throughout.

Wild certainly knows how to build them, and with anthologies inspired by Sonic Youth, The Smiths, Ramones, Velvet Underground and Joy Division in development, he’ll be gearing up for a greatest hits package before you know it.

Chris Power 28 June 07"

come, Dick-ah
come and see-ah
come and see-ah
come and see Spot-ah
see Spot, run-ah
see him run Dick-ah
run, Spot, run-ah[/i]