The Fall / Mark E Smith

Ha! Remember you saying that this was after or whilst they were playing You’ve Been Duped :smile:

Oh yeah, he usually walked off for that one but this time he just didn’t come back

Here’s my ranking off the top of my head - ignored the ones I’ve barely (if ever?) listened to.

Hex Enduction Hour > Grotesque > This Nation’s Saving Grace > Dragnet > Slates > The Wonderful and Frightening World Of… > Perverted By Language > Bend Sinister > Live at the Witch Trials > I Am Kurious Oranj > Fall Heads Roll > The Frenz Experiment > Your Future, Our Clutter > The Real New Fall LP > Extricate > Shift-Work.

All incredible albums.

I’ve got a lot to listen to! Thank you so much for all the recommendations. What I’ve listened to so far I’ve loved. So far I’ve listened to Live at the Witch Trials and Hex Enduction Hour. I have to ask though because I found it uncomfortable. What’s with the N word in The Classical? I don’t like hearing that word.

Yeah, I love the switch between that really pretty guitar line in the verse to the crazy violin chaos of the chorus. Definitely a 90s highlight along with Idiot Joy Showland and Noel’s Chemical Effluence (apparently inspired by their tour bus driver Noel who had to empty the chemical toilet on the bus as part of his duties).

I only saw them once unfortunately. Looking back at setlist fm was in 2012, and kind of an odd experience as most Fall related things are. Not sure whether it would fall under joyously chaotic or solid effort on the @Icarus-Smicarus scale. I remember a really long gap between support and them coming on to the point I was considering just going home, knucklehead security were clearly bored too as they kept weighing in and aggressively hauling people out who didn’t appear to be doing much wrong, MES didn’t come on stage for the first couple of songs, and when he did he spent lots of time with his back to everyone. He had loads of scruffy sheets of paper that he kept digging around for the right lyrics from and juggling them with the two mics he insisted into yelling into at the at the same time, which made him way louder than the band, but also really distorted to the point of incomprehensible. When he wasn’t doing that he was randomly twiddling knobs on the guitarists amp. At the end I wasn’t sure how much I’d ‘enjoyed’ it in the usual sense of the word, but I did kind of want to do it all again…

I dunno, this is may well all be normal service?

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that all sounds pretty standard. the knob twiddling especially. i once saw him turn off the guitarist’s amp and the guitarist had to stand there and pretend to play the rest of the song looking embarrassed before he could turn it back on again

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he even did it to Mick Jones on the Pyramid Stage during a Glastonbury headline slot :smiley:

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Ha hadn’t heard about this before :smile: - still find the story about Kurt Cobain being denied a ride on their tour bus by Steve Hanley pretty funny!

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I don’t really get why it’s there either but I read somewhere that they were in negotiations with Motown until Motown heard that song.

He had a piece of paper on TOTP!

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There was controversy on Live and Kicking

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Saw The Fall a handful of times over 15 years or so and they were pretty much always disappointing. Had a knack of picking the half assed shows rather than the ones MES could be bothered making an effort for. I was at this all dayer and bailed our before The Fall were due on to get an earlier train home as I assumed I’d be disappointed. Would have been the last time I saw them which occasionally makes me feel like I should have stuck around. Ah well.

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Snitching for a shit T-Shirt! :confused:

Just realised that the only time I saw The Fall was at Electric Picnic in 2010. It was a really good set, though he throw all the mics into the kick drum at one point. Wish I’d known more of their stuff before I went to that gig.

yeah. from what i’ve read it’s supposed to be a swipe at like the hypocrisy of tokenism or something? but i’m not sure MES has ever actually discussed it in much detail. hugely unpleasant either way. it’s frustrating because i think The Classical is in many ways the ultimate Fall song but that really taints it.

John Doran wrote an article about it recently

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i originally read this story as Motown were interested in the mid 80s and requested an album so MES sent them Hex and they replied with “we see no commercial potential in this band whatsoever” which i always found pretty funny. but it does say on wikipedia that MES wondered if it that lyric was the reason.

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As opposed to them just being a band with very little commercial potential…

Thanks for sharing that, it’s an interesting read.

My sense has always been that he obviously was big in to provocation and getting a rise out of people, and its use in The Classical was pushing a particular button. I guess at the time it didn’t jar quite as much as it does now (not like that makes it ok in anyway) and it’s telling that MES removed the line when the song was played live again in the 2000s (not exactly famed for his contrition). So yeah, definitely uncomfortable to hear it, but, for me, a dumb lyric rather than a representation of a racist agenda.

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Have always seen it as a combination of these two tbh. My impression of MES is that the type of person that would annoy him more than any other would be the stereotypical affluent liberal paying lip service to issues like inequality and race relations, without ever doing anything constructive about them. Pretty much exactly the same sort of target that Jelllo Biafra is taking aim at on Holiday in Cambodia. Genuinely don’t think The Classical is an example of a hidden racist agenda (there’s nothing that compares on any of their other songs) and fwiw, pretty sure that the Fall were playing a lot of rock against racism type of events around the time.

Having said that, aware that I am certainly not the best person to discuss the wider implications of the use of a racist term, and also aware that I may be giving MES the benefit of any doubt because I love Hex so much. Think on even the most favourable interpretation you can only describe that line as nasty and misguided and I’m very glad that MES decided to remove it when they started to play the song live again

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definitely my favourite song about Dr Harold Shipman

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