THE FALLEN
I found out yesterday that Mark E Smith passed away last week.
It probably says a lot that I somehow totally missed this on my various social media feeds - hardly anyone seemed to notice outside of the UK. Which I guess makes sense because The Fall were never more than a minor cult sensation in the US - you either heard them on college radio or you didn’t hear them at all. Certainly that was how I found out about them - and that wasn’t until 1994 while I was working in a college radio station.
Anyway, point being, Smith wasn’t a household name in America, so of course it's no surprise that most stateside media outlets apart from say Rolling Stone or Pitchfork didn't think it was worth mentioning. I think even Grant Hart’s death got more coverage. He didn't even make the Grammys "In Memorium" section (though I suspect Smith would probably see humor in this - and to be fair, neither did Grant Hart, or Holger Czukay for that matter, which just goes to show how relevant The Grammys are to music).
It might be as well - Smith wasn’t exactly a loveable guy, and his musical output was uncompromising, snarling batshit poetry that, let’s admit, probably made sense only to him.
And yet that was what was so great about The Fall - Smith may have been a savage musical dictator with alcohol/anger management issues who couldn't sing, but by God he somehow made it work - not every album, certainly, but more often than not. The final two band lineups from 2006 to last year ensured that The Fall went out on a high note - last year’s New Facts Emerge was one of my favorite new releases, and probably their best since Your Future Our Clutter.
Love him or hate him, he was a true original who truly believed in what he was doing - you could never mistake him for anyone else, and we’ll probably never hear the likes of him again.
FOR PROMOTONAL CONSIDERATION: At the risk of sounding like I’m trying to cash in, my band project Banana Deathmuffins once recorded a song that was sort of a Fall tribute, albeit an unintentional one. We were coming up with something to accompany a John Bonham drum track for a music project started by a friend, and it was only after we finished it that I realized we’d been unconsciously channeling our Fall influences.
Listen:
You may disagree, and fair enough. Anyway, it's fair to say we probably owe Mark a pint for this.
To say nothing of John Bonham.
Live from the Witch Trials,
This is dF
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