Mark E. Smith: Romane Totale in Reverse?
May 14th, 2008 by Donagh
Mark E Smith’s most distinctive texts echo both Lovecraft and Dick’s methodology. According to caricature, The Fall proffer a naturalism whose dreariness is leavened only by its humour. But it was only in their earliest mode that The Fall were comic naturalists, introducing an amphetamine-driven garage punk to the bingo halls, industrial estates and cracker factories of Northern England. By the time of Dragnet, The Fall were seeing the same Northern vistas through the filter of Weird fiction. Manchester tenements were now haunted by Roman spectres. Ghostly figures follow you down the Salford streets. ‘Impression Of J Temperance’ and ‘Jawbone And The Air Rifle’, from Grotesque and Hex Enduction Hour, compress Weird tales into a distorted, Northern rock. By now, Smith has repeated what Lovecraft had achieved – relocating the bizarre and the anomalous in his own neighbourhood. It is precisely the disjunction between the Manchester ‘estates that stick up like stacks’ and the ‘hideous replicas’ and haunted jawbones which generates the effect of Weirdness. Taken as a whole, Grotesque and Hex Enduction Hour are themselves weird objects: unplaceable, intractable, they are confections of things which should not belong together.
K-Punk writing up a storm about The Fall, Mark E. Smith’s new (auto)biography, HP Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, notions of ‘Weirdness’ and The Hammer House of Horror.
It also suggests that Smith has become a “doppelganger” which has all but replaced the Mark E Smith of old. A ‘licensed fool on the BBC, licensed prole (in The Guardian)’.
Fair enough, I guess. As with all K-Punk articles, you should read the whole thing, though.
Whatever about the licences he currently holds, in K-Punk’s opinion, MES certainly appears to me to be the ex 76/77 punk to have fallen off the least from his standards of the time - even if he looks in interview uncannily like some aul’ lad from down the local - albeit a very eloquent one…
Will try to post you up something in the near future - as soon as I’ve finished emerging from a ‘Bill is Dead’ couple of weeks…
Going by an earlier, and much celebrated K-punk take on the Fall, in his opinion their high point was around Hex Induction Hour and little else beyond that. I don’t hold with that myself. His lowest point, in the eyes of many Fall fans seems to have been in the late 80s, around the time of Extricate. It must have been those apperances on the Tube with Mark and Brix as the golden couple of British Alternative Rock. Well, perhaps not golden, more like tarnished brass. It was the beginning of the time when the irascible Mark became a bit of media personality, as opposed to maverick outsider and as he has admitted himself, he does camp it up.
All said of course, he’s still way more credible than most of his contemporarys.
Have to you been wheezing, sneezing? While back in Dublin you did mention though that you got pasted in a bar, on more than one occasion.
That’s the great thing about the majority vote - cos I effin’ love ‘Extricate’. I suppose it was around the time they were flirting with majors and even getting some promo budgets off the shaggers - maybe that’s what the “many Fall fans” resent…
Isn’t also his post break-up LP ? I reckon seeing your missus shag off with that t**t Nigel Kennedy did wonders for the irascibility levels.
Wheezing, sneezing, pasted - yes - but ne’er a dainty female dressed as if for riding school to be found - couldn’t find the right ad in the Northside People’s personals….
Lots of not-so-dainty females dressed as if for an obese shellsuit wearers convention though…..
On a vaguely related note, John Cooper Clarke is playing Crawdaddy tonight.
Yep, well maybe the occasion when I suggested that it was one of my favourites and receiving a dismissive snarl got it into my head that it’s considered less than their best. It’s high production values apparently is the thing that knocks it off the best of list.
An obese shellsuit wearers convention in Donaghmede Shopping Centre perhaps.
Thanks for that Kevin. Vaguely noted, as I probably won’t be able to make it along.
What d’ya mean Kevin ? - JCC is always impeccably turned out - in a nice black suit…
Couldn’t imagine him anywhere near a shellsuit.
Did ye get along ? And has there been a nipple in the Daily Mail, after all these years ??
I said it not because of the shellsuit thread of the discussion, but that general post-punk theme. Watched 24 Hour Party People the other day. Noticed Mark E. Smith in the background. Made the link. Didn’t get along, in the end, though. Exams abound. Been locked up in a room with the books and the criticism for a few weeks now. But my flatmate organised it. Said it went quite well. Certainly sold well.
Don’t worry Kevin, I was following your train of thought alright. In fact as I remember the 2 of them (JCC & The Fall) were both on the same seminal compilation EP / LP ‘Live at the Electric Circus’ from around 1978 (correct me if I’m wrong). In the case of the Fall, I think it’s some of their very first material released on record. (is it ‘Stepping Out’ and another track I can’t recall ?)
Good luck for the exams in any case…