Be Excellent To Each Other

Hooray! Amazon have delivered me my lovely new copy of Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E Smith.

I'm two chapters in, and it's glorious. So far I have learned all manner of useless trivia, in a book where he repeatedly returns to the theme of the pointless tittle-tattle that comes with being in a band today, being asked stupid personal stuff. And then tells the reader some stupid personal stuff. It reads very much like him, despite featuring the hand of a ghost-writer, and I am enjoying it thoroughly thus far.

is it just me, whenever theres a name in a thread title you think the first post will be saying there dead.

Nah - in a death thread there always has to be punnery. "Falling Down", for example, or "Mark 'E's popped it' Smith".

I liked "Arthur C. Clarked it" from a while back. That was word-play of a very high order.

More points if you edit the thread title to 'Mark E Smith-uh'.

Have any BETEOids actually been in The Fall?

with a ratio with this countrys population you are more likely to be in the fall at one point than be gay.

Hoorah, I've managed to find a copy of the new Fall album. Two songs in, I pre-ordered it on Amazon. It's their best since RNFLP(FKA'CONC') and maybe their best since the early 90s!!!



1. Alton Towers -- this is excellent. Surprisingly catchy, too.
2. Wolf Kidult Man -- this is also excellent. And quite catchy. Contains the lyric, "You're trying to destroy me, you're in collusion with Virgin Trains." if I heard correctly.
3. 50 Year Old Man -- this is about 12 minutes long. Imagine Carry Bag Man crossed with Ibis Afro Man with Mark putting the effort in and banjos. Catchy, in its repetitious length.
4. I've Been Duped -- sounds a LOT like some Kim Gordon-sung Sonic Youth song. One of the short, punky ones like 'My Friend Goo'. Catchy.
5. Strange Town -- this is also excellent. It sounds like a polished up demo, with noticeably variable sound quality. It's also catchy.
6. Taurig -- fucking hell. This is superb. It's like some early 80s electro gubbins, a bit like 23 Skidoo. Er, kind of. Totally unexpected and cool.
7. Can Can Summer -- this reminds me of the B52s lots for some reason. Lots of back-and-forth singing, and surf guitar.
8. Tommy Shooter -- erm, imagine if The Klaxxons decided to cover some obscure rockabilly hit. It might sound like this i.e. catchy and excellent.
9. Latch Key Kid -- okay, catchy, but maybe the weakest track.
10. Is This New -- more excellent surf rock guitar and nuggets-esque "I'm A Mummy" groove.
11. Senior Twilight Stock Replacer - this is fucking fantastic. You can actually imagine what this song sounds like now, it's totally a prototypical Fall song in many ways. It's as awesome as you hope, I think.
12. Exploding Chimney -- fucking hell. Erm, imagine someone forcing one of the downbeat electronic tracks like 'Devolute' from The Unutterable, and one of the generic 'rock' tracks from Fall Heads Roll like 'Clasp Hands', into a squeaky metal tube (with audible squeaks), whilst MES shouts about chimneys and wolvent over the top.

Most of the new band is from Walsall!!!!!! The American band on the last one are 'doing their own thing' this year.

9/10 - Best Fall album since This Nation's Saving Grace YES OMG SERIOUSLY.

Whenever I buy a Fall album I find it maddeningly catchy and end up humming it to myself all week. Then I get completely sick of it and never listen to it again.

I've just realised what Taurig reminds me of lots - there's a Residents track that reminds me of loads, but damnit I can't think what.

Cor, mrak. I envy you, I've not been to see them yet. They've always been *just* too far away, or I've had to work whilst they were on.

I just need to say again that I've been listening to Imperial Wax Solvent all night and morning now (except for when I wasn't), and fucking hell, it really is good (as previously mentioned). I'm amazed at how good it is. And it's not just a case of 'good new band propping up old Mark' either. His hands are all over it. It's a lot like Levitate, in a way. But loads better. Better than I thought he even had left in him, to be honest...

Only £9 at Amazon (for example), folks!

I might have to get that new album then. I'd got a bit bored with The Fall, seen them quite a bit over the years but if I'm honest I spent the last half of both of the last two gigs just wanting the noise to end. Mind you the support act didn't help, some absolute dweeb with a laptop and white noise doing a half hour avant garde video show. However I did enjoy Zardoz continually screaming "GO HOME YOU FUCKING CUNT" at the top of his voice much to the approval of everyone in the room.

Was Zardoz shouting that at Laptop Man or Mark? I can imagine either, really

What year/era was it you saw them? Because I didn't much like the last two albums. Actually, I think I've only like about 3 in the last 11 years. But this new one really is a bit good. I'm shocked to be honest.

We should go to more gigs.

He was shouting at Laptop Man (though it wasn't nearly as good as 'the Jello Biafra Incident').

I guess the last two times we saw them it would have been mainly stuff the last two albums before this new one.

Nah, but we should go to more spoken word things when you are drunk and expecting a punk band, those are excellent.

Oh god. Tell me about the Jello Biafra incident, it sounds excellent. How much had Mr. Zardoz had to drink?

Loads. It was a fairly quiet sort of do in a small room and we were sat on the front row listening to the former Dead Kennedys singer going on about George Bush and loads of stuff about US politics as he stood about five feet away from us. Mr Z however was getting drunker by the minute and was expecting some sort of punk-rock action. When it became clear that this wasn't going to happen he started grabbing hold of me and telling me really loudly that he loves me, and then shouting across to my girlfriend and telling her the same thing. After this got boring he turned his drunken on Jello Biafra and started yelling "shut the fuck up and play Holiday in Cambodia, you fat cunt" etc. About half of the rest of the people there seemed amused but the other half were getting angry. Thankfully we knew quite a few of the old punks and other people who had turned out and so were able to make good our escape without being killed.

Hooray!

Have you heard it yet, mrak? It really is A Return To Form.

You're in league with Virgin Trains against me

I read an extract and this book looks very fun. Another autobiography I want to get is Steve Martin's Born Standing Up but the library doesn't have it yet and I never read a book twice so I'm not too keen on buying them.

Aye - and I'll tell you know, a reasonably accomplished reader will zip through Mark E's book in no time at all. It's very readable, but also quite short. It needs to be twice as long at least, really. And, heh, unedited. I found myself thinking 'What, nothing at all about Code Selfish, Middle Class Revolt, Cerebral Caustic?', and other stuff, other people. I'm sure the 'Fall Online' forum has been enjoying going through it with a fine comb, heh.

This is stuff of legends.

You are mad, sir, and were I still mod then you can be assured I would be doing terrible things to your posts/avatar RIGHT NOW.



I think it has got more of a 'MES shouting over some noise' feel to it than FHR yes, but I personally am very glad about that. FHR was, for me, a really generic and rubbishy collection of 90s britpop/britrock. At times, RNFLP also reminded me a bit of that (such as on Boxoctosis and Protein Protection), but FHR was entirely that. All rawk n' bluster, but as one-dimensional as any number of other generic rawk n' bluster bands out there in the NME today. IMO lol etc.


What's so bad about using a fretless bass? They used to have a bongos player fer chrissakes

I suspect we are liking the same band for quite different reasons sir, so I shall politely bow to you and sit down again (see again first sentence).