Obituaries

Given the state of the NHOs that explains his passing.

I used to trade New Order, Smiths and Fall tapes with Dave Simpson. He wrote a nice piece in the Grauniad about M.E.S.:

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When Gideon Coe opened up with 3 John Peel Fall tracks my worst fears were confirmed.
Thank god I was driving home from a band rehearsal so could dial up some Fall and play it LOUD.
When music has sometimes got boring & shitā€¦at least there was always THE MIGHTY FALL.

Unique legacy of records, but live, they were just something else entirely

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Agreed :+1:

I was listening to Mark Radcliffe when he announced the news.

I met the cunt on Macclesfield railway station platform. He was with his misses and another band member as it was 7.30 in the morning and totally pissed and abusive. He shut the fuck up after a word. All mouth.

First time we went to see The Fall, they didnā€™t turn up, which wasnā€™t that big a surprise tbh.
The next time, got smack in front of the mike stand around 8 oclock. The next hour was spent listening to a totally incoherent bloke telling me his life story (I think) and another guy whoā€™d seen them a zillion times.
It passed a wonderful hour until I turned round to witness the De Montfort Hall rammed to the rafters.

But now over to John Peelā€¦ who sums up Mark E Smith & The Fall better than I ever will or possibly couldā€¦

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Like other readers, I grew by listening to John Peel under the bed sheets.
But probably have +5 years on the Fall listeners, so failed to catch on.

On Mrs MoPā€™s comment, it seems bright young things burn fast.

Sadly.

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Whilst I agree 60 is no age to go, and my sympathies go to his family and friends, I never understood the appeal of the Fall.

The last time I checked them out was on a 6 Music Festival Concert that the BBC were showing on the red button a couple of years ago. What i found was a bassist and drummer who were very good, and a guitarist who was also good, but apparently playing a completely different tune to the aforementioned bassist and drummer. The lineup was completed by what appeared to be a shambling old man (frankly, Iā€™m shocked he was only 60!) who lurched round the stage, either shouting incoherently into a microphone or bashing it on various bits of equipment. I was waiting for security to remove him so the real singer could take over when i realised that his was indeed the fabled Mr. Smith.

I remain confused regarding his appeal.

I think he achieved everything he set out to in your case. :blush:

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I liked this anecdote.

ā€œā€¦Mark E Smith DJā€™d for us in 2005. He arrived with a carrier bag containing a Boney M 12ā€ an a jumper. We had to collect him from a snooker match at the G-Mex. He took out two CDs and took the songs off half way through, all the time wearing one black leather gloveā€¦ā€

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and this one.

ā€œThere was this other group warming up, and they were terrible. I said ā€˜Shut them cunts up!ā€™ And they were still warming up. So I threw a bottle at them.ā€ ā€“ Mark E Smith on Mumford & Sons

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To be fair, they are shit.

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Every time I saw The Fall live they somehow managed the unlikely trick of magically becoming the most danaceable band on the planet, weirdly the same songs were imbued with a bass and rhythm that meant you just danced all the way through to every track , only to look around and find everyone else doing the same thing! It happened every time I saw them and no matter what album or line up they were touring*

*drink and drugs may have been involved, but what a live band(s) and what unforgettable experiences they made.

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Coffin will be flat packed with two lids and plenty of screws left over.

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Perhaps theyā€™ve been wear testing it for hundreds of hours.

Tremendous loss of nonagenarian tax-dodging nazi-apologist who became a billionaire off the back of the fact most of us are too lazy to search for interesting furniture, or too brainwashed by consumerism to re-use older items, and ruthlessly exploited overseas labour to make us even more wasteful and ephemeral than we already areā€¦

Boo-fucking-hoo.

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Also had a dreadful taste in colour schemes and an infatuation with mazes.

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Struggled a bit with the desk build?

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Ikea, via offshore trusts and ā€˜charitiesā€™ in the Netherlands, manages to pay almost no corporation tax. Amazon & Starbucks have nothing on them and yet astonishingly no one makes a fuss.

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