The Unutterable

Live

The next live Peel Sessions concert on Friday Sept 22 at the Royal Festival Hall features Dick Dale, The Fall and Terry Edwards. On-line ordering at http://www.royalfestivalhall.org.uk/music/

Mark E Smith will be doing a reading at the Stanza 2000 poetry festival, St Andrews, Scotland. It will be at the Victory Hall on Friday 6th October at 10pm, tickets £6/£3 concession. Musical backing by Julia Nagle.(Peter: MES appears alongside (maybe introduced by?) a WN Herbert who lists The Fall as one of his obsessions at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/poets/Herbert/obsess.htm).

The Fall appear on the Oxford Zodiac's booking list for Sun 14 Nov (not Sat 2 Dec).

The track that is going on the October issue Wire Tapper CD is "Dr Buck's Letter". The mag-with-CD-attached will be out on Tues 26 Sept, and the album won't be out till mid-November. So Fall fans can get a nice advance preview of the brilliance of the new album by simply buying a copy of the October Wire!

Fri 22 Sep 2000 7:30pm Royal Festival Hall

Dick Dale and The Fall, Special Guests: Terry Edwards & The Scapegoats

Peel Sessions Live

John Peel's favourite band didn't so much grab the zeitgeist as create it. From their riotous late '70s madness, through heavy-synths and every techno beat, The Fall have seen it all 'and still come-up sounding fresher than the next big thing' (NME). Dick Dale is the father of surf music, as significant in the development of pop as Brian Wilson or Van Dyke Parks. This is the hero of fender reverb, staccato playing and thundering instrumentals. His classics include 'Let's Go Trippin' and 'Miserlou' (both covered by The Beach Boys) and the last decade has confirmed his status as a vast influence on contemporary music. £12.50

OS: What was the sequence of events surrounding 'Inch'? Was it pressed as a single copy and given to John Peel at some point? Was it a one single deal?

SS: The music was written by myself and Keir for inclusion on Levitate,and we went to London with the band as producers... we didn't really get on with Mark as well as we hoped and once we'd got the vocals for 'Inch' we ran off back to Manchester with the tapes. Then we cut about 20 CDs of the finished mix, sent it to Peel, NME, other radio stations etc. which was a bit naughty really, but Mark was alright about it and agreed to us putting it out on another label. Eventually, after months of being fucked around by one label, it came out on another - Regal. It was a one single deal but I'm about to send them the new D.O.S.E. material I've been working on, so who knows?

OS: The spoken intro on Inch is pretty funny. Is this how things work with Mark E Smith in the studio?

SS: The spoken intro was done when Keir was playing as a member of The Fall. Keir and Si (ex-drummer) were trying to write a tune and they were playing it to Mark over the phone and trying to get him to sing along, which is how come Keir recorded it.

OS: I felt because you weren't part of the Big Beat fraternity, Plug Myself In got hardly any exposure. For example, Monkey Mafia and Lionrock have released some shit records but have always been critically lauded. Wouldyou agree?

SS: Yes, Monkey Mafia and Lionrock were shite, but then they managed to complete albums whereas I can manage about one single every year, so who am I to say.

OS: Who exactly are D.O.S.E.? Is it just yourself and Keir Stewart.. and who is Val Hooligan?

SS: D.O.S.E. is me, and Inch is me and Keir, and Val Hooligan is Keir.

OS: Have you got into any trouble over the origin of your name?

SS: Not yet.

OS: How did the collaboration with Prolapse come about?

SS: The Prolapse mix [Flexed] was Keir's. but I went in to help him mixdown and we ended up adding a new bit that sounds rather like Flash Gordon by Queen, and you can't say fairer than that.

OS: What was the main source of disagreement during the recording of Levitate?

SS: We basically ended up having major disagreements with Mark over how it should be done. He wanted it doing his way which was very different to our way so we left. It was his album so we should have probably been more co-operative, but some of his working methods can be a little, shall we say, unorthodox. The version of Ol' Gang on Levitate justifies his approach entirely though, as I'm sure you will agree.

OS: The songwriting credits on Levitate are a bit perplexing. How come you don't get mentioned for any of the breakbeat tunes on there, but arecredited for Spencer Must Die... and surely you deserve some mention for Powderkex on the bonus CD?

SS: Well I wrote a tune I gave to Mark which he christened Spencer, and then after we left the album sessions he changed it to Spencer Must Die, but I had nothing to do with that recording of it really. The only input me and Keir had was on the version of Inch on the album, which Mark really produced himself using our track. As for Powder Keg, you must be referring to the D.O.S.E. remix... if it is, then yes I should have been credited but who gives a shit - as long as it's out there. That's the favourite thing of all the stuff I've done with Mark as it happens.

OS: What did you think of the Utah Saints version of Edwin Starr's Funky Music, which was listed as one of your fave songs?

SS: The Utah Saints should be fucking shot.

OS: Do you like any of the Fat City/ Grand Central, or Twisted Nerve stuff?

SS: Not a fan of Grand Central... I do like Mum & Dad, Badly Drawn Boy. Urban Guerrilla by Mum & Dad is the best thing I've heard in ages.

OS: Didn't D.O.S.E. play with Howard Marks at the opening of Herman the Head shop in Manchester?

SS: D.O.S.E. didn't play with Howard Marks - that was some fucking DJ stealing my name. I told him to stop and apparently he has ... Cheers for writing, check out the D.O.S.E. Web site, you can hear some Real Audioclips of new D.O.S.E. material. Simon S.

Olli's made a fantastic animated gif of the recent photos from the Leeds 1981 gig. It's about 1 Mb, but you have to download it:

http://webast.ast.obs-mip.fr/users/oczoske/clap.gif

Pete Diaper:

You'd love the Fall calendar that my mate's got (only available for a brief period by mail order back in '89).

Jan - Smith lighting up outside some grim looking public toilets

Feb - Smith buying a loaf of sliced white bread from the corner shop (he's probably having beans on toast for his tea)

March - Smith putting on his best shirt because it's Sunday and he's going down the pub with his mum and dad

April - Smith having a laugh with an old lady (in grey mac and transparent plastic rain hat) at a bus stop

May - Smith and some mates in the pub pointing and laughing at a man with poofy hair

June - Smith walking straight past the make-up counter at Boots without even glancing at it. He's just bought some Anusol and he's on his way to the bookies

July - Smith chatting over the fence with a rugged-looking ex-miner about his pigeons

August - Smith... oh, you get the idea

Ta to Paul Saxton for the next few bits:

Don't know if this is already been posted, but there's a review of the recent D-Percussion gig (featuring The Fall) at:

http://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews/20000824062036.html

From the new Q, a review:

The Fall I Am As Pure As Oranj

Contrary old sod live in Edinburgh in 1988.

Even back then it seemed odd that most of Mark E. Smith's I Am Kurious Oranj album should become the soundtrack to a Michael Clark ballet and that, together, band and dance company should play Sadler's Wells to general acclaim. Still, it happened. A few months later, The Fall turned up at the Edinburgh Festival with some Dutch dancers and spawned this document. The two-woman, three-man ensemble was Smith's brief flirtation with sex: keyboardist Marcia Schofield added confusing short-skirted glamour, while Brix Smith longed for Bangle-hood. Unusually for a live Fall album, the sound quality is fine, but still inferior to the Ian Broudie-produced originals. (2 Stars)
John Aizlewood

The, ahem, New Puritans are on the march with the publication of a new book of short stories. Review from the New Statesman:

This anthology of short stories, titled after a record by The Fall, features a couple of respectable gimmicks: all the stories were written especially for it, and the writers agreed to the ten aesthetic rules laid out in the introduction. "The aim," say the editors, "was to bring together a group of like-minded writers and set them a challenge. Strip their fiction back to the basics and see if something exciting emerges." They go on: "The rules were designed to emphasise what makes recent fiction so original and challenging."

Fall cover artist Anthony Frost has some work on view:

http://www.galleryonline.org.uk/afgallerypage.htm

Peter:

http://www.newage.com.au/library/spiritualism.html is a one-page history of spiritualism. It's one of those articles that you get echoes of the Fall from even if they're faint echoes.

1. Swedenborg was the father figure of the movement. I've seen Swedenborg's name in an article on William Blake (who also talked to the deceased).

2. The 1944 trial of Helen Duncan (as mentioned on Witch Trials) is listed.

3. Not clear where the Spiritualists' National Union is based but at least two AGMs have been in Manchester. I wonder whether the movement had particular ties to the region.

4. It's not mentioned on this page but spiritualism boomed during the Great War. The massive loss of life went with an increased interest in contacting the dead. An association between war and psychic phenomena, that's almost like two sides of MES's imagination.

On a complete tangent, the site mentions the book Phenomena of Materialism (1920) by the wonderfully named Baron von Schrenk-Notzing. Schrenk-Notzing had two research interests: ectoplasm and finding a cure for homosexuality. A copy of Schrenk-Notzing's book was found in Francis Bacon's studio. One photograph in the book, of a man whose nose was obscured by a veil of ectoplasm, is thought to have inspired one of Bacon's studies of Pope Innocent X. Some of Schrenk-Notzing's photos can be seen at http://www.fst.org/phenom1.htm

John H:

In an interview in the current issue of Jane, Tim Roth namechecks The Fall when talking about his punk days.

AmC:

> There was a big colour pic of Peelie in Friday's Guardian clutching the Hip Priests & Kamerads LP.

I read this and I thought - wait -

The Hip Priests and Kamerads LP? Not Room To Live or Hex Enduction Hour or one of the singles therein?

If you only have like $12 to spend and you want the best Fall LP for the money, it's HP&K, no doubt. (if you only have $12 and you want the best No Doubt LP for the money, cut my throat with a garden tool)

But

JPeel has no excuse for taking this shortcut - that I know of - AND being photographed doing it.

Pick one over the other, John. Or do what I would do and hold up the Lie Dream / Fantastic Life and I'm Into CB / Look Know 7"s as framing "ears" and smile full-on into the camera.

HP&K

You had your own special limited-to-john-peel-only pressing of Inch, and now you fence-sit, being caught hedging all bets with HP&K. Okay, not all bets. You're right that most essential stuff is on there (not Slates though, eh? Eh?)

But I think you should be made to pick out a real '81-'83 release to be photographed with.

Terence:

check this out, Momus is using the MES Font on his web site. people do rip off the fall.

http://www.demon.co.uk/momus/

The Fall contribute Rowche Rumble to the 6 CD set Shit Factory...

"Stockhausen & Watercloset present the greatest pop swindle of all time:"

HOD BOX5053

Michael:

Wow, just saw Jack Wild being interviewed on Channel 4 News. This is the bloke who played the Artful Dodger in the film version of Oliver. He was being interviewed about being a child star (Harry PotterCon) and how it screwed him up. The man is a dead ringer for MES (with maybe a touch of Alex Higgins about him). It was uncanny, the eyes, the jowls. See here for pics:

http://www.outofthenight.com/wild.html