Fall News - 10 May 1998

Records

Still random availability of Live To Air in Melbourne 82 (not here anyway).

Spoken word CD might be out this week (he says for the third week running).

Still no sign of the Peel Sessions release.

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From: "Peter Diaper"
Subject: NME report the Fall again - edited highlights

Okay, I know a lot of you probably object to the NME on religious grounds or something, so I'll tap in the best bits from todays report on MES, that you might remain unsullied:

Mark E Smith has vowed the Fall will carry on, even as a 3-piece. Blah blah blah ... Dingwalls ... dozens of fans asked for their money back, with one describing the gigs as "utterly shambolic". But Smith told NME: "I'm really pleased with the way things are at the moment. Our audience is getting younger, they don't want to see old men thrashing about with guitars onstage. You've got to look to the future and keep changing, otherwise there's no point in the Fall really."

Blah blah blah... Smith played down the departure of the trio, even though Hanley had been with the Fall for 18 years. "I think we couldn't really handle New York. And anyway, Tommy was really just a hired guitar. It's the same as if the triangle player out of Phil Collins' band had left. Karl is out too. If Steve leaves for good, we'll just get another bassist. I just picked the wrong men to take to New York. I don't really know why they left, they don't communicate with me. It's all arse about tit. Everything you read, the opposite is true. It's like one of those films where a fellow's minding his own business and he gets attacked."

Asked to explain more precisely what the problem had been between himself and the three departed members, Smith said: "The tension was building up between the three of them. They've got late 30s syndrome or something, the male menopause." When NME asked if that was what he was suffering from too, he quipped, "No, I had the male menopause when I was 12, love." He also denied hitting Julia, said the police had "overreacted" and that they had treated him "appallingly".

"If you shout in New York, you get locked up. In New York, it's an offence to drink a beer and smoke a cigarette and raise your voice," he explained. "Even the judge was flabbergasted." Blah blah blah... also denied that the onstage brawl and his erratic behaviour in New York were anything to do with a drink problem: "I don't think I've got a problem. I just get over-upset when things like that go wrong, so I kick off. It's more to do with my temper really. It's not anything else. I mean, I could say worse things about them three." And then he did.

Inset piccie of Dingwalls bass in stand with groansome caption: 'This Nation's Unused Bass'

[Duncan adds: Another snippet from MM says that Kate Methan from Polythene is an American and they had been keen to recruit her for some time.]

----------------

From: Simon Fluendy

"From up high where I was, you could shout anything you liked at them. I tried. They made me sick, the whole lot of them. I hadn't the nerve to tell them so in the daytime, to their face, but up there it was safe. "Help! Help!" I shouted, just to see if it would have any effect on them. None whatsoever. Those people were pushing life and night and day in front of them. Life hides everything from people. Their own noise prevents them from hearing anything else. They couldn't care less. The bigger and taller the city, the less they care. Take it from me. I've tried. It's a waste of time."
from Journey to the End of the Night, Louis Ferdinand Celine

Sound like anyone we know?

--------------

Received:

>AS you will be aware by now, Steve, Tommy and karl have started a
>new band called ark. A website is going up next week, and a cd
>containing six new songs will be on sale in about ten days. Watch
>this space.

-------------

From: Jeff Curtis

There's an article in this month's U.S.Rocker, a local monthly free underground music paper that formerly was strictly hair metal band oriented, but is now actually not too bad in its coverage of punk, indie, alterna, etc. The cite is U.S.Rocker May 1998 p. 6. It's a new column called The Synthetic Rock Revelation by "Matt Damn Kuchna" and the title of this particular column is "The first day of school" since it's his first column, and he's sort of listing a handful of miscellaneous thoughts to give you an idea of where he's coming from. It's odd because he seems to cover the gamut from Steely Dan to metal to rap to punk to, yes, the Fall. I'll list the titles of the other sections of the column, but only type in the bit about our lads:

1) Steely Dan invented postmodernism.
2) Puff Daddy IS Berry Gordy
3) (see below)
4) What the HELL is up with Metal?
5) British music is almost entirely without true merit. (he explains that this is because "British artists always consider themselves Artists")
6) The joy of schlock
7) Judy's Anti-Fashion, or Punk's Unplanned Obsolescence.

3) RZA (Wu-Tang Clan) and Mark E. Smith (the Fall): the hidden connection. Just off the tops of my head, I see an amazing similarity. Neither man is frequently intelligible, both have invented their own rules for previously defined roles, and their words -- when understood -- often don't make much sense in the contexts presented. Rather, one must perceive their work on a grander scale, almost as a whole, to extract any understanding of what they may be talking about. Or maybe not; neither artist has seemed altogether interested in whether people get it -- but both seem kind of pissed that people don't or haven't. Plus, of course, both vocal performers often present their art -- consisting of more or less tightly regulated rhythms with rambling, lost-within-their-own-meter phrasings -- cloaked in esoterica (if not minutiae). I'll shut up now. Next!

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