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The Fall play...

Sat., Jan. 26	Gagarin 205, Athens, Greece
Tues., Feb. 19	Palac Akropolis, Prague, Czech Republic
Wed., Feb. 20	Szene, Vienna, Austria
Thu., Feb. 21	Rockhouse, Salzburg, Austria
Fri., Feb. 22	Hafen, Innsbruck, Austria
Sat., Feb. 23	Conrad Sohm, Dornbirn, Austria
Sun., Feb. 24	Schüür, Luzern, Switzerland
Mon., Feb. 25	Tunnel, Milan, Italy
Tues., Feb. 26	Covo, Bologna, Italy
Wed., Feb. 27	Brancaleone, Rome, Italy
Thu., Feb. 28	Velvet, Rimini, Italy
Fri., Mar. 1	Interzona, Verona, Italy
Sat., Mar. 2	Reitschule, Bern, Switzerland
also	two weekends in April (19-21 & 26-28) at All Tomorrow's Parties, Camber Sands Holiday Centre, East Sussex. This looks like quite a lineup of bands - very tempting.

A reader in Germany says there was mention in a local newspaper of a gig in Frankfurt on Feb. 16. I asked Ed Blaney (Fall manager) about it, and he said the band aren't playing any dates in Germany. Rest assured that as soon as new gigs (if any) are confirmed, I'll update the web site.

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Competition Time...

Cog Sinister / Voiceprint are releasing a limited edition, numbered (1000 copies) vinyl picture disc of Are You Are Missing Winner, and they've agreed to offer three copies, signed by MES, as competition prizes.

You'll have to work hard to win a copy by filling in the balloons:

Entries to fallwebsite@yahoo.com please. Please send your entry in text form only: don't download the photo and fill in the balloons!!!

Deadline is round midnight, Friday, January 25. A crack team of judges (me, and my wife Resa if she's got a minute or two) will spend the weekend pouring over the entries, sorting and sifting, analyzing and debating, weeping with delight and shuddering with horror, finally arriving at the three winning entries based on originality, wit, (ir)relevance, irreverance, etc. If it makes us laugh you're in with a good chance of winning.

Voiceprint will also be selling the pic disc for a reduced price (£9.99 plus p&p) for Fallnet and website readers. We're working out how you should go about ordering a copy; I'll post details as soon as I have them. It'll involve quoting the secret "special code word" EDMUND, that much is clear.

Jan. 14 update: I've received loads of entries already - keep them coming! The judges will have a tough time of it come January 26.

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I've added an article to the Fall bibliography: the infamous "pop summit" meeting between MES, Nick Cave, and Shane McGowan ("The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse," NME, Feb. 25, 1989).

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"Cheap Space Chant" by Timekode: http://www.timekode.co.uk

You can read all about Timekode and Deni's project with MES in her very entertaining book (PDF - 1046 kb) on her web site - the stuff about MES starts on p. 43, and there are a few photos of Mark taken at his house in 1992. There are some great anecdotes in this book!

Deni collaborated with MIT students to build the Mk E Unit - a contraption that simulates Mark's voice. She writes:

"It's not possible for me to get hold of The Mk E Unit anymore, as some engineers from MIT (USA) built the hardware & software at the time & it was disassembled after use. And all personel scattered afterwards!. (This was because the engineers - who were students - helped me out instead of doing their course-work, as my project was a damned sight more interesting!). I did it for "the crack" & because I wanted too, never for the cash!"

Deni very kindly sent a tape of the 7" and 12" versions of "Cheap Space Chant," and here they are in Real Audio.

If you want to buy a cassette with artwork directly from Deni (6 pounds), write to her at timekode@hotmail.com.

The Mk E Unit in the flesh (© Deni c/o Timekode)

_______________

More album reviews:

Agenbyte:
http://www.agenbyte.com/r_fall_winner.html

[from the site: "Agenbyte: Middle English for "remorse." Best known from "Agenbite of Inwit" ("remorse of conscience"), from Joyce's Ulysses, a phrase itself borrowed from the title of a "medieval manual of virtues and vices intended to remind the layman of the ierarchy of sins and the distinctions among them." (Gifford, Ulysses Annotated). Pretentious? Moi?"]

another French review:
http://www.stnt.org/UneChroniqueDeDisque.php3?i=182

another German review:
http://www.popkomm.de/dyn/news/popclash/platten/alternative/29736/0

and a Swedish review:
http://www.feber.se/pub/pub3_2.asp?art_id=4084

and Adrian's added a review to his Fall review archive:
http://www.geocities.com/mdenster/thefall.html#arey

Matt Bryden had a go at one of the earlier French reviews - thanks Matt!
http://www.sefronia.com/sefronia/affichefiche.wml&num=11187

(10 out of 10)

Take a guess; 3, 4…8, 9, 10. Keep going. 22, 23, continue without interest … 38, 39 and so to 40. Chucked out from among the dispensables ‘AYAMW’ (on the trusty Cog Sinister) is, according to the most subjective mathematics, the 40th great disc by The Fall, a figure as rough as MES. If it recalls scraps of previous albums (The Joke in My Ex-Classmates Kids), it clearly resembles none of them. At root, the voice of an old alcoholic replunging into his vice after being poured a shandy, the common thread of their discography (or more accurately, that of singer / leader / misanthrope MES), his unique characteristic, your burst eardrums conclude that The Fall are the best producers of demos in the world. The scraps which others consider second-rate and relegate to an EP or to fill a hole on a Best Of ensuring cash for groups in crisis to pay their rates, these muddled blurred tracks, too short or too long, considered too crude by the artists, these The Fall make into albums. MES isn’t afraid to show his naked inspiration, and - continually inspired - perpetually surprises. He remains himself. A William of Rock of sorts. The Fall haven’t been banned by the lapdog Blair because ‘we-are-all-American-especially-the- English’ and must respect events of September 11; with a name like The Fall one isn’t played (even in France ‘A Plane Without Wings’ and ‘Fallen from the Sky’ have been boycotted by radio for two weeks! When the banning of ‘We Are Two Twin Towers’?), and so we hurry to digest AYAMW morsel by morsel.

1 Jim’s The Fall seems to be the best fruit of The Unutterable fallen into the basket of AYAMW. More vigorous than the others but too lacking in the verses to sit next to ‘2 Librans’.

2 Anyone crossing ‘Bourgeois Town’ will be accosted by the hard looks of its inhabitants who won’t tolerate trouble at tea-time by the unknown. The fear of lynching. One may pass through ‘Bourgeois Town’ alive, but will never forget it.

3 Crop Dust’s riff knocks you about a bit, by way of the Kinks, through Mark’s unpredictable vocal waves, circular like acute paranoia and throbbing like a happy person wanting to puke.

4 My Ex-classmates’ Kids will be THE record which is never successful because its lead singer resembles a monkey and thus search in vain for the clip on MTV. Like every track and album by The Fall.

5 Kick the Can? Kurt Cobain would have probably stolen the blueprints if Mark had not written this after his death. Perhaps why he shot his brains out with a 38. The twist of the summer! Best enjoyed in snow boots to reheat your pins in winter. Ensure empty cans to kick but most of all avoid the neighbours.

6 Gotta See Jane is an R Dean/Taylor cover. Ha. One suspects MES of creating fictional groups to cover that never existed (See I’m Going to Spain off The Infotainment Scan’).

7 The joyous surreal shambles ‘Ibis Afro Man' is credited to one I.Pop. Ignatius? Isabella? Imam?

8 For The Fall, country evokes cowboys shooting up cough mixture astride Jacobean mounts pursued by Indians wanting backpayment for three months’ rented tipis. In ‘The Acute’ these relations of Dolly Parton have drooping breasts.

9 Hollow Mind has the makings of a Fall classic, scaling the heights of their other titles.

10 Reprise: Jane – Prof Mick – Ey Bastardo - allows us to hear Mark’s first words of Spanish. Has Mark been influenced by the Cuban wave? Go back to track 1…

and late-addition glowing German review, translated by Olli Czoske:
http://www.intro.de/index.php3?nav=&con=/platten/kritiken&einreview=1006956953&a\ z=7&

Translates somewhat like this:

Bad news for Fall fans: The new Fall LP is out/here/released. And for everybody who's heard it the story of how MES recently broke a leg at a rockabilly concert and said: "You can't break Mark E. Smith" must have a bitter after/side taste, something of sinister irony. It's not that the last Fall LPs were masterpieces throughout. But in the fan's imagination you could still discover a remnant of the band that John Peel once referred to as the one by which to judge all others. "Are you are missing winner" however is a final declaration of bankruptcy. For the first time there's no company involved apart from (the band's own) Cog Sinister, which does not result in more artistic freedom or lack of compromise but simply in worse production, i.e. really bad not: bad as a stylistic means. The habit of treating personnel like dirt and to sack everything that can't defend itself nurtures MES's aura of ruthlessness but has by now gotten him the least colourful and inspired band of all times. And he simply needs creative potential which to exploit - he just doesn't have enough himself. Only now it becomes obvious how important people like Craig Scanlon and Stephen Hanley used to be, and the fact that instead of Simon Wolstencroft a completely taste- and nameless peasant is doing his foul work is maybe the biggest impertinence. The Fall - and saying that hurts me more than you - are finished.

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Pan, by Camden Joy and Colin B. Morton:

It looks like Highwater Books are issuing a limited edition (200 copies) box set of three Camden Joy novellas (including "Pan"), as well as printing the books individually. No sign of "Pan" in my local bookshops and it's still a pre-order on Amazon.

Here's a piece by Camden Joy - "Do I Dare to Fireball Atomic," which also mentions the Fall.
http://www.fictionopolis.com/avantgo/camdenjoy_fireball-atomic.htm

an excerpt:
"...Dragnet stank of bad breath, primitives wrestling with the supernatural. 'His friends are full of evil serum,' went one murder song. 'The streets are full of mercenary eyes.' It sounded to be recorded using soup cans and string, in the days before color was invented. What those spoilt diplomatic children made of such crudeness was anybody's guess, when their own skin was so soft you could cut it with a butter knife. It was a record album one of their espionage dads perhaps surreptitiously picked up through a fuzzy government wiretap."

There's an interview with Joy here: http://www.gloriousnoise.com/index.php?camden.htm

and he's got a web site: http://www.camdenjoy.com

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Haf found this March 1987 German fanzine interview with MES at http://www.wdp.net/ staubsauger/6/fall1.htm - I used the Google translater to generate the following. It's not perfect but you can follow along well enough - plus it's the funniest thing I've read all year (I'm easily amused). Note: "case" = "Fall"; "plates" = "records."

Last mark as I The case in the Metropol saw, was it a complete disaster and exactly the same something I this evening feared. It began already badly, with (the not usual) delays. Not there Daziablo as vorgruppe pleased me not so particularly, but ihretwegen was I. And then after long waiting period The case (1 schlagzeuger, 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 key board and Marks an E. Smith) came and with Fiery Jack began, which had I for years no longer live heard, madly. And further upward, trtz bad Metropol acoustics went. As the set past truely, the public flippte out and requires three additions. Mark of E. has itself even thanked you (Cheers), so deeply it it impressed.

I went arranging afterwards behind the stage around a breakfast interview for Tuesday. Also there nod Cave and parts of his bad seed were, but they fled before the industrious pencil of the vacuum cleaner.

Thus I waited Tuesday at 13 o'clock for Mr. Mark of E. Smith in the entrance hall Kant of the hotel. Over after 10 he came down, gave me the hand and apologizes for the delay (nice, wa?). It had hunger, therefore we went into a correct granny cafe into the Wilmersdorfer road and ordered coffee, cocoa and a Croissant with cheese. And now to the discussion:

Mark was quite gene FFS over the interview of the previous evening with Christine Heise. It thought, it should something about The case talk instead of questions about marriage for answering children and household. He meant, it concerns no somewhat, which he does privately (Christine, it is good that you placed these questions first, I wanted exactly the same to make.)

David, our companion presents a double album of the 4 Seasons to Marks, there is pleased he much.

Vacuum cleaner : What do The case make where it are so popular now?

Mark: It did not operate, if a group has a rising popularity, thus further so.

S: Or does become slowly boring will it appear to more plates of The case?

M: This interview in any case.

S: Well if you mean, then we can talk about your house.

M: Thus it is in Manchester, has nearly no garden and it on mortgage is bought.

S: Say approximately about your play in London.

M: Thus I find, it well arrived and it terribly much fun brought. My Mrs. Brix wrote the songs and was for me it a recovery of the normal music scene.

S: Yes, in the tip they wrote sides here over you and your piece of stage, however they have always over Pope Paul I written, the at the beginning of the 10ten or 12ten of century died. (for our readers: Marks play acts of the strange death of the Pope Johannes Paul I)

M: Hectar, complete idiots, who have determine the wrong article of possibly someone abkopiert!

S: How is it then to be married?

M: Not badly.

S: How then does the future look with you? You will buy a Landrover, shit on the country pull and to pheasants (?)?

M: Nee, sowas leave I for the south Englishmen like you.

S: Thus north Englishmen go working, with 65 into the pension and die with 68 on lung problems, or how?

M: No, we live in large cities and are no Schafficker like it.

[Dear reader! This delicate thing really gives it in England. The people, which will live south of wading Fords as dekadente ass holes of the north Englishmen regarded and these to become from those from the south still as proletarian workers stamped. We talked then about the granny cafe, it were so German. Mark found it very nice.]

S: Where do you sell then your plates still except in England?

M: Germany and America. But lately also on the Australian continent.

S: Thus with the money it looks well?

M: Now already, but in the past we were too trusting and some did not get.

S: Thus Marks, which you make, if you are not with The case?

M: I read quite much and stand on Manchester town center (football), but so often cannot I not go, because of the tours and in such a way.

S: I go also to the football here into Berlin.

M: How is the German football?

S: A little more slowly like the English, but completely maintenance SAM.

M: Craig, our guitarist, goes regularly, thus from it wars I the information.

S: You are actually one week too early, because then is the film celebration here.

M: Actually I do not like a cinema.

S: How does your house please you? Are you often in your spare time in the garden?

M: Nee, rather in the Pub.

S: How then is Manchester at all?

M: Completely nicely, no dekadente central layer or malicious housing developments. And in addition I am there born. It is there completely calm and I can there well works.

S: Thus it will be full in the future from your children.

M: That may perhaps be, I do not exclude it. Which annoyed me, was this radio ending (in the SFB). Perhaps Sowas should be brought in the housewife radio in the afternoon, but by the translations and so little was in such a way said. In addition it should have played more drop plates. It concerns the people a shitting dirt, which private I make.

S: How do you imagine then perfect the radio interview?

M: Simple questions, the simple answers require and much good music.

S: To the music again: When does a number 1 come - single of The case?

M: Hey, Luciani should have been one.

S: You became better. How, why?

M: Do not know I, but it is correct, what you say. On Sunday I was completely ill and I am surprised that I had held out that.

S: Back to the hit single.

M: Yes. Do you want to eat my cheese?

S: No, I had a Avocado to the breakfast. What is with a hit single?

M: Do you drink much?

S: Not often, but if, then correctly! And you?

M: If one becomes older, one does not stand any longer so much, actually unfortunate. In England it is still an exception, at to drink four o'clock in the afternoon a beer, but it is usual here.

S: What do your buddies in Manchester make?

M: Most are not unemployed and those work, those have money.

S: What is with a hit single?

M: Is completely nicely here in Berlin, but rather many students.

S: Shit to Hippies mean you, with its expensive bio shops, carrots, brown-spotted apples verschrumpelten and dry cheese.

M: In so a shop was not I yet, but it sounds terrible.

S: Is it also. You should go this afternoon to one. The vegetable looks, as if it was stored over a central heating.

M: Correctly, in England at the moment all preservatives from the food are banished. The chips and the cookies taste any more, softly and pappig. it bring no more fun to eat such a thing. One does it in the dte and her dissolves simply. Disgustingly.

S: Exactly the same with this fat. One kriegt in suedengland no more greasy breakfast.

M: I find like that something am a dishonor. Our traditions are destroyed thereby. In the north is it not yet so far. The south Englishmen look also all ill, particularly the health minister.

S: How does it look with vacation?

M: Thus such a thing I do not like. I was in the USA with Brix ' elstern, but America is too dekadent me.

S: How waers with the GDR as a vacation goal?

M: That leave I Billy Bragg and Tom Robinson, to the rich socialist.

S: I find it simple to be socialist if one has money in the bag.

M: Is correct, it is many simpler.

S: Back to vacation.

M: I was in former times with my parents on the way and that for me everything spoiled. Perhaps a beautiful week in Skegness, where it in the evening at 6 o'clock coldly will and one must flee before the weather.

S: Mach nevertheless ' ne week here.

M: Sounds completely good, but in my house it is like vacation, where I can read much.

S: What?

M: History, Martin Amis and Phillip K. Dick.

S: That is me too bourgeois, I reads gladly northEnglish authors such as Sillitoe and Barstow.

M: Yes, those are super, but they do not write now any longer so often.

[As authors exchanged and book tips to the woman with the calculation came.]

S: Do you pay then half?

M: No, I have only one Mark, Mark.

[Our company paid and we left.]

S: Thank you, Mark, was much maintenance SAM to talk with you.

M: It also pleased me. Tschuess!

S: Tschuess!

© 1987 I and My Vacuum Cleaner (Ich Und Mein Staubsauger)

________________

And a more recent German interview, from Nov. 15, 2001: http://www.laut.de/vorlaut/interviews/2001/11/15/02244/

Beer drink with Marks of E. Smith

The legend lives! I met Marks of E. Smith and was not we not Pizza to eat, but but a few lecker drink beer (I ' sparkling wine drank, for the celebration of the daily). It was not really gespraechig. It looked also tired. The excessive Punkrock years did not go past without trace at it.

Hamburg -- a suitable location for the questions to find, was not simple also. After a quarter hour, of Smith already easily angenervt, we found finally the suitable Etablissement. Fortunately participated his dear Mrs. Elli, who functioned the whole somewhat more loosely arranged and here and there also times than woman interpreter. The Manchester it has accent already quite in itself. And one may not forget the Nuscheln of Mr. Smith also. Now a short interview with the front man the British cult volume The case follows. On journalists it does not stand in such a way. He speaks rather freely from the soul. It is already somehow mad, but very nice, in its way.

The case yesterday began their Germany route in Cologne. How was the concert?

Very well!

Shortly give her also some concerts in New York. For the moment the people react there very hysterisch. How do you see the American society after 11 September? How will it be according to your opinion to play there?

Yes, naturally is the situation different. But the flights are cheaper! (laughters)

You live still in Manchester. Can you describe the current music scene there to us? Do you sound yourself the current Charts music?

I have now no desire, shit to Manchester scene to judge here. It does not interest me simply. (late told it us still that predominantly students control the scene. Manchester has allegedly the world largest university. In the plain language: Mark of E. Smith likes simply no students. As one can hear also from its Song "Hey student" out. One finds the Song on the albums "15 Ways tons of Leave Your one" and "A Past of gone WAD", notes of the editorship)

Thus, you do not have a contact to other volume?

No.

Don't you go on concerts?

I try to avoid generally musicians in Manchester. I hardly go on other concerts. I like Reggae. And Rockabilly.

And is there a certain interpreter there or certain volume?

I like Jack Scott. That ' I live also last saw. (Jack Scott is a skirt ' n ' roll star from the 50ern, note of the editorship).

On your last album "The Unutterable" gives it to the Song "Cyber insect", which describes virtual communication. How do you think of the InterNet? Are you interested in it?

No, I have people, which make that for me. I do not use the InterNet. I make the music. It gives however some, which write over The case. Sometimes use I mean whole time, in order to read it. There is real a quantity of entries. Many people write there, which met me. They maintain that at least! It's all crap, you know!

Before a few years you made a very beautiful Coverversion of "Rollin Danny" (originally of genes Vincent). In addition again and again names of large Rock'n'Rollern emerge like left Wray and others in your texts. Can you imagine times a pure Rockabilly plate to make?

No, that is impossible!

With "The post office Nearly one" you have a LP published on which you the spoken word into the center place. I read that "Panda Pander tank" will go into the same direction. Is that correct?

Yes, I try it.

I am surprised that there is still no book publication of it. Can we shortly expect a Hardcover of Marks E. Smith?

I do not think. I would not like to publish it as Prosa. I may it note things which would be too strange however for a whole book.

But in the broadest sense this CDs is a kind hearing book nevertheless?

Yes, which is correct!

You along-played as a guest interpreter on plates of "Inspiral Carpets", "Long Fin Killie" and other one. With which volume would you work still gladly together?

I did not want to really play with this volume together. I made it for the money.

The case gives it since 1977 and it fights until today against Mainstream, disk label and journalist. Is it at all still possible in these times to retain its artistic liberties?

I do not have problems thereby. You must stop with thinking about such things. Only then the problems begin.

There is German volume named Tocotronic. Perhaps you know it. They have a Song written "I have ' dreamed I would be Pizza to eat with Marks of E. Smith"!

No, I know not (in addition his Mrs. Elli says: But clearly. Those wanted to take up a plate with you. She meant later still the fact that Tocotronic a Song of The case gecovert and in the InterNet published this. Over it they were however little inspired!)

How do you think of the fact that you are for many humans a Idol?

That is rather heavy for me. I go my own ways. I do not like it really, if people me into this section urge. I would not like to feel responsible for all. There is a quantity shit there outside. If I die, I must possibly still pay for it (laughters)!

O.K. Wars. Thank you!

Well thanks also. Then we can drink still one now.

Jan. 13, 2002

This is the latest news and gossip off FallNet for those with weak stomachs.

If you have anything to say, you can mail Stefan, but you can't mail the FallNet mailing list direct anymore. To subscribe to FallNet, send mail to fallnet-subscribe@ yahoogroups.com. The Freedonia list is out of action.