Where's North From Here?

We had a really good weekend in London. The Flightpath Estate were part of the line up at the Acid House Chancers event at The Social on Saturday night, on this occasion me and Baz third on the bill in the downstairs room with Mark representing upstairs in his Rude Audio guise. It was a fantastic night, the reaction of the crowd to the music was off the scale and I will at some point recreate the set and share it here. We got loads of good feedback and my pre- set nerves at taking over from Jenny Leamon, who already had a room of people dancing, were settled fairly quickly but the fear of clearing the floor and playing to an empty room is real. 

While we were in London on Saturday we popped into Tate Modern. I wanted to see Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals (again). On turning into one of the galleries we were met straight away by Andy Warhol's Marilyn diptych, a piece of art so famous it's almost meaningless, just pop culture wallpaper. Seeing it close up and in full wall sized glory was an experience, fifty slightly different Marilyns fading from day glo colour to black and white. 

Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals take up an entire room, a series of very large, wall sized rectangles in deep reds, maroons and black. They become the room, swallowing you inside them. I can see why some people find them quite oppressive and they certainly suggest something about Rothko's state of mind when he painted them (for a restaurant originally). When I first saw them in Liverpool in 1988, an eighteen year old just arriving at university, they had an impact on me and going back to see them in London periodically over the years since, they still do. I like big art, art you can get lost in.

On Sunday morning we went out for breakfast in Soho, looking for a morning after cure and still on a high after DJing at The Social. Just round the corner from our hotel was It's Bagels, a New York style bagel shop offering breakfast bagels, the walls decorated with pictures of Bob Dylan and De La Soul. The people sitting in the window looked like they were enjoying their bagels so we went inside. The in- shop stereo was loud, playing a weirdly hallucinatory late 70s/ early 80s soundtrack, trippy yacht rock and stoned singer songwriters. Without warning Mark E. Smith suddenly boomed out, 'where's north from here?', beamed in from his guest appearance with Gorillaz in 2010. I actually laughed out loud in the queue. The expected Gorillaz electronic glam stomp never came- the syrupy yacht rock came back in, Mark E Smith's line isolated from its source and re- appropriated in a new soundtrack. 

Glitter Freeze

The bagels were very good. Not cheap but very good. 

Forty Minutes Of Paul Simonon

This happened last night- Paul Simonon and Dan Donovan DJing at The Golden Lion in Todmorden. They were both lined up to play in August 2023 but Paul had to pull out and Dan played solo, a set of reggae, ska, rockabilly, punk and Clash songs. I wrote this post in advance of the show so can't report back yet but will do so soon. 

In the meantime here's a forty minute mix of Paul Simonon songs, presented roughly in chronological order, featuring the dulcet tones, reggae inspired bass and beating heart of The Clash, Paul Simonon, the coolest man to ever wear and play the bass guitar, the sharpest dressed man in punk.

Forty Minutes Of Paul Simonon

• The Crooked Beat
• The Guns Of Brixton
• Robber Dub
• Red Angel Dragnet
• Hey Amigo!
• Kingdom Of Doom
• The Good, The Bad And The Queen
• Plastic Beach
• Hero
• Lonely Town

The Crooked Beat was Paul's song on Sandinista!, a bass- led groove celebrating the blues parties and shebeens of his youth in South London with Mikey Dread at the controls. One of Sandinista!'s hidden gems. 

The Guns Of Brixton was written by Paul, initially titled Paul's Tune, and worked into the song we all know during the London Calling sessions at Wessex. Paul had realised during 1978 that the real money was in songwriting and elbowed his way into the Strummer- Jones partnership. Live Paul would sing/ shout the song with Joe switching to bass. Paul's bassline, instantly recognisable, was borrowed for Beats International's Dub Be Good To Me, a 1990 number 1 single. CBS released a 12" of Guns Of Brixton shortly after to cash in with some club friendly remixes by Jeremy Healy. I was going to include both Dub Be Good To Me and return To Brixton on this mix but wanted to keep the running time down to under forty five minutes. I still think Dub Be Good To Me is a great record and should have put it in this mix.

In 1980 The Clash appeared live on American TV on ABC's Fridays, playing four songs including this paring of Guns Of Brixton and Clampdown. You don't need me to tell you that this is the stuff that dreams are made of. 

Bank Robber was a 1980 single, recorded at Manchester's Pluto studio, produced by Mikey Dread, and originally released on import. When it charted by import sales alone CBS put out a UK release in August 1980. According to Paul in the Westway To The World documentary at first CBS executives didn't want to release it, saying it sounded like 'David Bowie backwards'. Bank Robber is a Clash classic, heavy, reggae inspired bass and drums. The Robber Dub first the light of day on Black Market Clash. 

Red Angel Dragnet is from 1982's Combat Rock, Paul on vocals on a song about the New York Guardian Angels with a Taxi Driver quote section narrated by Kosmo Vinyl. The free association lyrics in the end section are bewilderingly brilliant- 'Hands up for Hollywood/ Hooray/ I hear you/ Snappy in the air/ Hang in there/ Wall to wall/ You saved the world/ What else? You saved the girl/ Champagne on ice/ No stranger to Alcatraz...'

After The Clash 2 eventually split Paul formed Havana 3am with Nigel Dixon, Gary Myrick and Travis Williams, naming themselves after a 1956 Perez Prado album Paul was fond of. They played a cut and shut mix of rockabilly, Latin, dub and Spaghetti Western. Nigel died of cancer in 1993 and the rest of the band split. Paul lived in LA for a while in the late 80s/ early 90s, riding his motorbike with Steve Jones. During this period Paul and Steve found themselves in a studio with Bob Dylan- Dylan had been looking for a band to record with and somehow they got the gig. Paul recounts Dylan playing them a song, them playing along, then another, and another. After six songs Dylan said they'd go back to the first and record it and then the others. By this point Paul had forgotten the first song and the others too. This became Down In The Groove in 1988, which is nobody's idea of a great Bob Dylan album. In fact it may be his wrost. I don't have a copy any more (I once had it on cassette) and therefore can't include any of the Simonon- Dylan songs. Paul moved back to London, put his bass away, and began painting again- he'd been at art college in 1976 when he met Mick Jones and started The Clash. 

In the early 21st century there were rumours and rumblings that The Clash were going to re- unite to play at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame to celebrate their induction. The Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame is an awful idea and I imagine a terrible place too. Joe apparently was up for it, Mick was in Topper was clean. Paul kiboshed it saying if they did reform it wouldn't be for a bunch of people paying hundreds of dollars for a ticket but for real fans. He also said what he took from punk was not looking back- 'I never wanted to go back and relive the glory years; I just want to keep moving forward'. Joe tried to persuade Paul to do it by saying he had Mani on standby. It was the last time Paul spoke to Joe. He died in 2002, just days after the conversation. 

In 2007 Paul made an unexpected return to bass playing as part of The Good The Bad And The Queen, a Damon Albarn supergroup with Tony Allen on drums and Simon Tong from The Verve. Paul first met Damon at Joe Strummer's wedding in 1997 and although some friends advised him not to work with the Blur singer, he went ahead. The debut album was a low key, melancholic state of the nation, urban Victoriana set of songs. Kingdom Of Doom seems to sum up the end of the Blair years, pubs, the Iraq war and Damon's general dissatisfaction with things. The title track to the group and album is frenetic, with constantly building tension and Tony Allen's drumming finally unshackled at the end of the album.

Paul continued with Damon on Gorillaz's 2010 album Plastic Beach, playing on the title track with former- Clash bandmate Mick Jones. Both of them then joined the full Gorillaz live band touring in 2010, the entire band in nautical and naval inspired wear. Paul Simonon just looked like Paul Simonon. Plastic Beach featured a wealth of guest stars- Snoop Dogg, Kano, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Mark E. Smith, and Lou Reed- and played Glastonbury in June 2010, a performance instantly memorable for the moment Mark E. Smith wandered onto the Pyramid Stage in a leather jacket and approached the microphone...

Hero was an internet only single in 2014 from a series of pump/ trainer related musical tie ins from Converse called Three Artists One Song. The three artists on Hero were Frank Ocean, producer Diplo and one half of The Clash, Paul and Mick (plus the West Los Angeles Children's Choir). The result of this unlikely origin story is a song that does more in two and a half minutes than some bands manage over the course of an album. I made it the Bagging Area Song Of The Year 2014 (I mean, what accolades come higher??) and I stand by that ten years later. Mick's guitar prominent in the mix and Frank's lyrics and voice at the peak of their powers as he dissects the experience of being a young black man in modern America.

Lonely Town is from the album Paul made with Galen Ayres last year, Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?, a collection of charming acoustic guitar and twin voice songs that began with Paul busking with some locals in Mallorca after Covid some folk, some sea shanties, some Nancy and Lee vibes, some Spanish songs. Imagine how funny it would be to be walking down the street in Palma, on holiday, enjoying some Balearic sun, and there's Paul Simonon playing songs in the street.... 

Thirty Five Minutes Of England Mix

I’m really not a very patriotic person at all, it being as Oscar Wilde said, 'the last refuge of the scoundrel'. The markers of patriotism have always felt like nonsense to me- the flag (either of them, the cross of St. George and the Union flag), the national anthem, the monarchy, the Little England attitudes, the English exceptionalism, all of it does nothing for me. It makes no sense at all that someone who was born in Carlisle, Dover or Chester is in some way better than someone born a few miles away in Wrexham, Calais or Dumfries. Pride in one's country and it's achievements is I suppose OK to an extent but that pride often tips over into nationalism and exceptionalism and has a habit of hiding or ignoring some parts of a nation's history too. 

Supporting the England football team has always been tainted with all of the nonsense too. It's not necessarily the team's fault, they're partly just the vehicle for it. Tabloid controversies about whether the players are singing the national anthem with enough ‘passion’. Songs about winning two world wars, ten German bombers and no surrender to the I.R.A. Grown men dressed as crusader knights. The England band (thankfully now missing). Car flags and cheap red cross on white background bunting sagging in the summer rain. The booing by their own fans of players taking the knee to protest against racism. The deluge of racist messages that Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho received after missing their penalties in the 2021 Euro final. This was almost the last straw as far as I was concerned, ‘fans’ who would have been dancing in the streets if the penalty kicks had been a few inches one way or the other, taking to social media to racially abuse the young men who were taking part in a game was sickening and reflective of the wider culture- of Reform and UKIP, of Tory Little England politics, of the immigration narrative that Farage and Johnson and others fuelled by the tabloid press have spewed into British politics and English culture, of the nationalist nonsense that is only ever a sentence away from racism and the 'I'm not racist but...' brigade. 

The football team have dragged me back in over the last four weeks. I've tried to remain a bit arm's length from it, not get too invested. I boycotted the Qatar World Cup, hardly saw any of it, so it passed me by completely. But there was a sweet pleasure in watching the England penalties against Switzerland last Saturday, as five black and mixed race young men calmly slotted home their penalty kicks, the first and second generation descendants of immigrants putting England into a Euro semi- final. Where, as someone asked on social media after the match, are the racists now? Another of those children of immigrants, Ollie Watkins, scored the winner on Wednesday night, in the last second of the last minute of normal time.  

Tonight, England play Spain in the final of Euro ’24 in Berlin. This is a major achievement, the second consecutive Euros final. Those of us who grew up watching England in the 80s and 90s have seen little but failure from England teams. Sometimes they have been truly awful- the Euros in ’88, ’92 and 2016, the World Cup in 2014. Sometimes they’ve been massively overinflated and departed meekly beaten by clearly better sides- tournaments in 2002, 2006, 2010, 2012. Sometimes they’ve been engulfed by (in)glorious failure with a sense of injustice- Mexico ’86, France ’98. Sometimes they’ve not even qualified for tournaments- 1994, 2008. Very occasionally they’ve pulled it together and almost but not quite got to the final- 1990 and 1996. But on the whole, even if you can ignore the nationalist bluster that surrounds them, they've been not very good. 

Recently they’ve been better and if nothing else Gareth Southgate has changed the story around the England team, blocked out ‘the noise’ as he puts it. I’ve learned to limit my expectations of England. Reaching Euro finals twice in three years is something no other England manager or team has done. Hopefully, maybe, they can go one step further tonight and put to bed the endless burden of 1966 and all that. 

This is a thirty five minute mix of songs about England with a couple of England football songs. I'm sure some of you won't go anywhere near it but I like to think of it as the antithesis of Three Lions.

Thirty Five Minutes Of England For Euro 24

• Billy Bragg: A New England
• The Clash: Something About England
• The Clash: This Is England
• Care: Sad Day For England
• Black Grape: England's Irie
• Shuttleworth ft. Mark E. Smith: England's Heartbeat (Brazilian Ambush)
• The Vermin Poets: England's Poets
• Big Audio Dynamite: Union, Jack
• New Order: World In Motion (Call The Carabinieri Mix)

Billy Bragg's A New England is his 1983 calling card, a song about being twenty two and looking for a new girl, wishing on space hardware, and life in the early 80s. I probably should have included Kirsty McColl's cover which in some ways is the definitive version. In 2002 Billy addressed a load of the flag, nationalism, immigration, tabloid press, racism and England football shirts in his song Half- English- this only occurred to me while writing this part of the post. 

Something About England is from The Clash's 1980 album Sandinista!, a song that opens with the more resonant than ever lines, 'They say the immigrants steal the hub caps of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ if England were for Englishmen again...' It's a truly great song, one where ick and Joe sing in character, Mick a young man leaving a bar and Joe an old man huddled in rags in a shop doorway. They then give us a history of the 20th century, war, depression, class struggle, disaster, all set to Clash punk/ music hall. 'Old England was all alone', they conclude.

A few years later, Mick and Topper both sacked, Joe recorded the final Clash album, Cut The Crap. The only song you really need from it is This Is England, the last great Clash song, Joe giving a state of the nation address, five years into Thatcher's government, economic depression and unemployment, with drum machines, guitars and chanting football crowds.  

Care was Paul Simpson (who will be back at this blog soon) and Ian Broudie. In 1983 Paul formed Care after The Wild Swans split for the first time. Sad Day For England was the B-side to the 12" My Boyish Days, one of only a handful of releases by the pair before they split in 1985. 

Black Grape's England's Irie was an unofficial Euro '96 song, a song that brought together Shaun Ryder, bez and Kermit with Keith Allen and Joe Strummer (and Strummer's only Top Of The Pops appearance). Shaun delivers several memorable lines, not least 'I'm spectating my wife's lactating/ It's a football thing'. I'm not sure it's aged particularly well but I thought I should include it. 

Shuttleworth were a one off band of Mark E. Smith, Ed Blaney and Jenny Shuttleworth who recorded this song for England's adventures at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Apparently the FA approached him to do it (!) but then decided against having an official song so Mark put it out anyway. Mark wrote a few football related songs- Theme For Sparta FC is a classic- and on one occasion read the full time results on the BBC. 

In the 2010 World Cup England were dreadful in the group stage, finishing second behind the USA. They lost the next game in the knock out round to Germany, 4- 1. 

The Vermin Poets were one of Billy Childish's many, many groups. Their album, Poets Of England, came out in 2010, garage rock/ psyche pop. I don't think it's among Billy's best work but anything by Billy is worth paying at least some attention to. 

Union, Jack was on Big Audio Dynamite's 1989 album Megatop Phoenix, their fourth album and the last made by the original line up. 'Make a stand/ Before you fall/ You country needs you/ To play football', Mick sings, slipping in lines the empire, pints of beer, a green and pleasant land, and all for one. A Mick Jones late 80s football song that tries to re- imagine the football song after some terrible 80s ones sung by England squads with perms, mullets and in leisure wear. Mick would find himself trumped a year later though...

World In Motion needs no introduction really- New Order, Keith Allen, John Barnes, the summer of 1990, Italia 90, a dire group stage, wins against Belgium and Cameroon and then ultimately disappointment, penalties and Germany. This version is an Andrew Weatherall and Terry Farley remix from the remix 12" that came out a week after the main one. New Order had wanted to reflect the zeitgeist of 1990 by calling the song E For England, a step too far for the FA. They had to settle for the chorus, 'love's got the world in motion'. The FA wanted it changed to 'we've got the world in motion' but New Order stood their ground and love it was. 

Imaginary Albums

Over at The Vinyl Villain you can find a long running series of Imaginary Compilation Albums where JC and various readers have put together compilations for a range of artists and musicians from The Smiths (ICA 001) to Steve Albini (the most recent, ICA 366). This is not a post or series to tread on those toes- this is imaginary albums that should have happened but didn't or that only exist in the mind, music that should have/ could have been made but which remains unwritten, unrecorded and inexistent. 

I've spoken to Mark from Rude Audio/ The Flightpath Estate previously about the imaginary album we wanted to happen. In 1991 Jah Wobble and The Invaders Of The Heart recorded Rising Over Bedlam, an album taking Wobble's huge love for dub and fusing it with what was then called World Music. Sinead O'Connor and Natacha Atlas both appeared on vocals and on Bomba and Visions Of You Wobble produced some of his best solo songs. In 1992 a 12" of Visions Of You appeared. The A Side was the version from the album. The flipside, The AW Side, had three remixes by Andrew Weatherall, remixes that ran into each other, adding up to nearly thirty minutes of music- Andrew took the song and looped it, twisted it, dubbed it, reshaped it, the bass and FX bubbling on forever, Sinead's voice dropping in and out. The AW remixes,  Pick 'n' Mix 1, Pick 'n Mix 2 and The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny Mix, are a brilliant piece of work in their own right, the remix as an artform. 

Weatherall's remixes of Visions Of You were also the first time that what would become The Sabres Of Paradise would work together. Andrew had met Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns in a club and said they should work together. Jagz and Gary nodded and smiled and said, 'of course, of course', not expecting it to happen. Andrew phoned them shortly after and the three of them went to work on Visions Of You. 

Visions of You (The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny Mix)

In the imaginary album of my mind the remixes led to talks about an album, and in the aftermath of the albums Andrew produced for Primal Scream and One Dove, he, Jagz and Gary went into a studio somewhere in London (Orinoco was popular at the time) with Jah Wobble and Sinead O'Connor and they went onto write, record and produce a full length album- Andrew Weatherall's production, Jah Wobble's bass and Sinead O'Connor's voice all fleshed out over four sides of vinyl, a widescreen, post- acid house, 1992/ 1993 dub and electronics masterpiece to go with Morning Dove White. 

I have a second imaginary Andrew Weatherall album that coulda/ shoulda happened. In December 1993, in the bumper end of year Christmas edition of the NME, Mark E Smith was one person given a series of questions, including being asked to nominate their Jerk Of The Year. MES gave the response 'Andy Weatherall' (he also replied to Woman of the Year with 'lead singer from James' and said what he wanted from 1994 was 'death to all French people' so curmudgeonly Mark was definitely having one of those days). But to nominate Andrew Weatherall, out of everyone who could have annoyed MES, as Jerk Of The Year seemed odd. 

It turns out Andrew had been lined up to produce a Fall album. Like all right minded folk, Andrew was a huge fan of Prestwich's finest post- punk group and in 1993 had accepted the challenge. Mark and the then line up had been playing with dance music rhythms and the album that ended up being '93's The Infotainment Scam included The Fall covering Lost In Music among the customary swaggering Fall brilliance and mayhem. If Andrew had stayed on the job, he would have been the producer of The Infotainment Scam. The thought of a 1993 Andrew Weatherall produced Fall album is mind boggling- by '93 Sabres were off the ground and the techno sound of Andrew's Sabres Of Paradise club and label had shifted him away from the Balearic remixes of the previous years and the genre bending sounds of Screamadelica.  

In reality Andrew arrived at the studio, took a look at the amount of boozing that was going on (as Brix Smith has said in an interview) and walked away. Other Weatherall insiders have said similar. We can only imagine what a Weatherall produced Fall album would have sounded like but the thought of some of the Sabresonic- era sounds and rhythms with Mark E. Smith's voice plus those ramshackle, distorted Craig Scanlon guitars cut up and looped is mouthwatering. 

A Past Gone Mad

The experience may have led Mark to call Andrew Jerk Of The Year. It clearly didn't put Andrew off The Fall- they appeared in mixes and sets thereafter, not least on Sci- Fi- Lo- Fi, a 2007 compilation Andrew put together for Soma which had Big New Prinz on it (From 1988's I Am Kurious Oranj). In 1988 The Fall played the song on Tony Wilson's The Other Side Of Midnight- a proper glam racket. 

There may be more imaginary albums to follow, some may even be non- Andrew Weatherall related. Although there is the story of the Sabres Of Paradise album with guest vocalists that never happened that I'll probably come back to. 

Damo Suzuki R.I.P.

Damo Suzuki, Can's vocalist and front presence, died a few days ago on 9th February. It's fair to say he was a distinctive and unique person, discovered busking in Munich by Can's bassist Holger Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit as they wandered through the streets of the city. He joined them for Soundtracks, released in 1970, and then their run of groundbreaking and massively influential early 70s albums- Tago Mago, Ege Bamyesi and Future Days. His vocals were a singular sound in themselves, freeform and freestyle, switching between English, Japanese and a language all of his own. The singing on those records sometimes seem to bear little relation to the music Can were playing, their own distinctive take on rock fused with jazz/ musique concrete/ avant garde/ whatever, but it's impossible to imagine the songs without him and his stream of consciousness words and non- sequiturs.

After leaving Can he spent a decade out of music before returning in the mid- 80s and in recent decades has toured the world as his own Damo Suzuki Network, playing with bands recruited locally, that he called his sound carriers. When he played Leicester a few years ago, my brother in law Harvey and members of his band had the chance to become sound carriers for one night. At the soundcheck Harvey asked Damo what he wanted them to play. 'Whatever you like', was the reply. So they did just that. 

Scrolling through my social media timeline at the weekend it turns out quite a few people I am friends with or follow have been sound carriers, all of them part of the Damo Suzuki Network, an improvisational, amorphous, ad hoc clan of guitarists, bassist, drummers, synth and keys players bound together by one man, Damo Suzuki. He is of those people of whom it seems very apt to say, we shall not see their like again.

Damo Suzuki R.I.P.

Some music to celebrate the man and his life. First Mother Sky, a Can song from 1970, recorded for the film Deep End and released on Can's album Soundtracks. Mother Sky is a fifteen minute long song, that jumps straight in, one of those grooves that only Liebezeit and Czukay could muster, with a Michael Karoli guitar solo and Damo pondering the relationship between madness and mother sky. 

Mother Sky

In 1985 The Fall, another group with a singular and unique talent at the microphone, paid their own tribute to Damo with the song I Am Damo Suzuki (the entry point for many people into Can in the mid- 80s). The song is from This Nation's Saving Grace, a Fall highlight and one from the Brix period. Mark's opening lines, 'Generous of lyric / Jehovah's Witness / Stands in Cologne Marktplatz / drums come in / When the drums come in fast / Drums to shock, into brass evil', summoning both Damo and Jaki into The Fall's unholy racket. 

I Am Damo Suzuki

In October 2022 I put together a half hour mix of Can songs for my Sunday series, seven slices of pioneering West German krautrock with Damo Suzuki's voice running through it, starting out with some funky Can disco- kraut and ending with a 2007 edit by French producer/ DJ Pilooksi. 

Thirty Minutes Of Can

• ... And More
• Moonshake
• Vitamin C
• Oh Yeah
• Future Days
• Mushroom
• Mother Sky (Pilooski Edit)

Forty Minutes Of The Fall

Putting together a forty minute mix of songs by The Fall is the easiest one I've ever done. 

• Go into the folder marked The Fall and start selecting songs.
• Sequence them into an order that is pleasing.
• Note that this process could be repeated three, four , five more times over and the quality would not dip.

Mark E. Smith famously said that 'if it's me and your nan on bongos, it's The Fall' but there's no doubting the musicians who came and went through the ranks over the years added a significant amount to the songs the group wrote and played. The songs here would sound different if Brix Smith, Steve Hanley, Craig Scanlon, Simon Wolstencroft, Karl Burns, Marc Riley, Martin Bramah, Spencer Birtwistle and all the rest hadn't been members of The Fall. Mark E. Smith may have been an intolerant and difficult person to be in a band with as time went on but he was also a singular and endlessly electrifying presence, as the songs below demonstrate. The lyrics and vocal delivery are of course central and the ones here find room for the Kennedy assassination, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Frank Zappa, Australians, Oprah Winfrey, Nelson, Tolstoy, Jeanette Fletcher, forty year olds in coloured shirts, the Flintstones, Star Wars, Nietzsche and the hip priest. 

Forty Minutes Of The Fall

• Cruiser's Creek
• Australians In Europe
• Free Range
• Oswald Defense Lawyer
• Touch Sensitive
• Two Librans
• Big New Prinz
• Blood Outta Stone
• High Tension Line
• Dead Beat Descendant

Cruiser's Creek is a single released in November 1985, one of the first songs written and recorded for This Nation's Saving Grace, when Brix joined the band and upped the ante a little in terms of sound and melody. John Leckie produced. The intro, MES shouting through a megaphone or over a tannoy, 'What really went on there? We only have this excerpt', is a brilliant way to open any song/ mix/ compilation tape.

Australians In Europe was a B-side to Hit The North, released in October 1987. Hit The North is a great single, 80s indie/ alternative night dancefloor gold.

Free Range came out in 1992, on the album Code: Selfish and a single in the same year. There are dance/ techno influences finding their way in to The Fall's sound, partly brought by new recruit on keys Dave Bush. At some point in the mid- 90s Andrew Weatherall was lined up to produce a Fall album but it became clear to him that his way of working ('You will give complete control of songs and production over to me and I will turn the vision in my head into a wildly expansive album') and Mark's ('I am The Fall and I say what it sounds like') would not be conducive and he backed out. A Weatherall produced Fall album is one of life's great What If's....

Oswald Defense Lawyer is from 1988's The Frenz Experiment, my first Fall album and hence one of my favourites (I think it ranks fairly low among The Fall's cognoscenti). There are Fall fans who say the cover of The Kinks song Victoria (also from this album) and There's A Ghost In My House are the worst songs The Fall did. Similarly there are Clash fans who hate Should I Stay Or Should I Go and Rock The Casbah because they sold in large quantities and were hits. Generally, I distrust these views. A good song is a good song regardless of how many or few people bought it.

Touch Sensitive came out in 1999. I'd drifted from The Fall by this point and this single bought me back, a dancefloor friendly, catchy as you like, thundering rumble of Mancabilly, filled with MES one liners. It opened the album The Marshall Suite, the 20th Fall album and last one in the 20th century. 

Two Librans came out on 2000's The Unutterable, the first Fall album of the 21st century, and proof that the band and Smith were as vital as they'd ever been.

Big New Prinz is a contender for my favourite Fall song, the first song on  October 1988's I Am Kurious Oranj (either my second or third Fall album purchased I think). The album was conceived as the soundtrack to a ballet performed by Michael Clark and Company, a performance based on William of Orange's ascension to the English throne in 1588, the so- called Glorious Revolution. Big New Prinz is based on 1982's Hip Priest. The album also contains their cover of Jerusalem which is priceless.

Blood Outta Stone was on 1990's The Dredger EP, a four track 12" led by the cover of White Lightning. It was later on added to CD re- issues of Shift- Work.

High Tension Line is another favourite of mine, also from 1990, a period when they seemed to release 12" singles almost weekly. It was produced by Grant Showbiz who did a lot of good work with them around this time.

Dead Beat Descendant is prime late 80s Fall, the B-side to Cab It Up. The title apparently comes from an episode of The Flintstones, Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty sent into the 21st century by The Great Gazoo. The four of them are chased out of Fred's company by George Slate the 8000th, Fred's $4 loan from prehistory now ballooned into a $23 million debt, Slate shouting 'come back here you dead beat's descendants!'

And should you require it, here is Wilma using the word bollocks...

Blonde September

By the turn of the millennium The Fall were becoming a less well loved affair. Mark's reign seemed to have flipped into something less lovable, line ups disintegrating, being fired or walking out, tales of drunkenness, violence and arrests (on stage and off stage) becoming wearying and worrying. There were of course still disciples who would buy every album and go to every tour but by the time their 2000 album The Unutterable hit the shelves, some had silently drifted away. But even a below par Fall album contains moments of Smith genius and on The Unutterable one song stands as a 21st century Fall highlight. 

Two Librans

The band are in their finest North Manchester garage band form, guitar lines ringing and drums clattering and when they smash into the chorus the sheer force of the distorted guitars is a shot of pure adrenaline. The bass sounds brilliantly filthy, as if it's been dredged up from the bottom of the ship canal, covered in all manner of shite and detritus, shaken down and forced through an overdriven amplifier. 

There are websites that try to pinpoint and explain all Mark E Smith's lyrical references, a small band of users making contributions and identifying the obscure, the possible and the probable. There are similar websites for Half Man Half Biscuit and I can't be the first to see parallels between these two long running north west cultural commentators. Two Librans is littered with classic Smith lines and references, from the titular zodiac pair to Oprah Winfrey and her study of bees, Nelson in Timor, Tolstoy in Chechnya and the miracles of blonde September. 

Saturday Theme Twenty Five

In 2003 The Fall released an album that was as good as anything they'd done for a decade, titled The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On The Click). Mark E Smith was unhappy with the mix on what was intended to be released as  Country On The Click and pulled it to re- mix it. Some copies leaked out. Mark described the Country On the Click mix as resembling 'Dr Who meets Posh Spice'. One of the Real New Fall LP's stand out songs was this...

Theme From Sparta F.C. 

Ben Pritchard's descending guitar riff intro and clattering drums and then the crunchy guitar riff running through it are exciting enough, handclaps and chants add to the joy. Mark's lyrics are brilliant, his narrator a Greek football fan of a fictional Greek football club (Turkish club Galatasaray feature too- when Manchester United played there in the 90s, trying to navigate their way through the group stages of the then new fangled Champions League, a banner at the home end read 'Welcome To Hell'. The United's player's faces, some well travelled and seasoned footballers among them, suggested that playing there was indeed like an away game in Hades). 'Come and have a bet/ We live on blood', the Greek fan/ Mark chunters, 'We are Sparta F.C.' The English fans of Chelsea get their marching orders too- 'English Chelsea fan/ This is your last game', he threatens and adds, 'Take your fleecy jumper/ You won't need it any more... No more ground boutique at match in Chelsea'. It's funny and unnerving.

Theme From Sparta F.C. was recorded at Lisa Stansfield's studio in Rochdale. A year earlier a version had been recorded for John Peel and a year later a re- recorded version became a single- but as the early 21st century line up of The Fall batter their way through this new garage classic and Mark slurs and sing speaks as only he can, there's no doubt that this is the one, electrifying, compelling and uniquely The Fall. 

Saturday Theme Nineteen

After Mark E. and Brix Smith divorced MES threw himself (or shuffled himself maybe) into a new line up and a new album, what would become The Fall's twelfth studio album, 1990's Extricate. Martin Bramah rejoined on guitar and at the height of Madchester (something Mark was fairly scathing about not least on the song Idiot Joy Showland from 1991's Shift- Work). However in a nod tot he changing musical times The Fall had worked with Coldcut on Telephone Thing, the song which leads Extricate, a chunky drums, dance music influenced song which fitted in very well with the then current sound. Extricate also had possibly the most sincere and personal song The Fall recorded, the beautiful Bill Is Dead. It also had Black Monk Theme Part 1.

Black Monk Theme Part 1

Keyboards and guitars plus a loping drumbeat Black Monk Theme Part 1 is a cover of I Hate You by 60s garage band The Monks. I Hate You is one of the great songs of the 60s, an organ led, minimalist piece of nihilistic thuggery, the flipside of the 60s dream of peace and love pre- dating both The Stooges and The Velvet Underground (I Hate You came out in 1966 on the album Black Monk Time). The Monks were five GIs stationed in Gelnhausen, West Germany. The brutal rhythms, chanted vocals, lyrics about the war in Vietnam, whiny organ, banjo and feedback gave them a pretty unique and far out sound. If that wasn't enough, they dressed as monks in black robes and shaved their heads into tonsures.

I Hate You

Mark E. Smith retitled another of their songs, Oh, How To Do Now for Black Monk Theme 2 which came out as a B-side on the Popcorn Double Feature 12". The highspeed backing track and chipmunk like backing vocals make it all sound a bit ridiculous until Mark wades in to bring the song under control. 

Black Monk Theme Part 2

The original can also be found on Black Monk Time, a blast of proto- punk rock from five men playing U.S. airbases and in West German beat bars at a time when being sent to die in the jungle of South East Asia was a daily possibility. 

Oh, How To Do Now

When their time in the army came to end they stayed on in West Germany honing their abrasive, high energy, non- conformist and distorted sound. Their record company, Polydor, decided against releasing the album in the States, it was they reasoned 'too radical and too non- commercial' and Black Monk Time didn't get a full U.S. release until 1994.  

Extricate got rave reviews in 1990 and remains one of The Fall's finest albums. In typical Fall style Martin Bramah and keyboard player Marcia Schofield were sacked by Mark while the group were touring the album in Australia. 

Pat Fish

Pat Fish, the singer/ songwriter/ musician/ gentleman died suddenly this week aged sixty- four. He was best known as The Jazz Butcher and in the eighties and early nineties recorded seven albums for Creation records, which is where I first heard him. I think my first Jazz Butcher song might have been Lot 49 which was included on the legendary budget Creation compilation Doing It For The Kids. Lot 49 is breakneck, literate indie pop, guitars played at amphetamine pace, with the only pause coming for the line 'you make me want to carry on'.

Lot 49

One of the many gems in his back catalogue is this, Southern Mark Smith, from his 1984 album A Scandal In Bohemia (a few years before he moved to Creation), a perfect slice of mid- 80s indie- pop.

Southern Mark Smith

In 1990, fired up by the times and the technology and recording as J.B.C. Pat recorded an acid house cover version of The Rolling Stones '67 single We Love You. It's one of my favourite singles of that time, a huge sounding record with crunchy drums, acid squiggles firing on all cylinders, synths and samplers and a vocal line pinched from a Tears For Fears song that skewers the period instantly- 'DJs the man you love most'.

 We Love You (The Great Awakening)

There were many tributes to Pat in certain corners of the internet yesterday. He comes across as one of life's good guys, a genuine person, good friend to many and loved by those who knew him as well as a fine writer and musician. 

RIP Pat Fish. 

Frenz

If you head over to The Vinyl Villain today (and every Sunday for the foreseeable future) you'll find JC and Drew going through the singles of The Fall. That may well sound like a Herculean labour but Drew has been known to undertake- voluntarily- the task of listening to every Fall album released in chronological order in one weekend before. 

In 1988 I bought the tenth Fall studio album, The Frenz Experiment. It contained their cover of Victoria, an actual top forty hit for Prestwich's finest. The album has been seen as a bit of a mis- step by many purist fans, a bit Fall on autopilot, Brix pushing the group in a more commercial direction, and there's no denying it has a more accessible sound compared to some of their records but there's plenty to enjoy- The Steak Place, Carry Bag Man, Oswald Defence Lawyer, Get A Hotel and Bremen Nacht all do it for me. Mark E Smith is in minimalist lyrical form in part, a less is more approach, in contrast to the torrent of words he often used to spill into the mic. On the album's opening song, the first I heard when I snapped the cassette deck shut in March 1988 and pressed play, is Frenz- a groove as much as a song built around a two note Steve Hanley bassline and Mark ruminating on the number of friends he had (not enough for one hand) with the unsaid insinuation that he was surrounded by hangers on.

Frenz

Gorillaz In The North

New Order's recent releases (and by recent I mean those since 2015's Music Complete) haven't always convinced me. It sounds like New Order but with all the edges sanded off and smoothed out, the tension and pioneering spirit of their greatest art lost after so long in the saddle. I suppose it's to be expected- no one can keep their edge for that long, unreliable technology and stubborn independence gets traded in for gear that works and financial security. At some point in the process (I'm dating this to the recording of Republic in 1993 and Rob Gretton's absence onwards) there was a power struggle that was won by Bernard. He took control of the creative process and song writing, the recording and production. Peter Hook's departure is well documented and there's no need to dig over that again but his bass was one of, if not the, key sounds of New Order- the bass guitar as lead instrument, the riffs and runs played through that chorus pedal and those amps. At some point Bernard decided he wanted a bass player who followed the guitarist and who just played the root notes. 

Thankfully Hooky pops up here and there from time to time, bassist for hire, his Viking bass sound immediately identifiable on two superb singles by The Liminanas (Garden Of Love and The Gift). Last year he slung the bass around on a single with Damon Albarn's Gorillaz, part of their monthly 2020 digital release campaign. Aries, Hooky's growl at the start and then the bass runs throughout, beamed in seemingly straight from New Order's Cheetham Hill rehearsal studio in 1986, seem to contain the spirit of New Order as much, if not more, than anything on Music Complete. 

Aries

Ten years previously Damon, Jamie Hewlett and the four unreal members of Gorillaz released Plastic Beach, a guest star heavy concept album featuring turns from Lou Reed, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, Gruff Rhys and another hero of the Manchester's punk scene, the late Mark E Smith. 

Glitter Freeze

'Where's north from here?'

Monday's Long Song

On his recent radio appearance with Heidi, posted here if you missed it, Andrew Weatherall dropped the news that back in 1993 when questioned for the NME's end of year poll Mark E Smith's nomination for Wanker Of The Year was Andrew Weatherall. He didn't go on to say what had gone down between them other than that he (Weatherall) had been lined up to produce an album for The Fall and then for reasons unspecified it didn't happen. If you want to dip in, it's at around forty five minutes into the show.

Then Weatherall played this from 2005's Fall Heads Roll, the centrepiece of that album led by a filthy, churning, propulsive bass guitar riff and chugging drums. Mark speaks into the microphone of walking bass, Aristotle Onassis, Jane Seymour, Calvary and cavalry, Prestwich, Deansgate and Moscow Road, eight minutes that once again proves Mark E Smith and whoever was playing with him at that time were indeed The Fall and that they were capable of coming up with moments of genius. 

Blindness

I'm Telling You Now And I'm Telling You This

'Life can be an onward, downward chip'.

Some music from The Fall for Friday. Gut Of The Quantifier is from 1985's magnificent This Nation's Saving Grace, an album Mark E Smith reckoned was one of their best (or at least he said that in an interview once). The Fall line up in 1985 was Mark, Brix and Craig Scanlon on guitar, Steve Hanley on bass, Karl Burns on drums and Simon Rogers on keys. This incarnation of the band were tight as you like. Gut Of The Quantifier shows this group could cook up killer riffs (Hanley's bass riff on the song below is immense and the guitars are wired and exhilarating), could get a proper groove on and wrote music that borrowed and stole but sounded unique. You can trace the outlines of various older songs in Gut Of The Quantifier- Junior Walker, The Doors and Lipps Inc for three, all pulped together with a semblance of James Brown. Over this amped up garage band rock MES delivers one of his finest sermons. Some excerpts follow which I won't attempt to annotate or comment on-

'I'm not saying they're really thick
But all the groups who've hit it big
Make the Kane Gang look like
an Einstein chip'

'Here are your wedding pictures
They are black'

'They take from the medium poor to
give to the needy poor
Via the government poor
Give it to the poor poor
They're knocking on my door'

'Who are the riff-makers.
Who are they really?
How old are the stars really?
Half-wit philanthropist, cosy charity gig'

Gut Of The Quantifier

'I'm telling you now
and I'm telling you this,
Life can be a downward chip'

Head Down

I was thinking while driving home last night about The Fall and how they've been part of my musical life for over thirty years. When I first started properly getting into music- buying the records, going to the gigs, reading the music press, looking for the clothes, all that kind of stuff- The Fall were there (along with The Smiths, New Order, Talking Heads, and various other indie/alternative bands). And while I've never been a buy-all-the-records Fall fan, their music is undoubtedly part of musical DNA. In the 8 years I've been doing this blog I've posted about them 17 times. The songs- Theme From Sparta FC, Bill Is Dead (thrice), Popcorn Double Feature, Funnel Of Love, How I Wrote ''Elastic Man'', Bingo Master's Breakout, Two Librans, White Lighting, There's A Ghost In My House, Rowche Rumble, Big New Prinz, Wrong Place Right Time and Squid Lord (plus I Want You by Mark E Smith and Inspiral Carpets, Mark with Edwyn Collins on Seventies Night and Rhinohead by MES with Von Sudenfed). That looks like a pretty decent compilation album right there.

On top of those I could easily have posted these without much effort- Free Range, Hey! Luciani, Repetition, Industrial Estate, Edinburgh Man, Mr Pharmacist, Hit The North, Eat Y'self Fitter, Touch Sensitive, Victoria, Cruiser's Creek, Totally Wired, Who Makes the Nazis?, Telephone Thing, High Tension Line, Twister, Blood Outta Stone, Kimble, Trust In Me, Spoilt Victorian Child, Bremen Nacht, Dead Beat Descendent, Jerusalem and Get A Hotel. That's just the obvious ones off the top of my head. And this one, off 1988's The Frenz Experiment (a somewhat unloved album I think among the devotees but I treasure it. I think Brix really brought something to the gruppe).

The Steak Place

For a long time I thought there must be a subtext to The Steak Place but couldn't put my finger on it, something in the lyrics I couldn't work out. But on reflection I think it is just a song about a steak house.

'Cheap carpet lines the way 
Aluminium tack door handles 
Candelabra lions head 
Via butchers display too

The steak place

Via a carcass row
Things are brought forward and eaten,
I see the corners filled with hitmen,
Two young lawyers they are whispering, in

The steak place

I want to stay here,
I don't want to go anywhere,
I could remain here'

Mark E Smith

I've just seen a post by Dave Haslam on social media saying that Mark E Smith has died at the age of 60. He doesn't seem to have been in the best of health recently but it is still sad and shocking news. He was a true one-off, a maverick, a wordsmith and a visionary. He will be missed.

Wrong Place Right Time

There are two good reasons to post Wrong Place Right Time by The Fall today. Firstly, I bought I Am Kurious Oranj in King Bee on Saturday. I used to own it on cassette, in fact it was the second Fall album I bought back in 1988 (the first was The Frenz Experiment). The cassette version had more songs on it I think but seeing a pristine vinyl copy for a fiver was too tempting, mainly because Big New Prinz is one of my favourite Fall songs, maybe my number one. The whole of Side A is really good- Prinz, the seven minute Dog Is Life/Jerusalem. I love the dirty bassline of Jerusalem. And the first side closes with Wrong Place Right Time.

This performance of Wrong Place Right Time is from the ballet so you've got The Fall playing live with Brix on tambourine and Michael Clark's dancers flitting about. Somehow, The Fall soundtracking a ballet to commemorate the three hundredth anniversary of William of Orange's ascension to the throne made perfect sense. I like the Brix era Fall- there were tunes to go with the MES vocal delivery.



The second reason is I'm meeting Drew, Fall fan and Across The Kitchen Table blogger, for a few pints tonight while he's in town with work. Right place right time.

I fucked my back up getting out of the car at work on Friday (I know, I know) and then made it worse playing football after school the same day. It's just beginning to feel Ok again after a weekend of hobbling about. A few pints in The Old Cock will probably aid my recovery.

The Chart Show

The Chart Show was more or less the only place to watch videos in the late 80s and early 90s, MTV being the preserve of the well off. Every week it had a specialist chart, indie, dance or metal and was required viewing, often with a hangover and a day with no responsibilities in front of you. So, make yourself a cup of tea, sit back and slip back in time...

...to October 1989's dance chart with Electribe 101 and De La Soul...



... and to the indie chart in April 1991, with New Fast Automatic Daffodils and The Shamen, showing dance's influence on indie...



...and from a few years later, February 1994, this top ten run down has the mighty Inspiral Carpets and Mark E Smith collaboration and Suede...



No metal charts here I'm afraid but there's plenty more where these clips came from if you look at the Youtube sidebar.

Check The Guy's Track Record

Anthony H Wilson presenting The Fall live in '88, on The Other Side Of Midnight. A fairly youthful Mark E and the classic Fall line up then play Big New Prinz, my favourite Fall song. Mancabilly. The wobbly nature of the VHS does not detract from the performance- if anything it adds to it. Brix Smith, in frilly green shirt, has gone on to mix in very different circles, as you'll know if you watch daytime fashion makeover TV.

This version, with Michael Clark's dancers is also making the grade. Mancabillyballet.



We are off to see Primal Scream tonight, a friend's birthday night out. Who, on a three date tour, decided that the best date for Manchester would be a Sunday night? Eh? Support is provided by someone called Andrew Weatherall, playing records apparently. Supposed to be quite good. Chances are primal Scream won't play this piece of C86ery..

Crystal Crescent

Stepping Out In Style

I've read a couple of references to this recently and have taken it as a sign it should be posted, and it follows on from the Friday night Mancabilly post. In 1997 Edwyn Collins recorded a super shimmering seventies disco tribute for his album I'm Not Following You and cajoled Mark E Smith into providing vocals. It is quite superb. Even Ctel might agree, despite liking neither disco nor Mark E Smith.

Seventies Night