Mark E Smith RIP

john eden

male pale and stale
i dont know how he slipped through the cracks but it does go to show how poisonous and wasteful our class system is. how much talent and potential it squanders. how much richer our literature could be if we didnt write off a huge bite of the population.

I get what you are saying here but he didn't "slip through the cracks" - he went from being a docker (apparently?) to making a living off music and being critically acclaimed all over the shop.

Lots of other people who were as talented didn't do that.

I reckon it is far less likely that someone would make that jump today though, despite all the nonsense about the internet democratising things. And the idea of a 40 year career in alternative music now is unthinkable too...
 

luka

Well-known member
he didn't "slip through the cracks" - he went from being a docker (apparently?) to making a living off music and being critically acclaimed all over the shop.

Lots of other people who were as talented didn't do that.

not sure i grasp the distinction you're making? (he was a clerk rather than a docker i think. a docker's clerk)
 

luka

Well-known member
oh... you think im saying he wasnt successful? slipped through the cracks meaning failed to get recognition? i meant the opposite actually. slipped through the blades of the threshing machine. wasnt cut down.
 

luka

Well-known member
and how much richer our cultural life would be as a nation if more (equally talented as you say) had managed to do the same. one of my core beleifs is that talent far outweighs vaccancies for talent. and huge unconscionable amounts of it are squandered.
 

luka

Well-known member

best thing about this doco is immediately as that smug self satisfied bloated pink head and observer magazine columnist stewart lee stops talking they cut in "the observer magazine just about sums him up eg self satisfied, smug"
 

john eden

male pale and stale
and how much richer our cultural life would be as a nation if more (equally talented as you say) had managed to do the same. one of my core beleifs is that talent far outweighs vaccancies for talent. and huge unconscionable amounts of it are squandered.

Exactly this. (and you have understood my misunderstanding too!). Another reason why Grime was so good and important...

There is a good Fall primer by Stewart Lee in The Wire funnily enough - they just put some good bits on their website for free, including two very good "Invisible Jukebox" features and a live review by K-Punk. https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/the-portal/archive-portal-marke-smith-the-fall
 

luka

Well-known member
i saw that. the invisible jukeboxes are hilarious. (i've got the later one but the earlier one is a year before i started reading the wire)
it's very gratifying to know that he loved jungle, loved rap, but didn't rate eminem.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

Is this that Goldie remix?

I like the quote about not finding rough boys fascinating "I put one on crutches last week"
 

luka

Well-known member
yeah. the funny thing about it was that it was official. i had it on the cassette single so i know. not that i rated it.
 

luka

Well-known member
the proper version is amazing though. westwood used to rinse it. the diary is a great album too.
 

martin

----
"The middle class have this great consciousness about race but they treat the working class like crap".

or...

"INSECT POSSE WILL BE CRUSHED" - which I spent a fortnight obsessively scrawling on the top deck of the X31 among all the usual '(pick a Luton council estate) YOUTH POSSE 9T3' tags
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.

During the 1990s he seemed to age a hundred years - in most of the 80s interviews he looks good/possibly younger than his age.

I liked the LCD Soundsystem story:
James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem is a diehard fan of the Fall — and it shows in his music. “The Fall are my Beatles,” Murphy once said effusively. When Smith first heard “Losing My Edge,” he thought it was a Fall ripoff. “I went into my local shop a few weeks ago for groceries,” Smith told the Wire. “There’s an Irish bloke in there, very nice, and he was playing this [“Losing My Edge.”] I said, ‘This sounds exactly like me, are you trying to take the piss?’ At which point the bloke’s getting a bit paranoid … I mean this bloke [James Murphy], I’ve met him, he doesn’t even talk like that, he’s New York, New Jersey, or whatever. Just some New York arsehole.” Smith took a dig at Murphy on the Fall’s 2013 album Re-Mit —reeling off the line “James Murphy is their chief / They show their bollocks when they eat” on the song “Irish.” When asked by Vulture that year if the lyric was taking aim at James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem — or a random Irish James Murphy — Smith chuckled. “Ha ha. What do you think?” Sometime later, Smith relented, saying of Murphy: “I liked him but he should stop putting on that American accent.”
 
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luka

Well-known member
"he reads books, of the list book club"

"The clever ones tend to emigrate
Like your psychotic big brother, who left home
For jobs in Holland, Munich, Rome
He's thick but he struck it rich"
 
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