Shark E. Smith

luka

Well-known member
The article is unreadable. Self indulgent and dreary. Who knows what he meant by that lyric but I put that song on a few days ago and winced when that lyric came on. It doesn't sound good but you don't need 50,000 words to say that.
 

Leo

Well-known member
The article is unreadable. Self indulgent and dreary. Who knows what he meant by that lyric but I put that song on a few days ago and winced when that lyric came on. It doesn't sound good but you don't need 50,000 words to say that.

OMG, incredibly self indulgent, spends 1,000 words on the set up alone before finally gracing readers with the gist of the article! I always imagined mark was singing in character.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Are we really surprised Mark E Smith used a racial slur in a song once 30 years ago? No.
Do we want to a 5000 word long article picking over that scab? Also no.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Oh ffs.

No white musician then or now should have recorded a song with that word in its lyrics without a spectacularly convincing justification. Smith probably reckoned his own reasons, whatever they were, were good enough. They probably weren't. "Dickheads" would probably have served just as well. It's a great song, but that line's a blemish; cf Fairytale of New York. Anyway, he's dead.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
We should find proof of the writer's grandparents being racist 30 years ago and then put them in the stocks in the town square
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
OMG, incredibly self indulgent, spends 1,000 words on the set up alone before finally gracing readers with the gist of the article! I always imagined mark was singing in character.

yep! I'm not familiar with the Fall's back catalogue (don't really listen to rock that often) but if the whole article is about a lyric, why not just start with the fucking lyric and not this long ramble that only makes sense to you and your small circle of Twitter buddies?
 

luka

Well-known member
They're great in theory although in practice a lot of it is a horrible racket. Woops says they don't get good till the 90s when they start using electronics. A minority opinion admittedly but still

 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Yes, they're great, you kinda have to buy into it though like most good music. Kinda where punk meets krautrock I think.


Hex Induction Hour is a fucking brilliant LP.
 

luka

Well-known member
Is this song racist? I really wouldn't like to say so I asked my Asian mate from the office who likes indie.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
can see why this current generation of hipsterism is put off by Mark. He's too coarse, too maladjusted. They see his edges as defects and his honesty about them reflects a humanity they find icky.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
I made a point when writing my elegy poems about M.F. of periodically confusing him with M.E.S., which I believe he would have liked.

Those who were there will also recall that Mark Stewart, of The Pop Group, spoke at M.F.'s memorial service at Goldsmiths, and concluded his oration by bellowing "READ MARK STEWART!" and leaving the podium, only to dash back up and yell "...I MEAN, READ MARK FISHER!". Which he would also have liked.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Whether it's racist or not doesn't really feel like something I can get invested in because individuals are always gonna be like that but Marc E Smith is one of those melancholic workerist (worker fetishising) types 'honest guv check out my northern accent!' Which makes him look like a Buffoon and much as he would hate it, place him in the same company of Will Self. A classic case of a Stalino-bohemian having read too much but not absorbed any of it. Like corpsey's existential lamentations about not being patient enough to digest music except in literary form. So it's certainly not a 2010s thing, this hankering for commodity/cultural capital knowledge.

Workerism is a form of capitalist ideology that is endemic amongst self-defined revolutionaries.
It is an ideology that encourages the acceptance of, and propaganda for wage-labour, amongst individuals who have realised the exploitation and alienation that wage-labour entails. It is thus one of the highest forms of alienation.
Worship of the worker is found in various state ideologies, such as Stalinism and Nazism. Workers are honoured for their role as builders of the nation, the economy, capital.
Workerism is not an ideology that praises all wage labour, but one that promotes only "productive" labour. It in fact vilifies office workers and service industry workers and praises only those who are most closely involved in the reproduction of capital.
Workerism worships manual labour, the "work with hammers". Its vision of the proletarian is of the muscle-bound male. In rejecting office and shop work, it rejects a large part of female wage-workers, revealing itself as sexist.
Workerism has been present in the workers' movement from the beginning. The earliest workers societies were Christian inspired, and praised diligence thrift and hard work. These moralistic ideas linger on in workerism, which is a remaining bastion of Christian ideology within the working class.
The strongest proponents of workerism are not manual workers who have had no choice in their labour, but ex-marginals who make a moral decision to become a "revolutionary" manual worker. Their advocacy of workerism is a compensation for their lack of sureness about their own class status, and a moral condemnation of proletarians who are willing to make different choices.

http://www.prole.info/texts/critiqueofworkerism.html
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
They're great in theory although in practice a lot of it is a horrible racket. Woops says they don't get good till the 90s when they start using electronics. A minority opinion admittedly but still

I actually think they are better in practice than theory which in any case is just typical post-punk dilettantism (not to go all tony blackburn like god forbid) but i get your point they could go much, much heavier. in fact the racket is always that which is still too trapped in not going far enough.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I love art but artists themselves disappoint me with their non-totalised art it's like premature ejaculation. this is why i prefer the utilitarian or the improvisatory in most cases. good artists are a rare breed to find today, not to get all nostalgic for the feudal aristocracy but any vulgar business tycoon can be an artist after buying the right amount of books/paintings/records. this is why i am anti-art.
 
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