Excavate!: The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall
Edited by Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley FABER
Scholarly scrapbook celebrates Mark E Smith’s rich cultural legacy.
Tarnished by decades of boozy excess, ugly bust-ups and uneven albums, Fall frontman Mark E Smith’s reputation as a visionary post-punk genius was in decline before his untimely death in 2018.
Curated by Tessa Norton and St Etienne co-founder Bob Stanley, this wide-ranging anthology of scholarly essays, sleeve artwork, lyric sheets and other ephemera is a satisfying reminder of Smith’s scabrous wit, unique visual style and rich literary hinterland. Stanley himself ruminates on The Fall as rock’s greatest amateurs, drawing amusing parallels with minor-league football teams.
Standing out among several reprinted archive pieces, the late left-wing cultural critic Mark Fisher locates Smith in the “pulp modernism” canon of occult weirdness alongside HP Lovecraft, TS Eliot and the League of Gentlemen. Siân Pattenden rightly celebrates
Brix Smith’s contribution to
The Fall: “Bigger riffs. Brix riffs. Briffs.” A few more female writers and angles would have been welcome in this generally excellent but testosteroneheavy tome. ■■■■■■■■■■ to speak of from before the mid-90s
Walker doesn’t shy away from the back streets and hidden alleys, the social and economic climate of the times, the drugs, the despair, and this document is all the stronger for it. It does what it claims to: records the period between punk/post-punk and grunge (ending inevitably with
Nirvana’s appearance down under); narrative, interviews, compulsive prose and scattergun memoir jostling together to help present a dissolute cast of chancers,
DIY gurus, community radio stations, venues, and of course musicians: the godlike Saints, the almighty triumvirate of the Birthday Party, Laughing Clowns and the Go-Betweens, The Scientists, Dave Graney’s chiding Moodists…
This new edition is much expanded and comes with 175 new photos. Yes, of course it’s all about his mates, but… damn it, shouldn’t all rock memoirs be like that? In places this is Greil Marcus great. ■■■■■■■■■■