MARK E SMITH’S FINEST MOMENTS
1980. “Last orders half past
ten!” mark makes important informational announcement in the midst of brisk, early live album Totale’s Turns: It’s Now Or Never. 1980s Prestwich homage. “Fall album covers are like an archive of old Prestwich,” he once said. early singles and albums feature photos of historic buildings since demolished.
1984.
the video for “Cruiser’s Creek”. Performance artist Leigh Bowery gatecrashes a scenario in which the Fall play guests at a depressing office party. re-cuts some of the footage for “mr Pharmacist” promo – as was standard Fall practice (cf promos for “Wings” and “Container drivers”).
1985.
the Fall release “terry Waite sez”, shortly before the famed hostage negotiator is captured. mes later responsible for other vaguely prophetic tracks including “Powder keg”, in advance of the manchester bombing.
1985.
“Paintwork” – mes accidentally records some tv and ramblings on to a tape – in so
doing prompting one of the group’s multilayered masterpieces.
1989.
nick Cave/ shane macGowan/ mark e smith summit in NME. When Cave comments that he is often exhausted after being on stage, mes comments that Cave is a “workshy australian”.
1989.
the sonic youth “Fall” Peel session, october 18. a week before the release of “daydream nation”, the band record “Psycho mafia”, “rowche rumble”, “victoria”, “my new house”. mark was himself no fan. nor did he like Pavement much. “he’s driving round in a BmW,” smith once said of steve malkmus, “while i’m struggling to pay my lads.”
1990.
director Jonathan demme includes a fraction of “hip Priest” in
The Silence Of The Lambs, heard diagetically while Clarice starling hunts Buffalo Bill in his home/ macabre kill suite.
1990.
John Peel’s Desert Island Discs. Occasions opportunity for (then show presenter) Sue Lawley to say: “That was The Fall – ‘Eat Y’Self Fitter’”.
1990.
Appears as the joker in NME playing cards. MES is unimpressed. Without fail MES sends a Christmas card to NME office: “From your pal, Mark E Smith”.
1992.
“Kimble”. The Fall cover Lee Perry on a Peel session. A spectacular, expansive versioning, and stealthily a cousin of “Paintwork” - trailing later single “Why Are People Grudgeful?”. “I wear very comfortable shoes!”
1992.
“Free Range” – The Fall’s only self-written Top 40 single, referencing Friedrich Nietzsche, Stanley Kubrick and the breakdown of the Soviet Union (maybe) over their finest indiedance groove.
1994.
Smith appears with the Inspiral Carpets on Top
Of The Pops, to perform their composition “I Want You” – to which he offers vocal interjections. Smith wryly consults the printed lyrics to the song, replaces them in his pocket, then continues his performance. “You say you lost two stone in weight/ Then why/Are you/SO FAT?”
1999.
“Touch Sensitive”. Among the finest of the band’s later period garage rock songs is blasted into homes on a TV ad for the Vauxhall Corsa.
2004.
When John Peel dies, MES is called to appear as a talking head on current affairs show Newsnight – and uses the opportunity, essentially, to bait his fellow guest Damian O’Neill from The Undertones. In so doing illustrating the very off-piste spontaneity for which Peel so admired him.
2004.
The Real New Fall LP. Part of their unreleased new album leaks online, MES re-records, re-works and re-titles it.
2005.
A treat for the non-soccerinclined, Fall fan – as MES turns the reading of the classified football results into a seven-minute a cappella Fall track.
2005.
appears on Later… With Jools Holland. asks for a clause in contract to state that Holland is not to play “boogie-woogie piano anywhere near the fall”.
2006.
appears in Ideal, a tv comedy with Johnny vegas. Mes cameos as a sweary, murderadvocating Jesus. “i’ll use any words i fucking want, OK pal?” also appears as himself in the film 24 Hour Party People.
2007.
Paul Wilson invents the Mark e smith font – so that all may now endow their prosaic to-do lists with a hint of Mes’s cryptic lexis. enduring literary references. Mes enthusiasms for arthur Machen, Wyndham Lewis, William Blake, Mr James, HP Lovecraft, Philip K dick feeds a post-punk literati. (in 2011, he said his favourite books were North by céline and Kevin Keegan’s autobiography.) His sartorial consistency. always a shirt with a collar. always the second button unfastened – even when in a wheelchair. Mes apparently throws a bottle at Mumford & sons during a rehearsal at a european festival. Obviously violence isn’t an answer, but a person can only take so much provocation.