"Two bands changed my life. Joy Division introduced me to the power of music and the possibilities of sound, and demonstrated that pop songs could be far more – and come from somewhere far deeper and darker – than entertainment. But the Fall changed everything I felt about words and language. From the moment I heard 'Totally Wired' in a friend’s cellar at an impressionable age, Smith’s lyrics had a seismic effect on me. To listen to my first Fall album, Grotesque (After the Gramme) was to enter an unknowable netherworld of “hydrochloric shaved weirds”, “new faces in hell”, hideous replicas of much-loathed dog breeders and a worldview that sneered at Englishmen, councils, rapists, northerners, southerners, students, tourists, dogs and, well, pretty much everyone and everything. This was not the language I knew from pop. It was more like musical science fiction."
Dave Simpson, author of The Fallen: Life In And Out Of Britain's Most Insane Group, writing in the Guardian on the profound impact Mark E Smith and The Fall had on him.
Friday, January 26, 2018
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