Tag Archive: Mark E Smith


RENEGADE : THE LIVES AND TALES OF MARK E.SMITH by Mark E. Smith with Austin Colling (Penguin Books, 2008)
markesmith_renegade

I can visualise ghost writer Austin Collings lining up the pints of beer and whisky chasers in a Manchester pub then setting up a recording device in front of Mark E.Smith.

I doubt that any overly active conversational skills would have been required since one gets the distinct impression that his subject operates best in monologue/ranting mode.

In more or less chronological order, Smith catalogues his life and times as chief hirer and firer of The Fall “for people who are sick of being dicked around”. Continue reading

THE MIDDLE CLASS ARE REVOLTING

MILLENNIUM PEOPLE by J.G. Ballard (Flamingo, 2003)

“Learn the rules and you can get away with anything”

I visualize J.G. Ballard writing his dystopian fiction from his safe European home in the Surrey stockbroker belt of Shepperton. Although his views bordered on the misanthropic, his life was outwardly respectable and I reckon he was a big softy at heart.

However, the late author hated anything that struck him as pretentious and/or fake; which accounts for his venom towards cheap entertainment and much of what passes for modern culture. Continue reading

THE BLUES HAD A BABY …..

baby rock

A new generation of rock?

Two bands who supported Sigur Rós at A Perfect Day Festival in Verona were prime examples of Rock and Roll as :

(a) an outmoded genre that survives only as a parody of itself.

(b) a vibrant musical force which still has the power to excite and inspire.

In the (a) corner were dEUS, a Belgian Indie band who were almost big in the 1990s and who are still plugging away trying to sound edgy by mixing in some rap and disco into the standard R’n’R formula.

On stage there is plenty of what The Fall’s Mark E Smith witheringly labelled as “false histrionics” and cries of “let’s do this”. Continue reading