Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics

Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series

by Michael Goddard

This volume offers a comprehensive range of approaches to the work of Mark E. Smith and his band The Fall in relation to music, art and politics. Mark E. Smith remains one of the most divisive and idiosyncratic figures in popular music after a recording career with his band - The Fall - that spans thirty years. Although The Fall were originally associated with the contemporaneous punk explosion, from the beginning they pursued a highly original vision of what was possible in the sphere of popular music. While other punk bands burned out after a few years, only to then reform decades later as their own cover bands, The Fall continue to evolve while retaining a remarkable consistency, even with the frequent line-up changes that soon left Mark E. Smith as the only permanent member of the group. The key aspect of the group that this volume explores is the invariably creative, unfailingly critical and often antagonistic relations that characterize both the internal dynamics of the group and the group's position in the pop cultural surroundings. The Fall's ambiguous position in the unfolding histories of British popular music and therefore in the new heritage industries of popular culture in the UK, from post-punk to anti-Thatcher politics, to the 'Factory fiction of Manchester' and on into Mark E. Smith's current role as ageing enfant terrible of rock, illustrates the uneasy relationship between the band, their critical commentators and the historians of popular music. This volume engages directly with this critical ambiguity. With a diverse range of approaches to The Fall, this volume opens up new possibilities for writing about contemporary music beyond traditional approaches grounded in the sociology of music, Cultural Studies and music journalism - an aim which is reflected in the variety of provocative critical approaches and writing styles that make up the volume.

Genres: Music

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Michael Goddard is Reader in Media and PGR Director in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford. He has published widely on Polish and international cinema and visual culture as well as cultural and media theory. He recently published a book, Impossible Cartographies on the cinema of Raúl Ruiz. He has also been doing research on the fringes of popular music focusing on groups such as The Fall, Throbbing Gristle and Laibach and culminating in editing two books on noise, Reverberations and Resonances. He is currently completing a research project, Guerrilla Networks, examining radical media ecologies in film, TV, radio and radical politics in the 1970s from a media archaeological perspective.

Reviews

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Conference proceedings for an academic symposium about the Fall entitled "Messing up the Paintwork". The very idea, walk some more, etc. Most unendurable essay is a "psychogeography of the Fall" by Mark Goodall, which begins with putting words like "explain" and "authentic" in quotes, compares Mark E. Smith to Guy Debord because they liked a pint, and includes a footnote about the author's irrelevant film project. Here's something I bet you didn't know: "The Lettrist theory of hypergraphy, metagraphics or post-writing where text is combined with other media (photos, etc.) for example, can be related to The Fall -- especially their record covers." He also claims that MES was influenced by the that bagheaded charlatan Thomas Pynchon, something I've found very little evidence to support. So terrible I wonder whether the Goodall is trolling.

Next worst is Chris Atton's engagement of the homology of the Fall's fanzine, Biggest Library Yet, which at one point lobs a "permanent revolution" at us with nary a Trotsky reference.

Most of the other essays similarly lard the Fall with theorie and jargon, with few original insights or interpretations. "Don't start improvising for God's sake" is misquoted 189 times throughout the book, and the word "jouissance" caused me to reach for my revolver at least once.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mixed bag collection of essays on the great post-punk band The Fall and its leader, Mark E. Smith. The best parts of the book offer useful perspectives on the band via Deleuze and Guattari and other postmodern thinkers (if you like that sort of thing). The worst parts tend to be incoherent and rambling, skipping from one fashionable theoretical idea to another. In the worst bit, there's a distinct tendency to "Other" Smith - make him into some object of study, see him as an enigma wrapped in a mystery, a remarkable (especially given he's working class!) occurrence who gives middle-class academics a frisson of excitement. Yet it does bother to take the band and its output seriously and add to the telling of The Fall's story, which is one of the most fascinating in contemporary popular culture. Nowhere near as good, of course, as listening to The Fall.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really interesting essays in here that did give me greater insight into the Fall. I was just excited that academics were paying attention, but the downside is that sometimes their writing gets a bit bogged down and dull. However, the book is well worth reading if you're a Fall junkie.