The Fall's Motown Era*

If I don't love the Fall like RL Burnside or Flannery O'Conner then grits ain't....

Still...not even I can find the sexy there. Grooves? Yes! Grooves that cut deeper than the Mariana Trench but...sesssy?

No...I don't think so. Soul? It's hard to have Soul when you're laying waste to every thing in your path.

That's where Jonathan Fire* Eater comes in...to give us a glimpse, five seconds maybe...and they flicker out.



"A girl had a seizure there.../she was putting on her make up in the club car/There's make up everywhere...You little Princess"



Is his brother a cross-dresser or a werewolf?



Killed by hype before anybody knew who they were...the hoopla was ridiculous. Matador scoffed...but, only after they'd failed to singed them. They signed to a major label...released a fantastic but unappreciated album and then disappeared.

In the aftermath we got the Walkmen...eh.




*Stax woulda signed 'em.

Muck Raking.

From local Memphis TV in 1979 we have Straight Talk With Marge Thrasher...and she is having none of this nonsense. In fact, she's in a right tizzy about it. The Regal couple just seems confused.



Tav handles himself like the consummate Southern Gentleman that he is.

More important for our purposes here...are the "invisible performers" he's talking about. He's almost certainly talking about people like Charlie Feathers and his mentor Junior Kimbrough, Othar Turner, Jim Dickinson, Jessie Mae Hemphill and even our very own Alex Chilton there...and I have no doubt that R.L. Burnside was on his mind.*

 ** Snake Drive written by R.L. Burnside

It should be pointed out that Panther Burns is covering R.L. Burnside more than a decade before Bad Luck City and almost 15 years before Fat Possum Records.

Behind the Magnolia Curtain was released in 1981...the same year, you will of course remember, that The Fall were touring the US behind Grotesque and Slates...while also running through songs that would appear on Hex. You will also know that one of the greatest moments in the history of sound occurs on this tour...Winter..."that's an alcohol free lager...well, anyway I digress."



It was recorded at a show in Memphis, Tennessee...where Mark E Smith met our man Tav. Both were on Rough Trade and The Fall Online is convinced that Mark E Smith was introduced to the song Bourgeois Blues through the Panther Burns cover on Behind the Magnolia Curtain. If he owned that record...he heard Snake Drive.

This proves, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Mark E Smith was indeed completely obsessed with Hill Country Blues.

Here's where I drop the mic...wipe my hands of this nonsense and leave the room a champion.

ALL I DO IS WIN WIN WIN NO MATTER WHAT...

*If you're a little confused by the geography...Memphis is in the extreme southwest corner of Tennessee bordered by Arkansas to the west and Mississippi to the south. The reason that everybody in Mississippi ends up in Memphis instead of Jackson is that The Delta and the Hill Country are within Memphis's sphere of influence. When they go to town...they don't go to Jackson they go to Memphis.

 

Special Thanks to Gronmark for the Hasil Adkins reference...which reminded me of Panther Burns...which led to me uncovering this fascinating rocknroll artifact.

 

** If Mississippi was a sound it would be this song...here's Jim Dickinsons boys, and Burnsides and Kimbroughs...burning Bonaroo down with it. Bonus Track.

 

 

Why'on't y'all deal with it!


A List of Incorrect Things

Half sung lyrics that are forced along by an irresistibly rough hewn rhythm...punctuated by demented melodic barbs. Hill Country Blues or....



Little Milton, Albert, B.B....we love you but, the Bossman's here now. Scatter!

Break your ears on this.



"Then One Night/I Was Doin' My Homework/My Woman/She Calls Out Yo' Name."



Those early Fall records are rocknroll in another dimension...a better one. One where Hill Country Blues, not Delta Blues, set the rules. Where they don't have a word for Rockabilly because Rockabilly just is. Where they don't have a word for Hippie because they've never seen one...and, internets forgive me, they've never heard a Boy Band sing Twist and Shout. I love the Fall...but, those records from Grotesque to Perverted By Language are transcendent.

We haven't even bothered with the fact that you have Ezra Pound, Christopher Logue, Mary Flannery and Eliot...ranting over the whole thing.

That's how a Cracker came to be obsessed with the FALL.*

How this clown became such a hater we'll probably never know.

 

Get The F*** Down Y'all!







*For the record...I am a Cracker...not a Redneck. My people were among those Britons who settled South Georgia

Bloody Mary

The cops are already patrolling the neighborhood.  Probably looking for me...

Justin Bieber.

Tonight's the night our neighborhood is over run with little punks...little punk-ass, demanding, will eye-cuss you if you run out of candy, bumble bees, princesses, cowboys and...

We live out of the way...there's no through traffic so we get kids from all around the area. Kids and their parents drunk driving tricked out golf carts, at two miles an hour, with 10 kids hangin' off the back...like the last boat outta Saigon. They are voracious for the candy...little fiends.

I'm ready for 'em this year though...







I mean...I'm ready for 'em this year....

Update:

 



Post-structuralist Halloween?

The kid in the Mississippi State uniform insisted that he was Dak Prescott...the all-world quarterback for MSU...he did not acknowledge the Bat Man mask he was wearing.

 



Looks like the real zombie problem is in England...Lancashire to be more specific. Lock your doors y'all....there's an adamparsons on the loose.

Garden

 

 

Make a hole Mozzer...make a way...the boss man's coming through.

Up Next Yoko Ono

Two Days!...after 8 dreary sepia months, we crack the screen door open on Oz...if Oz had bourbon and smoked pigs....a four month Technicolor Southern block party. Actually, considering the emotional scars, the intractable grudges, the fact that we will get drunk and yell at one another ...maybe it's more appropriate to call it a family reunion.



I love the song on this one...but, the true beauty comes at the 1:09 mark.

 

I can't wait. There's a delicious irony to this time of year. Universities all over the US are gathered into athletic conferences...the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is really the only one that's still regionally and culturally cohesive.* So, when SEC teams play outside of conference we are more Southern than ever...we are one fanbase. It drives a lot of people crazy but, SEC football is a Southern institution and we are loyal people and we are not them. It's also one of the only times a goodun can celebrate being Southern without somebody screaming racism in your face...just before they go into the RocknRoll hall of fame in Cleveland, Ohio...to eat bbq and drink Cokecola in the café while finishing off the last chapter of Absalom Absalom. Uh-Hmmm Anyway.....

On the other hand, during Conference play, we can forget about all that and get down to what we truly and dearly love...beating hell out of the only worthy foe...one another.

That's Thursday...this is still Tuesday and we need to go ahead and get some things out of the way...maybe deal with a few recurring topics before things go pear shaped.

PAVEMENT



Other than the sweet sweet degeneration**....the best thing about this about this clip is the flippant political statement. Earlier during the set he said "We're here for turrets...I mean Tibet." Ha. I know a lot of y'all are true believers in the political power of music...y'all and hippies :)...but, many of us were horrified and scared, as young'uns, watching you punk rockers become hippies with mohawks...pestering us about workers and the sandinistas or whatever. We were dismissed for being willfully uninvolved with reality...as Slackers. Yeah. I guess. 



Speaking of politics spoiling everything....this bastard.

MIRO

Today, during my trials and tribulations on the road (I left home without a wallet...and had to wait for an hour at a gas station to be rescued by Martha with credit cards), I tried to listen to a series of podcast on Miro. These were put on by the Tate...good...they turned out to be on MIro and politics...bad, very bad. The stream of profanity that I unleashed on the windshield was so intense that it blocked sunlight for a nanosecond. Look up there...look at it. Who looks at that and thinks about politics? It turns out, people whose definition of politics includes every possible human activity...that's who. Then they set about explaining his paintings through politics...even when political statements, in the paintings, were vague at best.

It's one thing to say a storefront mannequin unavoidably evokes Plato...it's quite another to say the worker who put the mannequin together had Plato in mind. I'd rather be bit on the forehead by a mosquito than listen to this nonsense.

Rude Talk

Did y'all hear Richard Dawkins the other day? He said it was "immoral" not to abort a fetus with downs syndrome. That's nasty man. Then, under the guise of an apology, he doubled down. At least he didn't actually apologize. I'm sick of people saying something...something they've obviously meant to say...something they'd given some thought to...then coming out the next day and apologizing like they'd merely burped at the table. You said it...stand by it. Shit.

What I want to know is this...what did he mean by immoral? He didn't say it was undesirable. He didn't say it shouldn't be allowed. He said it was immoral...as if he had some absolute authority in mind. I'd like to know exactly why he thinks it's immoral to have a baby with Downs. Why it's wrong...and what authority he's drawing on? I could infer...but, that would just be rude. Where does a machine go for moral authority?

Adamparsons Hates on the Fall

An oldie but a goodie (as a topic on the blogs...the song is timeless)



Me

Who am I kidding...we gon' keep talking about me....but, this gives me an excuse to point you all in the direction of Hugh Marwood's blog. He is an artist...a good one. He has been kind enough to recount some of our recent conversations on his blog. He's also put some of my really fantastic photos on there. So go look at it. He talks about Tom Wolfe too...so it's actually worth a click. :). Hugh's work is really good.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things but, that should hold us over for now.

*If the money grubbers keep expanding the Conference we'll have Yankees in it...at that point we will seriously be looking to immigrate...it'll all be over at that point.

**If only Pavement had given this much "effort" in covering The Classical.

Workin' It

Just some paintings and racket...

I need to finish his left shoe and then I think he's done.

The best that can be said about her right now is that she's survived the scraper. Her arm and hand are a little dead but I think we can fix it up.

Madonna's one truly great moment.

Funny...I got a great shape out of her hand...one that will reappear in various forms in the future. I had to paint over it though at some point. I guess I had to...damn. At any rate it's well documented.

Just because I feel like hearing it.