another conversation piece...'mark smith - not appreciated?'

‘He is not appreciated’.  So goes the self-referential and defiant refrain from (one of) The Fall’s most idiosyncratic and recognisable anthems, ‘Hip Priest’, penned by the inimitable, and often cantankerous, Mark E Smith.

Smith divides musos like no other (non)singer/song writer.  For some, including  the late John Peel, he is the finest and most enigmatic lyricist in pop; for others, including Peel’s Radio One producer, John Walters (who memorably dubbed the Fall as ‘the most tuneless rubbish’ he had ever heard), Smith is nothing more than a shuffling drunk, shouting incomprehensible nonsense over frustratingly dissonant and obscene musical accompaniment.

In 1998 Smith was confirmed as a ‘god like genius’ by the NME at their annual award ceremony.  Smith mounted the stage, brushed aside presenter Eddie Izzard with the line: ‘thanks Eddy, it’s not like you to be funny’, before dedicating his gong to anyone actually capable of reading NME from cover to cover.

The word ‘genius’, of course,  is used all too frequently today, especially in relation to individual performers and/or bands that have become enshrined as bastions of British pop - it’s almost as if by virtue of hanging around long enough, in what admittedly can be a ruthless industry, you are entitled to be thought of in this way.  Then again, perhaps Smith deserves the tag.

There is nobody who sings, or vocalises, like Smith; no group that sounds like the Fall; no one performer, or group that has ever replicated the sound of Smith or the Fall.  And while, as Smith has testified in infrequent, sometimes alarming and eventful (at least for the journalist posing the questions) interviews over the years, he has mined many of the same influences as his contemporaries from Joy Division to Morrissey, there remains something unfathomably wonderful and entirely unique in the way he expresses thoughts and ideas through language, as well as his unrivaled talent for a catch phrase.

Meanwhile, Smith famously runs the Fall (his ‘group’) like a prison chain gang, with tight, sometimes draconian discipline.  The Fall, due to release their 30^th studio album in 34 years, are all about work ethic – but a work ethic instilled in them and inspired by the restless creative belligerence of their founder.

Although the current line-up has survived since 2008, membership of the Fall, or indeed membership of the ex-Fall club is approaching sixty.  It has been said you could step out of your office on your lunch hour and likely as not run into somebody who has been, at one stage or other, an active member of the Fall.

‘If it’s me and your granny on bongos then it’s the Fall’, Smith once remarked, further underlining his unerring belief in himself, as well as his intellectual stamina.  Under Smith’s direction, tutelage, call it what you will, the Fall’s songbook incorporates everything from garage punk, to psychedelic jungle, as well as rousing chart hits including ‘Victoria’ and ‘Touch Sensitive’, and they once staged and provided the score for a ballet.

Smith keeps on going: still beady eyed and critical of everything, he is doing far, far more than simply surviving.  After all, he likes to think he hasn’t even started yet.