{"id":22252,"date":"2018-01-25T14:30:25","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T19:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=22252"},"modified":"2018-08-09T17:04:50","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T21:04:50","slug":"only-noise-rip-mark-e-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/only-noise-rip-mark-e-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"ONLY NOISE: Mark E. Smith is Dead, Long Live Mark E. Smith!"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years I was certain that the Fall\u2019s 1982 album Hex Enduction Hour <\/em>was in fact called: Hex Education Hour<\/em> \u2013 perhaps referring to some BBC instructional program for budding witches. An ex had ripped the record onto CD for me and delivered it in a sort of comprehensive British post punk bundle, which contained discs by Gang of Four, New Order, and the Smiths. I would like to blame my misreading of Hex Enduction Hour <\/em>on the illegible sharpie scrawled across my copy. Unfortunately, I can\u2019t find the CD anywhere. Maybe it was improperly labeled The<\/em> Hex Education Hour<\/em>, or maybe the correct name was printed in two-inch block letters and I was simply trying to extract a real word from \u201cEnduction.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took almost a decade to realize that I\u2019d been saying the title wrong the whole time, and it was the Fall\u2019s fearless leader Mark E. Smith who corrected me. In a late night YouTube hole I chanced across an interview with Smith and then Fall member Marc Riley circa 1982, right around the release of Hex Enduction Hour<\/em>. The interviewer \u2013 offensively tan next to Smith\u2019s blanched skin \u2013 was curious: \u201cWhy the title and what does it mean?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a word I made up,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt\u2019s like an induction into the Fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one deadpan sentence, Mark E. Smith had righted my error and summed up what Hex Education<\/span> Enduction Hour<\/em> had meant to me. It was without a doubt my induction into the Fall. It was also one of those records that changed my perception of music as I knew it. I had never heard anything like the Fall before, and yet it was immediately clear how many bands had Xeroxed their style. The opening seconds of\u201cThe Classical\u201d felt revolutionary – the hand drums, the cowbell, the fuzzed-out bass, and of course, the legendary Mark E. Smith, screeching and slighting throughout. There\u2019s no shortage of rage in the history of punk music, but when Smith barked, \u201cHey there fuck face! Hey there fuck face!\u201d it cut more deeply \u2013 and with a serrated knife, to boot. I played that song endlessly, especially while walking, just to marvel at the banshee squeal Smith mustered while shouting, \u201cToo much romantic here\/I destroy romantics, actors\/Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!\u201d\u00a0From those jarring first bars of \u201cThe Classical,\u201d I was on board.<\/p>\n

Smith embodied a rare role within the post-punk arsenal. He was an agent of rage but also a poet. He possessed a wonderfully dark sense of humor, but was volatile and hard to get on with. The only constant member of the Fall, Smith went through roughly 66 bandmates in 40 years, as he was prone to firing musicians \u2013 provided they didn\u2019t quit first.<\/p>\n