No Sex or Records for a Year and a Day: Transmission 516, 2020 March 5

 

A great show awaits you, and in even better news, it's my show! The only element missing is Lady Catharsis, who has arrived by and by at a grudging respect for The Fall, tonight's featured artiste.

Here is yet another posthumous Hall of Legends induction, since I lazily made the band charter members and then for whatever reason never asked to talk to the man himself. I need to start talking to people again.

Anyway, I guess this is where the origin story goes but once again there really isn't one. I have a weird memory of being 17, and being driven by my mother to a halloween party (I didn't get a driver's license until age 25), insisting on listening to KDVS in the car, and hearing a very distinctive song that stuck with me for about a decade before I figured out it was "Barmy." In my early days deejaying for that same station I would play "Hey! Luciani" and whatever the U.S. equivalent of Bend Sinister was. Jeremy, Friend of the Program, had a copy of In: Palace of Swords Reversed and we all loved "Marquis Cha-Cha." I had a copy of the Steve Barker compilation Bugs on the Wire and still think the version of "Wings" on that is the best one. In the waning days of the record store at which I worked, I gave myself a very special discount on the 458489 A Sides cd compilation, which tided me over until graduate school, during which time all the Beggars Banquet albums were reissued on cd and my obsession really began. Mark E. Smith used to say that Fall fans were the salt of the earth; as with Coil, there's no great explanation why this cishet black guy with a doctorate is among them; life just bounces!

Recommendations: the two best three-album runs are Perverted By Language > The Wonderful and Frightening World Of... > This Nation's Saving Grace and The Real New Fall L.P. > Fall Heads Roll > Reformation. If for some perverse reason you must own only one thing by this band, make it the Peel Sessions box set. That is the real story, right there.

I feel like I have to address this: by several accounts Mark E. Smith is a first-class asshole and an easily cancellable person. I know this. As a recovering abuser myself I give him a certain forbearance. That is all.

Anyway, "Why Are People Grudgeful" goes crazy on the turntable but winds up sounding alright. Otherwise I think the show is a technical success. It's a perfectly fine but random selection; at least I manage to play things I have not played before, unlike the Coil program from a week ago.

I don’t know why I had to remind people that it was a live show? Was it because I hadn’t spoken for a while? Or because I made some embarrassing error that has been memory-holed by post-production magic? Editing was so long ago.

Since this program was broadcast, 415 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 56 times. I have delivered 54 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. "It's a living," I would say, if it were a livelihood and if I were truly living. Maybe someday.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 March 5, 2100-2300:

• "Bombast" | The Fall | This Nation's Saving Grace | Beggars Banquet
• "Totally Wired" | The Fall | Singles 1978 - 2016 | Cherry Red
• "Brillo De Facto" | The Fall | New Facts Emerge | Cherry Red Records
• "Systematic Abuse" | The Fall | Reformation Post T.L.C. | Narnack Records
• "Stepping Out" | The Fall | Short Circuit - Live At The Electric Circus | Virgin
• "Lucifer over Lancashire" | The Fall | Bend Sinister / The Domesday Pay-Off Triad -Plus! | Beggars Banquet
• "Pay Your Rates (Live in Vienna 16/4/88)" | The Fall | Seminal Live | Beggars Banquet
• "Plug Myself In" | D.O.S.E. Feat. Mark E. Smith | A World Bewitched: Best Of 1990-2000 | Artful
• "Why Are People Grudgeful?" | The Fall | Why Are People Grudgeful? | Matador
• "Blindness" | The Fall | Fall Heads Roll | Narnack Records
• "Sing! Harpy" | The Fall | Extricate | Cog Sinister
• "Kurious Oranj (Live)" | The Fall | Cab It Up | Beggars Banquet
• "Arid Al's Dream" | The Fall | Volume Four | Volume
• "Barmy" | The Fall | This Nation's Saving Grace | Beggars Banquet
• "The Rhinohead" | Von Sudenfed | The Rhinohead / Slow Down Ronnie | Domino
• "Theme from Sparta F.C." | The Fall | The Real New Fall LP (Formerly 'Country On The Click') | Action Records
• "Put Away" | The Fall | Mixed Peel | New Musical Express
• "Chicago Now" | The Fall | Extricate | Cog Sinister
• "Cruiser's Creek (Single Version Remastered)" | The Fall | Singles 1978 - 2016 | Cherry Red
• "2x4" | The Fall | The Complete Peel Sessions 1978 - 2004 | Castle Music
• "Pacifying Joint" | The Fall | Fall Heads Roll | Narnack Records
• "(I'm) In Deep" | Coldcut | What's That Noise? | Tommy Boy / Reprise
• "A Day in the Life" | The Fall | Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father | New Musical Express

Winter lives in my heart

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