Michael Nath paid tribute to Mark E Smith at an event at the Poetry Café. Covent Garden, London, ‘A Celebration of Mark E Smith and The Fall’ held on Monday 12th February, a few short weeks after Mark’s death. Here’s what Michael read on the night.
And a tow, row, row, row, row.
In memory of the Captain …
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Who gave life to words like ‘Kentledge!’
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Who used scat-sounds against Slaughter and the Dogs, for they ran out of lyrics in ‘Cranked up Really High’. The Captain never ran out … ‘Ba ba me-oo me-oo’.
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Who blew his nose on stage. Oh to have kept the tissue, and sold morsels to sinners! The Nightingales supported, in Country and Western shirts. Sheffield, 29th October 1981.
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30th April 1982. Retford. The Fall played the legendary ‘Backdrop’. By 2008, I’d confirmed this. The support group were from Iceland: Don’t forget the Cod War! (I’d feared my old man might be conscripted.) In the audience, punks and miners scrapped. It was hard, but it was merry.
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In ‘Garden’, what got me was the gather-and-surge. Like, There’s always more, where that came from! You’ll not be left alone … 26 years on, it was the power-surge in ‘Slippy Floor’: that got me like Yeats, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, Part VI – where he raises demons.
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7th Oct 1985, or was it 1597?, I saw the Cap and Brix on Princes Street, just above Waverley Station. He wore zipped boots, and looked like Allan (“Sniffer”) Clarke – Leeds Utd No.8. Mrs McRae confused ‘My New House’ with Shakin Stevens’ chart topper. At night we drank whisky and cloves.
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Aug ’88. The Captain left Tollcross Supa-Store with a bag of mini-Marathons and a pack of Superkings. His overcoat was good and he bore a doctor’s bag. I didn’t say hello on this occasion either.
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There are far lovelier songs than ‘Edinburgh Man’, the gist of which was only that whisky was served in ¼ gill measures in some pubs in Fountainbridge. So a large Scotch gave you 1/8 of a pint – in England only 1/12. 1/8 is a drink, 1/12 a kind of dampness in the glass. I will not list far lovelier songs.
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The gigs at The Forum weren’t up to much. Nonetheless, I saw myself in them.
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Nov ’98 at The Astoria. He tidied up after the group. They were young, and left their things all over the shop. My pal Nick Groom took this image away.
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September 2014. I came upon Brix at a Route/Rough Trade event: Last time I saw you, you were rotating on a burger! She ‘laughed’.
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Let us pause on the Captain’s total humour: the word for such humour is hilaritas. So I learned from the letters of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged at Flossenbürg, April 9th 1945.
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I’ve mentioned years and intervals and dates. So a genuine cult comprehends your time. You can measure yourself, without leftovers. A genuine cult also takes your time: think of Dragnet. Of course there was life before The Fall, but it was unredeemed – like the time of the virtuous Greeks.
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‘Kentledge’ is a word for ballast, something Captains know to be vital.
‘And green grow the hedgerows along the walls … ’
