| mark e smith | phespirit.info | phespirit.mail |
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Mark E SmithEnglish Singer - [b.1958]Baby-BiographyMark Edward Smith is born in Salford in 1958. At 18 he is working in the Manchester docks. Influences by the music of the Velvet Underground and Can, he auditions for local heavy metal bands but is rejected for being tone-deaf or hated personally. In 1977, he forms his own group - The Fall - and issues an E.P., 'Bingo Master's Breakout' on the Step Forward punk label. Smith typed out all the lyrics on the typewriter at the docks during his lunch hour. Pursuing Smith's aim "to have raw music with really weird vocals over it", The Fall release their first album, 'Live At The Witch Trials'. Already Smith is earning a reputation for hiring and firing band members, and for resiliance in front of hostile audiences. The second Fall album, 'Dragnet', is released in 1979 despite studio protests that it is so terrible it would reflect badly on them. The album is now regarded as a classic. The Fall move from Step Forward to Rough Trade, issuing several well-received singles, and then on to the tiny Kamera label. In 1982, The Fall release their sixth and seventh albums: the acclaimed 'Hex Enduction Hour' and less well-received 'Room To Live'. In 1983, Smith returns from The Fall's American tour a married man. His wife, Brix Elise Smith, joins The Fall as a second guitarist, playing on their next album, 'Perverted By Language', back on the Rough Trade label. In 1984, The Fall sign with the Beggars Banquet label and release six albums of new material in as many years, including some of their most commercial and accessible work. In 1986, Smith writes and directs the play 'Hey Luciani' (The Times, Life and Codex of Albino Luciani), a music comedy centring around the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I. In 1988, Smith moves on to ballet, staging the 'I Am Curious, Orange' production with contempory dance group, Michael Clark And Company. Band line-up changes continue throughout, including the ultimate displacement when Smith's marriage fails. The Fall move to Phonogram - their first major label - and release the album 'Extricate' to universal acclaim. Is the 1990s, The Fall continue touring and releasing albums. In 1998, Smith sacks his entire band and declares that no friendships have survived the split. The Fall begin again ..... Phespirit's HeroBehind the cantankerous and confrontational personality cult created by the music press, Mark E Smith is as intelligent, creative, diverse, literate and shrewd a lyricist as any to have emerged in post-punk England; he casts his words upon a raw and rumbling sound, a backdrop shifting and changing. Mark E Smith can't dance and Mark E Smith can't sing, but the Fall are the cool group and Mark E Smith is the Hip Priest. Others imitate, but he teaches ..... after twenty years The Fall still cannot be pigeonholed. Mark E Smith is Phespirit's hero for 'Kurious Oranj'; for 'Flat Of Angles'; for 'Cary Grant's Wedding'; for 'Chicago, Now!'; for 'Disney's Dream Debased'; for 'Garden'; for 'Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul'; for 'Paintwork'; for 'Look, Know'; for 'Living Too Late'; and for 'Two Steps Back'. Mark E Smith is Phespirit's hero for 'Free Range'; for 'The Man Whose Head Expanded'; for 'Rose'; for 'An Older Lover Etc'; for 'Mollusc In Tyrol'; for 'New Face In Hell'; for 'Oswald Defence Lawyer'; for 'Hip Priest'; for 'Hit The North'; for 'Marquis Cha Cha'; and for 'The Knight, The Devil And Death'. Mark E Smith is Phespirit's hero for .....
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