I used to review records and gigs for a student publication and have been fortunate to see a lot of live performances (and unfortunate enough to see very many bad ones). The Fall always fascinated me. I think I have seen them a couple of dozen times or more. Two or three times they looked disinterested and were dreadful, but when they were on it they were phenomenal and created an electricity that was intoxicating. Probably five of the best ten sets I have seen were delivered by The Fall.
MES was a maverick, deeply flawed, a curmudgeon. probably not a nice person to spend a lot of time with if you got him on a bad day, etc etc. He made some terrible music but in my opinion some of what he did was genius, and he was definitely one of a kind. In todays world where so much music is uniform, bland, staged and over-produced, we could do with a few more Mark E Smiths and it is a shame he has gone.
