I’ve always been intrigued by bands that can be so amazingly perfect one minute and so horribly awful the next. Bands that deliver an absolutely flawless collection of songs on one album, and then deliver dreadful drivel the next. Bands that can fill several albums-worth of “greatest hits” with catchy tunes that lodge in your head and prompt you to whistle or sing spontaneously, but also have just as many albums full of noisy, grungy sludge that induces head banging of a different sort.
The Fall has always been one of those bands for me; a disjointed and disconcerting post-punk band from Manchester, England that has run either totally hot or completely cold. Fronted by the elusive, acid-tongued Mark E. Smith, the only constant member of the band since 1976, The Fall is probably best described by British music critic Simon Reynolds who wrote: “a kind of Northern English magic realism that mixed industrial grime with the unearthly and uncanny, voiced through a unique one-note delivery somewhere between amphetamine-spiked rant and alcohol-addled yarn.”
I’ve never been a fan of the band’s “conceptual noise-making” efforts that seem to tread a fine line between uncompromising artistic integrity and commercial suicide. Occasionally however, Smith and the band’s pop genius shines through, and when it does the results are spectacular. I would file this Happy Medium Song of the Day in the “spectacular" category. “C.R.E.E.P.” was released as a single in 1984 — one that I own on green vinyl. Purportedly about a slimy tour manager that used to keep the band’s money in a suitcase handcuffed to the radiator in his room, I think it’s the bizarre, unsettling lyrics coupled with the almost childlike melody that makes this song so memorable for me. In fact, since I first heard the song back in the early ‘80s, I just need to hear the word “creep,” and I start whistling the piano melody with pavlovian predictability. I think it might have the same effect on you.
(Please use the comments box to share your thoughts.)
The Fall has always been one of those bands for me; a disjointed and disconcerting post-punk band from Manchester, England that has run either totally hot or completely cold. Fronted by the elusive, acid-tongued Mark E. Smith, the only constant member of the band since 1976, The Fall is probably best described by British music critic Simon Reynolds who wrote: “a kind of Northern English magic realism that mixed industrial grime with the unearthly and uncanny, voiced through a unique one-note delivery somewhere between amphetamine-spiked rant and alcohol-addled yarn.”
I’ve never been a fan of the band’s “conceptual noise-making” efforts that seem to tread a fine line between uncompromising artistic integrity and commercial suicide. Occasionally however, Smith and the band’s pop genius shines through, and when it does the results are spectacular. I would file this Happy Medium Song of the Day in the “spectacular" category. “C.R.E.E.P.” was released as a single in 1984 — one that I own on green vinyl. Purportedly about a slimy tour manager that used to keep the band’s money in a suitcase handcuffed to the radiator in his room, I think it’s the bizarre, unsettling lyrics coupled with the almost childlike melody that makes this song so memorable for me. In fact, since I first heard the song back in the early ‘80s, I just need to hear the word “creep,” and I start whistling the piano melody with pavlovian predictability. I think it might have the same effect on you.
(Please use the comments box to share your thoughts.)