Gloomy Tunes: Mark E. Smith, RIP

I never met Mark E. Smith, but he was a regular presence in my life. Good, bad (but never indifferent) you could count on a new Fall record every year. . One of the many bands (the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, among them) that were formed in the wake of the Sex Pistols show in Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall on June 4, 1976, a scene wonderfully recreated in Michael Winterbottom’s  24 Hour Party People, the Fall were feral, scabrous, pummeling, angry, bitter, loutish, and funny.

A demanding, famously intractable bandleader, the line-up of the Fall was in near-constant flux  (the band broke up on stage in New York in 1998, and Smith spent the night in jail for assault), Smith’s voice—a bitter-laced complaint, shouted in a Manchester accent so thick it often rendered his lyrics unintelligible, its most identifiable quality the way he stretched out the ends of his words; in his mouth, “Today” turned into “Today-ah.”

When word hit he died yesterday, there was little to do but go back to that dense catalog and listen. Here’s a half-hour of some of our favorites…

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.