What the pop papers say: Ails to the chief

Noel Gallagher's on the cover of the NME this week, which can mean only one thing. (And, yes, it does - Pete Doherty's on the cover next week.)

Noel on the cover; and inside, there's an amusing interview with a grouchy, funny giant of the Manchester music scene.

No, not Noel; Mark E Smith:

I mean, the Arctic Monkeys, come on. They've been to music college [this is not true]. They've got degrees in tock music [this isn't true, either]. I think some of them have got passes in The Fall.
[...]
I get sent magazines with all this advice for new bands... and it's 'Number one, get a decent bank account.' It's like applying to university. There was always privilege in music, but nowadays you don't have a chance in hell."

That's the way you do it. But then Smith doesn't have the problem Gallagher does - he's not trying to square a working class hero image with struggling with paying to send his kids to school; his anecdotes are about Pixies fans trying to take selfies rather than (as Noel does) stories about being on the red carpet at the BAFTAs.

The NME is still calling Noel "the chief"; I'm hoping this is ironic, given his timorous, weak new album - the way men in their 80s who were something in the Raj were still called The Major long after the sun had set on the Empire they once bestrode and the career they once had.

There's six pages of Noel, and Tom Howard gives him an easy ride. Especially when there's a strand of his thinking that's a little disturbing.

First, Gallagher trots through the Ali G defence for sending his kid to private school. We've heard this before, of course:

Good for you that you don't have to go to fucking school and come home talking like fucking Ali G, because, believe me, I would beat that out of you

Let's hope that Noel's using "beat that out of you" as a figure of speech. Let's hope that.

But - as the last time he used 'I don't want my kids to sound like Ali G' justification for swerving the local comprehensive - what does "sounding like Ali G" mean?

It could be that he simply means that he doesn't want his children to sound like working class kids do these days - a strange position for a man who has made his money out of tales of working class upbringing. Suddenly, Gallagher is concerned about "speaking proper", is he?

Or it could be that "talking like Ali G" means "talking like Ali G" - co-opting the speech patterns and slang of young black men?

Later on, Gallagher is talking about his support for the Teenage Cancer Trust - one of the things that reflects really well on him. It's a great cause, and Noel has really gone above and beyond in the work he does for them.

There's a but.

I like it because it's a charity for British kids, and it's real, you know

Not a charity for kids who are unwell; not that they're facing a massive challenge at a time of their lives when they should just be enjoying themselves.

It's a charity for British kids.

As opposed to what, exactly, Noel?

It's not as if Noel hasn't helped charities aiding people cursed with the misfortune to not have been born British on top of their other problems - Oasis were one of the main attractions for War Child, for a start. It makes the phrase even more puzzling.

Like the Ali G remark, it feels less like a racist stance and more a throwback to Victorian charity-begins-at-home Little Englanderism; a faint whiff of the UKIPs that Noel himself would probably be surprised to notice.

Maybe The Chief has more in common with The Major than we'd first expect.

Elsewhere, Laura Snapes watches Sleater-Kinney, deftly linking Carrie's claim that their music is an "obliteration of the sacred" with their presence as "some sort of religious totem".

Emily McKay talks to Kim Deal, making a game attempt to get to the bottom of the Pixies split but deciding it's better to hear about the Breeders than it is to pursue the matter.

You do wonder, though: The Fall, Noel Gallagher; Sleater-Kinney; a Radiohead The Bends feature; Mark E Smith; The Breeders... why on earth are young people not buying the NME? Is it because they're not really much in the NME these days?

One last thing: Between page 52 and page 59, Pete Doherty has morphed in Peter Doherty. Might want to decide on which it is before you lay out next week's cover, guys.

Bookmarks: Elastica & Mark E Smith

The AV Club remembers that time Elastica and Mark E Smith worked together:

It’s a corker of a tune, with Frischmann spitting some abstract fatalism about there being no way out and “last chances,” which resonate even more knowing that Elastica would break up shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, Smith barks about breaking through “glass barriers/class barriers,” which could possibly be read as commentary on Elastica being held down by a boys’ club music scene that saw it as irredeemable. Or, maybe it just sounded good.

Bookmarks: Internet stuff - Tim Gudgin

As part of his last day reading out the football scores, Tim Gudgin remembers the time he shared the job with Mark E Smith:

Several fans have appeared alongside him, reading the results on the BBC's interactive service, most memorably and singularly, the Fall's Mark E Smith. "He knew the teams because he was keen on soccer," Gudgin says. "It was an idiosyncratic performance, partly because he'd had more than a little alcohol beforehand. I think we just about got away with it."

Mark E Smith: Broken hip priest

Somehow I'd managed to miss the news that Mark E Smith had broken his hip, until he returned to stage using a wheelchair. He's going to be sitting down during the Koko gig as well.

To be frank, it might be a bit safer for him to do the gigs from a sitting position.

Serialis-aaah-tion: Mark E Smith's book - 3

More extracts from the Guardian's extracts from Mark E Smith's book:

It turns out I'm related to her. I should have realised. She had the same nose as me, the Smith nose.

Serialis-aaah-tion: Mark E Smith's book - 2

Continuing our serialised extract of The Guardian's serialised extracts from Mark E Smith's autobiography:

He'd stand outside Strangeways and recruit ex-prisoners, get them making lathes and pipes.

Serialis-aaah-tion: Mark E Smith's book

The Guardian is serialising Mark E Smith's Renegade this week. We're going to serialise the serialisation:

"We remember Japanese prison camp. You don't fool us, you pop star."

Today, we'd probably get investigated by the social services.

Squirrels-ah! When Mark E Smith attacks

What is it with Mancunian popstars and animal cruelty? After Shaun Ryder's war on pigeons, we've now got Mark E Smith claiming to kill squirrels:

The gruff singer claimed he would "happily set about an endangered red squirrel with a set of professional hedge-clippers".

"Squirrels mean nothing to me. I killed a couple last weekend actually. They were eating my garden fence.

"My sisters are animal lovers and they had been leaving food out for these squirrels. They've got rats in the bloody house now. Serves 'em right."

To make matters worse, the maverick frontman went on to add that he 'wouldn't have a problem' with running over seagulls for fun.

Although unsavory, we somehow can't picture Mark E Smith using hedge clippers at all, much less being nifty enough on his pins to start chopping animals up.

It's the Daily Mail who bring this story to our attention - of course, they're struggling to explain Mark E Smith to a readership who, frankly, probably don't recognise their own carers, never mind pop stars. First of all, as is the Mail's way, they try to subtly link him to the BBC:

The short-tempered punk rocker - said to have been one of Radio 1 DJ John Peel's favourite acts - bragged to a music magazine he had "killed a couple last weekend".

We love that "said to be", as if there is any room for any doubt whatsoever that Peel loved the Fall.

They then try to place him in some sort of musical context. Maybe he writes songs about being cruel to animals, perhaps?

The group - whose songs include Disney's Dream Debased and DIY Meat - have released 95 albums since forming in 1976

Well, they're sort of cruel about animals, a bit.

Then they get the RSPCA in to comment:

Miss Kennett said: "Running over gulls is also an offence and the RSPCA has prosecuted people for illegal killing of both squirrels and gulls - and would not hesitate to do so again.

"To suggest in a magazine read by youngsters that it is a good idea to harm wildlife is both extremely stupid and highly irresponsible."

This was Uncut, so the RSPCA needn't worry about impressionable young people being corrupted.

It's not funny, and it's disheartening, but it's equally tiring to see the Mail getting exercised about a Fall interview in Uncut. It's hardly porn-heroin in our classrooms, is it?

Another reshuffle

Brown's had a go; Cameron's had a go; so that leaves just Mark E Smith to have a reshuffle. Apparently the era of an all-American backing for MES is over; the new Fall has a more anglo-Saxon background.

Von Sudenfed on YonTube

Just popping up on YouTube is a video for Fledermaus Can't Get It by Von Sudenfed. If you're still sat here going "and I should click why?", Von Sudenfed are a Mouse On Mars/Mark E Smith collaborativey side project type thing. This is the first track from the resulting album Tromatic Reflexxions. You can't really knock that, can you?

[Edit: we transposed our mice. Sorry.]

[EDIT: Let's just embed this, shall we?]

Notebooks out, plagiarists

There's something quite inspired about the idea of inviting writers to contribute short stories based on Fall songtitles. After all, even after listening to some of Mark E Smith's songs, you're still trying to work out what the hell he's on about so there's lots of room for further inspiration.

Perverted By Language, edited by Peter Wild, stretches from Niall Griffiths' Bingo-Masters Break Out to Rebbecca Ray's I Can Hear The Grass Grow. Rumours that Gillian Keith is organising a non-fiction sequel, Eat Y'rself Fitter, are lies.

You, Ah-Tube and the music: Mark E Smith

Today is the 50th birthday of Mark E Smith, one of the most doggedly cussed and brilliantly inventive musicians the UK has ever produced. Let's celebrate by looking at him as he does things:

A snatch of Cab It Up from a performance of I Am Kurious, Oranj, The Fall's collaboration with Michael Clark [NSFW if you work in a very strict place; video contains Brix E Smith on a giant hamburger]
Mark reads the football results on the now-defunct Grandstand
The now-legendary John Peel eulogy on Newsnight
Caitlin Moran interviews MES on Naked City from May 1994
Smith and Wilson on Granada's So It Goes in 1978
The Fall do I Am Frank on The Late Show - 1991-ish?
The Fall, apparently on The Tube, with John Peel presenting

I, an act-AAAAAH!

Mark E Smith is apparently going to turn up playing a comic foil to Johnny Vegas - not, we understand, taking the ITV Digital Monkey role in a PG Tips ad, but in a forthcoming episode of I Deal.

Lets hope being himself doesn't put too much of a strain on him - he's going to struggle to remember his motivation, isn't he?