The Fall In Fives

    L is for... The Langham Hotel London hotel , built in the 1860s in Marylebone. It was taken over by the BBC after WW2, and was used by the broadcaster until 1986. In ' Fortress ', the seemingly random streams of numbers and letters (‘room C-H-1-O-C-H-11’) is actually MES expressing frustration at the arbitrary room numbering system in the BBC building. In April 1981, Smith was invited to appear on Talkabout , a Radio 1 discussion show. In Have A Bleedin Guess , Paul Hanley explains: 'Mark was sufficiently vexed by the experience to pen a satisfyingly splenetic lyric which even takes umbrage at the door numbers - CH10CH11 is presumably a parody of the BBC addressing system. All rooms in Langham Hotel were prefixed LH followed by the floor and room number. Broadcasting House rooms begin BH, in Maida Vale it was MV.' There's further detail at The Annotated Fall , which suggests a link to Room 101 from Orwell's  1984 . MES made some specific references to the ev...

   K is for... Arthur Kadmon Real name Peter Sadler, he played in Manchester bands Ludus and The Distractions (tracks from both featured on episode #14 of The Fi5 Radio Show). As part of Smith's strategy to mixes things up a little during the recording of Room To Live , Kadmon was invited to contribute some guitar to 'Hard Life In Country'. Steve Hanley was perplexed to find a ‘long-fringed sap’ with a guitar in the studio. Mick Middles described Kadmon's part in the proceedings: ‘[He was] told to go and tune up and play a few test samples, which indeed he did: four chords, a tune-up and a finger loosening solo. It took just sixteen seconds. “Thanks Arthur. That’s superb. That’s just what we wanted. you can go home now.” “What? that’s it?” “Yeah, thanks cocker.”’ He was credited as ‘Arthur Cadman’ on the sleeve of Room To Live .  Albert Kahn French banker and philanthropist, responsible for The Archives of the Planet , a collection of 72,000 colour photographs. There...

  J is for... J In the OED, "J" is the second least frequently-used letter ("Q" is the rarest), so it's interesting (well, mildly interesting at least) that according to  Dannyno’s Concordance , it comes equal ninth (tying with "M") in terms of single-use letters in Fall lyrics. ("I" and "A", obviously, are way out in front; third to eighth places are filled by C / O / R / T / G / B.) Of course my stumbling across this fact is mainly due to the fact that I was a bit short of entries for J! Here they are anyway: Alton Towers : 'the spawn of J "Loaded" Brown' James Brown, journalist who founded 'lad mag' Loaded , for which MES undertook a notoriously well-oiled and antagonistic interview . Dr. Bucks' Letter : 'J McCarthy, approximately ten - fifteen days' The Annotated Fall suggests either British journalist John , American actress Jenny or communist hunter Joseph  (in that order of likelihood)...

  I is for... Ice hockey The cover of the 2009 single 'Slippy Floor' featured Blackburn Junior Hawks Under 16s ice hockey team. Other than the fact that ice hockey players by definition play on a 'slippy floor', it's not entirely clear why. Incantation Simon Rogers, who joined The Fall in 1985, had attended the Royal College of Music and worked with Michael Clark at Ballet Rambert. He was, as Dave Simpson described, ‘the least likely musician ever to end up in The Fall’. But there was more to Rogers' history than composing ballets: in 1982 he had a top twenty UK hit with ‘Cacharpaya’ as a member of Incantation .  Inch Two years after their dismissal from the Levitate sessions, Simon Spencer and Kier Stewart released 'Inch', a version of '4 1/2 Inch' It featured some secretly recorded MES dialogue, where Smith describes to Stewart  (in a comical human beatbox fashion) how he wants the bass and drums to sound. The duo sent it to John Peel and seve...

  My mother lives 200 miles away from me, so during the pandemic our contact has been limited to regular Facebook video chats. I don't know which of us came up with it first, but after a couple of weeks we had the bright idea of doing an online crossword together to pass the time. At first, we stuck to the daily puzzle here , which is cryptic but not too challenging; later on, we graduated to The Guardian .  Back in my 20s, I used to tackle the Guardian  puzzle pretty much every day, but the increasing demands of work and raising a family meant I fell out of the habit. However, this online solving with my wife and Mum rekindled my interest, and before long I became increasingly fascinated by the setting process. The end product, inevitably, was a Fall-related cryptic puzzle.  It's the first cryptic of any description that I've ever created, and whilst I'm generally very pleased with it, I'm aware that some of the clues aren't quite as polished and elegant as I...

  H is for... Halifax Town FC The lyric of the 1996 single 'The Chiselers' has an unusual fascination with shortness, the description being applied to ‘The Stones’, ‘Mr. Grumbly’ (with his white Ferrari), and Pink Floyd. There are also several references to money, including the entertainingly nonsensical ‘ninth richest country in the world bar none’. None of this is explained by the message printed on the back cover of the 7” - ‘This song is relevant to the recent experiences of Halifax town football club’. Happy Mondays In 1990 , the Mondays joined the long list of bands to be on the end of a withering MES comment: ‘The Happy Mondays upset me very much… they practise their north Manchester accents’. Shaun Ryder also makes a memorable appearance in the session version of 'Hey! Student': ‘masturbating with your Shaun Ryder face’. Blaine Harrison In April 2012, the NME published a joint interview with MES and Mystery Jets' vocalist Blaine Harrison. The Mystery Jets...