An A-Z of The Fall - T
T is for...
Tackhead
Industrial hip hop/electronica outfit featuring musicians Doug Wimbish, Keith Leblanc and Skip McDonald (who played on ground-breaking early 80s rap records 'The Message' and 'White Lines') and produced by Adrian Sherwood (see S part 1).
'Repetition', one of MES's earliest collaborations, was a b-side to the 1990 'Dangerous Sex' single.
Fred Talbot
Before rising to fame as the This Morning weatherman who leapt around a map of the UK floating in Albert Dock, Talbot was a biology teacher at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, attended by Ian Brown and Simon Wolstencroft. He was referenced in 'A Lot Of Wind': ‘[the] weatherman… [who] used to teach all our friends’.
In 2013 was arrested and charged with sexual offences against some of his former pupils. In his 2015 trial, Ian Brown gave evidence. Talbot was sentenced to five years in prison and was released in 2019.
Talkabout
The line ‘two hours with four left wing kids’ in 'Fortress' refers to Smith’s experience of taking part in a round table discussion for Radio One show Talkabout (see also The Langham Hotel).
Shirley Temple
Temple was a 1930s Hollywood child star who went on to become a US ambassador. In 1935 she starred in The Littlest Rebel, a movie that glorifies the Confederacy and suggests that many blacks did not wish to be emancipated (although Shirley, aged only seven at the time, can hardly be blamed for this).
The Fall song of the same name mentions her by name: ‘hips like Shirley Temple’.
Tequila
Although whisky was MES's spirit of choice, a limited edition version of the 'White Lightning' single came with a promotional miniature bottle of White Lightning tequila.
Kate Themen
After the Brownies disaster on 7 April 1998 (see B part 2), one might have expected the three UK gigs that The Fall had booked at the end of the month to be cancelled. In typical style, MES did no such thing and recruited Polythene drummer Kate Themen, who presumably had one of those infamous crash courses well-known to many Fall recruits.
The Smith/Nagle/Themen line-up - aided considerably by backing tapes - stumbled reasonably unscathed through two nights at Camden Dingwalls and a further gig at Reading Alleycat before Themen was replaced by Tom Head and Karen Leatham joined on bass.
Time Enough At Last
The Code: Selfish track was one of several Fall songs to be named after / inspired by an episode of The Twilight Zone (see this playlist and below).
This 1959 episode (spoiler alert!) saw Burgess Meredith (see M part 1) play a man who loves reading – but never has the time – who survives a nuclear war and finds himself surrounded by books in the ruins of a public library.
TJ Hooker
William Shatner starred in this early 80s American police drama. The line ‘white snow, scum-ball’ in 'L.A.' was, according to Brix, inspired by the show. The Fall in Five Radio Show episode 14 contains a snippet of the show's theme tune.
Top of the Pops
MES only made one solitary appearance on the UK's long-running chart music show, appearing alongside the Inspiral Carpets performing 'I Want You' in 1994 (see I).
The performance (sandwiched between a Michael Bolton video and Morrissey's 'The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get') is a treat. Smith, clad in black leather, doesn’t look entirely comfortable to begin with, almost as if he doesn’t know where to place himself, unused to sharing the stage with another front man. He soon warms up though, even performing a little dance (of sorts) at one point. Singer Tom Hingley keeps his eyes glued to the front, seemingly having to concentrate hard in order not to be put off by Smith’s melodic waywardness when they sustain the final note in the title refrain together.
Not for the first or last time, Smith avails himself of a written reminder of the lyrics, just as he had done in the promo video. Entertainingly, he was later to be castigated for this by the young viewers of Saturday morning show Live And Kicking.
Twilight
In my Twilight Zone-related playlist, I sneakily included a couple of songs that were related to the hilariously awful teen-vampire-werewolf franchise Twilight rather than Rod Serling's cult 60s show.
In this interview with Tim Cumming, Smith claimed that his publisher struck a potential deal with the producers of Twilight for The Fall to contribute a song to the film soundtrack (‘they said they'd give us $50,000 to come up with a song… I said, I'll give them some horror…’) Cumming implied, albeit vaguely, that the song in question was ‘No Respects Rev’. However, according to Greenway, Spurr and Melling, it was ‘Cowboy George’ that was offered (and rejected).
The Twilight Zone
- 'R.O.D.' spells out Serling's first name; ‘Realm of Dusk’ could also be seen as synonymous with ‘twilight zone’
- 'Butterflies For Brains' contains a reference to The Four Of Us Are Dying, an episode from January 1960
- 'Kick The Can' was named after a 1962 episode about a man longing to recapture his youth
- 'Time Enough At Last' (see above)
- 'Open The Boxoctosis': What’s In The Box? was a 1964 episode where a man’s television set tells him his past, present, and future, revealing to him that he will kill his wife
- 'Paranoid Man In A Cheap Sh*t Room' was possibly inspired by Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room, an episode from 1960 in which a small-time crook who gets embroiled in an argument with his own reflection in a hotel mirror
- 'Slang King': ‘Wickwire’ is a character from the 1960 episode Elegy in which 22nd century astronauts discover an Earth-like planet populated by people frozen in time
- 'What You Need': Inspired by a couple of episodes, one actually called What You Need, the other being The Four of Us Are Dying - Smith admitted that he got the two episodes mixed up, his confusion probably arising because the two episodes were shown as a double bill in 1983
Fi5 Main Page
Comments
Post a Comment