The Fall's Mancunian Post-Punk Prole Art Beat Therapy

North country and western England prole art dance music 1983. From album, Perverted by Language, on a short list of my favorite Fall albums for sure, and an even shorter list of truly great post-punk albums. And it's not just Mark E. Smith, in your face, clever, obtuse, cryptic, provoking suspicions, homophobic "Sodmized by presumption," antifa "In a German history book," or antisemitic "a Jew on a motorbike," but the band, who he apparently rarely speaks to, so under him or behind him or in whatever hierarchical relationship to him, actually, rock out with him in rivetingly tight post-punk shambolic intensity. Classic Fall. 

"Who Makes The Nazis" (1982),  post-punk legend Smith tells you: White-O's [flag waving white supremacists], All the Os, Intellectual half-wits, balding smug faggots [great, more potential homophobia and lumping all us bald guys w Nazis], long horn breeds, smiling Buffalos [atavists?], rapists in mirage Spa Motels, real Irish know [underground violence?], Joe, Benny's cob-web eyes, bad bias TV, BBC, George Orwell [note to self: read that James Burnham book], Burmese Days [colonialism], Black burnt flesh, and Crack unit species [militarists? decade before the Crack epidemic]." And a word from anti-fascist (and, again, likely homophobic) Bobby: "If you're out of love, just give them real soap. Hates not your enemy, love's your enemy." Let me guess: "Bush warriors" have menaced Smith/Benny and they're suffering untreated PTSD? And you still can't argue it isn't a little Hitler like for Smith to fire a musician for eating a salad, as he allegedly once did. Nonetheless, poet laureate of anti-fascist soccer hooligans. 

After a long career as one of class of '77 punk's most stylish, accomplished post-Dadaist ranters, Smith tries crooning. No Ray Davies, to be sure. But something semi-sweet in a mumbly wounded animal kind of way. Put out on Cherry Red Records in 2003. 

PRT.