Frank O’Hara, Charles Bukowski, Mark E. Smith and Shogun

Similar comparisons have been made many times before by far cleverer people, but for old time’s sake, with the passing of the Mancunian malcontent, singer/songwriter Mark E. Smith of The Fall, here’s a post that compares the words of three 20th century icons, and looks to the future that is Grime.

Manchester

My link to The Fall is via The Fall’s home city of Manchester in the north of England. One of the many members of The Fall was a school classmate of mine. I think a lot of people had a classmate in The Fall because there was a high churn. I think that’s where a lot of the energy came from.

Hit the North

The Fall’s timeless songs are prescient warnings for dangerous times right now. 2003’s Theme for Sparta FC, is a shocking abstract snap shot of casual high street racism which is, sadly, just as relevant now.

The Fall were the howl of an attacked, divided and insecure society, projected by someone with the bile of the nihilist. Never saw Brexit coming? You probably never listened to The Fall.

Listening again to English Scheme, Pay Your Rates and The War Against Intelligence, I’m wondering about the future, and who’s taking swipes at the aspirational norm that passes for culture in the UK. Grime steps up.

My New Novel Update

I’m on the lookout for what’s new in the UK all the time and I’m a subscriber to YouTube channels: LDK, StormzyTV, and Twelve 50 TV. I listen to JME, Skepta and Stormzy because dragging up a new novel from scratch, you need to block out the powerful mainstream voices, the carefully curated product placements, and the slight novels of literal-minded journalists who start their thrillers in the middle. It goes with the coffee rituals and the creative battery acid recharge.

Couldn’t Get Ahead

The Fall were always effective in blocking out those serious intrusions with a relentless cultural water cannon. I’m always asking, did Mark E. Smith really say that? And yes is usually the answer. He did. I checked back to the lyrics of Couldn’t Get Ahead because I couldn’t believe how good they were. Not ‘good’ in the way that they rhyme and are, by definition, lyrics,  but ‘good’ in that it’s great poetry.

Driverless Doggerel

‘Culture’ right now seems to be a driverless car steered by algorithms built on rank, averages, statistics, spreadsheets and bots. You have to clean the slate every day with something that (as they’d say on GBBO) cuts through the blancmange.

Everything Suddenly Honks

20th century American Post-Modern poetry does the blancmange-cutting. O’Hara and Bukowski’s influence is in The Fall’s Couldn’t Get Ahead, so here are two poems followed by my transcript of Couldn’t Get Ahead showing Mark E. Smith was right up there with the very best, and then it’s the future.

A Step Away From Them by Frank O’Hara (excerpt)

On

to Times Square, where the sign

blows smoke over my head, and higher

the waterfall pours lightly. A

Negro stands in a doorway with a

toothpick, languorously agitating.

A blonde chorus girl clicks: he

smiles and rubs his chin. Everything

suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of

a Thursday.

Note: So, to set the ball rolling, in the above poem, the ad-man’s alluring message goes over the poet’s head, and then he sees its by-product, resentment and racism, on the street: a black man dares to look at a white girl, and it all kicks off.

My Old Man by Charles Bukowski (excerpt)

it was a story about

a rich man

who had a fight with
his wife and had

gone out into the night

for a cup of coffee

and had observed

the waitress and the spoons

and forks and the

salt and pepper shakers

and the neon sign

in the window

and then had gone back

to his stable

to see and touch his

favorite horse

who then

kicked him in the head

and killed him.

Couldn’t Get Ahead by The Fall, Mark E. Smith (transcribed by me)

Come out of the pub, the shop is closed

Come out of the pub, Harry wants to know

When the next bus is, I said five or ten minutes

I had change in my hands

The bus flashes past, my hands are caught

In a week, earned money for a month, got all my jabs done

My eyelids were sticky with it, gist was I could sleep for a day

But bad bills have no respect for a decent man’s rest

Flopping on the doorstep, outlined in colour red

On an Asiatic plane with wings not of the grain

Toilet queue was endless, couldn’t get a beer

The hostesses were muslims

When I get in the toilet, light flashes: “Return to seat”

I feared withdrawal and I feared beer was making sludge in my head

Couldn’t get ahead, I just couldn’t get ahead

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

Here’s the future:

Cy Forrest is the author of The Punished

Links to publications and the Art Decades interview are here.