Mark E Smith completists have some job to do securing every single Fall album - there are reportedly 38.
One thing you can get though is the current Fortean Times, which has a small pic of the great man in the top left hand corner of its cover, and the heading "Legends of The Fall: The Weird World of Mark E Smith". The subsequent article perhaps does not quite live up to its billing - it is a mere one page piece by a New Zealand academic, Dean Ballinger, entitled perhaps predictably "There's a Ghost in My House".
Ballinger is clearly a fan, although I have never been able to summon up much personal enthusiasm for the stories about Mark E Smith and tarot cards, or that he somehow predicted the 1996 Manchester IRA bombing. Better though is the analysis of Smith's use of Lovecraft, Machen and James, and he locates one of the Fall's classics, Wings, in the work of Phillip K Dick. There is clearly a lot more to be said about Smith's general interest in fortean matters - check out the homage to the Cottingley Fairies in the video to Ghost in My House - and I suspect his work, now he is safely dead, is due a whole series of reappreciations.
Let us hope therefore Dean Ballinger is revving up for a longer article. And I can get my hands on the approximately 19 Fall albums I am currently short of.....
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