9. The FallHex Enduction Hour
It’s just so fragmented and scattered and clattering. I heard this during a period when I was… ‘ready to be enlightened’, I guess. It was really liberating. I’ve talked to a lot of people my age, and I often hear that people found out about The Fall from the band Pavement, and I heard about Pavement always talking about The Fall as an influence, and Mark E Smith would just say, "You guys are just ripping us off." And I was a Pavement fan growing up for sure, but I didn’t find out about The Fall through Pavement.
When I was a child running around Athens, Georgia, my mum would go get her hair done on a Saturday. One Saturday she was still getting her hair done, and I was running around with some Athens kids, who were like ten, eleven years old, and we went into this place called Jittery Joe’s, which used to be right outside the 40 Watt Club. And they had these chocolate covered espresso beans, and I ate a bunch of them, and then I drank a Joe Cola. I walked across the sidewalk drinking my Joe Cola, and I saw this record shop called Low Yo Yo Stuff Records, named after the Beefheart song. And I was in there, bouncing around, completely wired, and I spilled my Joe Cola on a box of used CDs, marked "The Fall". So the owner – who’s now a lifelong friend of mine, Todd – made my mum buy this entire box of CDs! So when I was about ten or eleven years old I came into the possession of a Joe Cola-stained box of, basically, a good bit of The Fall’s discography.
I didn’t know what The Fall was – never even heard of it, you know what I mean? Over the years I started cleaning the CDs up and listening to them, and eventually got to Hex Enduction Hour. For them it’s the most emotionally – and I say that very sceptically – varied. I find a song like ‘Iceland’ to be very moving and eerie. And ‘Winter’, I find that sad. Although of course he’s not really known for his melancholy. I feel there’s this side to The Fall that can be really unsettling.
