Guest Post: Flaunt the Imperfection

Yes, we have guests. Well, now we do. Please welcome a Friend of Bury Me Not, Gary Butler, who offers this appreciation of The Fall, a band I believe, and I write this with a little surprise, is appearing for the first time on this site.

Once one has developed an ear, the always changing, always imperfect sound of postpunk rockers The Fall assumes a kind of ragged glory. Mumble-mouthed Mancunian madman Mark E Smith, the band’s undisputed leader and sole constant member for more than 30 years, not only flaunts his imperfections but also rejoices in them. Embrace these obvious shortcomings – accent exaggerated to the point of approaching Tourette’s, borderline tone-deafness, catalogue of addictions – and it’s surprising but clear to find the man to be the ramshackle portrait of professionalism. Consider Smith’s good sense to (almost) constantly surround himself with musicians as adept at taking chances as they are at taking orders. A madman’s privilege, he’s the only person who knows how he wants his band to sound; good thing he at least knows how to get it.

Then there’s his impeccable choice of cover material (almost every studio album since 1985 has included at least one), songs often lesser-known but usually absolute firecrackers in their original form. Despite The Fall’s usual postpunk classification, Smith’s roots are in ’60s British garage and early-’70s Krautrock. Like anything to do with The Fall, his reasons for the band’s cover selections are his own, and if they often seem audacious, bear in mind that a garage-cum-kraut take on anyone’s work would have to qualify as audacious almost by definition.

Here, then, some music, and some imperfect audacity.

First up, the original: “This Perfect Day” (The Saints, 1977). At the conceptual level, the Smithification of Aussie protopunk Chris Bailey’s sneered, thuggish vocals is no giant stretch. (Or is it?) Without doubt, the challenge is this pristine song’s defining, epic, blank-generation lead-guitar riff, which dispatches all comers, proclaiming itself absolutely untouchable. (And it is.)

• The Saints, “This Perfect Day” (buy here)

Next, The Fall’s rough take of “This Perfect Day” (from the band’s 22nd Peel Session, late 1998). Smith predictably messes with the vocals, delivering misremembered lyrics like an incitement to riot, where with Bailey they were more something one shouts while fleeing the fuzz. But here’s the jaw-dropping bait and switch: call it respect, for lack of a better insight into Smith’s mind, but the Saints’ grand and untouchable guitar riff is … gone, entirely. In its place, a shambling lower-E lead, trading off with muted, reload-the-ammo strum, in the song’s second half alternated with a dissonant, furball-hacking chop (arguably a hard-edged cousin to the Bend Sinister B-side “Entitled”).

Was the music here a repurposed demo for which the band was expecting new lyrics from Smith? Was the umpteenth incarnation of The Fall completely unfamiliar with the original song? Was this cover simply Smith’s surprise to everyone present at the BBC Radio One studio (himself included, given lyric mangling like “Your mommy says” for “What more to say”)? Not knowing the answer is half the fun with this glorious car wreck of a recording, a cover version of such passionate immediacy that for the first minute (of two and a bit), its sheer force makes it seem more than just salvageable, but indestructible. Perhaps it is.

• The Fall, “This Perfect Day” (Peel session) (buy here)

Finally, The Fall’s official “This Perfect Day” (1999), which deftly channels the urgency of the then-recent rough version and, surprise, tweaks it aplenty, likely to suit Smith’s mood du jour. Second time’s the charm, here – almost. The previously stripped-down approach is subtly fleshed out, and the revamped structure even dares to acknowledge the source material’s chord changes. (Shock of the old!) The weak link is the predictable one: Smith’s vocals – so hushed at the start that one wonders if the mix is off, delivered with more growl on the second verse but never approaching the Peel Session’s drill-sergeant drawl.

Too bad, because the new version opens with a ten-second drum fill that’s pure military, followed by a machine-gunned lead guitar with a slightly funky air to it. Astonishingly, the riff here is wholly new – it has nothing in common with either the Saints song or the first Fall cover. Plus, the quality of his singing aside, the delivery is uniquely Smith, particularly the pacing: listen to mixed-up Mark E inexplicably parse the song’s best-known line, “It’s all so funny, I can’t laugh,” sandwiching it around, believe it, the chorus. It should not work, but it does. Pretty much. After all, it’s The Fall.

• The Fall, “This Perfect Day” (The Marshall Suite album version) (buy here)

Mark E Smith introduced me to The Saints. It’s likely enough that I would have eventually discovered the band on my own, but it’s just as fair to assume that that even so, I would have never studied “This Perfect Day” with such deconstructive intensity. I really do know why I love this song – all of its versions.

Here’s the rub: otherwise perfect, “This Perfect Day” will never be perfect to me. Flawless as was, to be sure. But in feverish dreams, I hear the Peel-Session Smith barking over the Saints’ heroic guitar, backed by one of those unusual Fall bass leads (either will do, both are far superior to the functional but plodding original). I developed an ear for The Fall, doctor, and now I hear things that don’t exist. That said, you could do a lot worse than to join me.