MES and TRP

[Cathy Edwards]

I saw a shouting choir ages ago in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Half Man Half Biscuit were playing too - was that you?  It's brilliant.

-----Original Message-----
From: Heikki Raudaskoski [mailto:hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi]
Sent: 31 January 2005 12:05
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: MES and TRP




Spring 1990. The shouting choir is touring Finland with the
Russian 20s-style avantgarde performance group, the campy
Avia. (Shortly after the tour we will give a couple of joint
gigs in Leningrad.) Our bus DJ is going through a somewhat
monolithic phase, it seems, and for the whole tour we listen
*only* to the music of The Fall. And, loving it. (Well, at
least as far as the Maxwell Smart-quoting writer of these
lines goes; many Russians & some Finns are not as thrilled.)
And now.

.................................................................

"He's still the Fall guy"

Notoriously punchy Mark E Smith has spent nearly three decades
on the periphery of British culture with the Fall. So what does
the most awkward man in Manchester think of the BBC's new film
about him?

Sean O'Hagan
Sunday January 16, 2005
The Observer

[...]
Having listened again to 'Kicker Conspiracy', 'Totale's Turn'
and 'Grotesque', it struck me that the nearest equivalent to
Smith's songs in terms of style and subject matter would be the
early works of Thomas Pynchon: all those strange character names,
the convoluted narratives, the abiding sense of paranoia, and
the feeling of the whole barely being held together by an
overriding, but fragile and fractured, authorial voice.

He nods and smiles when I mention Pynchon, but remains as
secretive as ever. 'I have some Irish mates who are trying to
contact him,' he says, leaning in close and winking. Later, he
says: 'I'm plagued with graduates reading things into the songs.
There's a glut of graduates in the world.'
[...]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/screen/story/0%2C6903%2C1391224%2C00.html
..........................................................................


Did anybody see the film?



Best,
Heikki


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