How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Fall starts and ends with Hex Enduction Hour. It sure as hell doesn't start with the 458489 B-sides collection, like I once thought. "Hey, it's cheap, and it has lots of songs, and it's two discs!" = bad move. If you're new to the scene, and you want to know what the big deal is about this Fall group, proceed to Hex Enduction Hour post haste. But don't just take the word of some bitter no-talent sweater-wearing Pitchfork Media jerk. Renowned musicologist Courtney Love swears by the album's ramshackle opulence and vituperative charm. Even street thugs like Hex Enduction Hour! Why, one went so far as to play catch with my driver's side backseat window using a piece of concrete, just to get a hold of a copy.
Castle has kindly reissued the album, and added a bonus disc. The recent Peel Sessions collection makes the inclusion of two session tracks somewhat superfluous, but that valuation assumes you're fanatical enough that the decision to drop upwards of $50 for a 6xCD set of radio sessions is no biggie. If you're not so disposed, enjoy this interpretation of "Deer Park" (the third on this collection) and a rinky-dinked "Who Makes The Nazis?" that replaces the introductory ping-ponging bass line with some banjo-sounding plunking. In addition, there's a B-side-- "I'm Into C.B.", which sounds like a Fall B-side-- and some live tracks. Most notable from the live stuff is the inappropriately titled "Jazzed Up Punk Shit", unless their idea of jazz came from traveling into the future to watch This Is Spinal Tap. It's more like down-tempo Fall shit, the band puttering along on E (the fuel gague reading, not the recreational aid) as Mark E. mulches "shit" into "shirt." All of this is good, by the way.
No write-up concerning the Fall is complete without mentioning and/or quoting their gone-but-not-forgotten patron saint John Peel, so here you go: "Always different, always the same." And that's Hex in a nutshell. You've got two-drummer, four-on-the-floor rave-ups like "The Classical", you've got pensive seethers like "Hip Priest", and you have a kazoo on "Nazis?"-- all different, but all the same. It's Mark E. Smith's scatological charisma that makes, breaks, and remakes the Fall. As has been said before and will be said many times, the Fall are pre-, post-, and beyond punk, taking the same old tools and building timeless machines. Atavistic in approach, futuristic in scope. And catchy as all hell, too-- phrases like "hey there, fuckface" and "he is not appreciated" are hard to escape, either while listening to this record or doing anything else. The most quotable tidbits, however, are the ones that can't be neatly discerned through Smith's interpretive elocution. In regards to a pseudo-intellectual magazine editor: "Has a beard which was weird/ Some time ago heard Ramones in '81/ Has a Spanish guitar." In regards to who makes the Nazis: "Motels like three split-level mirages...Buffalo lips on toast, smiling."
But what does it sound like, you may ask? Well, it sounds like the Fall. It sounds like a group of five talented musicians trying to play as brilliantly stupid as possible, while a sixth fellow from the docks hops on stage, grabs the mike, and fights his way through the morass scorched-earth style. It sounds like the primordial ooze that birthed touchstones like the Stooges and the Velvet Underground come to life, nursing a bitch of a hangover and a vendetta. It's something you're born with, not something you learn. And, as on most Fall records, but especially this one, it's something to behold.
