John Doran introduces The Fall's Hex Enduction Hour 

Darn ! Those lyrics are very deep indeed !!

Excellent, excellent talk!

I had to be the 77th to like this. This is an album i only bought in 85, because distribution and import around these shores were a headache in those days, but i remember when it came out. Mind you, my country's national fm headquarters ( at least two major stations in 1982, in Portugal) had some announcers/dj's who were into The Fall, so secondary and university students progressively became witness of Mr Smith's group's energic yet somewhat awkward musical rendition. The Fall must be on the UK's 5-short-list for Die-Hard British bands who freakin' never sold out, even when grooming and slightly polishing their sound and vision, namely when Brix joined them. I'd been an lp collector since 77 and this was the first Fall album i've ever bought ( ...many more after) , nevertheless, having heard parts of Live at TWT, Dragnet and Grotesque (a.t.t.g) on said radio shows, this new one had something about the sound and production (yes, production) that kinda set them side by side with them ''professionally sounding'' groups. And when The Classical broke in through the speakers, without warning, it was as if they were takin' on the world - you never recover from that track. .

"Bands send tapes to famous apes
. Male slags, male slates, famous apes, water, cater. Now: great thoughts
. The whole country is post-gramme
. Hail the new puritan!"

Very interesting.

Why is he so obssessed with a single lyric from The Classical. I took it to be Smith attacking tokenism and condesending attitudes to black people in general. Maybe I am taking a charitable view. Either way it is not important. It is a single word not typical of the rest of Smith's output.

Well said sir :)

I don't see why he singles out the Gun Club. I've checked the lyrics to For THe Love Of Ivy and it seems quite clear that they were in character unless of course Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a "steel drivin' man" which seems a bit unlikely. I'm not saying it was a good idea for him to use the n -word but I don't think for a moment it was meant to be representing his own viewpoint. One of Pierce's big influences was Robert Johnson and he was also a fan of Sun Ra and even Prince. There's far more evidence to support the argument that MES was racist if you wanted to go down that route.

What a pathetic load of twaddle regarding 'the n word'. Back in 1982 that word hadn't been weaponized in the way it has today. And Smith is using it in an intelligent way to describe the Fall's outsider status in relation to the main stream media. These days everyone and their sister 'love' the Fall, back then they were as peripheral to the music industry as you can get. It's also important to contrast this with his observation of "Kensington white Rastas". So in effect you're talking about 2 sides of the same coin. It's ill-advised trying to explain stuff like this if you weren't there, but there was never any critique of this at the time and no one seriously considered Smith or any of the Indie bands as racist in outlook.

How many times does he say "I/me/my" ... yawn

Some interesting stuff, bit too much lefty politics which I don’t think shares much with the Fall.

If you're a middle class lefty with a degree, you should STFU about The Fall. About sums up Doran & The Quietus. Go back to your groundbreaking Radiohead records.