Radio Gonzo

I will be the first to admit that I never really got The Fall, although I came very close at times. But I always enjoyed reading his - often hilarious - outbursts of misanthropy. As I have got older, I have become more of an old curmudgeon myself, and I have always had a bad attitude. But I pale into significance besides Mark E Smith of The Fall who died this week. He was part of the rich vein of Beefheartness that runs through the Manchester punk scene. Even the first Manchester punks, The Buzzcocks followed in Van Vliet's footsteps to a greater or lesser degree, and their founder's next band Magazine did so even more strikingly, but nobody did it quite like Mark E Smith. I was a little misleading in the first paragraph. Mark E Smith wasn't of The Fall, he WAS The Fall. in his own words: "If it's me and your granny on bongos, then it's the Fall." One of my favourite of his quotes was when he compared Soviet Russia to Doncaster, and claimed that he would 'nuke' it in a shot. But, arguably it was his ex