30 Apr	HMV, Oxford Circus, London. Mojo 2008 Honours launch party. The Fall are scheduled to play at 7pm.
3 May	Maxwell Hall, University of Salford. Balcony seats (200 @ £19 plus booking fees) available through Ticketline only (0161 832 1111). With John Cooper Clarke and Bobbie Peru. Standing floor tickets (1000 @ £17 plus booking fees), available through Ticketline, wegottickets, Salford University Union; Vibes, Bury; Endless Music, Prestwich; King Bee, Chorlton; Piccadilly Records, Oldham Street; and with no booking fee from Alan Wise, 26 Lockett Gardens, Manchester M36BJ (enclose an SAE and check for £17). This gig has been postponed for a second time, the University now citing structural problems with Maxwell Hall (an asbestos problem, apparently). Ticketline says it's rescheduled for 21 May.
8 May	Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Belfast. Cheaper than usual tickets, too: £10 + £1.50 booking fee.
10 May	De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, according to their site.
21 May ?	Maxwell Hall, University of Salford, according to an announcement to ticket holders from ticketline. It's not listed on their site, however.
24 May	Brighton Festival. MES reads from Renegade at 3pm at the Old Court House. Tickets are sold out but you can try the box office for any returns – 01273 709709
26 May	Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Mark E. Smith and Austin Collings talk to Jon Gower in the Cinema at 7pm.
13-14 June	Rabarock festival, Järvakandi, Estonia, according to their site.
3 July ?	Spiegeltent, Cork Midsummer Festival of the Senses, Cork. The festival runs 15 June - 5 July and the programme hasn't been announced yet, but this page suggests the Fall are on 3 July.
17-20 July	Dour festival, Dour, Belgium, according to their site.
25 July	Wickerman festival, East Kirkcarswell, near Dundrennan, southwest Scotland, according to their site.

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added 9 May

Thursday, 8 May    Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Belfast

soundcheck: Senior Twilight Stock Replacer

gig: Is This New / Wings / Wolf Kidult Man / Fall Sound / 50 Year Old Man / I've Been Duped / Mountain Energei / White Lightning / Latch Key Kid / Over! Over! / Mr. Pharmacist / Can Can Summer / Pacifying Joint / Blindness

Photos by Geoff on flickr.

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added 8 May

Here's a video of Mark being interviewed by Mojo at that HMV launch party on 30 April.

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added 23 April; updated 8 May

Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith reviews

#3 on the Sunday Times nonfiction hardcover bestseller list.

There's a thread on the forum to post your reviews and I'll add others here as I find them. There are also some good comments on the BBC's Marc Riley forum, including a few from the man himself (MR, not MES).

• Sean O'Hagan in The Observer, 20 April
• Ian Harrison in Mojo, May 2008
• DJ Taylor in The Independent, 27 April
• John Doran in The Quietus
• Lottie Moggach in The London Paper, 29 April
• Tim Cumming in London Lite, 29 April
• Matt Thorne in The Independent, 2 May
• Mark Taylor on This Is Nottingham, 2 May
• Michael Bracewell in The Daily Telegraph, 3 May
• Mark Hodkinson in The Times, 2 May
• Sharon O'Connell in Time Out, May

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added 28 March; updated 8 May

Imperial Wax Solvent reviews

There's a review thread on the message board and I'll add links here to others as I find them.

• Luke Turner, formerly of Playlouder.com, and John Doran, on “an as yet untitled site, currently known as This Is Nowhere”
• paulaysatan on the God Box blog
• Adrian Denning
• David Cavanagh, Uncut, May 2008 (scan, thanks to Ocelot - and for others below)
• The Stool Pigeon
• Midnight Aspen on the Massive Crush on Music blog
  
• Taylor Parkes' glowing review on The Quietus
• Dave Simpson in The Guardian, 25 April (scan)
• Andy Gill in The Independent, 25 April (scan)
• Pat Long in the NME, 24 April
• Jim Wirth in Mojo, May 2008
• Mark Prindle
• Stephen Bray in Godisinthetvzine
• Daryl Easlea on the BBC site, 25 April
• Dr. John Murphy on his Blogtrotter - it turned into a 3000-word essay/introduction to the Fall.

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added 2 May

Short interview with MES in the Manchester Evening News by Rachael Clegg (2 May). IWS is about "looking at Britain from Germany."

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added 1 May

Wednesday, 30 April    HMV, Oxford Circus, London

Is This New / Wings / Wolf Kidult Man / I've Been Duped / Over! Over! / Latch Key Kid / Tommy Shooter / 50 Year Old Man / Pacifying Joint

Reviews and photos on the message board. Thanks to Mark for the setlist.

There's an entry by Danny Eccleston about the Mojo awards launch party (MES has won the Mojo Maverick award this year) on the Mojo blog.

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Literary Review - Private Eye No 1209 (thanks to Harry for typing it in)

WHAT YOU DIDN'T MISS, Pt 94
Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith
Mark E. Smith
(Viking, £18.99)

On his early life
Is this fookin' thing switched on...? Right, then... Cheers... No, ah'm not raising me voice, else I'll miss the Karaoke.... Cheers mate... Me childhood? It was all right, torturing me sisters and trading porn mags with them Irish lads. I feel sorry for kids these days. They're missing out on things. Not that I enjoyed myself, mind. At school they read us the fookin' Hobbit. Can you imagine that? This book about some tiny fucker who lives in a hole. I couldn't get me head round that... I couldn't afford to go to college: went for about three months, but I never had any money. Not that I liked it, mind, fuckers telling you what to do. Educate yourself, that's always been my philosophy. George V. Higgins – that's a good writer. You don't get fellows like that on any of the reading lists. Not, that I agree with reading lists, mind. You don't fookin' tell me what to read... [continues]

On his public image
I really do think there's people who think I'm an aggressive character, y'know, some kind of maniac... Look, just fuck off will y' pal, else I'll... Right, I fookin' told you, you fucker... Anyway, it's mostly journalists that do that, that fookin' Paul Morley... [rambles uncertainly for some minutes] Ask anyone that's been in The Fall – that bloke there, he played bass for us for ten minutes in 1980, or was it 1981 – and they'll tell y', Mark, he looks after his own. That time I clobbered Eric Lard [Fall lead guitarist, 13 September – 3 October 1982] with his Fender Stratocaster – fookin' poncey guitar, I mean why couldn't he have a Woolworth's one like everyone else? - it were all over the papers – trust that fookin' Paul Morley – but what no one ever remembers is that it was me that took him down to Casualty and phoned his dad to say “Your wanker of a son's had an accident”. Credit where credit's due. The fucker.

On the band's early days
Rat Street, Prestwich was quite a going place at the time. Always plenty of vomit on the doorsteps at Christmas, which is a sign that folk aren't feeling the pinch... Good solid working class people... Not that I liked it, mind. Then when I saw the Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in '76, I thought “My lot aren't as bad as that.” Not that they were any good, mind. There's people who'll say “that Mark, he's a fookin' dictator, he'll sack his band every fookin' week”, but the way I see it is, them musicians, y'have to watch them, always ready to get pissed... Cheers mate... and shout their mouths off about things they know nowt about. The fuckers.

On the sartorial niceties
As a band, we've always dressed sharp. You have to. That Oxfam shop on Salford High Street sells some all right stuff at a fair price. There's times I've taken the whole band in there – well, them that I hadn't fired that morning – and had them kitted out with flares and red-and-white tank tops. Nobody rates a scruff. Not that I've ever really bothered about clothes, mind...
[continues endlessly]

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added 30 April; updated 1 May

Imperial Wax Solvent non-UK distribution / CD mastering

Several people have asked me whether Imperial Wax Solvent is getting a domestic release in the USA. I wish I knew. Universal, who bought out Sanctuary last year, has earthwide if not quite universal rights to the album but don't appear to be doing much to promote or distribute the album outside the UK.

I'd recommend purchasing the album through Action Records. They're selling the CD for £11 and the LP for £12, and you get a 10% discount if you enter "fallnet" in the coupon box area. Or you could get it for about $26 through these Amazon resellers.

Also, in answer to another common question: Yes, Strangetown sounds like it has mastering defects galore (see also 50 Year Old Man); it was apparently intended to be that way and it's not a problem with your particular CD or LP.

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added 30 April

Four contibutors to the defunct The Pseud Mag Fall fanzine have started a new, virtual fanzine – Reformation Post TPM – on googlepages. Their first issue is online and they welcome contributions for future editions.

They're also reviewing tapes of Fall gigs past and present on The Fall Live.

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added 30 April

A blog entry with a great mp3 of Greg Lyon, of Princeton University's WPRB radio station, discussing the gig he'd just attended at the Trocadero in Philadelphia – The Fall on 4 April 1998, three days before the Brownies Incident.

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added 29 April

Mark E. Smith was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Front Row programme last night. You can listen again on their page or download this handy mp3 from yousendit, with thanks to Ocelot.

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added 29 April

An MES interview with Aidan Smith was in the 27th April Scotland on Sunday.

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added 28 April

Cologne's #1 Fall fan – Michael Jungbluth – and his mate Tobias Bock are running a two-night Fall event at their local pub.

They'll be playing Fall records only on 9th & 10th May at Connection, Marienstraße 5 in Cologne. 10pm - 3am each night.

Michael will post the sets played on the forum.

If you'd like a high res pdf of the flyer, please email Michael at the address at the bottom of the flyer – blu4711-shaATyahooDOTde (replace the AT and DOT with the appropriate symbols, obviously).

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