Detective Instinct
A New Annotated Fall
“Smith’s readily aware of the benefits of interpretation as opposed to mere assimilation, active listener participation… being one of The Fall’s most oft-avowed intentions.”
Gill, Andy (1981). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Smith.” New Musical Express, 10 January, p.10. [Link for text via The Fall Online]
Welcome to Detective Instinct – a new (emergency) annotation project focussed on the works of Mark E. Smith and The Fall.
This site exists because the amazing annotatedfall.doomby.com, owned and edited by bzfgt since 2013, was deleted as of the end of October 2024. The Annotated Fall incorporated a significant amount of my research (and that of others), which I don’t want to be lost. Although much of The Annotated Fall is preserved by the The Internet Archive, this is very much a live project to me – new information is still regularly being unearthed, and new theories or speculatively creative ideas are still being advanced.
This is not a carbon copy of the original Annotated Fall. I have made my own decisions about what to include. bzfgt’s site, for example, focused on the original lyrics of The Fall and therefore excluded instrumentals and cover versions. Both are in my remit.
This site has some fundamental aims which are easy to articulate but not straightforward to put into practice. First, to provide the most accurate possible transcriptions of the lyrics of songs mainly but not exclusively as they appear on records by The Fall (plus significant variants). Second, to contribute to an understanding of the lyrics – their meaning or interpretation, and their construction. Thirdly, to provide what are hopefully interesting and/or useful annotations on anything and everything in the wonderful and frightening world of The Fall that I feel needs annotating – lyrics, songs, tracks, record art-work, whatever.
Finally, it’s going to take me a long time to get to where the old doomby.com site had got to. I’m focusing on getting at least a basic entry up for every song, before coming back and fleshing them out. Posts will therefore be “in progress” for ages. However, when the mood takes me I am creating relatively complete entries too, so it’s going to feel a bit uneven for a while.
dannyno
