The Fall

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More About

• Blondie (Musical Group)
• Mark E. Smith
• Garth Brooks
• Punk Rock

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I've done some bad things in my day; I suppose all of us have. Still, I've recently been turned around, for good this time, and I owe it all to Mark E. Smith. See, in the 56 minutes it took me to listen to the Fall's Fall Heads Roll, I saw exactly how oppressive eternal damnation could be. There you are, having passed peacefully, when all of a sudden this old British man starts speak-singing with sloppy articulation, like someone mugged him and stuck his mouth with nine shots of Novocain. He speak-sings to you about things like jackals and walking down the street and the lyrics to "Hey Jude." And just as you think, "Wow, not only can I not really understand what he's saying, but this is far more irritating than Chinese water torture," you realize that accompanying this man's voice is a weird pastiche of country and punk rock played by synthesizers and distorted bass guitars, which means it resembles the badly misshapen love child of Blondie and Garth Brooks. And so you think to yourself, "Hmm, maybe the devil appears to me like this because I squashed that bug when I was still alive, or maybe it's because I had that job that paid me under the table." Then you think, "No, nothing I ever did warrants being subjected to this for all of eternity."