The Fall – from Manchester to Memphis

Rock ‘n’ roll speaks in a secret language; its gnomic prayers and coded lamentations passed on from one disciple to another, which is why Bob Dylan posed with albums by Lotte Lenya, Ravi Shankar, The Impressions, Eric Von Schmidt and Robert Johnson on the sleeve of Bringing It All Back Home. Frankly, no one had to work hard to decipher the meaning Dylan wanted to set in train with that set of references. Mark E. Smith was no less adroit in his ability to speak in tongues, though truth be told his objects of devotion had escaped me for the best part of four decades; revealing themselves only after a recent binge on the band’s early catalogue.

Hiding in plain sight for all these years, up in the top left hand corner on the rear of Grotesque (After the Gramme) – part of a collage of snaps of the band – Smith stands next to a Pickwick Records spinner rack (liberated from the street outside Salford’s Radio Rentals, I’ll wager). On view is Elvis’s 40 Greatest Hits (inc. 18 #1s), released on the budget Arcade label in 1974 and at the time, and for years after, utterly ubiquitous. Above Elvis is a Charly Records compilation of Charlie Feathers’ 50s sides, Rockabilly’s Main Man – released a year before Grotesque in 1979 – a cult taste moving up fast into the mainstream courtesy of such disparate proselytisers of the new beat as Crazy Cavan and The Cramps . ‘Rockabilly is a hot sound just now’, wrote Martin Hawkins in his sleeve notes, ‘and getting hotter’. On top of the spinner stack is Tav Falco and the Panther Burns debut release; a self-produced EP that in 1980 would have been known only to a very small handful of initiates and hip priests.

The EP had zero distribution outside of Memphis and a first pressing of only 250 copies. I suspect Geoff Travis gave Smith a copy of the disc, which he would have obtained while negotiating and preparing the release on Rough Trade of Panther Burns’ album Behind the Magnolia Curtain the following year. Smith must have thought he’d found a fellow traveller in Tav Falco, who was also pushing the rattle n’ throb of rockabilly as far away from the revivalists as you could possibly get. His record could function as a touchstone for The Fall, and certainly worth putting at the top (or bottom) of a Memphis hierarchy. Beholden to Elvis, The Fall and Panther Burns are the true spiritual heirs to Charlie ‘One Hand Loose’ Feathers – fiery jacks one and all.

John 'Speedy' Keen and His Girlfriend's Dildo

The retro graphic attracted my attention to this 1973 advert in NME for John ‘Speedy’ Keen’s latest 45, but it was the dildo to her right that made me laugh. Sometimes, Track Records really do seem like the precursor to Stiff.

Who was the illustrator ‘N.R.’?

Budget label Teddy Boy R 'n' Revival

Two collections from the Contour label drawing on the Philips catalogue, mostly 60s recordings in reprocessed stereo.

The same three Teds are featured on both sleeves - jackets on and off. They have the look of the authentic. No photographer credit.

They are posing in front of a cinema for the Crazy Rock sleeve, Horror of Frankenstein is playing and Abbot & Costello’s In The Navy (1941) is also on the programme. The Hammer horror was released in November 1970, so I’d guess these two discs hit the shops in the following year.