Wednesday 7th February Dublin Castle Rock And Roll Book Club Julie Hamill Meets David Barnett Suede: Love & Poison: The Official Biography + DJ Tony Bugbear Get Cheap Tickets Here

When they appeared on the British rock scene in the early 1990s, a bastard fusion of the Smiths and Ziggy Stardust, some called them The Best New Band in Britain. At the time, the group, based around flamboyant vocalist Brett Anderson and guitarist Bernard Butler, hadn’t released one note of music. What followed was an eponymous album that was to become the fastest selling debut in British musical history, as well as a decade of narcotic excess, redemption, and fantastic pop music. Now fully updated to include the inside story of the band’s decision to split and Brett’s new solo ventures, “Suede: Love and Poison” traces the scarcely credible story of a band that went to hell and back. With Brett Anderson’s autobiography just around the corner tonight’s DC RNR Book Club presentation is certainly prescient. Writer David Barnett will be in conversation with Julie ’15 Minutes With You’ Hamill tonight with a Suede-centric soundtrack lovingly teased from the author’s cues in the book provided by Tony Bugbear. By way of an aperitff, hear David Barnett in conversation with Tony and Julie on Bugbear’s Soho Radio show by tapping upon the undeniably gorgeous Brett here…

“‘Book of the Month’ – The Observer Music Monthly ‘Excellent account of one of the most interesting UK bands of the 1990s’ – Record Collector

Our Raison D’Etre Is And Always Has Been The Fall. Bugbear Wipes Away The Tears. (Click Upon MES Here For A Fall Tribute Show Produced 6 Months Ago To Celebrate The Release of ‘New Facts Emerge’)

It’s 1978 and I’ve just discovered The Fall, hearing the band’s stark, strident Stranglers on strychnine offerings for the very first time on the wonderful Short Circuit 10 inch. A record sold by Virgin at bargain basement rates ensuring all us young punkers bought one. Richard Branson increased his smug factor by a nano degree and (tempted in by the siren call of the sainted Buzzcocks) we all got to hear the likes of Joy Division, Steel Pulse and John Cooper Clarke for the very first time. How wonderful, thanks Branson, now step away from the N.H.S you charlatan. But yeah, all those great bands. And The Fall. Of course, The Fall. [more]

The two tunes were ‘Last Orders’ and ‘Stepping Out’ and ‘Short Circuit’ was a live record showcasing the final days of Manchester’s infamous Electric Circus punk venue. This pair of ragged but rampant outsider rock menacers were as brutally esoteric and spine wrenching as a ’77 shitpile teen nihilist could hope for, and to the greasy ears of the beholder, their appreciation almost immediately diminished the efforts of other punk rock journeyman piddling about inanely with flabby pub pop. The Fall trounced much of the flippant fare being spat out at us hither thither in our time of colour vinyl coded new wave need. The Fall sounded remarkable, truly mesmeric to my 14 year old ears, trained piteously by years of Bowie, Wizzard, Mud and The Sweet as they were. Exposure to the band’s first John Peel session further galvanized my interest. A sickly sardonic song like ‘Mother Sister’ sounded genuinely terrifying at nigh on Midnight with the homework fobbed, Peel on and the lights down. It probably put me off my strokes. Or made them all the headier.

Bingo Masters Breakout, It’s The New Thing, Live At The Witch Trials and onwards. By Grotesque (After The Gramme) in 1980 it was official. The best band in the world were The Fall because The Fall were unique. Uniquely intelligent, uniquely proletarian, uniquely earthbound yet exaltant (clever trick that), poetic, contrary, mystical, hauntological, fluent, satirical, sensorial. There was more going on in a piece like ‘New Face In Hell’ than in the whole of the Sham 69 back catalogue. Fact, and then some.

Here was the band I made the journey to the record shop for ON THE DAY of the auspicious new release, feverishly primed to snatch up each fantastic record, each single, album, 10 inch maxi E.P, released thick and fast on a baffling range of labels with an equally confounding array of artistic developments and diversions. The jaw dropping stylistic spasms, the acidic and assured existential invocations, the leering lofi art pop topped with brilliant poetry. There were always new ways to be The Fall it seemed. Forever. It seemed. And the esoteric abandon of The Fall live, the anticipation of The Fall alighting the stage , that was a whole other level of fabulous, there was simply nothing like it. Never again will that combination of excitement, malevolence and mystique be ours to enjoy. Unlike most rock music there was a true mythology to Mark E Smith and The Fall, and boy did we Fall fans suck it up. Right up to the end. And it is The End. Thank you Mark E Smith, still our raison d’etre. Onward.