Good evening, we are the Fall and we are from the first world.

Sounds like these kids need to learn the three Rs.

Via SVD.se.

THE INITIAL invitation to curate a lecture series came in the spring of last year from Justin Beal, who asked us to put something together for the Mandrake, an artist-run bar in LA. The title Contra Mundum comes from Brideshead Revisited, the 1945 book by Evelyn Waugh, which follows the relationship between wayward aristocrat Sebastian Flyte and aspiring artist Charles Ryder as they retreat to Flyte’s family manor, Brideshead, to spend the summer alone together. They refer to this period of their friendship using the Latin motto “contra mundum,” or “against the world,” and in this space—away from institutional, familial, and societal frameworks—they experience a kind of aesthetic awakening. We were inspired by this idea of building your own world, and although in Waugh’s novel contra mundum is a temporary phase, we wanted to use the talks and the book as a kind of proposal: What would it mean to inhabit such a state as a subject position?

[...]

Oslo Editions (Artforum)

O’er grassy dale, and lowland scene
Come see, come hear, the English Scheme! [...]

Peter Cook’s jokes, bad dope, check shirts, lousy groups
Point their fingers at America
Down pokey quaint streets in Cambridge
Cycles our distant spastic heritage
Its a gay red, roundhead, army career, grim head
If we was smart we’d emigrate…

A glass of lager in his hand
Silver microphone in his hand
Wasting time in numbers and rhyme
One hundred blank faces buy
Bingo-Master’s Breakout!

Thanks, Lucas Quigley!

If any of the aforementioned 2/3 visitors to this blog happen to find themselves in the Southern California area this Sunday, I would implore them to them to head to the Mandrake Bar to hear Frances’s presentation, entitled, “The Sycophancy of the Contemporary Artist and the Impossibility of Reaching Out to Mark E. Smith.” Visit Oslo Editions for more information.

Now, without further ado, Frances’s first selection. Watch the whole clip, but please bear in mind her selection concerns the segment between ~ 6:38 and 7:37.

My singing’s getting very good, actually. I don’t want to boast. I’m getting really good at singing, actually. After twenty fucking …*

(* = scrambled)

What really went on there?
we only have this excerpt:

There’s a party going on down around here
Cruiser’s Creek yeah
Watch the shirt-tails flapping in the wind
Sidewalk running
See the people holding from the back
Hat-boaters tilting…

Promotional video for Cruiser’s Creek directed by Cerith Wyn Evans, featuring Leigh Bowery dressed, according to MES (quoted in TBLY no 3, February 1995) “like a clerk on acide, like he was from some alternative world.” [source]

Container Drivers official video, 1980.