I don't have a lot of dreams about The Fall even though I play them on virtually ever damn radio show I do these days. I've seen them live maybe four times (the last time was the most recent famous meltdown, where Mark Smith fired the band after playing perhaps twenty minutes) (which is a thrilling thing for a Fall fan to see!) & the chances of me seeing them live in the near future are nil to none. (But I might be going to Europe at the end of the year, so perhaps...)
I did dream about them last night. The situation requires a bit of a backstory. With recent advances in technology - which is to say, phones that can act as recording devices - it's easy to wander up to a more or less accessible musician & ask him/her/it if they would like to do an Artist ID for the radio station. I did exactly none of these for KVRX or KOOP - but they weren't considered much of a priority at either station. At WRFL, though, they got dozens of those things! Stretching back many moons! & not just musicians either - my favorite is the late, great Evel Knievel!
I managed to get one last year when I saw Darren Hanlon in Cincinnati & I got one when I saw the Wedding Present in Chicago last month. But I've missed more than I've gotten - mainly because I forget, since it's not really a priority in my mind. For example, when I was hanging out with my friends Bearsuit in Austin last year, I could totally have at any time gotten an artist ID. I was just having too much fun to ask.
Oh, & you can't just beg people to do it through the emails. They say they will but never do. Or they just don't write back. Because it's a little presumptuous!
In the dream I am in some kind of convenience store & I bump into Mark E. Smith, the mastermind of the Fall. He's much shorter than I am - whether that's true in real life I don't know - & he seems to be a younger version of the very aged malcontent you see these days. I ramble on about how much I like the Fall & even tell him that I knew I loved them when, like when you learn a language you know you're getting it when you dream in that language, I started to dream in The Fall. He seems utterly uninterested in this information as well he should be.
A little embarrassed by my fanboy nonsense, I walk away & then think, "Holy crap I could get an artist ID!" I find my wife - who has the iPhone I'll need to record the spot - & approach Mark Smith, now with his much-younger-than-he-is band, & ask them if that's okay. They don't seem to mind, so I find some paper to write "WRFL Lexington" on so they can say something like, "Hi this is the Fall you're listening to" etc.
Here's where the dream becomes a typical Gary dream: the wife's iPhone has a lot of programs running that I need to keep closing until I can open the audio recording one. Of course, an iPhone doesn't work that way, like a computer with screen after screen on a busy desktop, but in the dream it did, & I got upset at the wife for running so many damn apps simultaneously.
Then, for some reason, I can't seem to write WRFL properly. I am misspelling the call letters of my radio station! I am writing with a black sharpie & I it's coming out W R E E or W R E L or some other combination that only vaguely resembles the actual call letters.
When I finally get it right, the band has gathered around Mark Smith & they do the ID. You know, the folks who might not be in the band for the next record. While the Fall's one constant sits there & smirks.
It almost made me not want to try to get artist IDs any more.
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