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Mr. Pharmacist

'Mr. Pharmacist' (1986) was the first of The Fall's songs to catch my attention, although of course it wasn't one of their own compositions, but a cover of a twenty-year-old single by San Francisco band The Other Half. Presumably, Mark E. Smith would have heard it on the '85 compilation Nuggets Volume 12. I had encountered a few Fall tracks before that, and would already have been aware of John Peel's reverence for the group, but, up to then, their music had struck teenage me as colourless and cacophonous. Even thereafter, I never became a true believer, and was, at best, a part-time, fair-weather fan. Without the efforts of the then Mrs. Smith to steer them a little closer to the mainstream, I may never have boarded that bus at all.


The only one of their records I bought in the following years was The Frenz Experiment, almost no-one's idea of their finest hour, but, even so, I retain a fondness for it. Despite my on-off & sometimes lukewarm enthusiasm, I nevertheless would indulge, more recently, in occasional YouTube Fall trawls, and decided last year to acquire a small selection of my favourite tracks on vinyl, with an emphasis on individual songs rather than full albums. The Mr. Pharmacist 12" single was the first of these aquisitions, obtained via ebay.

As well as the swaggering racket of 'Mr. Pharmacist', also included are 'Lucifer Over Lancashire' (notable for inspiring Paul Rooney's extraordinary Lucy Over Lancashire), and 'Auto Tech Pilot' in which Smith declares, not unjustifiably, "I really think this computer thing is getting out of hand".

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