Lousy Celebrity Makes Record

Hearing exceprts of formerly "underground" rock music in commercials doesn't phase me much anymore, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around this Mitsubishi ad that uses "Blindness" by the Fall. I can see how they thought the song's vicious riff would make a cool soundtrack, but the fact that they kept Mark E. Smith's typically garbled "I was walking down the street..." vocal at the end must mean there's an ad writer at Mitsubishi with one sly, snarky sense of humour.

Anyway, here's the Fall performing a shortened version of that song on Later w/ Jools Holland late last year. I'm guessing they were booked, in part at least, to maintain the band's media visibility for a while longer in honour of John Peel, rather than because of Mark's sparkling stage presence and personal demeanor. Don't be alarmed by the 15 seconds of Robert Plant at the beginning of the clip, he has nothing to do with what follows. Plus you'll get to check out Mark's disproprionately hot current wife on keyboards.



Also, here's their other performance from that episode: a medley of "Pacifying Joint" and the Move's "I Can Hear the Grass Grow." And just for the hell of it, check out their national tv debut - booked and introduced by Peel - from 1983, doing "Smile" and "2X4," complete with dutiful professional dancers (unfortunately the video cuts out early).