POO -- The Fall

Singles (In order) Psycho mafia, It's the new thing, Rowche rumble, Fiery Jack, How I wrote elastic man, The Slates 10", Kicker conspiracy/Wings, etc, etc.

Best band in the world mate.

Best track: Jawbone and the air rifle/Fortress/deer park. (and loads of others)

"...his hideous replica - disappeared through the door"

all frighteningly wonderful. then I wait a while and hit them with Container Drivers, Do You Know What You Look Like, and Disney's Dream Debased

agh

I'm going to wait until tomorrow to pick mine.

By the way, as Josh pointed out already, these threads are pointless without people giving a reason!

Jawbone and the air rifle for the following reasons:

The lines" The villagers dance round prefabs and laugh through twisted mouths, don't eat it's disallowed, suck on a marrowbone or energy from the mainland" These words bring to mind an image only suppassed by the "Wicheta lineman"

The "We don't give a shit if we can sing" Out of tune backing vocals, Scanlon and Hanley I think, on every live version I have ever heard.

The line "Getting drunk fills me with guilt" Which pretty much sums up my own feelings every time that after hours drink turns into a beerfest finishing in the early hours of the morning (Usually with me singing Fall songs and scaring taxi drivers/my wife/my daughter)

Just the sheer Fallness of the song as a whole. It encapsulates most of what has ever been great about the band, Loud scrapey guitars, simple repetative bassline and Incredibly skewed lyrical content.

For REAL gutsy ballsy Fall I go for 'Couldn't get ahead'.

ans = "spectre vs rector"

(With print you substitute an ear for an extra useless eye)

Guest Informant, now that Tom mentions it, would be my second choice, for the section where the two sets of vocals overlap and there's this rilly great spoken-word meets polyrhythm that puts all the best of the L.A.N.G.U.A.G.E. poets to shame. Bremen Nacht because I imagine a decedent weimar era brass band belting it out as the reichstag burns and they know that tomorrow they will flee.

Third best fall track: Conduit For Sale, followed closely by The Empty Page.

It opens with 'The X in Xmas is a substitute crucifix for Christ', stops in the middle for a brief rendition of Good King Wenceslas before descending into horrendously atonal 'ahhhhh, ah-ah ah AHHHHHHH's for pretty much for the rest of the song, and because the (possibly aforementioned) live version features Mess shouting 'CANYERFUCKINGEDDIT T'GETHER INSTEAD'OSHOWINOFF' at the bassist for pissing about too much.

It will not drag me down
I will leave this ten times town
I will leave this fucking dump
One room, one room
Hotel maids smile in unison
Then you know in your brain
You know in your brain
LEAVE THE CAPITOL
EXIT THIS ROMAN SHELL

I have since bought Grotesque. I would probably go with "Pay Your Rates" now, but that 2nd unnamed track on my CD copy of Grotesque is great, too. I am so clueless on the Fall that I don't even know what the song is called.

I had heard and loved "Totally Wired" before I bought Grotesque, but on the album it fairly pales next to "How I Wrote Elastic Man". What a fecking great album.

Second choice: "Mr.Pharmacist".

Or you can make a choice that seems all wrong by the above criterion, but which in the concealed, outlawed context makes the only kind of coherent sense.

So I'm picking a bloody cover version of all things.

'I'm Going To Spain'

At the moment, for song alone, I'd say 'Tempo House'. That rhythm kicks my arse, and the lyrics are great; "Winston Churchill had a speech imp-p-pedament, and look what he did; erased half of London..." "Hooray hooray". At one stage though, I used to dance around my room in my underwear doing air guitar to 'Hip Priest'.

I'm also about to revisit Grotesque after not hearing it for a very long time. Not necessarily one of my favourite Fall albums, but it should be fun nonetheless. I can't wait to refamiliarize myself. I do recall Stop Mithering and J. Temperance with affection.

Oh, and the best video clip is "Eat Y'rself Fitter." It has Brix dancing AND MES dancing. And it acts out the lyrics.

Is it possible to truly love this band despite having virtually no clue what the hell MES is going on about 90% of the time?

Can I just say Grotesque's "New Face In Hell"? Please? Why doesn't anyone care about "New Face In Hell"?

I honestly never expected to be so delighted just to pull out old Fall. I stand corrected. I thought I was over it. Really, I thought I was pretty much over it.

or possible, that's what makes them so great.

Oh it's great, but the defining version is the Peel Session vers - less kazoo, more organ.

My Pick : 'Stepping Out'

DKTR FAUSTUS

where did the official site go?

http://www.thefall.info/

wot's a computar?
wot's a computer??

marquis cha-cha

any other day it would be New Face in Hell, but screw it..."Rowche Rumble."
IT'S ABOUT VALIUM!!! WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND??!

Fuck yeah.

"How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'", certainly.

that's in reference to me being totally hammered at some new year's eve party with complete strangers, trying to explain The Fall to them

and failing miserably, of course...barely succeeding in walking home to grab my Dragnet CD (where I promptly passed out )

"How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'", certainly.

well done

Still "Wings". 'cassionally "Bill is Dead".

No, still "Cruisers Creek".

The only Fall song I have is their cover of "The Legend of Xanadu" by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.

It's really good.

I started this thread and now I have all this Fall album.

It's just an impossible task but I'll go with "Paint-work" now even though it omits so many element of the band's greatness.

Various Times

Bend Sinister is the shit cousin

Oh man do i disagree

Toss up between Iceland and New Puritan for me

Couldn't Get Ahead

Still "Wings". 'cassionally "Bill is Dead".

― Noodle Vague

I can get w/this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-wmTOeuTJw

Oh man do i disagree

― his eye is on despair-o (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, December 28, 2016 12:49 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u don't like bend sinister?????

Oh haha nm
I thought you were saying it was the shitty cousin of the other fall albums of that era

I love it and hope it doesn't get the short end of beggars' dwindling remasters program

Banana!

I recall David Bowie (love him, RIP, etc.) dissing Bend Sinister in some interview at the time, and thinking what the fuck.

I DRANK A JAR OF COFFEE AND I TOOK SOME OF THEEEES-A

Today if I could pick only one it'd be Big New Prinz. One of Hanleys finest hours. It'd probably change tomorrow.

Despite rumours of Mark's ill health fuelled by last night’s mental 100 Club gig, The Fall’s new album is excellent. https://t.co/sgFyrysNIH pic.twitter.com/DglvyzGB88

— MOJO Magazine (@MOJOmagazine) July 28, 2017

What happened? Anyone know?

New Facts Emerge is on Spotify....digging it...Mark E is super unhinged, this is probably their "heaviest" album ever, "Couples Vs. Jobless Mid 30s" riff is stoner metal

Mark E's smoking ravaged voice almost sounds like auto-tune sometimes

half the time i'm literally just what the fuck kind of music is this supposed to be?

oooh excited

http://includemeout2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-fall-at-100-club.html

Left the stage and sang from the dressing room?!?!

huh....hope he's ok but i guess he probably isn't

that Gutters band mentioned in the blog is pretty good!

sounds very much in character tbh

What happened? Anyone know?

― heaven parker (anagram), Friday, 28 July 2017 15:41 (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalinl

Sounds like a woman called Pam was fronting the group for much of the gig, with Smith out of sight. When I saw them in Manchester recently, in what was an excellent gig, Smith looked like a thousand-year-old witch, with buboes and lank, sparse hair, and though often in full force, would periodically suddenly grimace and sway slightly as if in that sort of full body pain you get with serious operations or illness. Plenty of rumours about ill-health.

It was a remarkable gig though. I was laughing at how lopsided and half-assed the album was earlier (these are not necessarily bad things), but i need to listen again, as that's two people now who have said they really like it. One thing i'd concur with upper missisippi sh@kedown though is that much on the album barely qualifies as songwriting if at all. Again, not necessarily in a bad way.

If he has osteoporosis, and it seems he does, it wouldn't be too easy to get from the stage at the 100 Club to the drssing room, certainly not without people realizing and how you would sing from there, I have no idea, unless it had been set up beforehand.

Sounds like a woman called Pam was fronting the group for much of the gig

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51VhzsUgaiL._SX357_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I pick "In My Area" for its acoustic grooviness --or-- "Oswald Defense Lawyer" for how bemused i become when i play it for my grandma.

Ummmm.... https://www.instagram.com/p/BXER51PjzHH/

"This is actually a flattering photo"

Uh oh. I have a ticket to see The Fall in NYC in September, on the LAST night of the residency. I'm not sure he'll make it.

yikes

yeah wonder if he is on steroids of some sort?

Looks like that.

he looks like he aged 30 years since the last album, bringing him up to an even 150

I can't really summon any quipness right now, I really don't want MES to leave this world yet and those photos and descriptions are fucking concerning

^^^^^^

One of those iG comments said he was dying of cancer...??

that’s certainly been the rumour but it feels... idk, fruitless and maybe almost intrusive to speculate overmuch - not quite sure that’s what i mean tho. there’s a couple of things i wanted to post about physicality/death in the fall and also their recent vein of mundane office songs, which i’ve been enjoying, but i’m going to bed so will try and find time tmrw.

Please do, would v much appreciate

Fantastic Life!

MES has looked like an absolute mess for years now, but this feels different...

I can't really summon any quipness right now, I really don't want MES to leave this world yet and those photos and descriptions are fucking concerning

― or at night (Jon not Jon), Friday, July 28, 2017 8:19 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me neither, even though I could comfortably not listen to anything the band have put out since Bend Sinister...

As I see it MES is one of these English mystics who grew tired of his gifts finding them as much a curse as anything else and blotted them out with an insane speed intake and constant boozing. Like Jhonn Balance if he'd survived but never got better. It's a shame to see a mind which was once so sharp blundering through the clenched teeth gnomic slogans of recent Fall material. But he's got nothing to do at this point but carry on carrying on although the point was lost long ago. At the same time there's this sense he could still pull it out of the bag again if he wanted to. Just happens he doesn't. He wants to keep on going from inexplicably attractive woman to inexplicably attractive woman, drag them into The Fall, and stumble around onstage shouting. It's not to say it's not still thrilling, its just there's been this element of car-crash ghoulishness about The Fall since at least YFOC.

Wow didn't read the preceding posts, was simply answering original idea of thread. Man, this recent news re:MESs health issues really bums me out. He/they have been my defacto favorite gruupe for ages now. At least 30 years and it will definitely hit me hard when the time comes. For my money the most important !literary voice to emerge from the late 20th century pop scene. UK or otherwise. I know he can be a monster at times but still,
I love the guy.

I think YFOC and The Real New Fall LP and Fall Heads Roll are pretty essential

I could comfortably not listen to anything the band have put out since Bend Sinister

You'd be missing out. There's tons of great stuff after that high point. As much as I love his first decade of work, I often find myself drawn to his 21st century highlights. Mind, I cherry pick every album since "Extricate".

yeah srsly, soooo much amazing stuff in the 90's alone, Extricate and Shiftwork in particular are 100% killer

I think YFOC and The Real New Fall LP and Fall Heads Roll are pretty essential

I'd sub in Imperial Wax Solvent for Heads Roll and add in The Unutterable. The Fall were one of the best bands going in the 00s

I'd love them just as much based only on post-Bend Sinister stuff, so yeah. This news (well, that photo) is a bummer.

I think YFOC and The Real New Fall LP and Fall Heads Roll are pretty essential

srsly. I consider his late career arc fucking triumphant tbh.

holy shit 'couples vs jobless mid 30s'

he's finally written his Close To The Edge haha

Like I said I don't even know what this album is!

with one and a bit tracks remaining that song is the clear highlight although it begins a nice second-half run

It was really upsetting seeing how he looked close up this week... but despite that I have to say the 100 Club gig was really exciting. The current line up are not really my idea of a classic Fall line up but they were blistering. Contrary to what he looked like, I think he was less pissed and in really good voice (relatively, natch) and he was laughing a lot. The bit where his gf came on stage and took over vocals for the first time - while his nibs was still growling away from the dressing room - was absolutely thrilling. And if that was the last time I ever get to see The Fall - and I fear it may be - I'm going out as I came in, in a flurry of confusion, thinking, 'What the fuck is going on here at all...' And Mr Pharmacist live one more time.

The new album really doesn't do it for me though.

it's a shame they rip off In Between Days on one of the more intriguingly-produced tracks

basically if this album was just the three long tracks plus 'gibbus gibson' and maybe 'second house now' it'd be one hell of a great EP

yep its not good recent fall. and i'll forgive them a lot... but most of this is just very weak musically. morrissey's backing band level of weak unimaginativeness.

Wings
Smile
A Figure Walks Behind You
No Bulbs
CREEP

are all great individually

The new album is strange and inscrutable. Agreed they are really in some weird realm of...what kind of music is this? I'm not even sure anymore. Of course, in six months I'll be tapping my toe to it...

I repeat

COUPLES VS JOBLESS MID 30'S

It's quite metal that one

recently learned that "popcorn double feature" off of Extricate is, like Black Monk Theme, a cover……the writer Scott English did "brandy" and "Bend me shape me"… listening to earlier versions from the Searchers and someone named Tim Wilde was more or less psychedelic… like the title "popcorn double feature" as well as the lyrics seemed none more MES when I heard the tune first in 1995, but now they indeed seem a bit too linear and on the nose…but even given the tendency to like the first version you've heard of whatever it might be, the Fall's arrangement, particularly the intro (are those synth strings?) is much more dramatic and portentous…

I am going to one of the baby's alright shows…only saw him at Coney Island High in 1998, an indifferent show at which he had a shiner he got from whoever it was that struck back from the infamous Brownies show a few days prior…

pretty sure that was Karl Burns

I'm glad they've dropped the "one obscure cover per album" schtick tbh, but I love "Popcorn Double Feature"

Don't want to alarm people further but he was supposed to be appearing at a Wyndham Lewis thingummabob at the Imperial War Museum(!) in M/cr tonight but has withdrawn due to ill health.

The one and only time I ever saw this band live (in the mid '90s) was tense and confusing - I still haven't come close to watching any band that gave off such weird, intense vibes as that band did at that time.

I saw this gig w/Brix on the Middle Class Revolt tour:

Thursday, 22 September 1994 La Luna, Portland, Oregon

M5 / Behind the Counter / 15 Ways / Reckoning / Ladybird (Green Grass) / Mere Pseud Mag Ed / Free Range / Lost in Music / Bill Is Dead / Glam Racket / Hey! Student (Brix on vocals) / Surmount All Obstacles / Life Just Bounces / Deadbeat Descendent / L.A.

solid show, nothing transcendent iirc but S Hanley killed it on bass and Brix was ferocious

I've only seen them once. 2003 at the Roisin Dubh in Galway. They were touring the "Country on the click" album. Great gig even if I wasnt familiar with the album at that point. They did play "Spoilt Victorian Child" though and MES came on stage 5 minutes into the set with a big LIDL bag.

I had the chance to see them at Electric Picnic '09 but I had slept it out

Sleeve I saw the Seattle show of that tour. Had no idea brix had rejoined and flipped the fuck out when she walked onstage.

Also saw TNSG, Fall Heads Roll (more than once) and RPTLC tours. Wish to god I had clearer memories of the TNSG show at the Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis. I was only 15 and I knew the previous album but didn't have TNSG yet.

Unfortunately, Brix's second stint with The Fall was nowhere as good as her first stint... they really seemed to be unravelling spectacularly in the '90s. There's this whole period from Craig Scanlon getting sacked to the last stand of Karl Burns and Steve Hanley at Brownies - including the final farewell of Brix - which must serve as one of the worst periods in The Fall's history, if not the worst. These were people who were specracularly firing on all cylinders in 1985-1986 to awesome effect.

*spectacularly

so wrong

Cerebral Caustic is solid, Light User Syndrome is superb, Levitate is very good. I'll give you spottiness from late '98 until The Unutterable, but that's only a few years.

but hey, feel free to ignore this great music, your loss

I like The Frenz Experiment and I Am Kurious Oranj, and a few tracks from the early '90s, but I don't go back to that stuff as often as I do the stuff from the beginning up to 1986.

I find everything from Cerebral Caustic up to Levitate to be quite weak.

There's been some great stuff from The Unutterable onwards, and some not-so-great stuff, but I feel like all the Fall I really need is on their first 9 albums or so. 11 at a push, maybe.

Love the 2nd Brix run...Light User Syndrome has one of my favorite Fall songs "He Pep!" with an all time lyric from MES

"I believe there's a new drug out.
It's called speed I wrote a song about it
Conceptually a la Bowie.
But it's been lost in the bowels of the record company
By our manager
So instead our new 45 is 'Girlies' "

"I am Kurious Oranj" is superb

I saw this gig w/Brix on the Middle Class Revolt tour:

Thursday, 22 September 1994 La Luna, Portland, Oregon

M5 / Behind the Counter / 15 Ways / Reckoning / Ladybird (Green Grass) / Mere Pseud Mag Ed / Free Range / Lost in Music / Bill Is Dead / Glam Racket / Hey! Student (Brix on vocals) / Surmount All Obstacles / Life Just Bounces / Deadbeat Descendent / L.A.

solid show, nothing transcendent iirc but S Hanley killed it on bass and Brix was ferocious

― sleeve, Wednesday, 2 August 2017 18:08 (one hour ago) Permalink

I was at that show too! Your recollection is spot on.

For some reason I imprinted early on The Infotainment Scan and won't be budged. I've always been bemoaning that I've never been able to see them because the band gets sacked before getting to Los Angeles. Now, I doubt that I'll ever get a chance anywhere.

I am Kurious Oranj is one of my least favourite Fall albums but I am a weirdo who quite likes Are You Are Missing Winner so

My appreciation of The Infotainment Scan has grown and grown with each decade, now it's on my shortlist of fall faves and is my favorite example of 'Synth fall'

Infotainment Scam is great ("Lost in Music" seems an insane tune for the Fall, but hearing it it just makes complete sense). For a band with such a huge discog there are very, very few let downs for me. The Fall are the only band where even the records I don't dig make me feel it is my fault, not theirs, for I've not found the way in yet.

After admiring these guys for years I just bought a shit ton of Fall albums in sales. Kinda wading slowly into them, just kinda imagine that it'll take years to listen to and absorb everything, and I'm fine with that. (In the meantime? I'll just buy more Fall records.)

Best approach :)

yeah, just let it all sink in

In the last few years, The Fall have went from a band that I love but only go to when I'm in the "mood" to "why the fuck aren't I listening to The Fall right now?"

I like LBI's statement that it's my fault as a listener if there's a Fall LP I don't get it. Very John Peelesque

^^

In a way The Infotainment Scan is the last of their really pastoral records post-Brix. I think Code: Selfish is the best of those.

why are people grudgeful here?

how old are the stars, really?

http://www.anothermanmag.com/life-culture/9967/post-punk-legend-mark-e-smith-s-guide-to-longevity

“I’ve been poorly since Christmas, so I’ve been actually sitting down and watching bits of music on telly,” he reveals.

That's confirmation there's something seriously wrong, eight months where even he'd describe himself as ill and (reading between the lines) mainly housebound.

plenty to go through in thread since last posted with promise of posts on death and office culture, but just popping in to say i do like the line

“Homosapien, electric, selectin’ ya”

in fol de rol.

it’s the lyrical equivalent of those draughtsmen and women who can convey emotion and atmosphere with just a few pencil lines*. smith has always had the ability to imply entire worlds, corollaries and satiric or fantastic extensions of this one, in such lines.

Also:
We have no residents!
We have no reservation!
We have no pre-book!
I CRAVE DRAMA!
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII...
CRAVE DRAMA!
Victoria Train Station Massacre
We have no.... [vocal tape goes into reverse]

is rather wonderful as well.

*i’m thinking hogarth’s famous pikeman exiting a room, comprising three pencil strokes.

or wyndham lewis’ beautiful line portrait of his wife: http://pin.it/HEfxcQg (angry wyndham lewis so much of a bore compared to the artist (and writer in places) of beauty.

another one of my favourite examples of dread or drama flicked off in surreal collocations or collages of words being the opening line of Serum: “you can do what you want, Dear Barlow, as long as you got serum” before the song spirals into a feverish nightmare of endless recursion (“101-uh-POINT ONE”)” turning by the end into “101.101.101”.

The otherwise not particularly distinguished Taurig has the amusingly incomprehensible sinister dream whispering throughout over the thud-click of the electric backing, the only distinguishable line being the very first words - “He bought a watch...”

also Second House Now seems to be about an ambitious career ghost deciding to get a second home in the big city (“my image/mirage: black and white, apparition like!”)

All these names for woodlice sound like Fall songs:

http://conorhoughton.tumblr.com/post/35031117866/this-evening-the-twitter-celebrity-mooseallain

BANANA!

Names for Woodlice Sound should be the next Fall album.

Woodlice Sound
Get ovah!
Reputation surge, for skint taxon'y major

"Fol De Rol", "Brillo De Facto", "O! Zztrrk Man" (really compelling in that wtf-is-this way) and "Groundsboy" are my picks from the new album. Damned if I can understand most of the lyrics, though.

Fizzles should write a book on Fall lyrics. He always has an intriguing take

Fizzles can write a book on anything and I'm there with my wallet out

otm

irish. james murphy is their chief

His dreamgirl sings adverts for the Weetabix

Link?

"the war against intelligence"*

* “The phrase ‘pre-cog’ comes from having the ability to see into the future – pre-cognition. I’ve always felt this. Countless times I’ve written something or said something and it’s manifested in reality. I’m not talking standard coincidence. It’s more than that, something slightly more sinister . . .”

Kid passing by kitchen while I'm playing the Fall: "This music is bad."

Kid five minutes later: Dancing to "Cruiser's Creek."

I recently listened to all 57 CDs I own by The Fall, ask me anything

the October 1998 Peel Session is shockingly bad, a real nadir

The Unutterable and COTC were still great

"9 Out Of 10" is a great way to end a career

the October 1998 Peel Session is shockingly bad, a real nadir

#3, #4, #5 #6, #11, #12 and #19 are all candidates,

but it's #22 for me.

It came after the group had exploded in America, amidst uncertainty about both The Fall's future and the quality of what they would produce. The session that The Fall came up with - #22 - to announce their return was remarkable for this reason alone.

However, it was exceptional in other ways. It was incredibly raw sounding, as Peel said at the time it was like they had gone back to a Dragnet sound. Smith has never recorded sourer more rancorous vocals; the incredulous stuttering anger of Bound Soul, the impenetrable pained howling on Antidotes, the thin misanthropic nihilism of the Saints cover This Perfect Day, and the deranged Shake Off, the lyrics of which sound like they're being heard through a fever.

The black void behind the music is palpable, a feeling increased by the way Smith's pre and post tune instructions are left in - you are aware of the alchemy of The Fall, the something out of nothing, the something strange out of the perfectly ordinary. It's a dreadful, sinister, corruscating session and sounds utterly timeless so primitive is it.

It has the characteristics of the best Fall - sparse and dense at the same time, detailed but primal, mundane and magical - and it has them in

Not since early versions of The Hip Priest has music sounded less like music and more like invocation, incantation and exorcism - 'bad unafeared art'.

I remembering listening to it through headphones as it was broadcast - I still think that's the best way to listen to it - the hairs on the back of neck bristling with the febrile excitement that it invoked, terrifyingly reminded of the statement of intent from Fantastic Life -

Ours is not to look back, ours is to continue the craft.

― Abbe Black Tentacle (GamalielRatsey), Wednesday, 25 February 2009 13:20 (twelve years ago) bookmarkflaglink

you are extremely wrong

it is the worst thing I have ever heard them do by a wide margin

that I specifically remembered how bad it was after 57 CDs should tell you something

"Repetition" -- the blueprint for the Fall and the Universe.

― Jack Cole, Tuesday, June 25, 2002 5:00 PM (nineteen years ago)

thought the Bingo-Master's Break-Out! single from 1978, with Psycho Mafia, Bingo Master, and Repetition was great

liked The Unutterable, also Von Südenfed's Tromatic Reflexxions

‘Tis the season: https://nealmarkowski.bandcamp.com/album/hex-mas-enduction-hour

Sleeve, which 90s albums did you find the most consistent?

Shift-Work is my fave, Extricate a close second, Light User Syndrome 3rd, then probably Code Selfish > Infotainment > Levitate = Middle Class Revolt = Cerebral Caustic

27 Points is a lot of fun as well because of Brix involvement, same with the era's Peel sessions (that Glam-Racket/Star <3)

I note also that Shift-Work is the only one with the violin player, which may explain why I adore its idiosyncratic sound

Marshall Suite would also be in that last group altho the high points are really high

e.g. "The Crying Marshall" which is just unbelievably great

Wasn’t that Perl Session after he had the fight with his band and beat up his girlfriend in New York?

yep, and it shows. that was in April.

'his girlfriend' is no way to refer to Julia Nagle, architect of their sound during my preferred period for the band (Levitate through Unutterable) and my clear favourite 'other' Fall member

also, *I* am extremely wrong? I was simply presenting another user's opinion, one which has stayed with me through the years, as counterpoint to your own

The Crying Marshall is indeed superb, the Nagle era is noticeable for each album having a monster-banger dance remix on it (4 1/2 Inch, TCM, Serum)

I note also that Shift-Work is the only one with the violin player

on Extricate too!

Code Selfish and Levitate are my favorite 90s fall, followed by Infotainment Scan

Disc 1 of A World Bewitched is ridiculously essential as well

damn, haven't been watching the Fall discography since MES' death, but I count 24 live sets plus a 10 show/11 CD set released since 2018? any recommendations from that flood?

The 1982 box is great stuff
I’m not sure about all the other live releases, some of them have certainly looked pretty half assed. Clitheroe Castle is a great concert but shitty sound

There's some excitement on the Fall Forum about two recently discovered archival recordings: the full Electric Circus gig (along with all the other bands' EC gigs recorded by Virgin), as well as what's purportedly the first or second Fall gig, recorded to a reel-to-reel.

yeah I would avoid the live cash-ins, except for the St. Helens 1981 set on Castle Face which iirc is the only legit one?m also very good.

have been spending some time with middle-class revolt recently. pretty unloved album i gather but i saw them around that time and thought it was really great - this very gig in fact

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rx2Y956Oq0

reckoning, m5, hey student, 15 ways, behind the counter - they’re pretty good! maybe bad fall songs? I dunno i am no fall scholar clearly

(I also saw them sometime in the 2010s and thought it was pretty awful)

Always and forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzNe1NeFzRE

I defy Anyone (that’s Anyone) who hates, or is indifferent, or the rest of us, yeah?, to not acknowledge that this is brilliant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIZ7AhqflYM

Never liked "No Bulbs" much and that long version has always tested my patience (though Wonderful and Frightening is one of my favorite Fall albums).

Oh the long version is one of my favorite tracks evah!!

The extra long No Bulbs is the Fall’s own Marquee Moon

Wow

have been spending some time with middle-class revolt recently. pretty unloved album i gather but i saw them around that time and thought it was really great - this very gig in fact

📹

reckoning, m5, hey student, 15 ways, behind the counter - they’re pretty good! maybe bad fall songs? I dunno i am no fall scholar clearly

(I also saw them sometime in the 2010s and thought it was pretty awful)

I'd say MES had already gotten pretty personal on the Fontana albums (Bill Is Dead, Edinburgh Man).

MCR is a weird one in that about half of it is really good, or at least fun, but as a whole it just kind of drags. Infotainment is one of the most consistently excellent Fall albums, but it almost goes down too smooth. (Their lone top 10 album!)

I think I agree with that, I don't dislike MCR by any means but it's uneven

that live version of "War" from the Phoenix set linked above is really good

I always took Bill is Dead as kind of ironic and, due to the unavailability of the other Fontana albums in the uUS never heard Edinburgh Man until years later— and I didn’t even know until he’d died that he had relocated there briefly.

Is this the best Fall thread?

Just found this footage of them playing Beefheart's "Dropout Boogie" in 2015 and had to share.

Youtube link - track starts around 28:30 if the timing doesn't work.

No look back bores
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhYlI_J33X8

This was posted to youtube 18 months ago but I just came across it yesterday (and I don't think it was ever posted here)...

Someone won an eBay lot and in it found the original 16mm film which was used to film the Totally Wired live video on Perverted by Language Bis VHS and subsequent low res Cherry Red reissues on DVD/Youtube. The original video cut between this film camera and a second camera running videotape, and the result was transferred to VHS in the early 1980s so remained limited by that technology. This person scanned the silent film in 4k and synced it with the audio from A Part Of America Therein and it looks/sounds amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trXegBAZ8_g

omfg

that's actually my fave version of the song, too

Yeah that's fantastic.

Dang!

A project I have on the eternal back-burner is a two-hour chronological collage of The Fall and this is obviously a clip that's getting included in full (Big New Prinz on The Other Side of Midnight is another) - seems bizarre to me that the "official" version of Totally Wired doesn't have "you don't have to be strange to be strangled"

thank you!!

just heard a great Fall tune I never heard before - "Hey! Luciani"...gotta be one of their catchiest songs

in other news, here's one of my favorite Fall lyrics: "Everybody's talkin bout/the workin man/but nobody's talking bout/uh-rollin Dan

It’s a cover, but did he improv that line? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc8S3-voaj8

no I think it's a straight cover

xp to frogbs yeah that's a nice one, other stuff on Bend Sinister and Frenz Experiment is similar, or you could just go for this:
https://www.discogs.com/release/1958966-The-Fall-458489-A-Sides

haahahaha! sorry Mark! it's such a funny line!! well, coming out of his mouth it is

and yes that's where I heard the song...just found the comp and I don't own any Fall so I figured it's a start. it was one of the few tracks I didn't know and maybe my favorite on the compilation now

it was single-only, like a bunch of those tracks, not on an LP

or not on a proper UK LP anyway, some US versions had added singles tracks

I thought I'd start from album one ("Live at the Witch Trials") and continue from there.

Onto 2: Dragnet. Surprised by "Dice Man", that's a definite tune there!

make sure you get the Early Years comp that covers 1977-1979, it's all non album stuff (except for "Dice Man", lol), imo better than the actual albums

^^

Got to compliment on MES on the decision to cover "Rollin' Dany", love that song.

xps Yeah went back to that Early Years comp recently and it's fantastic.

Oh, I got a whole bunch of singles back then, think I'm sorted for those 'early' things. But, recently I comped the cd albums and I've got most of the cd versions of the albums, maybe missing around five. So, if I get up to "Middle Class Revolt" I'll have to buy one.

The cog sinister The Early Singles cd is even more handy, takes you through the zenith Kamera sides