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

"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