POO -- The Fall

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.

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