Why does anyone like the Fall?

nice to see that someone has added the lyrics from an unreleased fall song at the bottom of the comments on the quietus story though xp

MES is indestructible.

Pam in response to fans apparently giving her shit for singing some (all?) of "Bury" at the end of the gig

https://www.instagram.com/p/BagnvY3jkG8/?taken-by=pamela_vander

MES was always the epitome of healthy living. So surprising.

Fuck off

i wish i hadn't seen that footage.. :o. (On the last record, something his voice, made me think he's ill.) Let's hope he can keep going and crank out another 5 Fall albums before the inevitable curtain Falls.

nice to see a supportive Julia Nagle in the comments under that Instagram post

it's kind of weird how MES' exes tend to stay in the loop and continue to say nice things about him. maybe not that weird

I was wondering if that was she

Newcastle the other night:

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

He doesn't look great in that vid, but my god he sounds better than he has in yrs, and seems like from views from the heads on the Fall board that it was a great, heroic gig. He definitely seems like he wants out of that chair, which hopefully is a good sign.

2017 came for MES and he said go back, go back to your disease-control room

"seems like he wants out of that chair" counterpoint: he can't fuck with the amps in the chair

hahaha totally, it's the burning desire to fuck with his bandmates that will heal him

SepticSceptic16 hours ago

The man whose head expanded.

guilty lol here

Haha nooo

LOL that's plain wrong

btw, I saw Dave Swarbrick playing sitting in a wheelchair with a tube coming down his nose and an oxygen tank sitting beside him and he lived, and kept performing, for like 20 years after.

i mean, it's osteoporosis, right? what happens with osteoporosis if you don't treat it?

Has anyone mentioned the new cherry red compilations yet?

7cd set of all the singles, a sides and b sides. 3cd compilation of all the a sides.

It's been mentioned on one of the other million Fall threads.

It's also going on my Xmas list for sure.

Oh! The Fall SINGLES box set! OH! you guys.

Oh, that's a NEW fall thread, not one of the thousands I have already bookmarked...

As you were...

But props for the naming consistency.

Last night in Bristol and tonight in London both cancelled for MES health reasons :(

Very sad. Apparently he traveled to the Bristol gig against doctor's orders and was too ill to leave the hotel room. The band came out on stage and announced it a few minutes before they were scheduled to go on.

Lots of rumours similar to this on Twitter:

I’m sorry to say that I think tonight’s cancelled gig in Bristol, due to Mark E Smith’s ill health, may well be the end of The Fall. A “source close to the band” told me that “he’s hanging on by a thread”. As a Fall fan of 35 years, this has killed me. God bless The Mighty Fall.

— Sir Francis Drake (@cruiserscreek85) November 29, 2017

Almost seems as if he's determined to do a Tommy Cooper.

This blows

OK I 'm just gonna brace myself for this one, for some weird reason (probably the local friend-of-friends aspect)I think Fred Cole's death has made me simply accept that all of these artists I care about are gonna die real soon.

the absence of MES from this level will be something that will give me grinding dissonance for years and years

i feel dread

Jon I was thinking about you when I made that post, hugs

oh great pere ubu have just cancelled the rest of their tour and DT is in the hospital (serious but stable condition)

(the closest thing we have to a domestic Fall afaic. croaker behemoth please get better)

hugs sleeve

Fuck :(

xp and DT too?! :(

apparently so, read it on the visi fall forum just now

A Message to All, to All. From Mark E. Smith/The Fall group. As I, like Pr Rupert leave Bristol with my tail between my legs, I wish to give my great apologies to everybody. This idiotic idea to do both shows was purely my idea, against the advice of Pamela and The Fall group, agent & promoter. Hope to replace shows within 4 - 6 weeks. In the interim we have eight new songs ready to go and will try and let you hear a few before Christmas. From head patient to you, the patients. I love you all but cannot embrace you all, Mark E. Smith

UMS and I saw Ubu last week in Chicago and they were great and Thomas in particular was in great voice, but he did seem to be deflated physically.

MES...this line in particular really breaks my heart "This idiotic idea to do both shows was purely my idea, against the advice of Pamela and The Fall group, agent & promoter. "

I hope both of these characters get well soon.

I can't imagine MES talking like that, it's so far removed from his usual tone. What is the story behind this statement and are they actually going to plan more shows? All really odd and not entirely reassuring.

The Prince Rupert line is enough to convince me w/o a doubt it is a statement from the Group Field Commander ME Smith

It's legit.

He used to send out Christmas tidings but I think it's been a while...agreed that the unusual warmth of this one may not bode well.

Yeah, if someone was going to pretend to be MES, you know how it would sound-ah.

Yes, the ring of MES prose has always had quite a sweet intelligent nature to it. I like the 'head patient' line. (I do wish he'd written more prose, especially wrt that 'as-told-to' biography which lacked the sweetness and contained much of the latter-day tedium.)

The circumstances of the message are worrying though, I agree.

Been listening to the new album again, in part prompted by an imago tweet, and i've come to the conclusion it's v good. love the giant homeric cogs of fol-de-rol. still digesting and cogging couples v jobless.

on the bus the other day i had the conception of them as a psychic net or mesh (itself a fall image of course). this was an extension from what I thought when i saw them in manchester. You know the way a water filter in an office water dispenser captures all the dirt and ends up coated in a thick, black (and somewhat alarming) sludge? It's how i sort of perceived Smith at that gig. Looking like a thousand year old witch, bubonic, lank, sparse hair, sort of *leaning into* illness and death. A baffle for all the drugs and drink and strung-out psychic living of his life, so that the filth and sludge and mundane part of intoxication is caught in his body and organs. that he's done this for his musical and imaginative exploration.

i hope i don't romanticise here. it would be tempting to carry that analogy too far and say that he then delivered the purity of art, but that's bollocks (and a dangerous conception).

Because what The Fall do anyway is to focus on that sludge at the same time as the elation and strangeness. There is no *purifying* at work thank christ. The poor unfortunates of their early albums, like Grotesque, are laughable and insane and grotesque, but although there is a lot of crisp hate for pseuds and enfranchised crooks, there's a lot of sympathy there too.

grotesqueness is our *condition*. laughter and pity and mockery is the appropriate response to this condition. we are grotesque and absurd flesh and twisted out of shape character, we *are* the sludge, prey to megrims, paranoia, insanity and over and over again solitude, occupying a world of revenants, minatory and monitory governments, and governed by abstract, pointless numbers.

and of course they're such fun. This is an endlessly renewed observation, prompted this time by the IIIIIIIIIIIIII crave DRAMA! line in Victoria Station Massacre. It's delivered with such glee and exuberance at the terribleness of the person he's temporarily inhabiting with mocking mimicry.

On the way into work the other day, listening to fol-de-rol, with its keening guitar, and messy, phlegmy background, it occurred to me the same is the case for the fall's music as it is for mes. it acts as a sort of wind harp for the mess and substance, the mocking, spindly, frail guitar (so often in the 80s getting its riff from smith's central intonations - 'i work off the lyric'), and sludge of the world, with exuberant energy gained from this... *stuff* that they've caught in their net of music.

anyway, god bless the fall, and god bless smith.

i vant ar corman sludge hai choi

Massive promotional tour. Hemel Hempstead! East Retford!

http://thefall.org/gigography/image/79_dragnet_nmead.jpg

fuck west retford, honestly

sludge hai choi chase chase on indeed. lovely flyer. god, how fucking liberating and weird they must have been, in those tiny venues, creating a barbaric racket out of those rudimentary sounds, with that *boy* with so much stuff, so many thoughts, things, characters and words, in his head. brilliant.

yeah I tweeted about it but I'm extremely glad Chris prompted the trip to Chicago to see Pere Ubu.

Dave sat prior to the show folded into himself on a stool in the back corner by the merch booth, Deflated really is the only word, all his intimidating bulk is slack.

I went out for a smoke and realized I'd somehow misplaced my lighter, and literally the only person out smoking was Mr. Thomas himself, bent over a cane. I politely asked for a light which he politely handed over to me. I was momentarily tempted to say something but I imagine fan interaction is horrifying to him, and he looked so frail. I managed a thanks for the light and "take care"

he shakes and needs a cane to walk, but onstage seated on a stool, he was mesmerizing, whatever life force he has left goes into his voice and his stare and still theatrical hand gestures. the band right now is amazing actually.

but he looks like a dead man walking no doubt.

great posts you both

Yeah, heartbreaking. I can totally see David Thomas (who tbf has been sitting at concert for ages) looking so fragile, and yet when he's on stage, that force is gigantic.