POO -- The Fall

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.