"People get ready, strip down your houses because it's the FALL TRACKS BALLOT ROLL- OUT!" - PART TWO The Tracks (Pre-wray)

99. Where's The Fuckin Taxi? Cunt Points: 0 Votes: 0 Number Ones: 0

http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/d9d9b57b82750645253daf382aba16c8?s=48
"Oops!"

50. Free Range Points: 98 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 0

49. Glam Racket Points: 102 Votes: 4 Number Ones: 0

Smith only 3rd in favourite fall members. That should royally piss him off

48=. Kurious Oranj Points: 106 Votes: 4 Number Ones: 0

48=. Hotel Bloedel Points: 106 Votes: 4 Number Ones: 0

xpost not as much as when he was langiushing behind Marc Riley, about halfway through the count...

46. Fortress/Deer Park Points: 109 Votes: 4 Number Ones: 0

Nice live version in Iceland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKJPEAmuaT4

45. Rebellious Jukebox Points: 110 Votes: 5 Number Ones: 1

44. City Hobgoblins Points: 112 Votes: 5 Number Ones: 0

43. Bremen Nacht Points: 112 Votes: 3 Number Ones: 1

um, tie-splitter = 'whichever has the most number ones, then the most votes'..

(It is now, anyway!)

42. Bonkers in Phoenix Points: 114 Votes: 4 Number Ones: 1

41. English Scheme Points: 117 Votes: 5 Number Ones: 0

Great song, though there are 4 or 5 tracks from Grotesque I would place higher. Similarly, there's a lot of Hex, nothing yet from Slates or Dragnet, and lots of singles still to place.

O look, there's my number 1. Smith breaches reality, strangles the rules, transcends the recording process, queues for a meat burger

I voted for BiP too. Glad to see it in the top 50.

Bonkers is my first to make it. Also: hell yeah Shanley!

It's also an incredibly poignant metaphor for his relationship with Brix

Wonder who else voted for Nagle, too...

40. Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers Points: 118 Votes: 5 Number Ones: 0

38=. Marquis Cha-Cha Points: 120 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 0

38=. LA Points: 120 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 0

I failed to vote for band members in my ballot, but c'mon people 0 votes for Dave Bush?

37. Guest Informant Points: 122 Votes: 5 Number Ones: 0

36. Middle Mass Points: 125 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 0

35. Smile Points: 127 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 1

34. Slates, Slags, Etc. Points: 131 Votes: 5 Number Ones: 1

Woah! Are you rolling them all out this morning?

Might get to half-way, then sttretch the rest out..

LA only 38? Had that pegged for top 10 :/

But still, lots of great tracks showing that didnt make my ballot :D

33. Impression of J. Temperence Points: 134 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 0

32. Tempo House Points: 144 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 0

Wow, Tempo House is too low! It came very very close to being my #1, but was instead my #2.

31. Blindness Points: 145 Votes: 7 Number Ones: 0

MES attempts to shut jools holland up (fails)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We_mND4HpTg

Wonder who else voted for Nagle, too...

Hello there! She makes that era wrong and impossible in all the best ways.

46. Fortress/Deer Park Points: 109 Votes: 4 Number Ones: 0

The transition here is my favorite moment in their discography (though "Deer Park" kind of lets it down imo) - condenses that emergent quality of Hex, something broken rearranging itself into working order.

34. Slates, Slags, Etc. Points: 131 Votes: 5 Number Ones: 1

This missed my academic male slag ballot but is a v. worthy number one vote.

"Blindness" is a great song I still haven't heard a definitive reading of; would actually say the same of "Sparta." Each version gets one thing right and fucks up something else. I have pretty complicated feelings of MES as a frontman post-Frenz; he's gotten places he couldn't have gone with the old persona, but a charitable reading of say, taking out his teeth (see: "Way Round") gets impossible in places, and makes Doran's picture of the "peak of his power decline" hard to ignore.

I was just thinking about Way Round; he really takes out his teeth. Thats freaking hilarious

Uh there shd be a q mark at the end of first sentence

30. Prole Art Threat Points: 147 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 0

29. Container Drivers Points: 152 Votes: 7 Number Ones: 0

28. Spectre Vs Rector Points: 153 Votes: 6 Number Ones: 0

27. Jawbone and the Air-Rifle Points: 158 Votes: 7 Number Ones: 0

26. Weather Report 2 Points: 158 Votes: 7 Number Ones: 1

Tune in tomorrow for some more, u skinny rats...

Whoa. How is my #1 (Slates, Slags) so lowwwwww?

Prole Art Threat too low!!! (Regrets not voting for it...)

Ah, the best song of 2010. Smith inverts mortality: now death fears him

dang, this is going way too fast. goodbye, large raft of fall songs, we hardly knew ye. voted for these:

38. LA - so fucking spooky, i could live for days on just an arpeggiator and delay pedal, mark heeding his own r-related dictate for once
32. Tempo House - first fall song i ever heard, live version on homestead's speed trials comp, was so baffled by the amazing lyrics, goddam the pedantic welsh
31. Blindness - guess i like the groovy ones, one of my favorite songs of the last 10 years, nothing to do w mark, only nu-fall song on my ballot
30. Prole Art Threat - PINK PRESS THREAT! unlike the others here, not actually a good song, a tonic nonetheless

Some pretty great stuff in the lower reaches. Sorry I didn't get around to submitting, a few of these would've been bumped up ('Free Range', 'Slates...', 'Container Drivers' all on my definites list on my drafted ballot, quite a few more on my longlist).

The Annotated Fall

Oh yay hurray, that v cool site has saved me the task of typing in the awesome ad-lib portion of the live in Iceland version of The Classical:

On live versions, variant lyrics often would appear at this point. One more or less typical example (from Austurbaejarbio, recorded in 1982): "Dear customer, prior to delivery, this fine Ford Kawasaki Excel Escort was given a thorough inspection by Fred here in the white coat...please note, um, the, um, coin-spots on the dashboard...please note the fuel exhaustion limit reader...please note the elephant house odor of the dashboard, and most importantly the axels and the hubs which are immune to snow, extreme heat, rain, hailstones, sleet, and HAIL! The Classical!"

Not evoked by transcription is the amazing phrasing but it's something like

PLEASE NOTE!
the FUEL...
EXHAUSTION...
LIMIT...
READER...
PLEASE NOTE!
the elephant...
HOUSE!
odor...

That same live album has a great variant on Look, Know:

HE
Was the first
To wear
an idiotic
JACKET
in the club...

Container Drivers and I'm Into CB were robbed

This Poll in Number One in my list of Polls by the way.

Also I think this is the type of band and catalog that you could do one of these every six months and come up with quite a different result. Can we do that?

Jeff W! 'Twas I. This was my somewhat unreconstructed response to hearing it for the first time ever:

Australians In Europe - Holy hell, so catchy! And there's a subtle chord-change. This IS the poppy post-Bend Sinister burbling and it's AWESOME. And wow, that vocal echo thing! Playing with content AND form here. I'd not expected something quite so righteously joyful! It's still heavy; the bass and drums ensure that. But it's also a romp, a blast, perhaps the blinding chords of the Ketamine Sun shining onto our damned forms. I can't quite explain how bizarre this song's alchemy is. OH SHIT! The power-chord middle section!!! What's happened to The Fall?! This is completely insane! And then the guitar builds beneath, the bass changes, and MES comes back in...it's maybe one of my favourite 5 Fall moments so far? Hahahahaha, this band NEVER fails to amaze me. WOW. This has rapidly become one of the best pop songs I've ever had the privilege to hear. And there's still over a minute left!!! It's all going a bit Complicated Game. I ain't complaining. FUCK. I have no more rational argument about this. Why isn't it automatically mentioned every time the Peel Sessions are brought up? Beautiful solo during the fade-out too. YES

Anyway, here's my ballot. Hurricane Edward was fucking ROBBED my friends! Go on, give it another listen, it's the end of time

Bonkers In Phoenix
Hurricane Edward
Winter
Weather Report 2
Hip Priest
Garden
Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers
New Puritan
Australians In Europe
4 1/2 Inch
Ol' Gang
Blindness
Octo Realm/Ketamine Sun
The Crying Marshall
Two Librans
Paintwork
Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot
Midwatch 1953
50 Year-Old Man
Eat Y'Self Fitter

I tend to go for the dare I say 'more avant-garde' sort of Fall song - things like Hit The North and Totally Wired may reach me eventually - certainly I'm not going to make a distinction between 'interesting Fall' and 'boring Fall' because it's all part of the same creative process, really

REALLY REGRET NOT VOTING FOR:

Mexico Wax Solvent
The Birmingham School Of Business School
Antidotes

i forgot to vote for "autralians", stupid considering i made room for most every other would-be pop hit

it does look like a whopping great pop anomaly in my ballot doesn't it. but it's an unbelievably intense, bizarre and plain fucken rocknroll pop song, it's a righteous pop maelstrom

imago do you not fuck with Guest Informant, the other throat-shaker from that clutch of B sides?

Thanks for turning me onto that track, Aus in Eur, am listening now. It's great

would have to *gulp* hear...it...again? xp

btw you can add virtually every Levitate and Unutterable track I didn't vote for to the Regret list, especially Spencer Must Die, Levitate, Dr Buck's Letter, Devolute and Cyber Insekt

Had no time to comment

1 Wings
2 Kurious Oranj
3 Fortress/Deer Park
4 Leave the Capitol
5 Slates, Slags, Etc
6 The Classical
7 Lie Dream of A Casino Soul
8 Hey! Luciani
9 Look, Know
10 English Scheme
11 Your Heart Out
12 Jawbone and the Air Rifle
13 Blood outta stone
14 C'n'C Mithering
15 US 80s-90S
16 The man whose head expanded
17 Athlete Cured
18 Middle Mass
19 Who makes the nazis
20 Xmas with Simon

Could be v different, in fact looking now am surprised at some of my low votes.

20 Xmas with Simon

you rule

re: levitate, I wanted to vote for both Eve and Hurricane Ed, but in the end only Eve made the cut, mostly for the breathtaking transition to the hallucinatory 'if only the shards. could relocate. back. in place.' moment

Feeling da croupier's ballot for "Old White Train" and especially, uh, "Words of Expectation."

1 Words Of Expectation
2 Hotel Bloedel
3 Gut Of The Quantifier
4 I Feel Voxish
5 Job Search
6 And This Day
7 Leave The Capitol
8 Impression Of J. Temperance
9 Weather Report 2
10 Room To Live
11 Y.F.O.C. - Slippy Floor
12 Prole Art Threat
13 New Puritan
14 Dr. Bucks' Letter
15 Paint-Work
16 City Hobgoblins
17 Big New Prinz
18 Service
19 Blindness
20 Spinetrak

Really, though, that whole long list just gives me a nice warm feeling inside. Favorite discoveries of poll research: "Bremen Nacht" and "4 1/2 Inch."

Updated Spotify link (w/ correct "Deer Park" placing) is here.

1. Bremen Nacht
2. Leave the Capitol
3. Frightened
4. Cruiser’s Creek
5. Hip Priest
6. Sing!Harpy
7. Container Drivers
8. New Face In Hell
9. Repetition
10. Shift-Work
11. Don’t Call Me Darling
12. Feeling Numb
13. Telephone Thing
14. Ten Houses of Eve
15. Psykick Dancehall
16. No Bulbs
17. Totally wired
18. Lost In Music
19. Eat Y’Self Fitter
20. 50 year old man

REGRET NOT VOTING FOR:

Contraflow
It’s a Curse

Thanks for the Spotify link.

I think you have two of the tracks as 'local' i.e. on your laptop/whatever. (Paintwork and Cruisers Creek), which means 'we' can't access them.

Only 4 of these ended up in the top 20. Either I have really dopey taste in Fall songs or, as Hincklepicker suggested, this poll would come out vastly different every few months (or maybe both).
Looking over all the other votes, I could make a few completely different top 20s that I'd still like more than most other bands' music.
Whatta group!

1 Slates, Slages, Etc
2 New Big Prinz
3 Container Drivers
4 Frenz
5 Hit The North
6 Bill Is Dead
7 Bremen Nacht Alternative
8 Vixen
9 CnC Hassle Schmuck
10 The NWRA
11 Telephone Thing
12 Paint Work
13 Glam Racket
14 Kurious Oranj
15 The Chislers
16 Can Can Summer
17 Touch Sensitive
18 Victoria
19 Eat Yrself Fitter
20 Sparta 2XX

I think you have two of the tracks as 'local' i.e. on your laptop/whatever. (Paintwork and Cruisers Creek), which means 'we' can't access them.

Thanks, fixed it!

Looking over all the other votes, I could make a few completely different top 20s that I'd still like more than most other bands' music.
Whatta group!

OTM

me too

Everybody needs to give a good (re-)listen to "Before The Moon Falls":

01 Wings
02 Before The Moon Falls
03 Winter
04 The Man Whose Head Expanded
05 Take An Older Lover
06 Fantastic Life
07 Various TImes
08 Leave The Capitol
09 New Puritans
10 C'n'C-S Mithering
11 Gut Of The Quantifier
12 Hip Priest
13 Sparta FC
14 No Bulbs
15 Bill Is Dead
16 Who Makes The Nazis
17 Paintwork
18 Spinetrak
19 I'm Into C.B.!
20 Totally Wired

These are my selections wot didn't make it:

7. It's The New Thing
11. Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot
17. Flat of Angles
18. I Am Damo Suzuki
19. Disney's Dream Debased
20. Ludd Gang

Some not that far out of contention, I see. But I'm quite alone with my "It's the New Thing" luv.

I did this:

01. Smile
02. City Hobgoblins
03. Athlete Cured
04. Guest Informant
05. Gut of the Quantifier
06. Lay of the Land
07. 2x4
08. I Feel Voxish
09. Bremen Nacht (LP version)
10. Totally Wired
11. Frightened
12. The Steak Place
13. Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot
14. The Classical
15. The Man Whose Head Expanded
16. New Face In Hell
17. I Am Damo Suzuki
18. Shoulder Pads #1B
19. Riddler!
20. Bill Is Dead

..but really agonized over some of the tracks I left off.

Also, NO ONE else voted for Shoulder Pads?!? What is wrong with you people etc.?

i know, i wrestled w myself over that one. since i tried to skew pop, i should have made room. it really is a favorite. hey! luciani too. tbh, i cruelly shortchanged bend sinister/domesday payoff, my real first fall LP.

New Face in Hell
How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'
Rowche Rumble
Leave the Capitol
Flat of Angles
Psykick Dancehall
LA
An Older Lover etc.
Container Drivers
Jawbone and the Air-Rifle
Lie Dream Of a Casino Soul
Bonkers in Phoenix
4 1/2 Inch
Before the Moon Falls
Iceland
Wings
Fiery Jack
Hurricane Edward
Winter
Kicker Conspiracy

Total points by year:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b356/olem/ilx_The_Fall_points_by_year_zps006e9f47.png

Dates generally assigned by first appearance of studio version on album or single, or of live album release when no studio version exists. Exceptions/notes:
-- "Blindness", "Job Search": 2004 Peel session broadcast date used.
-- "Stepping Out": Taken as the 1978 Live at the Electric Circus track.
-- "Session Musician": Date of live recording (1981) used, rather than 2005 live album release.
-- "Antidotes": As the Peel session is specified, assigned to 1998 (date of broadcast) rather than 1999 (when it appeared on The Marshall Suite).
-- "Hot Cake": Taken as the 2010 album track, as the 2009 single track has a "Part 2" in the title.

That's pretty far from SD

"Container Drivers" and "Dr Faustus" also twice in list, the former should thus be pushed up to #21 if I calculate correctly.

Also "2 x 4".

Number of tracks per year:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b356/olem/ilx_The_Fall_count_by_year_zps5538bde3.png

Average score of each track by year:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b356/olem/ilx_The_Fall_avg_by_year_zps232c2459.png

where the hell is fizzles??

Good question. Might be under cosh at work?

feel like i haven't had time to sit in this thread.

I enjoyed glancing at every ballot and thinking 'yes, great ballot'. In other polls I think, 'no, come on, really?'; not here.

Thinking I should have done a post-90 or 95 ballot myself. I've enjoyed listening to that end more.

Funny how even a band as long-lived and multi-faceted as the Fall emerges with a huge emphasis on the early years.

That IS interesting.
Even though many (most?) of us have loads of time for much of their last 30 years, I guess when push comes to shove...

Most bands' golden 'early years' don't last as long as that though.

The longer the fall go on for, the longer time period the "early years" takes up.

^^^ well put

where the hell is fizzles??

― Flat Of NAGLs (sleeve), Thursday, May 2, 2013 4:42 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, don't fizzle out, this thread needs you

Forgot to thank Mark for taking on the mammoth task of a fall ballot.

fizzles has taken a pilgrimage to marcelo trotta's birthplace which he will desecrate with two sainsbury's shopping bags of his own excrement iirc

Having a "Fall" time...

Kinda look back bore