POO -- The Fall

Love the 2nd Brix run...Light User Syndrome has one of my favorite Fall songs "He Pep!" with an all time lyric from MES

"I believe there's a new drug out.
It's called speed I wrote a song about it
Conceptually a la Bowie.
But it's been lost in the bowels of the record company
By our manager
So instead our new 45 is 'Girlies' "

"I am Kurious Oranj" is superb

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

― sleeve, Wednesday, 2 August 2017 18:08 (one hour ago) Permalink

I was at that show too! Your recollection is spot on.

For some reason I imprinted early on The Infotainment Scan and won't be budged. I've always been bemoaning that I've never been able to see them because the band gets sacked before getting to Los Angeles. Now, I doubt that I'll ever get a chance anywhere.

I am Kurious Oranj is one of my least favourite Fall albums but I am a weirdo who quite likes Are You Are Missing Winner so

My appreciation of The Infotainment Scan has grown and grown with each decade, now it's on my shortlist of fall faves and is my favorite example of 'Synth fall'

Infotainment Scam is great ("Lost in Music" seems an insane tune for the Fall, but hearing it it just makes complete sense). For a band with such a huge discog there are very, very few let downs for me. The Fall are the only band where even the records I don't dig make me feel it is my fault, not theirs, for I've not found the way in yet.

After admiring these guys for years I just bought a shit ton of Fall albums in sales. Kinda wading slowly into them, just kinda imagine that it'll take years to listen to and absorb everything, and I'm fine with that. (In the meantime? I'll just buy more Fall records.)

Best approach :)

yeah, just let it all sink in

In the last few years, The Fall have went from a band that I love but only go to when I'm in the "mood" to "why the fuck aren't I listening to The Fall right now?"

I like LBI's statement that it's my fault as a listener if there's a Fall LP I don't get it. Very John Peelesque

^^

In a way The Infotainment Scan is the last of their really pastoral records post-Brix. I think Code: Selfish is the best of those.

why are people grudgeful here?

how old are the stars, really?

http://www.anothermanmag.com/life-culture/9967/post-punk-legend-mark-e-smith-s-guide-to-longevity

“I’ve been poorly since Christmas, so I’ve been actually sitting down and watching bits of music on telly,” he reveals.

That's confirmation there's something seriously wrong, eight months where even he'd describe himself as ill and (reading between the lines) mainly housebound.

plenty to go through in thread since last posted with promise of posts on death and office culture, but just popping in to say i do like the line

“Homosapien, electric, selectin’ ya”

in fol de rol.

it’s the lyrical equivalent of those draughtsmen and women who can convey emotion and atmosphere with just a few pencil lines*. smith has always had the ability to imply entire worlds, corollaries and satiric or fantastic extensions of this one, in such lines.

Also:
We have no residents!
We have no reservation!
We have no pre-book!
I CRAVE DRAMA!
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII...
CRAVE DRAMA!
Victoria Train Station Massacre
We have no.... [vocal tape goes into reverse]

is rather wonderful as well.

*i’m thinking hogarth’s famous pikeman exiting a room, comprising three pencil strokes.

or wyndham lewis’ beautiful line portrait of his wife: http://pin.it/HEfxcQg (angry wyndham lewis so much of a bore compared to the artist (and writer in places) of beauty.

another one of my favourite examples of dread or drama flicked off in surreal collocations or collages of words being the opening line of Serum: “you can do what you want, Dear Barlow, as long as you got serum” before the song spirals into a feverish nightmare of endless recursion (“101-uh-POINT ONE”)” turning by the end into “101.101.101”.

The otherwise not particularly distinguished Taurig has the amusingly incomprehensible sinister dream whispering throughout over the thud-click of the electric backing, the only distinguishable line being the very first words - “He bought a watch...”

also Second House Now seems to be about an ambitious career ghost deciding to get a second home in the big city (“my image/mirage: black and white, apparition like!”)

All these names for woodlice sound like Fall songs:

http://conorhoughton.tumblr.com/post/35031117866/this-evening-the-twitter-celebrity-mooseallain

BANANA!

Names for Woodlice Sound should be the next Fall album.

Woodlice Sound
Get ovah!
Reputation surge, for skint taxon'y major

"Fol De Rol", "Brillo De Facto", "O! Zztrrk Man" (really compelling in that wtf-is-this way) and "Groundsboy" are my picks from the new album. Damned if I can understand most of the lyrics, though.

Fizzles should write a book on Fall lyrics. He always has an intriguing take

Fizzles can write a book on anything and I'm there with my wallet out

otm

irish. james murphy is their chief

His dreamgirl sings adverts for the Weetabix

Link?

"the war against intelligence"*

* “The phrase ‘pre-cog’ comes from having the ability to see into the future – pre-cognition. I’ve always felt this. Countless times I’ve written something or said something and it’s manifested in reality. I’m not talking standard coincidence. It’s more than that, something slightly more sinister . . .”

Kid passing by kitchen while I'm playing the Fall: "This music is bad."

Kid five minutes later: Dancing to "Cruiser's Creek."

I recently listened to all 57 CDs I own by The Fall, ask me anything

the October 1998 Peel Session is shockingly bad, a real nadir

The Unutterable and COTC were still great

"9 Out Of 10" is a great way to end a career

the October 1998 Peel Session is shockingly bad, a real nadir

#3, #4, #5 #6, #11, #12 and #19 are all candidates,

but it's #22 for me.

It came after the group had exploded in America, amidst uncertainty about both The Fall's future and the quality of what they would produce. The session that The Fall came up with - #22 - to announce their return was remarkable for this reason alone.

However, it was exceptional in other ways. It was incredibly raw sounding, as Peel said at the time it was like they had gone back to a Dragnet sound. Smith has never recorded sourer more rancorous vocals; the incredulous stuttering anger of Bound Soul, the impenetrable pained howling on Antidotes, the thin misanthropic nihilism of the Saints cover This Perfect Day, and the deranged Shake Off, the lyrics of which sound like they're being heard through a fever.

The black void behind the music is palpable, a feeling increased by the way Smith's pre and post tune instructions are left in - you are aware of the alchemy of The Fall, the something out of nothing, the something strange out of the perfectly ordinary. It's a dreadful, sinister, corruscating session and sounds utterly timeless so primitive is it.

It has the characteristics of the best Fall - sparse and dense at the same time, detailed but primal, mundane and magical - and it has them in

Not since early versions of The Hip Priest has music sounded less like music and more like invocation, incantation and exorcism - 'bad unafeared art'.

I remembering listening to it through headphones as it was broadcast - I still think that's the best way to listen to it - the hairs on the back of neck bristling with the febrile excitement that it invoked, terrifyingly reminded of the statement of intent from Fantastic Life -

Ours is not to look back, ours is to continue the craft.

― Abbe Black Tentacle (GamalielRatsey), Wednesday, 25 February 2009 13:20 (twelve years ago) bookmarkflaglink

you are extremely wrong

it is the worst thing I have ever heard them do by a wide margin

that I specifically remembered how bad it was after 57 CDs should tell you something

"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