Week 07: 01/10/81 - 22/06/1982

Wigan Soul Scene! In The Fall lyrics book there's a Wigan Soul Poem which is actually quite lovely. Week 7 of The Fall project and it's a first: the first playlist which stretched beyond the length of my commute. 5 Hours 1 Minute. As such the music's been a little hard to digest.

Anyway: Lie Dream of a Casino Soul / Fantastic Life - I love the cover, the single doesn't really do it for me. Lie Dream is okay, better live but Fantastic Life drags a little. The two live outtakes: Session Muscian which I kind of like, it's raucous and rolling. I'm Into CB / Stars on 45 which is fun but ultimately poor recording lets it down.

Then some live tracks from Hip Priest and Kamarads. I had this way before I got Hex Enduction (that LP was pretty hard to get hold of back in the day). As such I knew these four tracks like the back of my hand: A Shimmering Who Makes The Nazis, a punctual Just Step Sideways. And then the bestest version of Jawbone ever - all angular and Mark sounds like he's singing through a rag. A non-Marc Riley Harmony and on the line "The Air Rifle lets out a mis-placed shot" the drummer hits a cymbal. Boof!

And then the worst of the week: And This Day. The live version is 15 minutes of that annoying riff over and over - they seemed to really like this song even though it was way too long and too much for me.

Which leads into Hex iteself. I never really got on with this album - a lot of it either sounds too polished or too throwaway. There's great moments on it but to me, with the build up it really sounds like the band are exhausted and just going through the motions. The Classical is a great opener, and Jawbone remains one of their best songs for me. Hip Priest is, of course, the Fall and this is probably the best version all tension and weirdness. Fortress is throwaway for me, from the silly opener - Deer Park is great but again, better live. Mere Pseud Mag is almost punk by the numbers (again better live). Winter is severly tedious and why it stretches over two tracks is beyond me. Sideways and Nazi's were better elsewhere. Iceland is the real standout - recorded in Iceland and largely improvised  it demonstrates that the band could really play. We won't talk about the studio And This Day.

A one-off(?) live thing - "Town Called Scrappy"; "I don't like Maggie", and then into Detective Instinct. I love this tune so much, that even a shitty audience recording of it does it for me. I'll declare my love more openly for it next week. And a live version of Wings with radically up beat music - glad that they put the work into improving this.

Look Know is all Marc Riley: bass and droning. I'm into CB is a little gem, Mark once again capturing the weirdness of English subcultures and making them out to be what we know them to be: slightly dangerous. I've never had a job; never been near a lorry.

Some other live stuff: Tempo House a little early which is a great live track and a functional verison of CB.

And then one of the weirdestly compelling live albums they did: Part of America 1981 - I adore the cover picture of the band in Philly. The US is split into the North and the South with SF being in the South. The two Chicago recordings are some of the best they've ever been. From the massively american intro - into the NWRA and the band are blazing. Hip Priest is equally as good, and Totally Wired is always a solid live song. Lie Dream is okay, and then Cash n Carry starts to drag. And then Older Lover, missing the mark of the Slates version, Deer Park's sounded better. And Winter - why do this live?

And more Live stuff keeps coming:Jazzed Up Punk Shit which is a little like Detective Instinct. AND THIS DAY AGAIN. And then Fall live in Germany, tin recording, great performance. A 12 minute NWRA is a killer, and tinny Your Heart Out really works. They do City Hobgoblins which is great and they close with Fantastic Life. Five Hours is a long time in the life of the Fall

Week 06: 10/01/81 - 01/10/81

And now onto week 6: The Fall project has a serious problem. Which is simply that thanks to an influx of low quality audience recorded live shows, the playlists are getting longer and longer. So this week was a manageable 3 hours 4 minutes, week 7 has stepped up to a 5 hour behemoth. Ah well, I've made my bed. This week I caught up with three tracks: Brand New Cadillac, My Condition and Pop Stickers (78-79). The first two are typical for the time, the latter is a weird one, a throwaway bunch of words that would become choc stock.

And then straight into the 80s and more live stuff. Cary Grants wedding (trad), Totally Wired (always sounds the same to me) and then a cracking version of the NWRA with a super buzzy synth. For a 9/10 minute song it really shines live. Then a version of Totally Wired recorded up the road in Berkley.

And then into a full show - 1981 Glasgow. They open with a weirdo version of Blob 59 (maybe). The show is okay quality wise - a bit thick in the mix but there's a piercing version of Jawbone and they even do Printhead which is cracking. And Middle Mass, which should not work live but totally does - it's all about Marc Riley according to the bible. I think it's one of my favourite Fall songs, the lyrics are rich and the music is rough.

Peel Sessions of Mass, Lie Dream, Hip Priest (first time round) and the wondrous CnC Hassle Schmuck. The latter is the standout Fall peel session for me (so far) - they start of doing CnC mithering, and then up the tempo when they learn that Arthur Askey has just been shot. Then it's straight up rockabilly - a great tune.

Then Slates, a weirdo little 10" which they recorded to avoid the charts. I had the US version, with it's "Five Dollars Only - U Skinny Rats". I love the cover, and the way that Prole Art Threat is written as a play. The image on the cover bemused me for years - I only had the small version on the Slates/America CD - it always looked like a weird goat character. Only when I got the 10" did I realise it was the band but the image was rotated.

Slates is The Fall of course - 6 tracks capturing the essence of the band. From the aforementioned Riley bashing Middle Mass, the mysterious Older Lover - right to the punk blast of Prole Art Threat. Slates, Slags really works when it shouldn't and then Leave the Capitol, signalling the end of their relationship with Rough Trade.

Then some scrabbly live tracks - Session Musician, and a great Middle Mass version called Middle Mass Explanation with Mark rambling on about nothing in particular. They do Container Drivers, Session Musician and then another blast from the past: Your Heart Out which sounds great.

A second peel session - they were clearly on a roll at this point. And it's all gone a bit HEX. Deer Park, my second favourite track from that LP: "In an off-licence I rubbed up with some oiks, who threw some change on the Asian counter and asked politely if I could covet two lagers" surely one of the best lines. Look, Know I don't like so much and Winter I always found a little pointless. Then a super tinny version of Who Makes the Nazi's. All the pieces were in place for Hex.

And to close it all off there's a live version of Deer Park, as good as the session version, and then a medley of a bunch of random things named: I'm into CB (stars on 45). There's another version of this lurking over the hill.

So The Fall continues - it's difficult to realise that this was one of their most productive and expansive periods, and so the volume of output has increased dramatically. Slates remains one of their best releases but it feels too small to be considered an album and too long to be a single. I guess they succeeded then.

Week 5: 21/04/1980 - 10/01/81

And so to the fifth week, and the Fall really hitting their stride. And what is probably one of their most productive periods. 3 Hours and 6 Minutes of the Fall. Overlong for my commute but I worked around it.

And the first live album: Totale's Turns (It's now or never). The dazzling array of northern towns exclaimed on the cover. Tracks taken from all over and they're on good form. From the Intro "We are northern white crap that talks back" through a blazing Rowche Rumble into a repetitious version of Spector vs. Rector (the second half). The sound quality is a blessed relief after those multiple audience recordings that I've been putting up with. Two "studio" tracks: New Puritan in a kind of demo form and the very pop like "That Man". I once made a present for my good friend Rob Talbot which featured the lyrics to That Man, alongside some random bits of crap stuck to a malteasers box. Simpler times. The closing No Xmas for John Quays is relentless and catches Mark at the height of his "complaining about everything" phase: "Will you fucking get it together instead of showing off" being my favourite turns of phrase. Then a couple of singles: Elastic Man being straight up rockabilly, City Hobgoblins on the flipside bringing weirdness. And Totally Wired which was their first smash. I don't really like it, I find it a little simplistic - needs more obliqueness. The other side is weird - all bits of live records interspersed with a genuine song.

And then the most joyous of rarities - I heard this first as a secret track on the Backdrop CD, but the Castle Grotesque found the full tape. A 1981 Mark Smith talking about the music press, it's as weird and confusing as I always imagined it would be. "Why don't you go into your local record dealer and ask him why he's such a dick". It's largely comprehensible until the end where he says "I'm changing into R Totale 17 and then goes on about nonsense". Truly one in a million.

A swift superb Peel session of Container Drivers / Jawbone / New Puritan and New Face in Hell. Jawbone and the Air Rifle is one of the first songs where I really started to realise that the Fall were pretty special: A song about some guy roaming the moors and then getting cursed by a jawbone cacked in muck. It's comprehensible and magical with Mark painting the scene beautifully. New Puritan is more poppy than the version on Totale's Turns.

And then Grotesque - the canonical Fall album, from start to finish no filler, all angular and grotesque. This, above any other record, I've probably listened to more times than I can care to remember. It's still wondrous: visceral and necessary, not a note out of place, that terrifying cover painted by Mark's sister. Like all great records it's really short and over before you realise it's begun. So much to say but it's worth just listening to it: "The lower class, want brass, bad chests, scrounge fags, The clever ones tend to emigrate" in English Scheme, The meandering C 'n' C Mithering: "Like Faust with beards, hydrochloric shaved, weirds". In The Park all about rude things, and the closing pair of Gramme Friday and The NWRA. The NWRA is The Fall - a 10 minute riff, with Mark going on about how the North could take over the UK. There's a real urgency to it: The DJ's had worsened since the rising, Elaborating on Nothing and praising the track with words they could hardly pronounce, in telephone voices. This was the sound of my youth, I held onto my copy of this CD, despite getting the record and the newer CD. There's a perfection to the record like no other from the picture of the band, presumably sitting in a WMC, on the back all yellow and nasty. Whilst it's not my favourite Fall record (that's still to come), it will always be a part of me: This is what a bunch of unlikely's from Salford can do when they put their minds to it.

And to round it off, a true rarity: The Fall Live. Apparently the 1980 gig at Acklam Hall was "legendary", though in context it's probably better described as "adequate". Not to say it's not bad - a good mix of tracks from the time. They open with a slow Middle Mass, which is a great song. They do a bunch of stuff from Grotesque and the sound quality is good. More enjoyable is to read the original track listing, which is a bunch of half heard titles and made up nonsense. They play Prole Art Threat and it sounds like it's the first time they played it: Mark screams "PINK PRESS THREAT!" and then they stutter into the slowest version of it you've ever heard. Jawbone is as good as ever. And a curveball: In the Park?. They close with Impression of J Temperance - always go out on a winner Mark.

Week 04: 01/08/79 - 21/04/80

And to week 04, or Dragnet week. I never really had Dragnet at the time, I think I borrowed it from a friend in sixth form who I thought was the coolest because he had a beautiful vinyl copy of said record. I'm not sure I really got it at the time but now I think it's a masterpiece.

From the tinny high end of Witch Trials, to the dank dark sewer of Dragnet. Dragnet seeps with damp, the recording sound like it's in a cave and Mark mumbles his way through the record. And the songs are really good, the set as a whole is super coherent and, unlike Witch Trials, a bit of thought's gone into it and the order actually makes sense. The lyrics are blossoming and the music is coming together, dropping off the bits that were superfluous. Printhead chugs along in the punk/rockabilly style that was to become the Fall in later years. Your Heart Out is almost pop like, and bounces along. "Here's a joke, to cheer you up...,They have no anaesthetic, that joke's pathetic". The stand out for me is Flat of Angles - cheap tinny recording that spits and starts: Now you're trapped in Flat Of Angles! The Streets are full of mercenary eyes! It's stunning.

Then a couple of live shows from the Hip Priest series - both are audience recordings and the quality is not super great. The set list is pretty much dragnet and the quality of the band is not far off the upcoming Totale's Turns live record. Retford gets a treat in the form of a blazing version of No Xmas for John Quays, much tougher than the Totale's version, but with less band put downs (maybe Mark played it up for the record). There's also a bizarre version of Psycho Mafia with the words from different songs being shouted over the instrumental.

Then to the West Coast (or as it now is: Down South) to LA. Lots of audience talking on this one. The track listing is not much different. They do a decent Stepping Out, an 11 minute version of Spectre Vs Rector, and a bass heavy take on Muzerowi's Daughter. The audience asks "What do you think of this band?" to no reply.

And then, I think the first Fall 45 I bought - Fiery Jack. Mine came in the non-yellow sleeve straight from the heartland of Bristol Indie: Revolver Records. I don't really like the single but sentimentality rules. The lead track is kind of boring and for me doesn't really go anywhere. 2nd Dark Age is great - with the annoying organ back but not being annoying. Marc Riley singing "2nd Dark Age" over and over, in the only way he can. And then finally, a version of Psykick Dance Hall which I think is a little better recorded than the album version.