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.
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