Sometimes, in life, you're on the ropes, taken too many blows and about ready to give up. I realised last week that I didn't need to hear another live version of the standard Fall setlist poorly recorded ever again. This week was destined to be short, until I decided to include Mark's second spoken word album: Pander, Panda, Panzer!
And thank god I did, because if anything needed to remind me that The Fall are something totally special it's a 45 minute spoken word / cut up recording. It's so essential, so present and so now that it's like a punch of adrenalin in the Fall Project.
It's a weird one - small parts Blue Jam, small parts The Fall being read out by an old man but fully incredible. Mark muses for a bit: I was 10 years old when I was born, I was 20 when I died. Then it cuts away to a live recording of Mark reading Fall lyrics to a appreciative audience. He doesn't sound in the greatest form and for the first time he sounds old - the words don't sound the same anymore. It's initially jarring but then he gets into the groove and you realise that the Fall is not a journey between different sounds and different lyrics - it's a consistent story: the old blending in with the new. He tells a Foot and Mouth Joke:
Two cows in a field, one says to the other "what do you think about the mad cow disease, the foot and mouth", the other says "it don't affect me, I'm fucking duck". The joke was all around but Mark tells it mid-flow for no reason. God knows what it's like to have a conversation with him. He reads Idiot Joy Showland, and then later Lucifer over Lancashire. It's incredible - the delivery is near singing, the background is white noise. There is seriously no-one in the world who could pull this off. A total one off.
And then we're into Susan vs Youthclub - the sound of the time is a crunchy electro rock thing - I'm still reeling from Pander so I've no idea what this is all about. And then their second to last Peel Session. And it's a cracker. Sparta FC is cracking, "Come and then I'll show you, how I will change, when you give me, something to slaughter". It's probably great if you know about that there football but it's bristling and it's not like we've got the old Fall back but it's like the old Fall have grown up and are still making great songs. Then the second road-based song: Contraflow continues the pace: I HATE THE COUNTRYSIDE....SO MUCH. The band are in a groove. Then a weirdo cover of Mr Bloe, mixed into a new song - Green Eyed Loco Man. All very good.
And then a curve ball: Mere Pseud Mag, from back in the 80s. Mark doesn't revisit the past my arse. But my god this sounds as good as the original - he even remembers most of the words. I never was a big fan of this one but it's been giving a new lease of life. It seems that after trudging round the world playing the same bloody songs in the same bloody order, the Fall have been given a swift quick up the arse.
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