Week 31: 05/02/99 - 27/10/99

I Know, I Know, I Know, I Know, I Know, I Know....Touch Sensitive kicks off The Marshall Suite and it's still the best thing they've done in ages. AND THEN. F-Oldin' Money which is one of the best covers they've ever done. There's something totally fresh in the music now, an urgency and the loss of the usual suspects has meant that whilst the Fall have lost their signature sound, Mark's starting to work out who to make it work.

Shake-Off is almost like the Fall of old but modernised - Mark's mumbling about stuff but it's not to a relentless rockabilly beat but to something more polished.

Not to say that the Marshall Suite is a winner, it's a little up and down for me - it's more solid than albums previous but there's still something lacking. Might be Mark's lost his confidence a little or that he's not worked out the band yet. Antidotes outstays it's welcome a little. And Birthday Song falls into the Edinburgh Man type melancholy a little too easily.

Rounding off Marhsall Suite are odds and sods - A live version of Jet Boy which is a cover but I hated it. And a whole bunch of single B-Sides.

And then an XFM live concert. The bible goes nuts over this and I really don't know why. The sound quality is weirdly terrible - it sounds fine, but it's like the mix is all wrong and Mark's on this permanent echo and sounds a little out of it - the band play through Touch Sensitive even though he's either forgotten the words or got them all in the wrong place. And either he's dicking about with the guitars or someone's not ready but it's a little reaching at times. 10 Houses of Eve sounds great but the mix makes the whole thing a little muddy. Ah well. There's a shocker coming next week I know.

Week 30: 17/05/98 - 05/02/99

Approaching the Millennium and we find The Fall not necessarily in rude health. Health being the operative word here - Amy and I watched the BBC4 documentary this week. Mark was pretty hammered throughout that one, I think this was the time when it felt like he was out of control.  And I think this started to effect the music as well - it feels less coherent, less together than usual. And for the Fall that's probably saying something.

But the music - and we start with a Peel session which is barely together. Antidotes especially wallows in incomprehensibility. The band sound perky and eager but there's no gel there and Mark sounds like he's rambling on the spot,

And then a wondrous sneaky thing. Inch was ostensibly a Smith side project but the bible reveals it to be a off cut from Levitate. The Inch were meant to be producers of Levitate but were sacked. AND WHY - Inch sounds 100% better than anything on L (bar I'm a Mummy) and is miles above the version that appeared on the album. Heavy crunching guitars and bleepy bloopy keyboards. It's great.

And then the remarkable single: Touch Sensitive. Right back in the Rockabilly with added "hey Hey Hey!"'s. The lyrics seem to be about Mark being a grouchy old man. It's bloody brilliant and in the way that only The Fall could do it. They're totally back together in this one - pop song amaze balls. There's a dance mix of course which, again, sounds like a outtake from Spaced. The b-side is all over the place. But that A-side though. Genius.

It would have ended there but I decided to dip my foot into the Mark Smith solo project: The Post Nearly Man. It was quite expensive to get a CD copy, so I snagged it on Amazon of all places.

It's a hard thing to deal with - it's not really spoken word, and it's certainly not The Fall. It's kind of like three people reading some of Mark's scrawling with occasional musical interludes. It's part HP Lovecraft Cthlu type stuff and part Mark rambling. There's a little bit of the hotel skit that he did way back on the Luciani play.

First listen I thought it was bonkers but on fifth or sixth listen I think it might be the best thing he ever did - as an album, as a whole it's totally spellbinding. And in the way that Mark does, it sounds incomprehensible but utterly enrapturing at the same time. There's other people speaking throughout. At times it reminds me of the Stephen Jesse Bernstein record - something that exists, that is wonderful but you can't really explain why you like it so much. The Post Nearly Man is fantastic and impenetrable. I love it.

That cover though - why he sticks with Pascal Le Gras is beyond me, his work is generally like a child pissing about with MS Paint.

Week 29: 26/08/97 - 17/05/98

Hmmmm. A 2 hour week again - I have an internal rule that if the playlist is 2 hours I only listen to it once a day, if it's less then I do two. So I got in a lot of Kermode and Mayo and a small dose of the Fall. I start with a few odds and sods from Northern Attidude  - a bunch of randos on a random label. Nothing outstanding but a confirmation that Mr. Pharmacist is a staple live show thing now. This is a good thing.

Then Levitate. I have a lot of time for Levitate - I kind of agree with the bible in that it feels half baked sometimes but overall it's pretty strong. And it's one of the few Fall records which really gets that blend of hard electronics and their Rockabilly sound, and Mark's sounding great finally. I like Hurricane Edward, with it's Mr Hughes was right in retrospect intro.

AND THEN OMG! I'm A Mummy - surely one of their best songs of all time and possibly one of the great covers of all time. Taking that twee I'm a Mummy from Bob McFadden and For and turning it up to 11. The other half of Bob McFadden was born in Oakland and Bob was responsible for the Medium is the Massage LP - it's a total joy. Then Doc Shankley: If, like me, you are a complete and utter pranny you know what I mean when I say recipe. No idea what this is about but it's great. 4 1/2 Inch is effectively Inch (next week for that one) but is great. Jungle Rock is another good cover, not quite I'm A Mummy though. And they close out okayish Levitate, Everybody But Myself. It's a melting pot. There's some bonus tracks on the CD but these are pretty forgettable.

Masquerade single b-sides are okay but nothing outstanding. Then a Peel session with Touch Sensitive! And it sounds nothing like the resulting single: it just goes to show that adding a "Hey Hey Hey" really lifts a song.

This being the late 90s, there also has to be a vinyl version of "club" type remixes. And the Fall never disappoints. You want a "Mr. Natural" Funked up remix of Masquerade? You got it. It sounds like incidental music from the club scene in Spaced - like I can't ever imagine any kind of DJ actually playing this out and I can't imagine any Fall fan playing this regularly. I couldn't find this on CD so I shelled out for the 10". Not even coloured vinyl. Amateurs. On the Flip side things get serious: PWL Remix time. The album was recorded at PWL which might go some way to explain the super punchy sound they got on this one.

Remember that time that the Aphex Twin got asked to do remixes and he just claimed to always give them a tape of whatever was lying around at the time. Well the PWL mix sounds something like the Fatboy Slim approach to remixes: Let's change the speed and tweak the drums. Thus it's the most pointless remix ever. Any they adjusted the speed in the wrong way - it's slower than the original. NUTTER VAINS.

Week 28: 05/12/96 - 26/08/97

No pictures this week because they didn't actually release anything - just a humble 30 minutes of odds and sods. A forgettable version of Everybody but Myself. Mark announces "Das Vulture Ist Ein Nutter Wein", begins to count the band in and they just play at a random segment. Genius - and they sound angry too which is nice. There's a track called Interference. It's wibbly wobbly space noises for about 5 minutes. Ol Gang live is good and it's a good song. That is all. So much for that "work ethic".

Week 27: 16/03/96 - 05/12/96

I seemed to have missed this one somehow and what a one to miss. The Light User Syndrome. I never bought this one at the time, I don't remember it getting favourable reviews. And to be fair it's largely forgettable - quite heavy on decent but non magical Fall tracks. And a couple of heavy hitters too: Vulture and He Pep! are big tracks which were live favourites. Mark looks like Eddie Marsden on the cover though. There's a non Mark vocal on Stay Away which provides some respite but it just sounds weird. The Chisilers was good but much more appealing as a single than an album track. The problem with the album is that it sounds like the Fall on auto pilot.

Then The Fall! Live! At The Astoria! 26th June 1996. It's okay. A little wayward in places - they do a cracking version of LA with one of the band shouting over Brix's bits. And Mr. Pharmacist is now becoming a staple of the live sets, and with good reason.

Then The Fall! Live! At Various Festivals! Truly if you've heard one forgettable concert, you really have heard them all.

Then A Peel Session. I remember hearing this one, but not the music really. It sounds 200 times better than the versions on the things above which is sort of depressing. Brix totally channels mid 90s indie on Spinetrack, to a frightening degree. The reason I remember it: They do a Captain Beefheart cover. Beatle Bones of course. Mark does the intro bit in his own way and I thought that would be it but they do the whole thing. It's okay. Not nearly as good as their Monks covers but you can't win them all.

Week 26: 26/06/95 - 16/03/96

Halfway. Literally Halfway through The Fall's career and in my real life, I was heading up to Sheffield to start University. This week coincided with the Fourth of July here, so I haven't really listened to much of the playlist but I got a good measure of the Fall in this period (I will listen to all the tracks at least three times this week I promise).

Three albums that balloon the playlist up to a mighty five hours. The Album is Cerebral Caustic which is kind of okay, a little bit the Fall on autopilot. The Brix novelty has worn off a little. There feels like there are tracks here (Rainmaster I'm looking at you) that should have been left on the cutting room floor. And a lot of the tracks that are good, are better elsewhere, whether that be live or in session. They do Life Just Bounces again, but it's not nearly as good as the original or that live version with the thing about Pipes. Bonkers in Phoenix is meant to be like being at Glastonbury. Well it is utter shit and a waste of time so maybe he's right. Ha Ha. It's not a bad record but there's just not enough oomph to it.

Thankfully the CD has a bunch of "Rough Mixes" of the tracks - so you get to hear them all twice, albeit some slightly differently. No improvement.

And then on to the 27 Points. I bought this at the time on two cassettes - I remember it being pretty cheap for a double album, I don't think I listened to it much but it's actually aged pretty well.  There's a spread of tracks, and the quality is generally pretty high. A cracking version of Return here, a decent stab at Ladybird Green Grass.

And one of the best moments of the Fall: Idiot Joy Showland, played brilliantly but Mark's not happy so he stops the band and pulls them off stage for 5 minutes. "RIGHT REX - YOU BETTER GET THIS SORTED". He then plays a tape of 10 points that he hates about a person. All of these will come back to you and confirm you as a damn pest. They don't come back on and finish Showland.

A fiery version of Mr Pharmacist, Bill Is Dead again?. And then it's gone, to be added to the list of "Above Average" live albums. All of the live stuff is kind of rolling into a single mass at this point, and so I breeze through The Idiot Joy Show without missing a beat.

The Peel session was awful: He Pep!, Oleano, Chilinist, The City Never Sleeps. The Fall safely on autopilot here. The latter is weird, I don't know who the vocalist is but they've been studying that book on mid-90s indie female vocals pretty hard. More of those Receiver things round this out and make me think that that was the most uneventful five hours of the Fall so far. Halfway though.

Week 25: 05/10/94 - 26/06/95

A short one and this week got lost in the fourth of July build up. The christmas Peel session though - another version of Glam Racket! Another!. Then Jingle Bell Rock, and a weirdly good version of Hark The Herald Angels Sing. And then Numb at the Lodge which is all about Prozac it would seem. It's good in a Brix kind of way.

And then a whole bunch of live stuff - mainly from "In The City" which proved the hardest CD to source so far, being largely unavailable. I paid market price.

They kick off with a lengthy intro tape, and into the Joke, which is now a live staple track. They do Bill is Dead halfway through the set, which is both a) an odd one to revive and b) an odd one to play live anyway. They close with Life Just Bounces which is a great track and I'm happy to see it persist. The last track on this weeks playlist is an intro tape from The Roadhouse - it's the same track as In The City. Pah!