The Fall 1999-05-05 The Foundry, Birmingham, AUD FLAC additional info http://thefall.org/gigography/gig99.html Ketamine Sun is a reworking of "Kill Your Sons" from Lou Reed's "Sally Can't Dance" album. Reviews on the Fall news (scroll down). - "As I stagger towards you over clad stones.......Birthday Song.....Good Evening We Are The Fall." (before This Perfect Day) - "(In deep voice) "The keys are replaced..."(in normal voice) ..."by mic stand..." (shouts) "and can you see....hey"... (into Ten Houses of Eve) ============ http://thefall.org/news/990509.html Birmingham Foundry, 5 May Doktor Pete: This Perfect Day F-Olding Money (Instrumental) Antidotes F-Olding Money Spencer Must Die And Therein Touch Sensitive Love Bound (AKA Bound Soul One, AKA Bound) Mad.Men-Eng.Dog Anecdotes In B# Jet Boy The Joke Kill Kill On My Own Ol' Gang + Big New Prinz 10 Houses Of Eve A pretty fine gig this one. After Mark walked off stage at the end of the first song, I was thinking that the old bugger was in one of his moods again, but it all seemed to be planned. I guess the band were supposed to be playing F-Olding Money along to a DAT, but instead we got four minutes of rockabilly stomp, followed by the DAT as an intro to the next song. Things were not looking good. But, as our friends at Winamp say, the rest of the set really whupped the llama's ass. Mark seems to be paring the songs down, in length as well as the arrangements. Nev was occasionally inspired, but didn't always seem to be on the same page as the rest of the band. Mark was indulgent. He even patted him on the back a few times -- well, it was either that or he was using him for support. We even got a bit of patter. Tom is as good as you've all been saying, and Adam seemed to be doing a fine job, certainly more at home than last winter's gigs suggested. The new treatment of And Therein has potential to be a winner. Acoustic guitar and open, acoustic-sounding drums. Was surprised to hear Mad.Men, and despite everything I've heard, I was still expecting Jet Boy to be a Damned song. It's not. The other new song, Kill Kill, is poppy at heart, but with loads of sonic masking tape over it in a VU type of way. Highlights for me was Big New Prinz, 'cause I'm the cliched old sod who likes old stuff best, Antidotes, and Touch Sensitive, which was an absolutely terrific performance. The journey back to the station was packed with FallCon. I saw a guy going for a pee behind -- not a tree, this is Birmingham -- a concrete pillar, and a monk waiting for a bus. No, really. ** Michael Flack: > A pretty fine gig this one. Super it was. Also we discovered that the last train back from Birmingham was at ten to eleven. So I had to miss the encores. The good news though was that the band were on almost on time and they have perfected the art of playing 15 songs in about 40 minutes. A good venue for The Fall, though whoever decided to put on gigs in a shoe box with half a dozen pillars was being just a tad too creative. It was packed, and I would guess that only about 12 of the people who were there could see very much. I thought the band were fantastic, really tight, and agree with the Doktor that And Therein, Touch Sensitive were highlights. Mad.Men-Eng.Dog was great to hear - not what you expect! > The new treatment of And Therein has potential to be a winner. This was better than when I heard "them" do it on the Extricate tour. Really. > The other new song, Kill Kill, is poppy at heart, It sounded familiar to me, but the Venerable Steve thought it was a song by the Not-Sensibles, who I've never heard of. ** Smurf:: Agree with Mr Flack et all on this one, mighty fine gig. My highlights - This Perfect day, Big new prinz and the Jet Boy song, also the karaoke F-Olding money was great in its repetition. ** Mark Goodacre: My first Fall gig since November 1997 Stoke, which was a shambles. This was really tight -- I agree with those who enjoyed it. MES seemed to be in a good mood. Someone shouted after about the third song when there was a gap "You're looking well Mark". He began to reply "Well, I'm . . ." but stopped as if reminded that he does not like to engage in conversation in the middle of a set. The next song (can't remember which) he then introduced with "This one is dedicated to our PR men" and mumbled something about the Guardian. Also we had a "Good evening; we are the Fall" at the beginning -- I do like that. Lots of moshing at the end on Big New Prinz. It looked like they might come out again for a third encore and certainly the roadies thought that they might, but the end not. The really plush tour bus was parked just by the venue in Beak Street and as we walked home we saw Mark and the band sitting round a table in good-ish humour. One fan banged on the window and said "Fantastic" on his way past. This was the first time I had seen the Fall without Stephen Hanley and it did look a bit odd to me. It makes Mark look much older to see him with people who look like they could be his children. And it made me feel older to see people in the Fall who are clearly younger than I am. Put Peel on on the way home to hear an Email read out from someone who was at Leeds saying that the Fall were good and Mark was "sprightly" but that the audience were all thirty-somethings and that it was a shame that the audience is getting older. The sound was basically sparse but tight. It reminded me of the Fall around 1991? before Dave Bush joined, Blood Outta Stone era -- sounded very much like that sound. Nice not to have too much faffing about too. When the second track was solely instrumental I feared the worst but afterwards everything OK. Mark kept looking at the back of his hand throughout -- odd. ** Ian Pritchard: Birmingham gig, great, really abrasive sound. Yes, the band did look like his kids, as many people mentioned at the time. The 'Good evening...we are The Fall' was a return to form in itself and had me grinning for about 7 minutes. Track 2 the mantra instrumental was awesome, and as I didn't buy MS til gig-end, F-Olding Money was my first hearing - marvellous - White Lightning #2, my mate reckoned The Meteors would have been proud of it. Wasn't sure about the semi-acoustic 'And Therein', but the stripped down shortened 'The Joke' was classic Fall for me. Clipped oblique menacing great gig (my tenth - frighteningly #9 was back in May '93). The Foundry's still a shit venue tho. ** Id's partial Tour Report: 7) Sound: the sound-girl - Speth - gets a great sound with this band, but she got really muddled with her mini-disk (not DAT) tracks at Birmingham. The extended instrumental version of F-Oldin' Money, and subsequent walk-off, resulted from her struggling to open the MD case in time to load the correct MD. We also got a snatch of On My Own towards the end of Mad Dog. ( I was stood behind her) 8) Bound: I can't get over how this is invariably a highlight of the live set, yet so disappointing (relatively) on MS. 9) MES: I am struck by the way MES is using his voice as the fifth instrument. Even when he is spouting utter gibberish, he is doing so in a manner which adds depth, texture and tonal qualities to the mix like no other vocalist I can think of. Great. 10) Verdict: notwithstanding the above, I found the band to be ever-so-slightly below par at Birmingham and lacking the togetherness and fluidity of the XFM show. Mighty enjoyable, nonetheless, and on a better night they will be awesome, for sure ... maybe tomorrow, at Salisbury? =========== http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Arts%3A+Still+grumpy+after+all+these+years%3B+The+Fall's+Mark+E+Smith...-a060542496 Publication: The Birmingham Post (England) Author: Evans, Simon Date: Apr 28, 1999 Arts: Still grumpy after all these years; The Fall's Mark E Smith talks to Simon Evans. Depending on your point of view, he's pop's Mr Grumpy, a one-trick pony of minimal talent or, if you work for the music weeklies, a "godlike genius", one of rock and roll's great innovators. To most journalists however, The Fall's Mark E Smith is a nightmare. Like Dylan, he's turned the interview into an art form and conversations with him can be enlightening, infuriating, frustrating or, like the man himself, a combination of all three. For one thing, his affinity with alcohol has, in the past at least, assumed a certain notoriety. Two o'clock in the afternoon, after Smith had just spent a long lunchtime session in the pub with a national journalist, was perhaps not the best time to be booked in for a 15-minute chat with the great iconoclast. Which is pretty well how it proved. Smith, for example, offered no enlightenment on The Fall's new album The Marshall Suite, their best in more than a decade, other than that it was an attempt to replicate the old double LP, "except this has only got three sides" (it's actually a single CD). The next LP, he confirmed, would have "five sides". Whether the same bunch of musicians are still around to record it must, in view of Smith's past record as band leader, be doubtful. To date, in their 21-year history, The Fall have had 27 line-ups and 34 members. The current aggregation of Smith (ranting, vocals), Adam Halal (bass), Julia Nagle (keyboards), Neville Wilding (guitars) and Tom Head (drums) was put together after the last Fall broke up amidst some ill-feeling - which is putting it mildly. In early 1998, Smith was arrested by New York police and spent a night in the cells for fighting with the band, after which, not surprisingly he dispensed with their services. When I venture to suggest Smith may be difficult to get on with, he changes the subject and starts asking what paper I work for in an endearing, if mildly threatening, "don't mess with me sonny" manner. Which, albeit in a roundabout way, answers my question. He brightens up considerably when I suggest the current line-up is one of the most effective for many a year. He refuses to let on however where they were recruited from - "it's a secret" he snarled. Which turned off that avenue of inquiry although it turns out Nagle is Smith's current girlfriend who, despite coming to blows with her bandleader beau, has managed to stick by him during the last fraught couple of years. Both Smith and I manage to agree that the new LP is one of the better Fall LPs. "It's pretty good isn't it?" says Smith before changing the subject to the current tour, which finds The Fall stopping off at the Foundry. It's the first time Smith will have played there and he's eager for information about it. When told the venue closely resembled a sweaty cave he perks up "oh that's good, I like them sweaty" before, unsolicited, offering the startling information that his grandmother was from Dudley. No, Mark didn't know Birmingham, in fact you soon get the impression Smith doesn't care much for anywhere outside his beloved Salford. He was briefly married to one of The Fall's many guitarists, Brix Smith, before she ran off with punk fiddler Nigel Kennedy and Smith's response was to fill up his next LP with horrible violins. Brix even returned to the fold in the mid-90s before falling victim once again to Smith's notorious mood swings. The words "suffer" and "fools gladly" never seem to form part of the same sentence in Smith's vocabulary. In fact Smith described himself recently as "a 60-year-old man in a 12-year-old's body", a born curmudgeon. In an age of vacuum-packed boy bands and corporate back-slapping it's refreshing to find someone as relentlessly miserable as Smith. In his own way, he's become something of a national treasure, a monument to malcontent - as long as you don't have to interview him. The Fall play the Foundry on May 5. The Marshall Suite is released through Artful Records. 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