YMGTA #16: I Am Kurious Oranj

“For once we’re being disciplined by outside influences.”

Image result for I Am Kurious Oranj

Details:
Recorded: Suite 16, Rochdale / The King’s Theatre, Edinburgh mid-late 1988.
Released: 24 October 1988

  • Mark E Smith – vocals
  • Brix Smith – guitar, vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Marcia Schofield – keyboards
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums

Background
After the release of The Frenz Experiment in early 1988 The Fall worked with Michael Clark once again. Clark had been asked by the organisers of the Holland Festival (the biggest and oldest arts festival in the Netherlands, which takes place in Amsterdam every June) to produce a ballet to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution. He turned to MES as ‘his musical and historical advisor’1 despite the fact that Smith, as he confessed in an NME interview at the time, knew ‘sod all’2 about the period. As a result, he took a similar approach to that which he had adopted with Hey Luciani – ‘I guessed a lot of it’3.

I Am Curious, Orange (the title of which was inspired by the 1967 Swedish erotic drama I Am Curious (Yellow)) gave Smith an opportunity to build further on the literary and artistic ambitions he had revealed with Luciani. He seems to have taken the opportunity seriously as well, for once forgoing his dictatorial style and partaking in ‘a true collaboration’4 with Clark. The writing of the piece also involved a significant change in approach for the musicians in terms of writing, rehearsing and recording. As the group played 40 gigs in the four months between the release of Frenz and Orange‘s first performance, much of the writing had to take place on the road. This put the group under a type of pressure unfamiliar to them. Brix:

‘It was a completely different way of writing, because we were under pressure. We weren’t just bringing whatever we had made up when inspired and presenting it to the group. We had a deadline, and there was a theme. We would frantically write in our hotel rooms, put it on a cassette and send it to Michael.’5

This approach proved to be problematic. The Fall’s style had always been to let songs evolve and develop each time they were played, but this was obviously not possible here. As Steve Hanley put it, ‘the music has to fit the dancing, it has to be exactly the same every night, to the nanosecond, so as not to throw off the dancers… for once we’re being disciplined by outside influences’6.

After the festival appearance in Amsterdam on 21 June, the piece was performed six times at the Edinburgh Festival in August and then had a run of 19 performances at London’s Sadler’s Wells theatre in September and October. The ballet featured an exploding ‘Old Firm’ derby, a giant carton of McDonald’s fries that was tipped over the stage and, most famously, Brix playing guitar sat atop a burger whilst being spun round by dancer Leigh Bowery dressed as a tin of Heinz baked beans. Simon Wolstencroft was probably not alone in finding it ‘hard to fathom what the hell was going on most of the time’7.

Reviewers from a dance background were not impressed, especially by The Fall’s contribution. The Observer’s Jann Parry, for example, objected to the ‘head-banging repetitiveness’ of the music8. The rock music press were more enthusiastic. Sean O’Hagan in the NME said: ‘This was The Fall in a new context – innovatory, exciting, iconoclastic’9.

Front cover 7 inch box

Unlike previous albums, the singles taken from Oranj came out after its release. Jerusalem/Big New Prinz was released a fortnight after the album as a double 7″ single and as a double CD in the exciting new 3″ format. Both formats included Acid Priest 2088 (simply a very slightly truncated version of Win Fall C.D. 2080) and Wrong Place, Right Time No. 2 (not noticeably different from No. 1).

Seven months later, Cab It Up (by now having lost its exclamation mark) was also released as a single. The b-side was Dead Beat Descendant, a song written for the ballet. Featuring a trademark Brix surf-twang riff, it’s a sprightly bit of garage punk-pop that certainly would have merited a place on the album. It suffers just a touch from a rather 80s drum sound; as such, there are superior live versions, for example the one on Live Various Years. The 12″ version added live versions of Kurious Oranj and Hit The North, both seemingly the same performances that appear on Seminal Live (of which more in the next post).

In The Wider World…
George H W Bush, vice-president for the last eight years, was elected as president, defeating Michael Dukakis. Pope John Paul II addressed the European parliament and was heckled and called ‘antichrist’ by Ian Paisley.

Shortly after Oranj‘s release, Enya’s soporific Orinoco Flow began a three-week stay at the top of the UK singles chart. Subsequently, Robin Beck’s power ballad First Time (on the back of a Coke advert) took over for a further three weeks. U2’s Rattle And Hum topped the album charts for the week of IAKO‘s release, but was soon replaced by Dire Straits’ compilation album Money For Nothing.

This clip of Top Of The Pops from the week of the album’s release gives you a sense of the true horror of 80s mainstream British music.

The Fall Live In 1988
The group’s first post-Frenz performance, their second of 1988, was a in-store appearance at the Oxford Street HMV on March 3, where they played Cab It Up! for the first time.

They played a further ten UK gigs in March. At Oxford on the 12th, Pay Your Rates made its first appearance for seven years. Athlete Cured received its debut on the 19th in Cambridge – this gig received an official release in 2000.

Front cover

Despite the fact that Athlete‘s first performance is missing (as is the first half of Mr Pharmacist) this is a very tidy live album and well worth acquiring, both in terms of sound quality (which is excellent) and performance. As well as an especially fast-paced L.A. and a distinctly tuneless Victoria, of particular interest is Pay Your Rates, the sole ‘oldie’, getting its sixth run-out after a seven year absence from the setlist. It works well, but it does sound odd to hear it with 80s-style drums and twinkly keyboard flourishes. There’s also an impressive version of US 80s 90s, featuring an extended instrumental coda.

The European tour in April saw Yes O Yes, Jerusalem and Bad News Girl get their first outings. May’s 13-date US tour featured Kurious Oranj for the first time in Boston on the 12th. The 26 performances of the ballet took place in June-October. The 17 August show in Edinburgh was released in 2000 as I Am As Pure As Oranj.

As can be seen from the inlay above, there were some odd spellings of the song titles, some of which were different again in the accompanying booklet (Dog LikeCabbing It Up Town). Despite this, it’s well worth owning. The sound quality is very good and the group’s performance is very tight (because, of course – as noted above – it had to be).

In general, the songs don’t differ vastly from the studio album versions. The main difference is that some of the guitar parts are more prominent here: Wrong Place features a much grungier, fuzzed-up riff which suits the song well; there’s a jangly line on Yes O Yes that’s virtually buried on IAKO. The drums on Dead Beat Descendant are a vast improvement on the studio version, although in places they are in danger of swamping Brix’s twangy riff. The most curious (pardon the pun) track is the Hip Priest/New Big Prinz merger: after nearly four minutes of the former, the latter lurches in and is just played over the top, leading to a peculiar and rather aimless cacophony. Like much of this recording, it probably made a lot (or a least a little) more sense when accompanied by the visual elements.

The Album
[As with the previous few albums – and for the same reasons – I am taking ‘the album’ to be the original ten-track vinyl LP.]

The studio album of the music from the piece was released as I Am Kurious Oranj a couple of weeks after the final performance at Sadler’s Wells. After Frenz reaching the giddy heights of the top 20, Oranj‘s peak of number 54 (the same position reached by This Nation’s Saving Grace) may have seemed a disappointment, although this was of course the group’s second album to come out in eight months. Reviews were generally positive. In the NME, Len Brown welcomed that the group had ‘retained the power to surprise, to provoke and occasionally outrage’.

In her book, Brix describes the album as ‘an overlooked gem’, the songs being ‘leagues ahead of anything on Frenz10. In his own book, Simon Wolstencroft agrees, calling Oranj ‘stronger’ than its predecessor11. As far as retrospective reviews are concerned, Brian Edge and Dave Thompson’s evaluations are typical: ‘[It] may not have been The Fall’s greatest album, but it did speak volumes for their ability and willingness to change’12; ‘Not The Fall’s most cohesive album… IAKO is nevertheless a dramatic reminder of one of the most audacious moves made by any band of the era’13.

It was only the second Fall LP (This Nation’s Saving Grace being the first) to have a gatefold sleeve.

The Songs
New Big Prinz
The album kicks off with one of the group’s finest ever moments. Opening with a gruff, throaty MES introduction (‘Rockin’ records / Rockin’ records /Rock the record’), the song is thereafter underpinned by a bouncing, punchy bass riff that’s simple but devastatingly effective, an abrasive descending guitar line and exuberantly thumping drums (that owe a little to The Glitter Band’s Rock And Roll Part 2).

An extension of or elaboration on Hip Priest (‘Drink the long draught for big priest’ who is still ‘not appreciated’), it manages the remarkable of feat of being simultaneously jaunty and sinister. It’s one of those songs that, however many times you hear it, takes you aback at just how remarkable this group was.

Unsurprisingly it was a long-standing feature in the setlist 1988-2006, clocking up a mighty 212 performances. The video below is one of those that comes close to capturing the essence of Smith as a natural, charismatic performer.

Overture From ‘I Am Curious, Orange’
A bit of an oddity, not least in the fact that, despite its title, it didn’t appear in the ballet. Its minimalist lyric consists entirely of titles of other Fall songs (plus a reference to An Older Lover Etc.‘s ‘Dr Annabel Lies’), yet this may be the Fall track that sounds least like The Fall. Its chorus-laden arpeggio jangle (especially if you take Brix’s odd, slightly manic vocal away) sounds pretty much exactly like mid/late-80s REM. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but it does sound a little out of place and pointless here.

Dog Is Life/Jerusalem
Dog is an unaccompanied MES anti-canine diatribe delivered in the style of his solo albums The Post Nearly Man and Pander Panda Panzer. It’s not a theme that Smith ever really returned to (although he did reference dogs in several other songs, most notably Greenway), but he displays some seriously unbridled hostility towards man’s best friend here: ‘Dog sh*t baby bit ass-lick dog mirror / Dead tiger shot and checked out by dog / Big tea-chest-f*cker dog’.

Jerusalem itself is another of the group’s finest moments. Driven by a dark, malevolent rhythm section (reminiscent of Joy Division), it finds the perfect balance between repetition and variety. The ‘rant’ section (4:32-5:47) is peerless: the intensity of the music gradually building as MES rails furiously against an uncaring government that is denying him compensation (‘I was very let down… I was expecting a one million quid handout’).

A ‘cheeky adaptation’ (as the Reformation A-Z describes it) of the William Blake classic hymn – MES described himself as ‘a complete William Blake fan’ in a Sounds interview – Jerusalem is powerful, audacious yet tongue in cheek. Played 79 times 1988-1990, it got a one-off reprisal in September 2002. The video below features a particularly fine rendition at the Reading festival on 1990.

Kurious Oranj
A song that – and I’m sure I’m not alone in this – will always remind me of the excellent Lee and Herring. A particularly joyful and uplifting tune, the sound of The Fall making an incongruous (and slightly yet charmingly ham-fisted) foray into reggae is a delight, although it possibly rumbles on for a minute or two longer than is necessary. After the theatrical performances, it was only played seven more times (all in December 1988) before being retired for good; 36 appearances altogether.

MES is on top form here, actually sounding like he’s actually having fun. It’s one of those songs where his timing is impeccable, enabling him to drag out more from the melody/lyrics than anyone else could – the alternating phrasing of or-ange and or-ange being an especially good example. The various ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ings are fun too. Also, it takes a certain kind of genius to rhyme ‘deranged’ with ‘orange’.

Wrong Place, Right Time
In a 2015 Mojo interview, quoted in the The Fall A-Z, MES claimed that: “I do think that is one of my best songs – I wrote every note and every word of it.” The accuracy of Fall writing credits is dubious at the best of times, but particularly when MES is designated as sole songwriter; however, the song’s simplicity (vocals, bass and guitar all follow the same melody) perhaps make this more believable than most. That said, Smith might well have been listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Gloomy when he came up with it.

This simplicity doesn’t detract from the song’s effectiveness though, the jointly-played/sung riff giving Wrong Place an energetic garage punk directness that sustains it happily over its three minutes. There’s also a comparatively smooth sounding middle eight around two-thirds of the way through that adds a bit of variety (and is the only bit of the album that harks back to the crisp, clean sound of Frenz).

It’s an infectious stomp, and it’s easy to see why it made it onto the setlist 149 times over nearly twenty years (although it was rested between 1993 and 2004).

Win Fall C.D. 2080 / C.D. Win Fall 2088 AD
As you can see from the images above and below, this track was titled slightly differently on the LP and CD versions. Unfortunately, this fact is pretty much the most interesting thing about it.

The Reformation A-Z site describes this as ‘a song of samplings and voice effects, based mainly on Hip Priest, which rambles on quietly in a not unpleasant way’, and it’s hard to argue with that summary. It sounds really dated; very much in the style of indie 12″ remixes of the day. (You remember the kind of thing: slap a bit of reverb on, add an incongruous plinky synth line and insert a couple of bursts of just-the-drum-track for 48 bars for no apparent reason and hey presto a 7 minute remix.) The off-kilter placement of many of the samples gives it a little bit of Fall-ness, but overall it’s a distinctly throwaway moment; perhaps just about forgivable as a b-side.

Yes, O Yes
As Tommy Mackay points out, Yes O Yes ‘sounds like the theme tune for a 60s spy series’14. It has a pleasingly sparse, delicate sound and features concise and enigmatic contributions from MES (‘An ordure from this planet that could not be extinguished’) that are, as The Annotated Fall has it, ‘resistant to too much interpretation’. It’s one that probably made a lot more sense in the context of the performance of Orange; on its own, it’s a little vague and meandering.

Van Plague?
After a rather hesitant start to side two of the album, Van Plague? picks things up a little, thankfully. There’s a restrained and melancholy tone to the song, and without there being a direct ‘borrow’, there’s more than a little flavour of early 80s Sonic Youth here, especially in the downtempo sections – for example the skewed, gently discordant, straggly guitar with a tasteful dab of feedback 1:35-1:57. To round it off nicely, Craig Scanlon contributes a restrained but emotive little solo that brings the song home very gracefully.

Lyrically, MES was apparently inspired to write about the origins of AIDS by what he described a ‘mad Catholic story’ about William of Orange bringing VD to England. Despite the somewhat gauche title, there are some rather gently poetic lines here: ‘All around is pure tension / Beliefs and tears now and again / From where has this great sadness came?’

Like Kurious Oranj, it disappeared from the setlist after a few airings in December 1988, making 32 appearances in total.

Bad News Girl
The ponderous, brooding atmosphere of the first two-thirds of the song make it feel like it could have sat quite happily on Bend Sinister, although the REM-ish guitar jangle lurking in the background is a recurring feature of IAKO. The jaunty final third emerges a little incongruously and is full of bounce if verging a little on the twee. 

In her book, Brix describes writing a ‘tune that started off like a slow lament and built into a fast-paced punchy song’. According to her, ‘It was clearly about me; this wasn’t some kind of riddle, he was putting our problems to the forefront. I knew it.15‘ Whether or not this was the case (and it’s hard not to think it was), it’s a notably bitter song: ‘Jaded lust and tiresomeness are not what I want to look at’; ‘wet sex’ll keep you anaesthetised… goodbye my dear’.

Like Plague and Kurious Oranj, it got a handful of outings in late 1988 after the ballet but then disappeared from the setlist after making 36 appearances altogether. Musically, it’s a strong tune; how much you enjoy it might depend on to what extent you can stomach the lyrical sentiment.

Cab It Up!
A spirited, uptempo romp that’s one of those that might be worth a try on a Fall newcomer. It’s driven by Hanley’s insistent virtually two-note bass line and features some energetic and choppy guitar work. As distinctly Fall as it is, it’s interesting to note some contemporary pop/indie features that crept into it: most obviously the ‘plinky’ keyboards that are reminiscent of OMD or early Depeche Mode, but also the New Order/Cure-ish guitar line from 2:38.

It’s a similarly spirited performance from MES as well, featuring effective use of the megaphone effect and some startlingly sudden high shrieks in the ‘uptown’s. It got 65 outings 1988-89, before getting a one-off revival in 2012.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
The CD and cassette versions contained three bonus tracks. Guide Me Soft appeared at the end of side one of the cassette and is a curiously fragile yet sinister couple of minutes. It’s basically a couple of scratchy chords (that sound like an unamplified electric guitar), a throbbing, distorted piece of bass distortion and a ghostly, skeletal glockenspiel with Smith offering some especially off-hand and tuneless vocals.

Last Nacht is a rather pointless remix of Bremen Nacht. It adds a big whack of reverb to MES’s vocal plus a variety of wiggly sci-fi noises. Big New Priest is a rather pointless alternative version of New Big Prinz.

Overall Verdict
After FrenzIAKO feels like a bit of relief, more like a ‘proper’ Fall album; overall, it’s a lot more pleasing than its predecessor. Production-wise, it lacks the clean, sharp edges that made Frenz sound rather sterile. That said, Ian Broudie’s production does make the album feel a little cluttered and muddy in places.

It’s undoubtedly an inconsistent album, but most importantly it sounds like the group trying (albeit not always entirely successfully) to stretch their ambition rather than retreating into themselves. In particular, the quality of songwriting is vastly superior to Frenz; where things don’t quite come off here, it’s not because of a lack of effort.

My “Version”
Side 1: New Big Prinz / Cab It Up! / Bad News Girl /Van Plague? (18:34)

Side 2: Wrong Place, Right Time / Dead Beat Descendant / Kurious Oranj / Dog Is Life-Jerusalem (20:30)

Rankings
Too inconsistent to challenge any of the top six so far, I wrestled with this and Room To Live; however, IAKO prevailed as the highlights (NBP/Jerusalem) outstrip the best of RTL.

  1. This Nation’s Saving Grace
  2. Perverted By Language
  3. The Wonderful And Frightening World Of
  4. Hex Enduction Hour
  5. Slates
  6. Grotesque
  7. I Am Kurious Oranj
  8. Room To Live
  9. Bend Sinister
  10. Dragnet
  11. Live At The Witch Trials
  12. The Frenz Experiment

Singles:

  1. Living Too Late
  2. Jerusalem/Big New Prinz
  3. Kicker Conspiracy
  4. The Man Whose Head Expanded
  5. How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
  6. Totally Wired
  7. Marquis Cha-Cha
  8. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  9. Cab It Up
  10. Cruiser’s Creek
  11. Hey! Luciani
  12. Mr. Pharmacist
  13. Couldn’t Get Ahead/Rollin’ Dany
  14. Look, Know
  15. There’s A Ghost In My House
  16. Victoria
  17. Hit The North
  18. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  19. Rowche Rumble
  20. Fiery Jack
  21. It’s The New Thing
  22. Oh! Brother
  23. c.r.e.e.p.

Live albums:

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  5. Totale’s Turns
  6. Live In Cambridge 1988
  7. I Am As Pure As Oranj
  8. Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
  9. Live 1977
  10. Austurbaejarbio
  11. BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
  12. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  13. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  14. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  15. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  16. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  17. Liverpool 78
  18. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  19. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  20. Live At Deeply Vale

 

References

1Ford, p180

2-3NME 17 September 1988, quoted in Ford, p180

4The Big Midweek, p301

5The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise, p239

6The Big Midweek, p300

7You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p125

8-9Ford, p182

10The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise, p240

11You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p128

12Edge, p91

13Thompson, p105

14Mackay, p99

15The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise, p241

YMGTA #15: The Frenz Experiment

“An odour resembling hot-dogs permeated the whole bedroom.”

Image result for frenz experiment

Details
Recorded: Abbey Road, London; Brixton and Manchester mid-late 1987
Released: 29 February 1988

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, keyboards
  • Brix Smith – guitar, vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar, vocals
  • Steve Hanley – bass, vocals
  • Marcia Schofield – keyboards, vocals
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums, vocals
    with
  • Simon Rogers – guitar, saxophone, keyboards

Background
Shortly after Bend Sinister‘s release, Simon Rogers left the group – although he did still contribute to Frenz in terms of both production and performance. His replacement was Marcia Schofield, a New Yorker whose band Khymer Rouge had supported The Fall on several occasions. She was thrown into the deep end, performing with the group for the first time at Ipswich in October 1986. She was lent a copy of Bend Sinister for preparation and arrived at the gig with some hastily-scribbled notes on scraps of paper (Steve Hanley recalls one of them as reading, ‘US 80s 90s intro verse, bass solo, chorus, verse, bass solo, chorus, rant with megaphone solo to fade’1. The group also played two encore songs that she’d never heard before. Still, she seems to have passed the test as she played keyboards for the group for the next four years.

Brix welcomed having a female ally in the group. She also commented on Schofield’s striking appearance: ‘All the men would drool over her. She was a goddess, the physical opposite to me. I was petite and blonde; she was a dark Amazonian voluptuous woman’2.

The group’s next single – recorded before Schofield joined – was Hey! Luciani. Originally written for Bend Sinister, it was held back when MES (inspired by David Yallop’s book In God’s Name) decided to write a play about the suspicious death of Albino Luciani, who was pope John Paul I for just 33 days. Smith discussed the play in an interview with Jools Holland (whose interviewing technique, as you can see, was just as appallingly inane back then as it is now) on its opening night in December 1986. In it, Smith admits that he ‘didn’t do a lot of research for it’ and that ‘I haven’t really been very factual’.

Smith wrote most of the play on the group’s October tour of America and ‘continued writing… until just days before the first performance’3. In Tommy Mackay’s 40 Odd Years Of The Fall, he says that, ‘according to Fall mythology, it was written on beer mats and delivered to its director in a shoe box’4. It ran for two weeks in December 1986 at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.

flyer

The play featured, amongst many other things, Brix and Marcia Schofield ‘in full army camouflage [with] massive sub-machine guns strapped across our chests – two fierce Jewesses hunting Martin Bormann’5. Steve Hanley played John Paul II, and his entertaining account6 of the play is well worth a read. According to Brix, it was ‘non-linear and nobody understood anything about the play. It made no sense whatsoever’7.

Reviews were, to put it kindly, mixed. Although Roy Wilkinson in Sounds described it as a ‘very watchable, incident-packed treatment of this fascinating piece of recent history’, Adam Sweeting in The Guardian declared that, ‘the completeness, the thoroughness of Smith’s failure must be accounted his only achievement’. The Melody Maker review criticised the ‘dismally poor acting’ and called for ‘an immediate and bloody end to Arts Council funding’. In the NME, Len Brown was more succinct: ‘heap of shite’. There were no official audio or visual recordings of the event, but if you’re feeling brave you can read a full transcript here.

Front cover

As for the actual single itself, it’s a solid enough bit of commercial Fall. It’s a very coherent song in terms of melody and structure, and has a memorable poppy hook. It’s all a bit polished, though, and Brix’s backing vocals are rather akin to pouring treacle onto honey – the song needed a bit more grit, not more sweetness. An ‘alternative’ version (the original, recorded by John Leckie) was released on a Sounds freebie – you can hear John Peel play it hereLuciani reached number 59 on the singles chart; including the play performances, it made 96 live appearances 1986-88 before getting one of those one-off revivals in 2002.

The b-side was Entitled, a pleasant enough but inconsequential bit of melancholy indie-jangle that’s rather reminiscent of The Woodentops.  Those who bought the 12″ were treated to a supremely unnecessary five minute version of Shoulder Pads.

The Fall finally reached the hallowed heights of the top 30 in the spring of 1987. There’s a Ghost in My House, a Holland/Dozier/Holland song originally recorded by R. Dean Taylor, was suggested to the group as a cover by Beggars Banquet press officer Karen Ehlers8. It was the highest chart position the group would ever achieve. As part of the promotion, Beggars paid for a sleeve that featured a ghostly hologram; Steve Hanley commented that it cost so much that the profits were ‘purely ethereal’9. The single’s chart placing of 30 suggested a likely appearance on Top of the Pops, but despite Brix’s excitement at the prospect (‘Me and Marcia were going, “What will we wear, what will we wear?”‘10), the call never came.

Front cover 7 inch

It’s a very straight cover and is possibly most notable for Smith’s greatest effort to sing ‘properly’; something to deploy as a gentle introduction to Fall newcomers, perhaps. The b-side was Haf Found Bormann, one of the songs that formed part of the Luciani performances.  It has a slow, loose-limbed rhythm that brings The Orb to mind. Steve Hanley gets quite free-form jazz in places (listen to him go at 0:45) and a lot of hard-to-identify noises float around in the background. After the play’s December 1986 run, it stayed in the setlist for much of 1987, racking up 39 appearances. There’s a great live version of the song here.

The 12″ included Sleep Debt Snatches and Mark’ll Sink Us, both also songs from the play. They are two of the most effective and intriguing effective songs that were ever hidden away as bonus tracks or b-sides.

Sleep starts with an uptempo, circular little guitar riff that sounds, again, rather like The Woodentops, this time playing a pacier version of Jilted John. A coherent, almost sprightly sounding MES joins in for thirty seconds or so with a couple of verses about sleep deprivation (sleep debt being a recognised term for the condition). And then, around a minute in, it all goes a bit strange (or, as Bzfgt puts it on The Annotated Fall, ‘we get some weirdie stuff’.) The brash drum pattern that enters abruptly at 1:03 sounds alarmingly like it’s veering off into Addicted To Love, but then everything goes all Test Dept. / Nine Inch Nails; a sort of sludgy, industrial march, backed with an assortment of random clicking, tapping, scraping and other downright odd noises. Throughout all of this, SH maintains a solid, unflappable foundation, Scanlon adds a funky, fluid, reverberating riff and MES pops in now and again to add a sinister whisper. Aside from parts of it appearing in the play, it was never performed live.

Mark’ll Sink Us, on the other hand did stay in the setlist for a little while after Luciani, being performed a further 21 times, the last being in May 1988. There are overtones of jazz, prog and blues: the Aladdin Sane-esque piano provides jazzy overtones, and the staccato part that backs the ‘Mark’ll Sink Us’ refrain could easily come from early 70s Yes or Genesis (especially when the moog-ish synth joins in during the coda). Smith’s vocal has an air of resigned melancholy that’s touching and emotional: ‘I am desolate.
I live the black and blue of the night’.

The day after Ghost‘s release, the group recorded their eleventh Peel session, which was broadcast on 11 May: Athlete Cured / Australians In Europe / Twister / Guest Informant. The follow-up single to Ghost arrived in October. Hit The North was the group’s first single to be released on picture disc (see below); it was also the first to get the remix treatment. The genesis of the song’s lyric, according to Steve Hanley, was Smith’s dislike of Norwich – exclaiming on the way back from a gig there that he couldn’t wait until they ‘hit the north’11. Musically, it originated from Simon Rogers playing around with a new sampler. In an interview for Sound On Sound, he describes how the song came about:

‘I’d just got this 440 and literally the first thing I put into it was a bass and a snare just on two pads, a little tiny Indian bell which I’ve still got, and a sax note and a bass note from a Gentle Giant record.

Mark came round to my bedroom studio and I said, “Oh, here’s the new sampler, have a look at it”, and just pressed play and out comes the basis of Hit The North. He said, “What’s that music?” And I said, “Well, it’s the first thing I put in.” He said, “I’ll have that, just do me a tape.”‘

Hit The North has a charming exuberance and energy, and the occasional cowboy-style whoops and yee-haws give it a joyful party atmosphere. You won’t find a more 80s keyboard sound than its parping riff, and the sequencer, drum pattern and vocal treatments all place the song very firmly in that decade. Yet it feels – unlike, perhaps, some of the songs of the early 90s – like a knowing, light-hearted sideways glance at contemporary styles rather than an attempt to ape them. The five (five!) remixes are all fun, although listening to all of them in a row (as I have done several times recently) does start to render the song a little tiresome, unsurprisingly.

It has a great video, too (once again Steve Hanley provides a wonderfully entertaining account12), featuring some funky dancing (and even funkier shirt) from MES and bemused but enthusiastic participation from the patrons of a Blackpool working men’s club.

It was made Single of the Week in the NME. Simon Gallup of The Cure, acting as a guest reviewer in Melody Maker, thought that the song sounded like both The Glitter Band and Van Der Graaf Generator. Despite the video and picture disc and all the remixes, Hit The North didn’t replicate its predecessor’s chart success, peaking at number 57. It was a popular setlist choice though, clocking up 126 appearances 1987-2005.

One of the 12″ versions featured two further b-sides. Australians In Europe (the opening of which features dialogue between MES and Trevor Stuart, who played the lead in Hey! Luciani) is an energetic, almost thrashy track that features some Lydon-esque sustained notes from Smith. It’s solid enough, but always destined to be a b-side. It was played 26 times 1987-1988. Northerns In Europ consists of what sounds like the group having a chat whilst listening to the same song on a badly-tuned AM radio.

To Steve Hanley’s surprise13, the group had by now been going long enough to get the rights back for some of their earlier work. This inspired Smith to set up his own record label, Cog Sinister. The idea was to support releases by obscure and interesting artists, financed by profits from re-releasing The Fall’s old material. The name came from Smith’s belief that his ‘pre-cog’ abilities would enable him to spot ‘neglected geniuses [and] fresh new talent’14. The first output from the label was In: Palace Of Swords Reversed, a compilation of album, single and live tracks from the early 80s.

In: Palace of Swords Reversed press release

For their next single in January 1988, the group went for another cover. This yielded similar success to Ghost, as Victoria reached number 35 in the charts. A cover of The Kinks’ 1969 song, it attracted ‘inevitable cries of “sell-out”‘15; in Melody Maker, David Stubbs ‘looked on in sadness as The Fall appeared to have gone hard and soft in all the wrong places’.

Front cover

There were three b-sides on the various formats of the single. Tuff Life Booogie enjoyed a relatively long shelf-life in terms of live appearances, being played 62 times, including 15 in 2015-16. Whilst the opening choppy little two-chord guitar part and slide guitar are pleasant enough, MES’s yelping of the title refrain (and for that matter the song’s title) is a little embarrassing. Twister is much more effective: it starts with a slow, snaky, twangy dual guitar line which is joined by galloping drums, double-tracked MES vocals and even some prog-like organ, before ascending into a crazy whirl featuring some eerie Brix contributions, thumping toms and manic keyboards. It was only ever played live once.

Even better, however, is Guest Informant. A regular feature on the setlist since late 1986 (going on to be performed 76 times in total), it’s a piece of stomping, aggressive and angular classic Fall. Possibly Brix’s best vocal contribution to a Fall song.

Around the same time that Frenz was being recorded, The Fall contributed a cover of The Beatles’ A Day In The Life for the NME-sponsored Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father. It’s not one of the group’s finest moments; a very straight and somewhat hurriedly knocked-out rendition that rather cruelly exposes MES’s limitations as a singer.

In The Wider World…
A week after the album’s release, the SAS shot dead three unarmed members of the IRA in Gibraltar. This led to a horrific chain of events: at the three men’s funeral, a member of the UDA launched an attack that left three dead and 60 wounded; at the funeral of one of these victims, two undercover British soldiers were dragged from their car, beaten and shot.

The housing market continued to boom in the UK: the average house price having risen over 25% (to a shocking £60k!) during the previous year. The Liberal Party ended its 129 year existence by merging with the SDP. Pound notes ceased to be legal tender.

Stock Aitken Waterman had recently released the second single on their PWL label, Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky. The ‘Hit Factory’, sadly, dominated the British charts for several years thereafter with their bland, assembly-line hi-NRG pop. Lucky was in the second week of its five-week stay at number one when Frenz was released. Terence Trent D’Arby (remember him?) was at the top of the album charts (in the middle of an eight-week run) with Introducing the Hardline…

The Fall Live In 1986-88
After Marcia Schofield’s debut in Ipswich, the group played four dates in Austria (the third of which saw Shoulder Pads get its debut) before embarking on a 12-date US tour. They played a further 15 UK gigs in November to promote Bend Sinister, Guest Informant being played for the first time on the 8 November performance at Woolwich. After the twelve performances of Hey! Luciani, the group rounded off 1986 with a one-off gig at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on 22 December.

1987 opened with a 20-date tour of Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands in February-March; Ghost was debuted on the second date. The group played a further 25 UK dates (mainly in the UK) in 1987. Australians and Get A Hotel were debuted in April; Frenz appeared on May 11 at Liverpool; Bremen Nacht, Oswald Defence Lawyer and Tuff Life got their first outings at Finsbury Park in July; Victoria followed in November; a one-off gig in Athens saw Carry Bag Man and In These Times played for the first time. On the 15 August, The Fall shared a bill with Nick Cave, Swans and Butthole Surfers in Hamburg. Tickets for the gig were oversold and a riot ensued.

ticket

The group’s May 19 date at Nottingham Rock City was released in 1993 as BBC Radio 1 ‘Live In Concert’. Like Austurbaejarbio, it benefits from crystal-clear sound but is curiously flat, soulless and limp.

On 1 July, The Fall acted as an unlikely last-minute support act for U2 at Elland Road. The gig (where Hit The North was played for the first time) was most notable for Craig Scanlon ending up with a black eye and a badly-bruised arm after being dragged down a staircase by U2’s security after he and Steve Hanley tried to get backstage to procure autographs for Hanley’s relatives in Ireland16.

The Album
The album was originally entitled ‘Gene Crime Experience’ until Smith realised it spelt GCE (which is what GCSEs were officially called back in the day when they were still ‘O levels’). The first side was still entitled ‘Crime Gene’. Parts of the album were recorded at Abbey Road, where recording was briefly interrupted by Duran Duran taking a studio tour17.

One of the biggest departures with Frenz was its cover. Up to this point, the group’s albums had all had covers that were intriguing and aesthetically pleasing. Frenz, however, was a horror. Featuring a variety of ugly fonts, the lettering obscures most of the group, leaving Smith, as Brix put it, lording it over us’18.

The allocation of songwriting credits is interesting here. While MES was undoubtedly capable of musical invention, the fact that half of the songs give him a sole songwriting credit seems, at best, unlikely (and in the case of Athlete is just silly). Brix’s perspective was that ‘every single one of those songs was a collaboration. It seemed to me that the deterioration of our relationship was reflected in my dwindling songwriting credits’19. There is a sense, perhaps, that MES was trying to assert his dominance.

The album was, in commercial terms, by far their most successful so far, reaching number 19 in the album charts. In the NME, however, Danny Kelly was less than impressed, declaring that it wasn’t ‘fit to share the same planet as This Nation’s Saving Grace‘.

Like the previous few albums, Frenz was a different beast if you bought it on a format other than LP (see ‘Reissues & Bonus Tracks’ below), and it was an interesting decision for me as to what should be classified as ‘the album’ for the purposes of this review. The late 80s did see CD sales start to overtake those of vinyl. However, my experience of the buying habits of my contemporaries suggests to me that most Fall fans at the time would have bought the ten-track LP (the high-volume CD sales at the time were of Brothers In Arms et al), so that’s what I’m sticking with.

The Songs
Frenz
The opener finds MES in melancholy mood. His vocals suggest sadness and also have a derisive, cynical quality that implies resignation: I’m lonely but I wouldn’t have it any other way. His repeated refrain of ‘my friends don’t add up to one hand’ is rather touching, if grammatically dubious. This is also one of those tracks where the Smiths’ vocals complement each other well; also one that’s well suited by the clean and crisp production. It was played live frequently at the time (69 appearances) but disappeared after 1988.

It’s a simple and sparse affair, fragile and almost ephemeral; the percussion, bass and guitar are all surprisingly delicate. When I reviewed it on the Fi5 blog, I commented that it felt rather incomplete in isolation, like it was building up to something that never arrives. In the context of the album, however, it was ideally placed to introduce something a little more robust…

Carry Bag Man
…and it is, unsurprisingly, followed by something much more muscular and aggressive. However, Carry Bag Man is a let-down. Based around a basic ‘yeah, this’ll do’ Stooges-ish blues-rock riff, it’s all a bit lazy and predictable and has run out of ideas at least two minutes before it finally calls it a day.

The fact that Smith carried his lyrics around in carrier bags was an interesting little idiosyncrasy, but not apparently interesting enough to sustain a whole lyric. It made 60 appearances 1988-1990 before being revived for four performances in 2008-2009.

Get A Hotel
Like FrenzHotel is sparse and measured. Steve Hanley makes the best of a simple bass line, and Si’s drums are crisp and precise. But there’s little emotion here; nobody sounds like they have much invested in the track; it feels like a rough sketch rather than a complete song. The slowing of the tempo over the final 30 seconds or so just makes it feel like the group have run out of interest. It was played 43 times 1987-1988.

Victoria
Despite MES’s assertion that the group’s approach to the track was to ‘cut it to bits… to do something extreme to it’ (from the NME 1988, quoted on the Reformation site), it’s actually a pretty straight cover. Without Smith’s voice, you’d be hard-pressed to identify it as The Fall. It’s a competent and lively update of a strong, interesting tune, and it injects a bit of well-needed vigour into the album.

Athlete Cured
Lyrically, this is an odd tale even by Smith’s standards, relating the story of an East German athlete suffering from the effects of his brother’s careless parking arrangements.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the song (except maybe the fact that the opening scream makes it sound as though the group are about to burst into Wipe Out) is its main riff, an unashamed lift from Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight by Spinal Tap (Spinal Tap was one of only two films that MES permitted on the tour bus in the late 80s – the other being Zulu). Steve Hanley’s repeated exposure to the song led him to be ‘doodling it’ in a soundcheck, whereupon Smith walked in and declared ‘We’ll use that’. Despite Simon Rogers’ protestations (‘It’s a total rip-off!’) the group ended up using the riff, ‘note-for-note, exactly the same, not altered in the slightest by key changes, time changes, chord changes or any other sort of disguise’20.

It’s one of the album’s highlights, a frantic cacophony anchored by that bass line and featuring a plethora of random electronic squiggles in the background as Smith relates his bizarre tale (‘An odour resembling hot-dogs permeated the whole bedroom’; ‘Obtaining a new parking space for Gert’s motor-car, athletic star soon
recovered’). It got only six outings (always as the opener), all in 1988. The Reformation A-Z site suggests that this small number was due to MES being conscious of the song’s distinctly unsubtle ‘borrow’, but this seems unlikely, especially considering the number of times the group quite happily played other equally derivative songs like Elves. A brief snatch of the song’s intro was also played at the disastrous Motherwell gig in October 1996.

In These Times
There are several likeable things about this song: Steve Hanley’s deep, heavily-flanged bass intro; the moody floor-tom-led interludes (e.g. at 0:44); the fuzzy guitar solo lurking in the background around the two minute mark; plus a selection of prime MES lyrical obscurities – ‘Diluted Jesuits pour out of mutual walkmans from Elland Road to Venice Pensions and down the Autobahns’; ‘My gossamer-thin gate will keep out the trash in which my psychic streets emerge’.

On the negative side, though, there are some rather cheesy 80s-style keyboard stabs towards the end, and the chorus does teeter slightly towards the monotonous end of things, although it’s rescued to some extent by Brix’s somewhat random contributions. She claims at 2:25 that ‘this song’s a belter’, which overstates the case a little.

The Steak Place
A gentle acoustic strum, a bit of finger-clicking and… well, not much else. A potentially interesting scenario (tacky American restaurant full of shady mafia types) fails to generate much interest owing to some startlingly banal (by Smith’s standards) lyrical observations: ‘Cheap carpet lines the way’; ‘Things are brought forward and eaten’.

I don’t always agree with Brix’s evaluations of Fall songs but she’s spot-on about this one, which she simply describes as ‘boring’21. A very thin idea that would have barely passed muster as a b-side. Never played live.

Bremen Nacht
The clean, clinical sound of the album’s production really suits this one, the crisp, sparse atmosphere adding to its aggressive punch. ‘Relentless assault’ is a music journalist cliché, but it’s apt here. This is a song that grabs you by the throat and pummels you into submission; a pugnacious, relentless slab of oompah-krautrock. Simon Wolstencroft described it as ‘always great to play live – you’d see some of the crowd almost going into a trance’22. I should imagine that it was actually bloody exhausting to play, but it definitely must have been hypnotic.

Guest Informant (excerpt)
Infuriatingly, one of the best songs of the era gets a muted, instrumental forty-second run-out. And whilst there was room for Get A Hotel and The Steak Place. Go figure.

Oswald Defence Lawyer
A sluggish, lumbering beast of a song, with only MES’s occasional falsetto ‘Lawyer!’ to lighten the mood. It just drags on and on and on and seems much, much longer than its six minutes. Once again, I have to sympathise with Brix’s view: ‘The most annoying song I ever had to play on… it was interminable, and when we played it I watched the audience switch off’23.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
Initial pressings of the LP came with a bonus 7″ featuring Bremen Nacht Run Out and Mark’ll Sink Us.

The CD/cassette version included Bremen Nacht Run Out, the full version of Guest InformantTuff Life BooogieTwisterBremen Nacht Alternative (a mighty nine-minute version), Ghost and Hit The North part 1.

The album was remastered and released as part of the 2013 5 CD box set, 5 Albums.

Overall Verdict
Whilst it has its highlights, The Frenz Experiment is in many ways an unsatisfying album. Part of the problem is the production, which is just too clean and is very ‘flat’ in many places. This does work well enough in a few instances – it suits the fragile melancholy of Frenz, and adds punch to Bremen Nacht – but overall there’s an air of over-sanitised sheen that fails to bring out the group’s angular, dissonant side.

The greatest problem, however, is with the songwriting. Far too many tracks consist of thin, sketchy underdeveloped ideas. There are too many songs – Carry Bag, Hotel, Steak Place – that just feel lazy and seem to have a ‘will this do?’ attitude to both music and lyrics.

My “Version”
A pretty radical reworking, it has to be said. Some of these songs really belong with Bend Sinister to be honest, but without them I might be struggling…

Side 1Frenz / Sleep Debt Snatches / Guest Informant / Mark’ll Sink Us [20.34]

Side 2: Bremen Nacht (alternative) / Haf Found Bormann / Athlete Cured / Twister [23:02]

Rankings
Both Dragnet and Witch Trials have their flaws, but they are by no means as frustrating and disappointing as Frenz. If you’d asked me a few years ago, I’d have have unhesitatingly put Frenz above both of them, but the sort of intensive listening that this blog has entailed leads me to this order:

  1. This Nation’s Saving Grace
  2. Perverted By Language
  3. The Wonderful And Frightening World Of
  4. Hex Enduction Hour
  5. Slates
  6. Grotesque
  7. Room To Live
  8. Bend Sinister
  9. Dragnet
  10. Live At The Witch Trials
  11. The Frenz Experiment

Hey! Luciani has a bit of flair and originality about it, so places the highest of this ‘batch’; the others are all comfortably mid-table.

  1. Living Too Late
  2. Kicker Conspiracy
  3. The Man Whose Head Expanded
  4. How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
  5. Totally Wired
  6. Marquis Cha-Cha
  7. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  8. Cruiser’s Creek
  9. Hey! Luciani
  10. Mr. Pharmacist
  11. Couldn’t Get Ahead/Rollin’ Dany
  12. Look, Know
  13. There’s A Ghost In My House
  14. Victoria
  15. Hit The North
  16. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  17. Rowche Rumble
  18. Fiery Jack
  19. It’s The New Thing
  20. Oh! Brother
  21. c.r.e.e.p.

With the live albums, ‘BBC’ sits next to Austurbaejarbio in the ‘nice sound, but still somehow uninspiring’ category.

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  5. Totale’s Turns
  6. Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
  7. Live 1977
  8. Austurbaejarbio
  9. BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
  10. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  11. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  12. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  13. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  14. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  15. Liverpool 78
  16. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  17. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  18. Live At Deeply Vale

 

 

References
1The Big Midweek, p281

2The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p227

3Ford, p165

4Tommy Mackay, p83

5The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, pp229-230

6The Big Midweek, pp259-264

7The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p229

8Ford, p169

9The Big Midweek, p285

10Ford, p169

11The Big Midweek, p286

12The Big Midweek, pp287-289

13The Big Midweek, pp286

14Ford, p175

15Ford, p177

16The Big Midweek, p297

17The Big Midweek, p292

18The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p239

19The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p236

20The Big Midweek, pp292-293

21The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p238

22You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p118

23The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, pp238-239

 

The Fall’s “Borrows” Part 1 (1984-88)

A little added extra… a series of compilations recognising the songs that The Fall took inspiration from (or, to be frank, nicked the riff from).

Part one covers Wonderful & Frightening to The Frenz Experiment.

  • Stooges – I Wanna Be Your Dog (Elves)
  • The Deviants – Billy The Monster (Mansion)
  • The Monkees – Valleri (Barmy)
  • The Groundhogs – Earth Is Not Room Enough (Spoilt Victorian Child)
  • The Doors – The Changeling/ Jr. Walker & The All-Stars – Shotgun (Gut Of The Quantifier)
  • Can – Oh Yeah (I Am Damo Suzuki)
  • Dusty Springfield – Every Day I Have to Cry (To Nkroachment: Yarbles)
  • Spinal Tap – Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight (Athlete Cured)

 

YMGTA #14 – Bend Sinister

“He sounds like he’s been having yodelling lessons.”

Details:
Recorded: Yellow 2, Stockport; Abbey Road, London; Square One, Bury mid-1986.
Released: 29 September 1986

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, tapes
  • Brix Smith – guitar, keyboards, vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass, guitar
  • Simon Rogers – keyboards, guitar
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums, percussion
  • Paul Hanley – drums (Dktr. Faustus)

Background
Following a US tour in February-March 1986, Karl Burns left the group for the second (although by no means the last) time. Simon Ford suggests that the reason was the drummer’s new relationship with Carrie Lawson1 (Marc Riley could certainly attest to MES’s antagonism to group members’ other halves) but there were wider issues involved, perhaps primarily Burns’ refusal to be intimidated by Smith and accept his dictatorial tendencies. His replacement, for example, had noted ‘a massive slanging match’2 between the two of them on tour in early 1986.

This replacement was Simon Wolstencroft. Wolstencroft had played in early incarnations of both The Stone Roses (The Patrol, with Ian Brown and John Squire) and The Smiths (Freak Party, with Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke).  Christened ‘Funky Si’ by Johnny Marr3, his band The Weeds had supported The Fall in early 1986. After one of these gigs (The Mean Fiddler on 11 February), Smith approached Wolstencroft and asked him if he wanted to join the group4. According to Wolstencroft5:

‘I fitted Mark’s criteria at the time… in that I wasn’t really a Fall fan and kept the drumming simple. Beyond that, it was maybe just a case of being in the right place at the right time.’

His first Fall gig was in Folkestone on 5 June 1986; his first recording for the group was Hey! Luciani (‘all I did was hit this floor tom for eight bars’6). He also played with the group on their tenth Peel session on 29 June (broadcast on 9 July), performing Hot Aftershave Bop, R.O.D., Gross Chapel-GB Grenadiers and U.S. 80’s-90’s.

Image result for living too late

On the 7 July, the group released the single Living Too Late. In a Sounds interview published a couple of weeks after the single’s release7 MES commented that ‘You get tired, really tired… I’m psyching myself up all the time for these live concerts and a lot of it is going through the ceiling’. This sense of jaded exhaustion was certainly reflected in the song. Smith’s tale of middle-aged regret and ennui (‘Sometimes life is like a new bar: plastic seats, beer below par, food with no taste, music grates…’) is, however, a touching, depressing masterpiece. The loping bass, stodgy drumbeat, ghostly violin and gently echoing guitar create a melancholy atmosphere that match the embittered, wistful lyrics perfectly; the relentless, marching rhythm a perfect companion to the image of a life stuck in a rut.

Living Too Long (the lengthier version on the 12″), places a nervy, skittering guitar front and centre, adds steam-locomotive percussion and has MES’s vocals floating around more subtly in a tinny, megaphone style. It’s excellent in its own right, but it’s the more concise Living Too Late that’s the thing of absolute wonder. I’d be perfectly happy with four and half minutes of just the relentless main section, but who else but The Fall would have added the middle eight (chorus?) that comes in at 1:06 and 2:31? A strange, ascending, discordant kaleidoscope over which Smith contributes a preposterous falsetto that’s at once laughable and oddly moving. The bouncing staccato bass that SH uses to bring us back into the main body of the song (e.g. at 1:21) is one the most memorable moments in the whole back catalogue. Living Too Late was played 53 times 1986-87; once again the group only just dented the top 100, the single reaching number 97.

The song was one of those evaluated by guest reviewer Samantha Fox in Smash Hits. She wasn’t keen:

‘I didn’t like this at all – it’s really crappy…he sounds like he’s been having yodelling lessons. it seems to be the fashion at the moment to like The Smiths and these sorts of groups, and to me the lyrics are really depressing.’

The b-side was Hot Aftershave Bop. It’s a shame that this is buried away here, as it’s a strong track. Steve Hanley’s contribution is a highlight: not the most complex of bass lines, but it forms a prominent, driving foundation, and there are several flamboyant slides up the neck (e.g. at 2:00 and 2:06) that add a bit of colour. There’s a guitar in either channel; the left (Brix?) focusing on relatively straightforward chords/arpeggios, whilst the right (Scanlon, presumably) lets loose with some frenetic, blues-rock string-bending.  The drums are the song’s Achilles heel, though: whilst they gain a bit more body from around the two minute mark, the fragile, tinny snare in the first half makes the song feel a little thin in places. It was played 45 times 1986-88.

Two months later, the group followed this up with Mr. Pharmacist, which fared a little better commercially, reaching number 75 (see the album tracks below). The b-side, Lucifer Over Lancashire, is an engaging piece of rickety rockabilly racket. The verse is particularly pleasing, with MES getting all high-pitched and ‘yee-haw’ while the band rattle along like a train. The chorus, despite Hanley’s impressively fuzzy, throbbing bass, is a bit dull and obvious in comparison to the rest of the song, however. It was played 73 times 1986-89.

Front cover

Tucked away on the 12″ was Auto Tech Pilot. Never played live, it’s an oft-overlooked little gem. The gloomy descending bass line, echoey piano and fuzzy understated guitar give it a sparse, ghostly atmosphere.  It also has a somewhat chaotic feel, particularly in the slightly jarring transitions/tempo changes, and is one those Fall songs where the group sound as though they’re working hard to hold things together. There’s an excellent, detailed review of the track by hippriestess here.

In The Wider World…
UK unemployment was still on the rise: figures for July showed it to be nearly 3.3 million. In education, the GCSE replaced ‘O’ levels. The Independent (‘It is. Are you?’) was launched and Gateshead’s Metro Centre became the largest shopping centre in Europe.

In music, The Communards’ Don’t Leave Me This Way (the best-selling single of the year) was in the middle of a month-long stay at the top of the UK singles chart, having replaced the soporific lovers’ rock of Boris Gardiner’s I Wanna Wake Up With You. Five Star’s Silk & Steel was number one in the album charts, but was only there for one week, soon to be ousted by the multi-million selling Graceland.

The 1986 Brit awards paint a picture of a rather moribund UK music scene: Phil Collins won best male solo artist and best album (for No Jacket Required), Dire Straits were best British group and the ‘breakthrough act’ was Go West. Best international group was Huey Lewis and the News.

The Fall Live In 1985-86
The group embarked on a 22-date UK tour to promote TNSG in the Autumn of 1985. Dktr Faustus was debuted on the first date (Newcastle Riverside on 3 October) and appeared on the majority of the tour.

On the 8 November, the group (featuring a heavily made-up MES in a long leather trench coat) appeared on The Tube, playing Bombast and Cruiser’s Creek. The performance of Bombast is particularly excellent:

They played a further seven UK dates in February 1986. Hey! Luciani and Hot Aftershave Bop were debuted on 6 February (where Paul Hanley stepped in in place of Karl Burns). Rowche Rumble, after a five year absence, was played at six of these gigs; it also featured in most of the nine-date North American tour that took place in February-March.

back

At the majority of the North American gigs, the group opened with Countdown, a lively if slight instrumental that can be heard on The Fall Box Set. On the 1 March in New York, Living Too Late was played for the first time; Bournemouth Runner, US 80’s 90’s and R.O.D. followed a few days later in Washington.

flyer

Simon Wolstencroft’s first gig in Folkestone on 5 June saw Gross Chapel – British GrenadiersLucifer Over Lancashire and Riddler! get their first outings. On the 11th, in Slough, Mr. Pharmacist was played for the first time; Terry Waite Sez followed on the next night in London.

The Album
For the third (and final) time, John Leckie was the producer. However, unlike on Wonderful and Frightening, where he had subtly and successfully suggested changes to the group’s usual approaches, and TNSG, where even MES had to admit he captured The Fall sound perfectly, the Smith-Leckie relationship here was fraught and volatile. Perhaps it was due to Smith’s well-documented desire to throw a spanner in the works whenever he felt things were getting too comfortable at the expense of creative tension; maybe it was due (as Brix suggests8) to a combination of MES’s heavy drinking and the first signs of marital problems. Either way, the deterioration in the Smith-Leckie relationship seems to have had an influence on the album’s sound – Smith, for example, apparently insisting that some tracks be mastered directly from a bog-standard C909. Brix described the whole experience as ‘miserable’10.

Reviews were much less positive than had been the case with the last couple of albums. In the NME, Dave Haslam regretted the lack of ‘eyeball-to-eyeball social comment, now replaced by more occasional contributions; pithy, scratchy phrases delivered in so clotted a vocal style that they undermine any potential accessibility in the music’. He still felt that group sounded ‘a good deal better than the rest’, but also that ‘you don’t feel the hard edges, the bite and the snarl you would have felt from their early releases’.

According to Melody Maker‘s Simon Reynolds, ‘While The Fall’s music has grown steadily more vivacious and approachable, Smith’s writing has folded in on itself in an ever denser scrawl, beyond decipherment, let alone understanding’. Despite this, Bend Sinister achieved a far higher chart placing than all the previous albums, reaching number 36.

[Many thanks to ocelot from The Fall Forum for the inner sleeve pictures]

The Songs
R.O.D.
You can often argue that the sequencing of Fall albums is somewhat perverse, but R.O.D. (‘Realm of Dusk’) is clearly a great choice as an album opener. One of Brix’s particularly sprightly riffs sits atop a song full of brooding darkness (‘I added the California beach to the dark dimension’11) to great effect. A disturbing yet poetic set of opening lines too: ‘It’s approaching / 600 pounds gas and flesh / Rotten, tainted / It’s approaching, lips and tongue abhorrent / Flickering lexicon or a stray dog pack leader.’ It was played live 40 times.

Dktr. Faustus
First recorded the year before the album’s release as part of the ninth Peel session (as Faust Banana), Dktr. Faustus was played 48 times 1985-87. To the casual Fall listener familiar with the group’s most famous period, it’s probably as close to an ‘archetypal’ Fall song as you get, with a twangy, repetitive guitar riff and a notable contrast between MES’s ‘megaphone’ vocals and Brix’s American drawl. For me, it’s also one of the best examples of how the Smiths’ vocals worked well together.

Based (obviously) on the Faust legend,  there’s an interesting and detailed discussion regarding the song’s lyrics here. Brix disliked the song: ‘I cringe when I hear it. I hated having to say those stupid lyrics’12.

Shoulder Pads 1#
A flimsy, throwaway tune most notable for its cheesy keyboard line (which bears a passing resemblance to the theme tune of dreadful 70s-80s sitcom Are You Being Served?). Difficult to see how this could ever have been selected for the album over Auto Tech Pilot or Hot Aftershave Bop. Played live 50 times.

Mr. Pharmacist
By some distance the group’s most often played song (around 400 performances between 1986 and 2017), it’s a cover of late-60s Californian garage-rock band The Other Half‘s 1966 single which featured on one of the Nuggets compilations. The bare-bones bouncing riff and mosh-friendly uptempo sections make it easy to see why it was a live favourite, although it’s never clear to me why this particular track was revisited by the group quite so often. It’s a spirited and enjoyable thrash, although I have to confess that I prefer the original.

Gross Chapel-British Grenadiers
A masterclass in the subtle creation of mood and tension. Steve Hanley rumbles along ominously; one guitar picks out a dark yet delicate and brittle melody line while the other scratches out oblique, angular chords; the drums are at once forceful yet carefully restrained. There’s a sense throughout that each element shifts slightly, moves to a different beat, which creates an unnerving, dislocated feeling. MES’s vocals are almost buried, providing texture as much as a focal point.

The whole thing sounds like it’s going to erupt at any time, but – like, say, Hip Priest – the group avoid any crescendo-ish clichés. As the song beds down around the six minute mark, you almost want it to burst free and thrash it out; the fact that it doesn’t is testament to their disregard for rock tropes and their understanding of effective dynamics. (You can find an excellent, detailed analysis of the song here.) It only had a nine month stint on the setlist, its 29th and final performance occurring in February 1987.

U.S. 80s-90s
The opening drums (both in terms of sound and pattern) root this track firmly in the 80s. It’s an unusual hybrid, containing electro/hip-hop influences as well as having a psych-rock flavour (especially the skittering synth effects); as if Run DMC had teamed up with Hawkwind rather than Aerosmith. It’s one of those tracks that the group didn’t quite capture at its best in the studio, good as it is; the Peel session and several live versions (see here) are far better.

According to Brix13, the song was inspired by the group’s on-tour experiences at American customs, where they were questioned about some sleeping pills that Brix’s mother had given them: ‘we practically had stickers on our foreheads saying “search me”.’ It came in at number ten in the 1986 Peel Festive 50, and enjoyed a long stint on the setlist: 123 appearances 1986-97.

Terry Waite Sez
Another one of Brix’s lively, twangy riffs. Its brevity (99 seconds) is welcome, as although it’s pleasant enough, it’s too flimsy to have been sustained for any longer. Played 56 times 1986-87.

Bournemouth Runner
You could never accuse MES of having a limited scope in terms of lyrical subject matter, but here, ‘a bloke nicked our banner at a gig once’ (the story is here) is not exactly a rich seam for lyrical insights. It’s a curious little song: it starts off with a slow, doom-ish bass line and echoey vocals that seem designed to create a dark and mysterious atmosphere. It’s not entirely successful though, as the band’s timing seems curiously hesitant. Once it gets uptempo, it all feels a bit unsubstantial and unconvincing. The Rock Lobster style keyboards don’t help either. It feels like it would have made a satisfactory if unremarkable b-side; as 6 minutes of a 46 minute album it doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. It only got 16 outings 1986-87.

Riddler!
An intriguing little number, built around a ponderous and simplistic (and once again rather twangy) guitar line that periodically bursts into a bit of energetic rocking out. Lots of interesting noises going on in the background too. Several sources indicate that ‘riddler’ was something that MES and his friends, as kids, used to shout randomly at people. It only had an eight month stay on the setlist, its 31st and final performance coming in February 1987.

Shoulder Pads 2#
A brief and pointless reprise. The frantic, scratchy guitar adds a little interest, and Steve Hanley’s bass booms impressively, but overall it’s just filler. One was more than enough.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
At the time of release, the CD and cassette versions contained three bonus tracks: Living Too Late (a crying shame it wasn’t on the ‘proper’ album), Auto-Tech Pilot (ditto) and Town And Country Hobgoblins – a cunningly-renamed live recording of City Hobgoblins from the Town And Country Club, 12 July 1986.

In 1987, the album was released in the US as The Domesday Pay-Off Triad Plus. The tracklist was: There’s A Ghost In My House / U.S. 80’s-90’s / Shoulder Pads #1 / Mr Pharmacist / Riddler! / Hey Luciani / Haf Found Bormann / Terry Waite Sez / R.O.D. / Shoulder Pads #2 / Gross Chapel-British Grenadiers.

In 2019, the album got a major reissue, which included a remastered version of the album plus singles, b-sides, etc. The remastered versions are, almost without exception, a great improvement, adding an exciting sharpness and brightness.

Overall Verdict
Not without its moments of greatness, it’s an album that falls a little flat in comparison to what went before. It’s not just the original production (which gives it a flat, almost ‘cold’ sound) but the quality of songs overall falls short of those on Wonderful and TNSG. I listened to it a lot at the time, but it has gradually receded from my listening over the years. It, to me, is one of those where you pick out moments without being inclined to listen regularly to it in its entirety.

My “Version”
My existing one, although I would replace the original tracks with the remastered versions:

Side 1: R.O.D. / Dktr. Faustus / Living Too Late / Auto-Tech Pilot (19:35)

Side 2: Gross Chapel-British Grenadiers / US 80s 90s / Hot Aftershave Bop / Riddler! (22:10)

Rankings
It will upset some, I know, but I got more consistent enjoyment from Room To Live (and all of those above it) than I did from Bend Sinister.

  1. This Nation’s Saving Grace
  2. Perverted By Language
  3. The Wonderful And Frightening World Of
  4. Hex Enduction Hour
  5. Slates
  6. Grotesque
  7. Room To Live
  8. Bend Sinister
  9. Dragnet
  10. Live At The Witch Trials

As far as singles go, Living Too Late leaps to the top as one of my favourite ever Fall songs. Mr. Pharmacist is solid enough and finds itself mid-table.

  1. Living Too Late
  2. Kicker Conspiracy
  3. The Man Whose Head Expanded
  4. How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
  5. Totally Wired
  6. Marquis Cha-Cha
  7. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  8. Cruiser’s Creek
  9. Mr. Pharmacist
  10. Couldn’t Get Ahead/Rollin’ Dany
  11. Look, Know
  12. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  13. Rowche Rumble
  14. Fiery Jack
  15. It’s The New Thing
  16. Oh! Brother
  17. c.r.e.e.p.

With official live albums, there’s nothing to add here chronologically. However, in March this year, this was released:

It’s not really worthy of description or review, to be honest; the very definition of scraping the bottom of the barrel.

References

1Ford, p155

2You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p79

3 You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p43

4You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p79

5-6You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p87

7Quoted in Ford, p157

8The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p224

9Ford, p159

10The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p223

11-12The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p225

13The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p222

YMGTA #13: This Nation’s Saving Grace

“Oh, to be thirteen and have this be the first record one heard.

Details:
Recorded: Mid 1985
Released: 23 September 1985

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, violin, guitar
  • Brix Smith – guitar, vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Simon Rogers – keyboards, guitar, bass
  • Karl Burns – drums, vocals

Background
Up to the release of Wonderful and Frightening, the group’s line-up (notwithstanding the addition of Brix) had been relatively stable for several years. Things changed after their gig at Cardiff’s New Ocean Club on the 1 November. Finding the hotel car park chained shut, the group had to leave their van parked in the street. Come the morning, everything but Steve Hanley’s bass amp had been stolen. MES seems to have been more than a little cross (‘Mark was on a different plane of angry’1), but arrangements were made for the group to play with borrowed equipment at the next night’s gig in Brighton. However, after that gig. MES’s haranguing (which apparently involved the use of a stick, Windsor Davies sergeant-major style) was the straw that broke the camel’s back for both Hanley brothers, who (separately) quit the group.

For Steve, the pressure of having recently become a father was undoubtedly a factor in his departure. Eventually, it was agreed (after a surprise visit to his home by Mr and Mrs Smith2 where he received £1000 to tide him over) that he would take a few months off from The Fall. According to Brix, MES was ‘chastened for probably the only time I had ever seen’3.

For Paul, however, the departure was final (although he was persuaded to play for the infamous Old Grey Whistle Test performance later that month). He formed a new band, Kiss The Blade, who released one single, The Party’s Begun. Shortly afterwards, he left the music industry to work in IT. He can now, of course, be found playing in Brix & The Extricated alongside his brother.

Musically, the solution to Paul’s departure was obvious. Finding a new bassist, albeit temporarily, would be more problematic. The answer came via Smith’s connection with Michael Clark. Simon Rogers had worked with Clark at Ballet Rambert; he was a ‘proper’ musician, who had attended the Royal College of Music, composed ballets and even appeared in the charts as a member of Incantation, who had a top twenty hit with Cacharpaya in 1982. According to Steve Hanley, who first met Rogers at the OGWT appearance, he could ‘play every instrument on the planet’. Dave Simpson described him as ‘the least likely musician ever to end up in The Fall’4.

Hanley seems to have – understandably – felt a little threatened by Rogers at first, especially as the group started to write new material such as Cruiser’s Creek without him. However, he was detailed to pick Rogers up from Piccadilly station after the Easter US tour and – having been surprised and slightly impressed by his conversion from ‘clean-cut, ethnically-dressed kids’ TV presenter type’ to a ‘straggly-haired man in leather trousers and in desperate need of a shave and a good night’s kip’5 – they seem to have bonded over an afternoon in the Hanleys’ living room going over the new material6.

In May, the group recorded their eighth Peel session (Cruiser’s Creek / Couldn’t Get Ahead / Spoilt Victorian Child / Gut Of The Quantifier), with Steve Hanley on bass and Rogers on guitar and keyboards. In June, they released the double A-side single Couldn’t Get Ahead / Rollin’ Dany, which had been recorded with the temporary Hanley-free line-up.

Couldn’t Get Ahead is, for me, a far better attempt at capturing an accessible-yet-still-The-Fall sound than the previous year’s singles. It’s a bouncy, twangy little number with an infectious chorus plus an energetic and coherent MES performance. However, it made no more of a dent in the UK charts than the 1984 releases, only reaching number 90. Rollin’ Dany, a Gene Vincent cover, is a spirited if fairly unremarkable piece of rock ‘n’ roll, although it features a pretty nifty solo from Craig Scanlon. Couldn’t Get Ahead was a popular setlist choice 1985-86, making 51 appearances, although it disappeared thereafter. Rollin’ Dany only got four outings, all in autumn 1985.

The 12″ version featured Petty (Thief) Lout. The main body of the song is quite mainstream, reminiscent of a Smiths/REM jangle/strum; pleasant if not earth-shattering. The quiet interludes are more intriguing, with an understated, bluesy slide guitar. It made 21 appearances in 1985 gigs, and was resurrected once in 1990.

A couple of weeks after the album’s release, Cruiser’s Creek became the group’s sixteenth single release. The title was inspired by the Smith’s experiences of holidaying with Brix’s family7; it features another irresistible and infectious riff (a languid yet direct surf-rock twang) and is one of the group’s best efforts at capturing that Fall-pop sound, although once again the group only reached the lower end of the charts – 96 this time.  It was played 50 times 1985-87.

Vixen, the bonus song on the 12″ of Cruiser’s Creek, is regularly vilified by Fall fans as being one of their worst ever efforts. I don’t have any particularly strong feelings against it, but it is rather thin and lifeless. It was never played live (other than Brix playing a snatch of the riff at the Santa Monica in-store appearance mentioned below).

In The Wider World…
September 1985 saw a repeat of the rioting of four years earlier: in Handsworth, Birmingham, two people died when a post office was petrol-bombed; a month later, the Broadwater Farm riots saw the murder of PC Keith Blakelock. Not entirely coincidentally, over three million people were unemployed in the UK. Neil Kinnock was wrestling with the Militant issue, his speech to the party conference in October causing Eric Heffer to walk off the stage in protest. Glenn Hoddle’s goal against Romania secured England’s place in the 1986 World Cup.

In the music world, Bowie and Jagger’s utterly awful karaoke/dad-dancing cover of Dancing In The Street was in the third week of its month-long stay at the top of the charts. After a one-week visit to number one by Midge Ure’s If I Was, Jennifer Rush’s archetypal 80s power ballad The Power Of Love took over for the next five weeks. Madonna’s Like A Virgin topped the album charts.  On Top Of The Pops in the week of the album’s release, we were treated to Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell, The Style Council’s The Lodgers and Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out For A Hero. Ah, the 80s…

The Fall Live In 1984-85
The Fall played 45 gigs between the release of TW&FWO and TNSG. This included five dates in Europe in December 1984 (the first following Paul Hanley’s departure), a dozen American performances in March-April 1985 and six German gigs in the month leading up to TNSG‘s release. Unusually for them The Fall went for a whole twenty gigs (the last twenty they played in 1984) without debuting any new material.

New material started to emerge in March 1985. At the Hammersmith Town Hall gig, where the group were promoting the newly-released compilation Hip Priest And Kamerads, Couldn’t Get Ahead, Cruiser’s Creek and Barmy were played for the first time. Petty (Thief) Lout was debuted later that month; Gut Of The QuantifierSpoilt Victorian Child, Paintwork, Bombast, What You Need and LA all emerged in June and July; Rollin’ Dany received its first outing a fortnight before TNSG‘s release.

Excerpts from the group’s in-store appearance at Texas Records Santa Monica on 23 March featured on MTV’s The Cutting Edge:

The Album
Like Wonderful & Frightening, the album becomes a different beast if you’re used to the cassette version or later CD reissues that shoehorn in the various singles and b-sides. But at 16 I bought the 11-track vinyl version and that will always be the ‘correct’ version of TNSG to me.

Once again, John Leckie handled the production. For me, he strikes the perfect balance on the album tracks. Not going back entirely to Dragnet-era scratchy murk, but pulling back a little from the sometimes very clean sound of TWAFWO. As Simon Ford describes, Leckie ‘chose not to smooth out The Fall’s rough edges; instead he made them a virtue’8. The album has a dark, ominous edge, but still provides clarity, giving the songs space to breathe. Or, as MES much more simply put it: ‘it’s just what’s there, bringing out what’s always there’9.

In the NME, David Quantick declared that: ‘The Fall have made one of their most accessible LPs yet; at the same time, they have made a record that’s infinitely more peculiar then almost anything else released this year.’ In Sounds, Chris Roberts was even more effusive: ‘Oh, to be thirteen and have this be the first record one heard. Life and what you needed would never be the same again.’10 The NME ranked it at number six in their albums of the year and it reached number 54 in the UK album chart, out-performing both Wonderful and Hex.

The Songs
Mansion
Brix in magpie mode again, as Mansion‘s riff is a clear lift from Billy The Monster by The Deviants (some of whom went on to form The Pink Fairies). But it makes for a very effective album opener, with its spooky, sci-fi atmosphere (it was ‘supposed to evoke the creepy theme song to the Haunted house at Disneyland’)11 setting the scene nicely for the aural assault of the next track.

How many times it was played live is a tricky issue. It was only used as an intro tape at the time, and didn’t make its way into the set until 2002 (in which year it was played 24 times). However, whether these performances were of Mansion or its companion piece To Nkroachment: Yarbles isn’t entirely clear. Musically, the live versions were closer to the instrumental album track, but they generally contained vocals; although they rarely resembled the lyrics from Yarbles. To add to the confusion, DVD releases from the year call it Yarbles whilst the 2002 setlists call it Mansion.

Bombast
Steve Hanley, not surprisingly, felt a little out of sync with the rest of the group when the album was recorded, several songs having been written in his absence: ‘I’m like a builder who’s been off sick, returning to find most of the wall has been built and all that’s left for me to do is the snagging.’12 However, his contribution here (he wrote the riff during his paternity leave) kicks the album into gear in an utterly glorious, boisterous fashion. It got an impressive 98 outings over the next five years.

MES gets on his megaphone for the opening (which sadly doesn’t include the lines about Lloyd Cole that were included when this intro was used to introduce the Peel session version of LA). It’s a great introduction, even if it doesn’t actually make a huge amount of grammatical sense – ‘Whose main entitle is themselves’? The message seems to be, ‘Don’t give me any of your bullshit, or you’ll know about it’ (on The Annotated Fall bzfgt suggests the somewhat wordier, ‘All those who are entitled in their own minds, and whose only source of entitlement is themselves, are in for an overdose of vitriol.’ Which is a fine effort, to be fair, although over around 800 words he really ties himself up in knots trying to pin it down.

What follows the intro is an absolute marvel. It’s like Steve Hanley came up with three great riffs and then thought, f*ck it, let’s weld them all together and see what happens. It clashes, it grinds, it thrashes, it threatens to punch you in the face… and the track is just full of highlights: the atonal, tremolo-heavy chord at 0:27; the staccato chords just before the minute mark and again at 1:36 and 2:22 (echoed by Smith’s yelps); the squall of feedback at 1:32; the brief, controlled burst of thrash 1:40-1:46 (and the extended one from 2:28). There’s no real song as such here, but it’s a gloriously effective and actually moving piece of noise.

Barmy
Another example of a ‘borrowed’ riff, this time from The Monkees’ Valleri. More twangy guitars, supporting a distinctly bouncy and surprisingly tuneful verse; contrasting with a dark, dissonant and gloomy chorus (of sorts). The latter features some lovely swampish wah-wah guitar. There’s also a bit of shrill rock ‘n’ roll piano sprinkled over the second half that adds some pleasant contrast.

It’s a joyful stomp of a tune. My only criticism (and this is pretty much my only – very mild – criticism of the whole album) is that it very slightly outstays its welcome; for me, it could perhaps have finished at 4:05. It was played 43 times 1985-86.

What You Need
According to a 1985 MES magazine interview, What You Need was inspired by a couple of Twilight Zone episodes, one actually called What You Need, the other entitled The Four of Us Are Dying, about a con man who can change his face to make it look like anyone he chooses. (MES got the two episodes confused, probably because they were shown as a double bill – thanks to Dan for the clarification.) Smith went on to say that, ‘the main theme of the song is that there are a lot of people in Britain, and a lot of people in America, too, telling people what they need. And in America, especially. I find this really scary.’

This is proper ‘3 Rs’ stuff: uncompromising in its adherence to The Fall principle of bludgeoning and beguiling you with relentless repetition. The snaking lead guitar line and sparse, choppy rhythm guitar are simplistic but devastatingly effective; Smith’s vocal is almost devoid of melody, simply declaiming – often in classic megaphone style – a series of seemingly random phrases: ‘been bleeding some itch’, ‘your verbose kitchen’, ‘slippery shoes for your horrible feet’. It also eschews anything as namby-pamby as a chorus or middle eight, although the ‘spooky carnival’ keyboards do add a bit of colour and variety, as does the intermittent appearance of a cowbell.

What You Need is, to me, just what The Fall sound like. You could greet a newcomer to the group with something enticingly mainstream-ish like Ghost or Victoria, or you could challenge them with something extra-difficult like Hurricane Edward or Jobless or Ibis-Afro Man. But What You Need is the sound of the centre of The Fall for me; the chalk-face; the grinding out of what needs to be said and heard; the epitome of the group’s work ethic.

Spoilt Victorian Child
A lyric of which MES had written an early draft back in the late 70s, but for which he had never found suitably ‘daft English music’13 until Simon Roger provided an angular, stuttering riff – in 6/4 time no less – that fitted the bill. (It bears a slight resemblance to The Groundhog’s Earth Is Not Room Enough.) Brix apparently found the guitar part tricky to learn, but ‘felt like Eddie Van Halen’ once she’d mastered it14.

The jerky, awkward riff contrasts nicely with the comparatively solid and straight drums, but the most pleasing aspect of the song is the way that MES seems to be in a constant battle to keep up with the music, which gives it an energetic urgency. It was played 29 times in 1985-86, and was resurrected for seven performances in 2004.

L.A.
Famously John Peel’s least favourite Fall track (you can hear him say so here), Brix said that LA was ‘my most favourite song that I ever wrote’. It’s one that doesn’t get universal love from Fall fans, although I’m never quite sure why.

The oscillating synth and snaky, sinewy guitar lines give this a dark, sinister edge which is supported well by MES’s understated and minimal contributions. Sometimes there is just something about Smith’s timing that is indefinably wonderful, and the way he moves from ‘L, L, L, L’ to ‘A, A, A, A’ – never quite at the point where you expect it – is just spot on. The breakdown at 3:14 – 3:22 is a wonderful moment too; there are occasions when a chord change, or a vocal inflection, can achieve huge amounts without seeming to try that hard: and this is one of them.

LA was a long-standing feature on setlists, racking up 104 appearances between 1985 and 1996.

Gut Of The Quantifier
A leading candidate for the most Fall-ish song title, and another spot of ‘borrowing’ here, as the riff bears a passing resemblance to The Doors’ The Changeling (which in turn may well have been poached from Jr. Walker & The All-Stars’ Shotgun). It’s a thumpingly muscular, aggressive tune, all angles and elbows. The double-tracked vocals create a sense of oppressive intensity, but it’s also not without humour: the ‘Kane Gang’ line might be a little lost in history now, but it still raises a smile, as does the manic cackle at 0:48.

It was played 65 times 1985-88, and then was resurrected for a couple of performances in 1995. It’s a beautifully well-paced track, the build/crescendo sections being perfectly placed; it’s still full of surprises even after all these years.

My New House
You can tie yourself up in knots attempting to decipher the meaning behind many of MES’s lyrics, but here’s an exception. My New House  was about, well, Smith’s new house. The house in question was a semi-detached in Sedgley Park, just around the corner from Smith’s parents.

It was credited to Smith alone, but it seems likely that the riff was Craig Scanlon’s15. One of the few Fall songs to feature a prominent acoustic guitar, it follows a ‘3Rs’ approach similar to What You Need. The simplistic riff is insistent and relentless, and the whole thing is ramshackle to the point of sounding likely to fall apart at any moment. It’s another one with an almost endless list of features to treasure: Smith’s gleeful whoops on the exclamations of ‘seeee my new house’; the odd, mistimed cymbals in the ‘chorus’; the grinding Beefheartesque guitar lurking in the background… Plus, a personal favourite amongst Smith lyrics: ‘I bought it off the Baptists / I get their bills / And I get miffed’.

Surprisingly, it was only ever played live seventeen times, all in 1986.

Paintwork
The title of this blog comes from a well-known quotation from Mr Peel regarding the fact that trying to rank Fall songs/albums is missing the point. And that’s very true; although it doesn’t stop us, does it? Because, if pressed, I would always name this track (along with Blindness and Dr Bucks’ Letter) as my absolute favourite.

The looping acoustic guitar, descending organ part and the ‘Hey Mark!’ refrain, combined with the occasional diversion into a grungy guitar riff would mark this out as a great song on its own. But add into this mix MES at his most wonderfully random and enigmatic (‘I read Paula Yates on Vision mopeds’, ‘Them continentals are little monkeys’, ‘As if I hadn’t done 10 months service in the USA on the big yachts’) then you have a truly great song. But then you also add in the peculiar excursions into ‘sounds MES accidentally recorded by sitting on the tape recorder in his hotel’ that are spliced awkwardly yet brilliantly into the song and you have an absolutely sublime piece of wonder.

Interestingly, Paintwork was only played six times in 1985-86, but got seventeen outings 2000-04. Like Gut, I find something new every time I listen to this song.; and every time it fills me with a sense of awe and wonder. The group at the height of their creativity; as MES said, ‘you can’t contrive something like that’.

I Am Damo Suzuki
One of the songs that made the most live appearances – 110 in total – although 66 of those were between 2001-04 after a fourteen year gap. It’s also another ‘borrow’, there being echoes of Can’s Oh Yeah throughout (plus a reference to Vitamin C).

It is, quite frankly, mad. The first time I heard it (aged 16) I checked my record player was working correctly, as surely there were two different songs playing at once.  The introduction is in itself somewhat askew: the simple, haunting guitar line already sounds a little out of sync with Smith’s sinister, breathy vocal. But the entrance of the drums at 0:43 provides an exhilaratingly jarring experience. The way that the two rhythms clash, resolve, then draw apart again is just masterfully bonkers. It’s worth quoting in full John Leckie’s account (from the Omnibus edition of TNSG booklet):

‘One of those where we did two takes and Mark liked the band on one tape but he liked his vocal better on the other. Now, on a computer you’d be able to edit that and stretch it to make it all work, so I said, ‘well, all we can can do is to take the vocal off here and put it on to a piece of tape. The two takes had different arrangements, like the verse and chorus came in at different times, so the whole thing gives the impression of being completely random, but the reason being that the first take was eight bars of verse, four bars of chorus, eight bars of verse and the second take is twelve bars of verse, six bars of chorus, a different arrangement. Also Mark’s standing next to Karl, so the drums are coming through the vocal mix and every time the drums stop on the first take you can hear these ambient drums going on from the vocal mix on the second take and I thought it was fantastic and so did everyone else, but a totally unconventional way of doing it.’

To Nkroachment: Yarbles
The companion piece to Mansion is softer and more lethargic, and is also an even stronger candidate than Gut of the Quantifier for ‘most Fall-ish song title’. Like the name of Brix’s first band, Banda Dratsing, ‘yarbles’ is nadsat (the language used in A Clockwork Orange), meaning ‘testicles’. Once again, we have a spot of ‘borrowing’, this time from a song called Every Day I Have to Cry, written by Arthur Alexander and covered by many artists, including Dusty Springfield.

There’s a doleful ennui to Smith’s vocal (‘All the good times are past and gone’); it’s a small, almost understated thing, gone almost as soon as it arrives. As I said on the Fi5 blog, I can just imagine my 16 year old self eagerly flipping the record over and starting again with Mansion.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
At the time of release, the cassette version included Vixen and Couldn’t Get Ahead tacked onto the end of side one and had Petty (Thief) Lout closing the second side (putting Lout after Yarbles being sheer madness in my opinion). When the album was issued on CD in 1988, Rollin’ Dany and an edited version of Cruiser’s Creek were added to the end.

In 2011, Beggars Banquet released a 3-CD ‘deluxe’ version, featuring a 48 page booklet. CD2 included a variety of rough mixes, which are all interesting if not exactly essential. One of the more intriguing inclusions is the instrumental Edie, which – with added vocals – would eventually appear as an Adult Net song. My review of it on Fi5 is here. The third disc rounded up singles, b-sides and the Peel sessions from the time.

Overall Verdict
It is a mark of this album’s quality that the only (mildly) negative thing I can find to say is that one song could possibly be about a minute shorter. It is simply the perfect marriage of the Fall’s increasing accessibility (although let’s not get carried away with that angle – try playing TNSG to a Coldplay or Mumford & Sons devotee and see how you get on) and their difficult, challenging qualities. And for once, the sequencing is absolutely spot-on (although I sometimes feel that the wilfully odd sequencing of many of their albums is one of the things many of us love about them).

It contains a flawless balance of everything the group did exceptionally well: aural barrage (Bombast), off-kilter pop hooks (Barmy), grinding repetition (What You Need, My New House) , sonic experimentation (Paintwork), difficult and angular riff (Spoilt Victorian Child) and sheer, audacious strangeness (I Am Damo Suzuki). To paraphrase Sounds’ Chris Roberts: oh to be sixteen again and be placing this on my turntable for the very first time…

Image result for This Nation's Saving Grace

My “Version”
No question: wouldn’t touch it.

Rankings
Not a difficult decision with the albums, obviously:

  1. This Nation’s Saving Grace
  2. Perverted By Language
  3. The Wonderful And Frightening World Of
  4. Hex Enduction Hour
  5. Slates
  6. Grotesque
  7. Room To Live
  8. Dragnet
  9. Live At The Witch Trials

The two singles slot in comfortably to mid-table positions at this point:

  1. Kicker Conspiracy
  2. The Man Whose Head Expanded
  3. How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
  4. Totally Wired
  5. Marquis Cha-Cha
  6. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  7. Cruiser’s Creek
  8. Couldn’t Get Ahead/Rollin’ Dany
  9. Look, Know
  10. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  11. Rowche Rumble
  12. Fiery Jack
  13. It’s The New Thing
  14. Oh! Brother
  15. c.r.e.e.p.

References
1The Rise and the Fall and the Rise, p203

2The Big Midweek, p237

 3The Rise and the Fall and the Rise, p204

 4The Fallen, p172

 5The Big Midweek, p247

 6The Big Midweek, p248

 7The Rise and the Fall and the Rise, p212

 8-10Ford, p147

 11The Rise and the Fall and the Rise, p208

 12The Big Midweek, p250

 13Ford, p146

 14The Rise and the Fall and the Rise, p209

 15The Rise and the Fall and the Rise, p207

YMGTA #12: The Wonderful And Frightening World Of…

“I decided to pop it up a little and alter the rhythms.”

Details:
Recorded: Focus Studios, London, mid-1984
Released: 12 October 1984

  • Mark E Smith – vocals
  • Brix Smith – guitar, vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Paul Hanley – drums, keyboards
  • Karl Burns – drums, bass
    With:
  • Gavin Friday – vocals

Background
The Fall’s reconciliation with Rough Trade proved to be short-lived. Smith’s unhappiness regarding the ‘cheapskate’1 recording of PBL was exacerbated by what he perceived as the label’s preference for promoting The Smiths. (MES seems to have had a pretty disdainful view of Morrissey, considering him a ‘twat’2 and reportedly always deliberately addressing him as ‘Steven’.) Another bone of contention was that Grant Showbiz had been ‘poached’3 to do The Smith’s sound. Possibly more pertinently, MES was considering the ‘mound of tax bills’ that he felt were the result of ‘not compromising’4.

Smith spent much of the group’s Autumn 1983 tour negotiating with other labels5. The end result was that they signed with Beggars Banquet. This was, according to Dave Thompson, ‘The Fall’s acknowledgement that it was finally time they started selling records’6. Or, as Smith put it: ‘I like it because they’re straights… Beggars just want to have hit singles’7.

The first product from this new union was Oh! Brother. Back in 1977, this song was a driving, aggressive but fairly tuneless offering. Now, with a light and airy production, it was transformed into a piece of quirky pop. It’s certainly quite a transformation when compared to the PBL material; the chorus-heavy guitar and bass and layers of backing vocals give it a light and sugary feel that isn’t entirely my cup of tea. It wasn’t a particularly successful excursion into chart-friendly territory either, reaching only number 93 on the UK charts. It was retired from the set in 1985 after 31 performances.

Front cover

The most notable thing about it is that it was the first Fall single to be released on 12″. The 12″ featured a slightly longer version of the title track, which, as was often the way back in those days, just extends the drum and guitar patterns to no discernible benefit. God-Box, which appeared on both versions is, like Hotel Blöedel, based on one of Brix’s old Banda Dratsing songs (Can’t Stop The Flooding).  There’s a certain pleasing angularity to it, but overall it’s a little cold, flat and uninspired. It got 41 live outings, the last being in 1986.

The group’s next assault on the charts was c.r.e.e.p. An idea rescued by Brix, who found a demo tape of it behind MES’s sofa8, it fared little better than Brother, reaching only 91 on the UK charts. Although some thought it was about Marc Riley, and others thought it might be about Morrissey, MES denied that this was the case – ‘It’s bits of things. A lot of people think it’s about them.’

[EDIT: hippriestess has pointed out, quite rightly, that in her book Brix says c.r.e.e.p. is about their German tour manager Schumech, which MES twisted into ‘scum egg’.]

It’s even more poppy and accessible than its predecessor. I have to say that I’ve never been keen on this one either; it’s lightweight and flimsy in a way that even Smith’s vocals can’t cut through. It was, however, a popular set choice, racking up 70 performances 1983-87.

Front cover

This one also had a 12″ release, which featured a lengthier (by a minute and a half) version of c.r.e.e.p., entitled C.R.E.E.P. Once again, in typical 80s fashion, it rather pointlessly just extends a couple of the instrumental passages, although it does at least push Steve Hanley’s bass line forward prominently for a little while.

The b-side (on both 7 and 12″) was far more pleasing, however. Taking its title from a drug-distributing tour manager, Pat-Trip Dispenser features a grinding, catchy riff and has a lot of very effective intertwining of guitar parts. If you listen to the opening, for example, you’ve got a central choppy rhythm, a simple Cure-like line that broadly follows Steve Hanley’s bass in the left channel and a slightly distorted tinny strum in the right. Great stuff, and rather overlooked and underrated. It was played 28 times 1983-85, before making a surprise one-off return in 2009.

On the same day that the album emerged, the group also released Call For Escape Route. This consisted of a three-track 12″ (Draygo’s Guilt / Clear Off! / No Bulbs) and a two-track 7″ (No Bulbs 3 / Slang King 2).

Front cover

Draygo dated back to 1980, and had already had 25 of its 29 eventual live outings by the time of its release. Like the two preceding singles, there’s a poppiness and lightness of touch that’s certainly a long way from anything PBL or earlier; however, there’s a bit more edge and substance to its Bo Diddley-esque shuffle.

I said on the Fi5 blog that I was infuriated by not being able to pin down what the riff reminded me of (the A-Z‘s suggestion of Lou Reed’s Vicious is not a bad shout, but I’m sure there’s something closer). Sadly, I still haven’t worked it out.

Clear Off! was one of three tracks recorded with guest vocals from Gavin Friday of The Virgin Prunes. It’s a curious mixture of The Cure (the mournful, chorus-heavy lead guitar), something C86-ish (the thin, choppy rhythm guitar) and 80s synth-pop (the sparse and rather hesitant plinky keyboard line). It got 29 live outings 1983-85.

No Bulbs here is the nearly eight minute version, which allows for some nice VU-style guitar work towards the end. It’s about the ‘trash mount’ of a flat that MES and Brix shared (before they moved to My New House) where neither light bulbs or a belt for MES’s trousers were available. It lasted in the set until 1986, and was played 32 times. The version on the 7″ (No Bulbs 3) is just an edit; Slang King 2 (on the other side), aside from a little voice-over intro, isn’t radically different from the album version.

In The Wider World…
On the day of the album’s release, the IRA attempted to blow up Margaret Thatcher at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. A couple of weeks later, Michael Buerk’s famous news report revealed the extent of the Ethiopian famine to the British public. Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards at the end of the month. On the same day, the Catholic Church, after thinking about it for only 359 years, recognised that Galileo might have had a point about the earth revolving around the sun. In the same month, Katy Perry and Kelly Osbourne were born; Leonard Rossiter and François Truffaut died. And  John Lowe achieved the first ever televised nine-dart checkout.

In the UK charts, Stevie Wonder’s execrable I Just Called to Say I Love You had just finished its six week run at number one, replaced by Wham!’s Freedom. U2’s The Unforgettable Fire was at the top of the album charts. The episode of Top Of The Pops broadcast the day after the album’s release featured performances from Alison Moyet (All Cried Out), Limahl (Never Ending Story), Status Quo (The Wanderer) and the thankfully forgotten Eugene Wilde’s Gotta Get You Home Tonight.

The Fall Live In 1984
The group played two late 1983 gigs after the release of PBL, between which they recorded their seventh Peel session (Pat Trip Dispenser / 2 x 4 / Words of Expectation / Creep). A mark of the group’s gradual shift into more mainstream circles was the fact that they also recorded three sessions for radio shows other than Peel’s between March and September: David ‘Kid’ Jensen’s and Janice Long’s shows, and Saturday Live.

They played 28 gigs in 1984 before Wonderful & Frightening‘s release in October. Ten new songs were played for the first time: Lay Of The Land, God-Box, Disney’s Dream Debased and He Talks in March; No Bulbs, Hey! Marc Riley, Craigness and Elves in June. (He Talks was played on the first two dates of the group’s ten-date visit to The Netherlands and Germany in March/April before disappearing forever. It’s most notable for having a riff that’s largely lifted from Judas Priest’s Living After Midnight.) Stephen Song debuted in September; Slang King a week before TW&FWO‘s release.

ticket

The Album
One of the most important factors in TW&FWO‘s creation was the appointment of a new and experienced producer. John Leckie had been employed at Abbey Road studios in the 70s, working with John Lennon and Syd Barrett, and had produced albums for Magazine and XTC. Despite his somewhat hippy background (‘he had recently walked off an ashram, where everyone had to wear the colours of the rising sun and was encouraged to have group sex’10) he seems to have established a productive working relationship with the group. Steve Hanley recalls him saying, ‘I want to capture the energy of the band playing live, but with a cleaner sound than you’re used to’; also that ‘John makes suggestions about the arrangements themselves in such an unobtrusive manner it’s impossible not to engage with his ideas… Our music begins to develop another layer’11.

The album reached no. 62 in the UK Albums Chart. In the NME, Richard Cook described it as ‘particularly sharp and still terrifically crowded’; any worries that John Leckie ‘was persuading them into good taste are vapourised by this clogged, boiling sound’. In Sounds, Andy Hurt decided that yes, The Fall could indeed ‘survive the culture shock of sophisticated recording techniques and find true happiness… rough edges are still very much an integral part of the “new” sound’.

The Songs
[N.B. This is, of course, the first time that a Fall LP’s tracklist varied depending on which format you purchased. For this one, I’m treated ‘the album’ as the original nine-track vinyl release, even though I know that some people are more familiar with the lengthier version. See ‘overall verdict’ below.]

label a

Lay Of The Land
This album – and therefore this opening song – was my introduction to The Fall (again, see ‘overall verdict’ below). Although it was 35 years ago, I can still remember being startled, bemused and slightly disturbed by the introduction. At the time, the creepy, chanting voices put me in mind of some of those ‘folk horror’ kids TV shows that had been around when I was a kid – dark and mysterious tales about stone circles, witchcraft, etc. Of course, I now know that MES was inspired by the 1979 TV series Quatermass (you can hear the ‘planet people’ doing the chant here).

The main body of the song clatters along like a demented train, the guitars are frenetic and the hyperactive bass (from both SH and KB) is just remarkable. MES contributes a particularly effective scornful snarl (the repeated refrain of ‘my son’ being especially pleasing). His a capella refrain at 4:30, followed by Burns launching into a scuzzy, distorted bass solo, is an especially delighted-grin-inducing moment. A ramshackle powerhouse of a tune, and one of the best album openers the group ever did.

It was played almost constantly in 1984, and reached a total of 69 appearances by 1986. In one of their earliest and most memorable TV appearances, The Fall performed Lay on The Old Grey Whistle Test in November 1984, accompanied by Michael Clark’s dancers. It’s a remarkable sight; there’s a detailed and entertaining description here.

2 x 4
Opening with an aggressive, high-up-the-neck, staccato bass riff, 2×4 revisits the punkish rockabilly approach of Fiery Jack. Like Lay, it clatters along exuberantly, although unlike its predecessor’s wierdly dark tone, there’s an almost cartoonish atmosphere due to the repeated ‘hit ’em on the head with a 2 by 4′ line. It’s also one of those where Brix’s backing vocals are a perfect foil for MES. One of the group’s most played songs, it clocked up an impressive 126 performances 1983-88.

Copped It
Like Oh! Brother, this was an old song that had appeared in performances as early as 1977. The driving, discordant guitar riff and megaphone vocal are a joy, and Gavin Friday’s contributions contrast nicely with Smith’s vocals. A typically impenetrable lyric, full of wonderfully crafted phrases: ‘Can’t get far in land of immovable frogs’; ‘Taking out a policy for love and destruction / can’t operate with this vexation’.

Over the last minute, Craig Scanlon chucks in some excellent swirly, aquatic guitar work, and the oddly dispassionate doo-wop backing vocals are also a treat. This one also had a fair bit of staying power on the setlists, making its 63rd and final appearance in 1987.

Elves
The Fall’s recorded history is littered with both cover versions and ‘borrowings’ – some more obvious than others. Elves is definitely at the ‘shameless steal’ end of the spectrum, its riff being lifted wholesale from The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog. Brix – who did the lifting – claims in her book that it was a deliberate homage, meant to be a ‘witty commentary, a send-up of punk’12. Steve Hanley’s account13 differs somewhat, suggesting that his brother pointed out the similarity and Brix’s response was that she’d never heard the song.

Whatever the actual truth, Elves is certainly  great deal more than a simple rip-off. Whilst The Stooges’ riff is prominent and recognisable throughout, the group add a completely new unearthly, disturbingly surreal and malevolent atmosphere. The simple descending guitar figure, accompanied by the shrill, swirling organ, gives you a sense of spiralling, falling out of control. The chanting, menacing vocals contribute to a dark folk horror atmosphere similar to Lay of the Land (once again, you can imagine one of those disturbing 70s children’s dramas set in a spooky village where there’s a terrible dark secret lurking amongst the standing stones…) – an impression that’s only strengthened by the lyrics: Tin-can rattle on the path / The bestial greed is on the attack / The cat black runs round the tree. In addition, the vocal explosion at 2:04 surely wins the hotly-contested ‘Best Sneeze in Popular Music’ award. Live, it had a relatively short shelf-life: 34 performances 1984-85.

label b

Slang King
Slang King had an even shorter stay on the setlist, notching up only 29 appearances before being dropped after October 1986. It’s a relatively accessible song, featuring a pretty keyboard figure; but there’s still a strange, swampish quality to it.

The heavily phased/chorused guitar line squats toad-like over the song; an incongruous trilling organ ripples in from time to time; a selection of high-pitched, breathy backing vocals drift hither and thither, and MES is at once crisp and distorted, discussing ‘lime green receptionists’ and ‘triumphant processions down the road of quease’. He also describes a scenario where some kids have insufficient funds to purchase a curly-wurly (which must be one of those many moments of lyrical confusion for non-UK listeners). As it says, all here is ace.

Bug Day
In the booklet that accompanied the album’s 2010 reissue, Steve Hanley described Bug Day as ‘a bit of a filler’, although I’ve always been fond of its random, lethargic oddness. It’s certainly a loose and experimental moment, comprised of a gently undulating bass line and various atonal guitar clippings over which MES rambles about insects (‘Green moths shivered / cockroaches mouldered in the ground’). Never played live, unsurprisingly.

Stephen Song
An upbeat and joyful song, with an infectious marching rhythm. It’s curiously uplifting, the light-footed percussion and tumbling chords and bass line capturing a spirit of playfulness. The slightly creepy gothic tone of Gavin Friday’s vocals cut across the tweeness of Brix’s voice effectively, and the passage that comes in at 1:13 and 2:25 adds a welcome bit of angular discord.

MES described it as being about competitiveness and plagiarism (the words ‘pot’, ‘black’ and ‘kettle’ spring to mind), which isn’t immediately apparent from the lyrics. As ever, some great turns of phrase, though: ‘a head like a spud ball’;  ‘his vendetta in parchment’; ‘floating grey abundance’. Perhaps because GF’s contribution was an integral part of the song, it was only ever played live six times.

Craigness
Like Joker Hysterical Face, a song about odd neighbours, this time one with ‘one eye’ and ‘maroon flares’. Smith was famously disparaging about bands who cited The Fall as an influence; regarding Pavement, he said, ‘It’s just The Fall in 1985, isn’t it?’ Craigness would suggest that he was a year out, as its ramshackle lope seems to be what Malkmus and co. based much of their early career around.

It’s lovely: gentle, melancholy, and one of those where the group pull off that trick where they only just seem to be holding the song together in one piece. And then Smith’s unearthly screech at 2:28 launches a mad yet somehow understated spot of wig-out. Like Stephen, it only ever got half a dozen live outings.

Disney’s Dream Debased
Another piece of ramshackle minor-chord jangle, albeit one with a more sinister air than Craigness. Famously, this deals with MES and Brix’s experience of visiting Disneyland on the day that a woman died on one of the rides (you can read Brix’s somewhat breathless account in her book, pages 191-193). Whether or not this episode proves MES’s ‘pre-cog’ abilities (it doesn’t, obviously) it inspired a melancholy, melodic yet oddly oppressive song that floats along in a delightfully peculiar haze. Another relatively short-lived feature on the stage: 23 outings 1984-86.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
This was the first time where the format in which you bought the album made a serious difference. The cassette version (Escape Route From The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall) added seven tracks and over half an hour of music – Oh! Brother / Draygo’s Guilt / God-Box / Clear Off! / c.r.e.e.p. / Pat-Trip Dispenser / No Bulbs.

tape inlay

tape inlayv2

[Thanks to Saveloy from the Fall Forum for the scans of the cassette inlay.]

The album was released on CD for the first time in 1988, featuring the 16-track cassette version. The 2010 ‘Omnibus’ reissue was a 4-CD set containing rough mixes, session tracks and a live set from the Pandora’s Music Box Festival in Rotterdam, September 1984. The program (below) seems to suggest that The Fall went on stage at 3.15 am.

84sep22_schedule

The live recording is of excellent quality, sound-wise, and it’s a pretty solid performance. The opening trio of LayCraigness and 2×4 is particularly good, and overall it’s well worth a listen. Kicker Conspiracy is an especially intriguing listen, having a much more sparse, spacious sound than we’re used to hearing. Brix adds an effective new backing vocal, and it’s interesting to hear Steve Hanley’s bass line far more clearly than you can usually. No Bulbs is spirited and energetic, although it’s marred by the fact that both Brix and Scanlon’s guitars are distinctly out of tune. The group had only played the set closer, Middle Mass, once in the preceding twelve months, and it shows.

Overall Verdict
The usual assessment of this album is that Brix, after having dipped her toes in the recording process with PBL, exerted her pop-sensibility influence on W&F and made it an altogether more accessible, ‘poppy’ and commercially viable prospect. This is, of course, overly simplistic, especially when considering the 9-track vinyl version that the overwhelming majority of Fall fans would have bought at the time. This is not to say that Brix did not bring a new dimension to the group; her influence can clearly be heard on Slang King, 2×4 and Elves, for example. However, as Dave Thompson comments, ‘despite media assumptions, Brix herself was not overtly responsible for ringing the musical changes’14. MES (not, of course, always the most reliable source) indicated in Renegade15 that it was him who was behind the more accessible approach:

‘After Perverted and after Brix joined the group I thought we needed to steer it in another direction. It all got a bit monotonous… plain monotony can get fucking tedious… That’s why I decided to pop it up a little and alter the rhythms.’

In many ways, it’s the production that really marks W&F out as a departure from the group’s previous albums; John Leckie achieves a precision, clarity and spaciousness to the sound that opens up a multitude of possibilities without detracting from the group’s intrinsic character. Whoever was responsible for the group’s (relatively) more commercial sound, the notion that W&F is a shiny, poppy chart-friendly record is a red herring anyway. Despite Slang King‘s pretty keyboard melody and Stephen Song‘s jauntiness, there’s still plenty of angular, difficult Fall here: Craigness‘ discordant finale; Elves‘ hypnotic chanting; Bug Day‘s random strangeness; Lay of the Land, just from start to finish.

W&F is (not for the first or last time) the sound of the group in transition. The angles and abrasiveness are still there; but there’s this cloud of lightness and melody that’s gently floating down over everything. To what extent it’s settled depends on which version you’re listening to.

My “Version”
Much as I love this album’s wild inventiveness and variations in tone and texture, the sequencing does seem a little perverse; there’s a notable imbalance (to my ears, anyway) between the aggressive, full-on tunes of the first half and the more gentle melancholy of the second. I wouldn’t drop anything from the original 9-track vinyl version, but I would include the sparky, intriguingly layered Pat-Trip Dispenser.

Side 1 (22:44) – Lay of the Land / 2×4 / Slang King / Craigness / Bug Day

Side 2 (21:24) – Pat-Trip Dispenser / Copped It / Stephen Song / Elves / Disney’s Dream Debased

Rankings
Albums wise, it gets really tough at this point. In particular, comparing the relentless assault of Hex to W&F‘s more varied palette is a real challenge. The sheer variety and inventiveness of the latter just about tips things in its favour. Just.

  1. Perverted By Language
  2. The Wonderful And Frightening World Of
  3. Hex Enduction Hour
  4. Slates
  5. Grotesque
  6. Room To Live
  7. Dragnet
  8. Live At The Witch Trials

With the singles, it’s much more straightforward. Neither of 1984’s releases make much of a dent on the ‘chart’ so far…

  1. Kicker Conspiracy
  2. The Man Whose Head Expanded
  3. How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
  4. Totally Wired
  5. Marquis Cha-Cha
  6. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  7. Look, Know
  8. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  9. Rowche Rumble
  10. Fiery Jack
  11. It’s The New Thing
  12. Oh! Brother
  13. c.r.e.e.p.

Regarding live albums, it was pointed out to me (thanks Sigma2!) over on The Fall Forum that I had neglected to include the live albums that make up the Set Of Ten box set that was released in December 2018. This is because when I planned out this blog, it had yet to be released. So, for the sake of completeness, I went back to posts #06, #08 and #10 (where three of them fitted chronologically) to note this fact.

The three that I’ve missed are Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham, Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans and Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester. All three feature strong performances, but sound quality-wise New Orleans is the pick of them, although it’s still a little hollow and ‘boomy’ sounding. The Manchester one is very thin-sounding, but does feature an interesting early version of Wings (pre-‘that’ riff) and an impressively frantic Prole Art Threat. None of them are exactly essential purchases though.

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  5. Totale’s Turns
  6. Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
  7. Live 1977
  8. Austurbaejarbio
  9. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  10. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  11. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  12. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  13. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  14. Liverpool 78
  15. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  16. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  17. Live At Deeply Vale

 

References
1Ford, p128

2Ford, p129

 3The Big Midweek, p195

 4Renegade, p149

 5The Big Midweek, p195

 6Thompson, p76

 7Thompson, pp73-74

 8The Big Midweek, p194

 9Ford, p136

 10The Rise and the Fall and the Rise, p198

 11The Big Midweek, pp203-204

 12The Rise and the Fall and the Rise, p200

 13The Big Midweek, p208

 14Thompson, p78

 15Renegade, p148

YMGTA #11: Perverted By Language

“Mark’s getting his violin out. Now we’re in trouble.”

Details:
Recorded: Pluto Studio, Manchester, mid-1983 (Tempo House recorded live at the Hacienda, Manchester on 27 July 1983)
Released: 5 December 1983

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, piano, violin
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar, vocals
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Paul Hanley – drums, keyboards
  • Karl Burns – drums, bass
  • Brix Smith – guitar, vocals (Eat Y’self Fitter / Hotel Bloedel)

Background
The second half of 1982 saw the final deterioration of the Smith-Riley relationship. One point of contention was Riley inviting his girlfriend to attend gigs on the December 1982 UK tour; Smith reacted both directly (telling Riley that he’d been ‘shit because you were fussing round your girlfriend all night, not concentrating on playing’)1 and by crossing her name off the guest list2.

Smith devotes a fair bit of Renegade to disparaging Riley. According to him, for example, ‘if it had been left up to him… Grotesque and Hex would have sounded like mediocre Buzzcocks LPs’3; ‘he was getting out of hand: wanting to do Totally Wired twice a night, playing Container Drivers with his cowboy hat on and all that kind of thing’4. In comparison, Riley’s contribution to Dave Simpson’s The Fallen is pretty measured and respectful: ‘If you’re going to work with someone like that you’re just going to have to put up with it, he’s made more good decisions than bad ones and more great records than not so great ones.’5

There are varying accounts of how Riley came to leave the group. Smith’s account in Renegade – he rang Riley, unaware that was his wedding day, and then said: ‘Congratulations mate, and by the way you’re sacked’6 – seems to be another one of MES’s more disingenuous moments. (For a start, this phone call actually took place during Steve Hanley’s wedding.) Looking at all the sources, the Wikipedia version seems to offer a pretty fair summary:

‘Riley was actually married on Christmas Eve 1982 and remained in The Fall until January 1983, when Smith met Riley in the Old Garrett pub, Princess Street, and told him that the group was undertaking a European tour without him and should it not work out he would be asked back.’

Whatever the reasons, The Fall’s 22 December gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester was Riley’s last.

After a brief February European tour, the group recorded their sixth Peel session in March – featuring Smile, Garden, Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot and Eat Y’self Fitter – before going back into a ‘swanky’7 London studio to record their new single. The Man Whose Head Expanded was, thanks to Kamera’s impending financial implosion and Geoff Travis’ apparent rehabilitation in Smith and Kay Carroll’s eyes, to be released on Rough Trade.

Front cover

It opens with some tinny electronic ‘plinking’ courtesy of Paul Hanley’s new Casio keyboard (‘He’s always fiddling away with its little buttons, programming it to make all sorts of annoying noises.’8) which leads into a dark, weird, yet strangely funny tale of paranoia and plagiarism. The eponymous man is some sort of author who becomes convinced that a ‘soap opera writer’ is stealing his ‘jewels’ for prime-time TV.

Steve Hanley provides the driving force musically; a bouncy yet darkly ominous bass line that’s fleshed out expertly with some almost jazzy runs up and down the scale (e.g. at 0:53) and a few other quite flamboyant excursions away from the main rhythm. After MES’s stuttering, hilarious command to ‘turn that bloody blimey Space Invader off!’ at 1:29, Craig Scanlon steps forward and proffers, at first, some languorous, distorted chords; as the tempo picks up he throws in a little bit of frenetic thrash, but then he withdraws his guitar for a minute or so before providing some jerky, angular work over the last thirty seconds or so. He populates that guitar-free minute or so (between 2:42-3:55), with some intriguing keyboards: gentle, floating, tinkling organ/electric piano, free-jazz atonal chords.

The b-side, Ludd Gang, is not unpleasant but is a little plodding and uninspired; it’s most notable for its surprisingly threatening attitude towards Shakin’ Stevens. Expanded was a popular choice in 1982-85 setlists, clocking up 70 appearances (it made a one-off reappearance in 2007); Ludd Gang was performed 68 times 1982-84.

In April, the group embarked on a month-long North American tour. After the recent departure of one their longest-serving members, two further significant events occurred on the tour. Firstly, Kay Carroll severed her links with the group. After arriving late after having problems with her visa, an incident after the Boston gig on the 17 April (where she was refused service in a bar) seems to have been the tipping point that led her to grab the tour money and leave9. She settled in New Jersey and later moved to Oregon. When interviewed by Dave Simpson for The Fallen, she said that her main regret was ‘that I didn’t hit him more’, but also commented that, ‘some weeks I wouldn’t go near it, some weeks I wish I’d never left, others I’d go back in a heartbeat’.10 Simon Ford summarises11 her contribution by saying:

…it’s difficult to say that anyone, apart from Smith, was indispensable to The Fall, but Carroll came mighty close. When others floundered or became hesitant she pushed through with a driving force, energetically hectoring the band to maintain its uncompromising attitude.

And then there was Brix. Born Laura Elisse Salenger, but taking her name from The Clash song Guns of Brixton, she first met MES after The Fall’s Chicago gig on 23 April. After having become obsessed with Slates, her first impression of the group12 was:

They were five normal-looking English blokes. These guys were the antithesis of rock stars. There were no gimmicks or contrivances. This band were a law unto themselves: mighty and brutal, unforgiving, honest and utterly brilliant.

Her first impression of Smith himself was that there was ‘something a little scary about him… he seemed angry, as if a simmering rage lay just below the surface’13. The story of the beginnings of their relationship is, unsurprisingly, covered in some detail14 in her book The Rise The Fall And The Rise. Briefly: a post-gig drink led to a party which led to them spending a large amount of time together on the rest of the tour, which led to her coming to England in May 1983 and them marrying on the 19 July.

Brix’s influence on The Fall (both musically and sartorially) is a subject of great debate for some; and for a vocal minority, a real bone of contention. As she only appeared on two PBL tracks, I’ll leave that discussion for future posts. The group themselves seem to have been bemused rather than hostile in their reaction to her sudden appearance. Steve Hanley describes being quite impressed by her knowledge of Joy Division lyrics15 and the positive impact she appeared to have on Smith’s conduct16:

We then undergo what is probably the most good-natured soundcheck I’ve ever experienced. It’s all ‘Steve, would you mind turning your amp down a little? Could I have just a tad more vocals in the monitors? Thank you.”

In September 1983, the group released one of their most iconic singles. Kicker Conspiracy was a football song, but one a million miles away from what the record-buying public had come to associate with football-related music. (For the benefit of non-UK readers, there are some of the more execrable examples here, here and here.) Containing references to Jimmy Hill, Bert Millichip and George Best, Smith – nearly twenty years before Roy Keane derided the ‘prawn sandwich brigade – it ‘detailed the early signs of the corruption and greed that would almost destroy the national sport in the coming years’17.

It’s easy (especially for those lucky enough to be in their 30s or younger) to forget how divorced from much of the rest of popular culture football was back in the early 80s. These days, any career-minded landfill indie combo takes care to express their devotion to both the national team and a club side, often utterly glibly and superficially – a phenomenon cynically and expertly dissected by the genius that is Nigel Blackwell on Rock & Roll is Full of Bad Wools (‘Do you ever get to Roots Hall? / Which to him means f*ck all’). But when Kicker Conspiracy came out, seven years before Gazza wept before the nation and it all became about prawn sandwiches and opera, liking football – if you aspired to be taken seriously regarding music, politics, art or literature – was a dirty secret. Nobody made reference to their team’s relegation/promotion in their NME interview; football was nasty hooligans, bad fashion and a tawdry working-class lack of aspiration. Which makes Kicker yet another example of Smith standing out from the crowd (if you’ll pardon the pun).

Leaving all this aside, it’s a remarkable song anyway; a rickety, ragged rockabilly blast that features some absolutely genius drumming. The title refrain sounds like nothing else on earth; a collision of rhythms where MES has no right to fit in those six syllables in the time available. It was also the first Fall song to have a promotional video, featuring Smith miming into a beer can:

Kicker was released as a double 7″, the second disc featuring Container Drivers and New Puritan from the third Peel session. Wings, which had been played live throughout 1983, backed the lead song. Described on the A-Z as a ‘convoluted but fascinating story of a time traveller’, it’s underpinned by a grinding riff that many consider to be one of The Fall’s best.

In November, the 7″ of Marquis Cha Cha (backed with Room To Live), originally scheduled for September 1982, was finally released. The current going rate for this single, according to Discogs, is nearly £140.

In The Wider World…
In the month that Perverted was released, the House of Lords voted to allow television broadcast of its proceedings; an IRA bomb outside Harrods killed six people. Billy Joel’s five week stay at the top of the singles chart with Uptown Girl was ended by The Flying Pickets’ Yazoo cover, Only You. A couple of weeks after PBL‘s release, the first instalment in the Now That’s What I Call Music series became the top-selling album in the UK, featuring such delights as UB40’s Red Red Wine, Kajagoogoo’s Too Shy, Howard Jones’ New Song and Mike Oldfield’s Moonlight Shadow. What a joy it was to be a teenager in the early 80s…

The Fall Live In 1982-83
The group played nine UK gigs in December 1982. New songs continued to emerge: Garden, Pilsner Trail and Ludd Gang all made their first appearances.

The first post-Riley gig, at Leeds Warehouse in January 1983, saw debuts for Kicker Conspiracy and Words of Expectation. In February, the group played ten dates in Switzerland and The Netherlands. After a London gig in March – which saw the first performances of Smile and Eat Y’self Fitter – The Fall embarked on their 15-date month-long tour of North America.

Long Island, New York, April 7, 1983 (© Bill McDermott)

The group returned to Iceland at the beginning of May for a one-off gig in Reykjavik. This was released in 2001 as Austurbaejarbio. The album features most of the songs from the gig, although Ludd Gang and Wings are missing.

Front cover

It’s a soundboard recording that is far better in terms of basic sound quality than many Fall live albums. That said, there’s something curiously unsatisfying about it to these ears; it has an oddly empty, hollow feel. The opening to The Classical, for example, is one of the limpest versions of the song that I’ve heard. Throughout, MES sounds strangely divorced from all that’s happening around him and the guitar is thin and brittle. It’s easier on the ears than many Fall live albums, but is not one that really captures the group particularly well.

The Fall played a further 39 gigs in 1983, clocking up a total of 68 for the year. In the Autumn gigs, C.R.E.E.P., 2 x 4, Clear Off! and Pat Trip Dispenser made their first appearances; Oh! Brother (which had up to this point only featured in Tony Friel’s farewell gig as captured on Live 77) also reappeared, in a greatly revamped form.

The Album


Leaving Kamera to go back to Rough Trade was a wrench for Smith: ‘We had to leave Kamera because we knew it was going down… It broke my heart. Only label I was upset to leave.’18 More importantly than the change in label, Steve Hanley saw a change in the group’s sound, post-Riley: ‘I’m beginning to see how things are going to shape up without Marc in the band: looser and more weird.’19 This was to some extent echoed by MES in an interview with Zigzag in November 1983:

There’s a lot more beauty on this new LP. Some of the new songs aim straight at the heart. It’s still aggressive in a way though. ‘Room to Live’ was aiming somewhere else. It wasn’t about emotion as such, but it was supposed to be looser in form than anything we had done before. ‘Perverted by Language’ is a lot funnier as well. We craft everything much better these days. Seriousness and humour are blended together more now.

The cover was a departure too. After the slogan-scrawl dominated covers of SlatesHex and Room To LivePerverted featured a nightmarish painting by Claus Castenskiold, an old school friend of Brix.

The album was recorded at Manchester’s Pluto Studios. Steve Hanley didn’t find this studio ‘swanky’, describing it as ‘decor-wise… on its arse’.20 Owned by the former Herman’s Hermits guitar player Keith Hopwood and Derek Leckenby, Pluto was originally built in 1968 in Stockport but moved to Manchester in 1977. The studio is still operated by Keith Hopwood but these days focuses on music for children’s TV.

When Brix had joined the group on tour in the second half of 1983 (acting as an unofficial roadie, helping out with the lighting, etc.), the rest of the group started a sweepstake as to when she would join them on stage21. However, it wasn’t until the recording of PBL that she really began to establish herself as part of the group, adding vocals to Eat Y’Self Fitter and contributing vocals, guitar and a song-writing credit to Hotel Bloedel. As Steve Hanley said: ‘So we were all wrong. Her way in is through the studio rather than the stage.’22

In the NME, Jim Shelley was less than impressed with PBL, describing the album as ‘slovenly’ and ‘self-satisfied’; ‘it’s The Fall plodding on, going nowhere, MAKING DO’. Dave McCullough, writing in Sounds, wasn’t any more positive, giving the album 2.5 stars and calling it ‘a pale zeroxing [sic] of [the] former Fall’ and ‘laborious and very dull indeed’. Of course, those of us who were around in the 80s will remember that the music press had a habit of building up groups for a few years then smugly knocking them down again….

McCullough’s review inspired Chris Southon to pen this response, printed in the Sounds letters page, which had a dig at the paper’s support for the burgeoning Smiths-led scene: ‘One can only assume that… the sheer force and humour of the record as a whole are beyond a man who seems happy enough the weedy, wet, pretty boy pop of the preposterous “handsome movement”.’ Whatever the NME and Sounds thought, Perverted gave the group their first independent chart number one since Grotesque.

Inner1

(Thanks to Saveloy from The Fall Forum for the scans of the inner sleeve)

The Songs
Eat Y’self Fitter
Fitter had been a common feature on the setlist since its debut back in March. Steve Hanley describes its origins in The Big Midweek: ‘Mark told us, “I’ve got a new song. I want der-de-der-de-de-der-de.” Once we made it aggressive enough for him, he started singing a line out of a cornflake advert.’23 (The line actually came from an All-Bran ad.)

Backed by an uncompromisingly basic and insistently simplistic staccato rhythm, and featuring one of the most ludicrous call and response choruses you’ll ever hear, Smith’s barked vocal takes in being refused entry to nightclubs, bafflement with technology (‘Where’s the cursor?’), Kevin Ayers (of Soft Machine) and the use of VCRs (‘And your bottom rack is full of vids of programs you will nay look at’). There’s also a disturbingly guttural, gargling backing vocal from Burns.

Steve Hanley’s recollections of recording the song24 describe how the engineer struggled to find a height for the microphone that would suit the diminutive Brix and the rest of the group; also the impact that her performance made: ‘We might be taller but she’s definitely louder than the rest of us put together. We’re doing our usual football-chant drone, but she’s layering psychedelic inflection all over it.’

Fitter was, famously, one of John Peel’s choices when he appeared on Desert Island Discs (it’s at 29:18, and worth listening to if only to hear Sue Lawley’s impeccably posh BBC voice say ‘The Fall and Eat Y’self Fitter’):

Over the past decade there’s been one band whose music has pleased me I think probably more than anyone else’s, and that’s been The Fall from Manchester. And they’re still around – I suppose they’re about the only band which actually does, sort of, last from one end of the decade to the other. Almost any of their records would give me great pleasure, but Eat Y’self Fitter is a particular favourite.

After being played consistently throughout 1983, Fitter‘s 43rd and final performance was in April 1984.

My long-suffering wife – who describes The Fall as ‘the worst band ever’ – made several unsolicited contributions to the Fi5 blog. She was particularly vociferous regarding this track, which she thinks epitomises everything that’s wrong with the group. To paraphrase: there’s no tune, it’s ridiculously repetitive, it goes on for far too long and the lyrics are stupid. And of course everything she says is absolutely, gloriously true. The world, I think, is divided into those who can’t help but see all those factors as being inevitably negative, and those who just… get it.

Neighbourhood of Infinity
After a brief, cymbal-heavy drum intro and a grinding, astringent rhythm guitar with some odd little background shrieks (that could be feedback or a hyperactive child on a descant recorder), MES fades in before being joined by typically rock-solid Hanley bass. Smith’s vocal is fragmented, disdainful; it references ‘cut-up technique’ and this seems to describe the sound of the lyrics, not just the words. The overall effect is of multiple ideas layered, shredded and mangled.

It settles into a greater state of equilibrium in the second half, but we’re never too far  from the sudden intrusion of some booming tom-toms or a burst of frantic guitar thrash. Even by usual MES standards, the lyrics are utterly impenetrable (‘And visitor esoteric Jackanapes says analyser. Mr Alastair touched off the tragedy’), possibly explained by the use of ‘cut-up technique’ to which he refers.

It’s an intriguing song in several ways: inexplicably brief (always disappointing when it ends so soon), which makes it feel like a tantalising fragment of something more fully developed; Marc Riley gets a writing credit even though its first performance was seven months after he left the group; and it was dropped from the live set after only eleven outings. Plus, there’s an astonishingly dark and intense (despite the dubious sound quality) recording of its final performance in April 1984 that appears on In: Palace Of Swords Reversed that features MES ranting and raving about giant moths.

Garden
An intense, hypnotic triumph; it showcases perfectly the group’s utterly magnificent use of controlled repetition. The understated tom-toms underpin everything; Scanlon’s clanging guitar provides bite and attack; Steve Hanley is, as ever, matchless in the way he drives the song forward with deep, booming notes and beautifully-timed forays up the neck.

MES is on peerless form, painting a rich, mysterious and evocative picture of… well, it’s not entirely clear what, but it’s full of striking and powerful language: A three-legged black-grey hogSmall, small location on huge continent/sodomised by presumptionLess stylish porch, we have the second god’s influenceThe second god lived by mountains that flowed by the blue shiny lit roads/had forgot what others still tried to grasp… (as ever, see The Annotated Fall for a detailed analysis). The mention of ‘brown baize’, according to Paul Hanley26 refers to the studio’s dated decor.

By the time PBL  was recorded, Garden had had around 20 outings live; it stayed in the set until September 1984, making 60 appearances altogether.

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Hotel Bloedel
In June 1983, when touring Germany, the group’s van broke down just outside Dachau and they ended up in the Hotel Bloëdel. The hotel had a ‘rancid’ odour (‘a reasonable smell of death’) and was disturbing enough to give MES nightmares. In the morning, Smith and Brix witnessed a member of staff carrying ‘a large, clear plastic bag of blood’25; it transpired that the hotel was next door to an abattoir.

Musically, the song is based on one of Brix’s old tunes from her old band Banda Dratsing, One More Time For The Record. During the recording of PBL, Brix largely retired to a separate room and ‘beaver[ed] away’ with her guitar27. However, with MES’s encouragement and some support from Steve Hanley, she sat down and ran through the song a few times, the take on the album being what she thought was just a rehearsal. MES added some lines about the hotel experience and some tuneless violin scrapes (‘Mark’s getting his violin out. Now we’re in trouble’28) .

The song (which was never played live) is notable for being Brix’s first major contribution to a Fall recording, and also for being the first time that anyone other than MES sang a lead vocal. But, for me, it really doesn’t work. There were many occasions where the contrast between Brix and MES’s vocals were a high point of the group’s sound, but here the effect is of a singer at a pub open-mic night being interrupted by a drunken punter. The guitar sound is unpleasantly thin and Brix’s vocal (remembering, to be fair to her, that she thought she was just rehearsing) is a little grating to these ears.

Smile
It is, of course, a foolish pursuit to try and ‘rank’ anything as diverse and complex as The Fall’s work – as Mr Peel said… Not that this has stopped me succumbing to the urge to do exactly that with each of these posts. Despite all of this, this track would always be in my top ten. In fact, whilst I was commemorating the anniversary of MES’s death (toasting his memory with a few glasses of wine in a Premier Inn in Bridgend) I couldn’t resist compiling a top 15 – ten was too hard – on Twitter, and I put it at no. 6. Some days it would be even higher.

A diatribe against the growing cocktail bar culture of the early 80s, it contains some of Smith’s trademark finely-turned phrases: ‘Lick-spittle southerner’; ‘special vexation process’. But while his vocal performance is excellent – a masterclass in controlled, snarling aggression (including a very rock ‘n’ roll ‘take it down’ at 2:41) – it’s the four musicians who make this such a towering classic. Paul Hanley and Karl Burns provide a taut, layered percussive assault; Scanlon’s guitar scratches and slashes feverishly; and Steve Hanley’s bass line is imperiously ferocious, even by his high standards.

By the time it was recorded for PBL, the song had only had a handful of live outings (it went on to clock up 59, the last being in July 1985), but it sounds like they’ve been playing it their whole career; utterly focused, completely together. It has a difficult, complex, almost stuttering rhythm that a lesser group might struggle to keep a hold of, but The Fall never lose their grip; focused, concise, sharp, piercing.

The song is captured incredibly well in the group’s first performance on national TV. Introduced by John Peel (‘a favourite of mine for a number of years… they’ve never been on national TV, which seemed to me to be shocking, so I quite wanted to go down in history as the man who put them on TV’) on The Tube, this is my second favourite video on YouTube (after the Palladium version of Blindness). It’s full of wonder: MES’s swaggering yet slightly awkward confidence; the telepathy between Burns and Paul Hanley as they batter the living daylights out of their kits in perfect synchronicity; and the sheer vehemence and energy with which Steve Hanley assaults his bass. And what a song to choose for your first appearance on national television: not Totally Wired or Container Drivers, but instead one of the most angular, intense and difficult (and not yet even released) songs they could have chosen.

I Feel Voxish
As Tommy Mackay notes, this is ‘nearly a catchy pop song’29. But not quite. More conventional in structure than many of the other songs on the album (it even has a chorus of sorts), it’s driven by a high-register Steve Hanley bass line and an almost off-hand descending Scanlon riff. Karl Burns also plays bass on this, contributing a deep, reverberating backing that lumbers into view at 1:30 and 2:11. There are also some random and tuneless keyboard splashes (e.g. at 2:37) that may well have been added by MES.

The choppy guitar work, throbbing bass and solid, insistent rhythm make this one of the more accessible songs on the album, but there’s still something angular and aggressive about it. Once again, Smith turns out a selection of intriguing phrases (‘A pillbox crisp / that French git / the spikes he left in the bathroom’; ‘Caught my life mould, give me silenced lectures’) without giving much of a clue as to what he’s on about.

After being a regular feature in sets in late 1982 and throughout 1983, its 58th and final performance was in November 1985.

Tempo House
The best Fall is based around simplicity and repetition, and Tempo House is a prime example: not much more than a languid, shuffling drumbeat and a simplistic four-note bass riff (C/G/Bb/F, should you be interested in that kind of thing). The percussion clatters and rambles, there are some dissonant keyboard stabs around halfway through, but basically it’s MES intoning over the bedrock that is Steve Hanley. Which is no bad thing. Hanley squeezes everything he can from such a basic riff; and Smith rambles as only he can about Richard Burton’s ‘chubby round jowls’, ‘the pedantic Welsh’ and Winston Churchill’s speech impediment.

Whilst the version on the album (live from the Hacienda, Manchester on 27 July 1983) is a perfectly decent recording, it’s frustrating that there wasn’t a ‘proper’ studio take released (I believe that such a thing exists, although I’ve never heard it.) According to Paul Hanley30 the reason for this was the that the bass sound on the album was ‘a little disappointing at times’, and since ‘the bass line was most of the song’ they went with a live version (some of which, he points out, often lasted twelve minutes or more).

An almost ever-present in 1982-83 setlists, Tempo racked up 69 appearances but wasn’t played beyond December 1983. The video below is the performance that’s on the album.

Hexen Definitive / Strife Knot
One of those definitive Fall song titles, Hexen is a lugubrious drawl of a song, underpinned by a lazy, chorus pedal-heavy Scanlon riff, that meanders along menacingly. Once again, Smith’s lyrics are opaque and mysterious but beautifully crafted and intriguing: ‘Blindfold so can’t feel maintenance / kickback art thou that thick?’; ‘While Greenpeace looked like saffron on the realm’; ‘Louis Armstrong tapes waft down the aisles’. The chord change at 3:55 is particularity melancholy and moving.

Played 95 times, 1982-85. A perfect choice for an album closer.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
The 1998 Castle reissue included the 1983 singles, The Man Whose Head Expanded and Kicker Conspiracy (plus b-sides), as well as Pilsner Trail (a fairly unremarkable Fall-by-numbers two-chord thrash, which was originally titled Plaster On The Hands).

The 2005 Sanctuary reissue featured a second CD which included the tracks from the  fifth Peel session plus a variety of live recordings. One of these was Perverted By Language: only played live four times, it features a drum barrage not unlike that on Hurricane Edward, but fades out suddenly just as it’s about to get interesting.

In 1984, the group produced their first commercial video, Perverted By Language Bis. The project was driven mainly by Brix’s enthusiasm; Rough Trade were less enthused about the idea, contributing only £500 towards the costs31. It contains various live performances plus the Kicker and Wings videos (see above). There’s also an entertainingly odd take on Fitter, featuring, amongst several other random things, the group sitting around a table mixing cocktails and some rather startling disco-dancing from Smith. There’s also an interview with a notably playful and humorous MES.

Overall Verdict
I mentioned above – with what I suspect was an easily-discernible roll of the eyes – the reaction of the contemporary music press to PBL. It’s hard to explain, considering the praise lavished upon Hex, how their opinion could have changed so much in eighteen months other than putting it down to their prevalent ‘build ’em up then knock ’em down’ attitude. The criticism directed at Room To Live was understandable, even if in retrospect it seems rather harsh. The notion that PBL saw The Fall lazily treading water is much less comprehensible. It’s an album of huge invention and contrasting textures and moods. It’s (almost) flawlessly sequenced and in Garden and Smile contains two of their greatest ever songs. Smith’s lyrical inventiveness continues to delight and astonish; obscure poeticism balanced with playful humour.

It’s not completely flawless: Fitter, excellent as it is, does sit slightly oddly at the beginning of the album; Neighbourhood feels just a little underdeveloped; Hotel is pedestrian compared to the rest of the album. (Plus, of course, it would have been great to have a proper studio version of Tempo House.) But these are minor quibbles. PBL strikes an (almost) perfect balance between the relentless onslaught of Hex and the ragged improvisation of Room To Live.

My “Version”
It’s often tempting with these things to just strip out the album tracks you don’t like and just bung in the singles that you do. My version would certainly include The Man Whose Head Expanded; not only is a great tune, but I think it suits the tone of the album perfectly. Kicker Conspiracy is, undoubtedly one of their greatest songs, but I think it’s one of those that works better as a stand-alone single. And, to be a little controversial, I think that Fitter would also have been a great ‘one-off’ single release. For me, Wings would have been a better candidate for the album.

So, we get a 45:53 album:

Side 1: Smile / I Feel Voxish / Wings / Garden (22:49)

Side 2The Man Whose Head Expanded / Neighbourhood Of Infinity / Tempo House / Hexen Definitive-Strife Knot (23:04)

Rankings
Albums: it’s very challenging to separate Hex and PBL. But there’s variety in tone and texture that just about tips things in the latter’s favour:

  1. Perverted By Language
  2. Hex Enduction Hour
  3. Slates
  4. Grotesque
  5. Room To Live
  6. Dragnet
  7. Live At The Witch Trials

Singles: Kicker and Expanded are clear leaders at this point, the former getting the nod due to its sheer musical and lyrical uniqueness:

  1. Kicker Conspiracy
  2. The Man Whose Head Expanded
  3. How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
  4. Totally Wired
  5. Marquis Cha-Cha
  6. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  7. Look, Know
  8. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  9. Rowche Rumble
  10. Fiery Jack
  11. It’s The New Thing

Live Albums: Austurbaejarbio is a lot easier on the ears than many, but its rather ‘flat’ atmosphere places it mid-table:

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  5. Totale’s Turns
  6. Live 1977
  7. Austurbaejarbio
  8. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  9. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  10. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  11. Liverpool 78
  12. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  13. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  14. Live At Deeply Vale

References

1The Big Midweek, p153

2The Big Midweek, p128

3Renegade, p104

4Renegade, p105

5The Fallen, p123

6Renegade, pp105-106

7-8The Big Midweek, p166

9The Big Midweek, p172

10The Fallen, p83

11Ford, p117

12-13The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p145

14The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, pp147-179

15-16The Big Midweek, p180

17Ford, p123

18Ford, p115

19The Big Midweek, p165

20xThe Big Midweek, p187

21xThe Big Midweek, p181

22xThe Big Midweek, p189

23xThe Big Midweek, p188

24The Big Midweek, pp188-189

25The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p178

26Leave The Capital, p175

27The Big Midweek, p188

28The Big Midweek, p189

29Mackay, p58

30Leave The Capital, p175

31Ford, p126

YMGTA #10: Room To Live

“He’s happy, ‘cos he’s good”

Details:
Recorded – June-July 1982
Released – 27 September 1982

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, violin
  • Marc Riley – guitar, keyboards
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Paul Hanley – drums
  • Karl Burns – drums, bass, guitar
    With:
  • Arthur Cadman – guitar
  • Adrian Niman – saxophone

Background / The Fall Live in 1982
Following Hex‘s release, the group played 29 gigs between March and May, including a brief visit to The Netherlands in April. New songs came thick and fast:  Hexen Definitive and Solicitor In Studio were debuted at Bristol Poly on 12 March; Joker Hysterical Face a week later in Bradford; Wings and Surrogate Mirage made their first appearance at Leicester on 24 March (the only ever performance in the case of the latter). Tempo House and Backdrop also received their first outings on the Dutch tour. Back in Manchester in May, The Man Whose Head Expanded was played for the first time. It’s safe to say that the group were going through a very fertile creative period…

poster

In April, Look, Know (recorded on the previous year’s Iceland trip) was released as a single, with I’m Into C.B. on the b-side (recorded at the Regal Cinema during the Hex sessions). According to Steve Hanley, Look was the first Fall song where he was completely responsible for writing the music, although it didn’t turn out exactly as he’d imagined; he anticipated ‘more guitar’ and ‘Dexy’s-type soul with a brass section’1.

You can perhaps hear why it didn’t end up on Hex: in comparison it’s distinctly jaunty and light-hearted. The lyrics focus on the shallowness of those overly concerned with fashion and appearance (‘Do y’know what you look like / before you go out?’; ‘You gotta know what you look like nowadays… or some existential crap will write about you’.) Not wishing to labour the point after the last post, but it’s disappointing to hear the word ‘faggot’ make another couple of appearances. Musically, though, it’s entertainingly bouncy, with SH contributing a full-bodied and funky bass line. It’s intriguing to imagine exactly what MES had against the song…

Front cover

As was the case with Fantastic Life, it’s a mark of how creative and productive the group were that something as good as C.B. could end up as a b-side. I wrote at length about this one of the Fi5 blog (some of which, I have to admit, was rather a nostalgic personal digression), the gist of which was that it captures several aspects of 80s British culture exceptionally well and is a jerky, exuberant piece of prime early-80s Fall repetition.

In June*, the group returned to Cargo Studios in Rochdale, where Dragnet had been recorded. The aim was to record a new single, Marquis Cha-Cha, but as was the case with Slates, the sessions ended up producing something longer. The recording of what ended up being Room To Live was a tense and less than happy experience, at least for some of the group. Smith decided that a different approach should be taken, one that involved different combinations of the group performing on each track (and even included some newcomers); also the songs were in general developed from scratch in the studio, rather than having been worked out live or in rehearsal (see ‘The Album’ below).

[*In Renegade2, Smith suggests that RTL was recorded after the Antipodean tour outlined below; this appears to be supported by Dave Thompson’s User’s Guide, which states that the album was ‘written, recorded and released within a fortnight’3. However, all other sources (including Steve Hanley4) confirm that the recording sessions took place before the group headed off to Australia at the end of July.]

The Fall’s month-long tour of Australia and New Zealand in the summer of saw them play around 20 gigs, although, like the previous year’s US tour, there is a little uncertainty about a few of the dates. The dates in the advert above (from RAMRock Australia Magazine, a sort of down-under NME equivalent) appear not to match with the actual reality – and in fact are even contradicted by a list elsewhere in the same edition of the magazine.

The first few dates of the tour had to be played with a single-drummer line-up. Burns was delayed because he had to apply for a new passport, his previous one having been eaten by a dog (Smith adds the rather superfluous detail that it was one ‘with a squint’5). When Burns finally arrived, about a week into the tour, the atmosphere within the group was rife with tension.

Things had got off to a difficult start at the first gig on 22 July at Sydney’s Musicians’ Club. Suffering from jet-lag after a 36 hour flight (exacerbated, it would seem, by copious alcohol consumption6), the group turned in a sub-par performance. Steve Hanley describes struggling to stay awake and the rest of the musicians suffering in a similar fashion. MES puts it more simply: ‘The tour began at the bottom… we were shit’7. Riley, Scanlon and the Hanleys’ choice of post-gig recreation led to one of the more infamous incidents in the group’s history.

According to Steve Hanley’s account8, the four of them headed to a club called The Mansell Rooms. Their body clocks still awry from jet lag, they suddenly found themselves wide awake and decided to hit the dance floor, ‘throwing shapes’ to The Clash’s Rock The Casbah. When MES arrived, he was enraged by the scene – ‘You’re not too tired to dance… [but] you were too fucking tired to play a decent gig!’ – and proceeded to slap Scanlon and both Hanleys across the face. When his attention turned to Riley, however, the guitarist floored him with a ‘full-blown punch’ to the face. Inevitably, Smith’s version9 of events differs somewhat. The group all went together to a ‘heavy metal disco’ where MES tried in vain to preserve the others’ dignity by discouraging them from dancing to (of all things) Smoke On The Water; whereupon, unprovoked, Riley started hitting him. (I think we can all agree that one of these accounts is rather more believable than the other.) You can certainly see Smith’s black eye lurking beneath the TV make-up in the rather stilted and awkward interview the pair of them did the next day.

Information about the setlists on the first part of the tour is very sketchy, but by the time the group played in Geelong (about 50 miles SW of Melbourne) at the end of July, Room To Live, Hard Life In The Country, Detective Instinct and Marquis Cha Cha were in the set. The gig also seems to have been notable for one the first recorded incidents of what came to be one of Smith’s live trademarks – messing around with the group’s amp settings (as recalled by a mightily pissed-off Steve Hanley)10.

Three days later, The Fall’s performance at the Prince of Wales in Melbourne was broadcast on radio; in May 1998 a cassette recording of the broadcast was released as Live To Air In Melbourne ’82.

Despite the awful ‘GCSE Art student makes a hurried collage out of tourist brochures’ cover and the distinctly hit and miss track listing – ‘Hexen Strife’ (‘Hexon Strife’ on Spotify), ‘Knot Deer Park’, ‘Totally Twisted’ – it’s actually an excellent, interesting live album.

The sound balance isn’t perfect – Steve Hanley disappears from time to time, and occasionally one of the guitars over-dominates the sound – but overall it’s far better than the average Fall live album. It’s interesting to hear very early versions of a few of the songs. Hard Life isn’t nearly as thin and bleak as its album version; here it’s equally doleful, but the thick, distorted guitar sound makes it muscular and brooding. Marquis Cha Cha is a bit ragged around the edges, but is jaunty and energetic, Smith even contributing some enthusiastic if rather odd scat/mouth-trumpet accompaniment. The highlight though is Room To Live, here an exuberant stomping hoedown and featuring a delightful country/blues guitar lick that was lacking in the studio take (and that Riley resurrected on The Creepers’ song Cure By Choice).

As ever, there are some interesting vocal amendments from MES. The infamous Mansell Rooms get a mention in Deer Park (5:12), Papal Visit is referenced in Hip Priest (6:10) and the ‘Jew on a motorbike’ line from Garden gets an early try-out in Tempo House (6:56). In particular, Smith goes off at a bit of a tangent in The Classical:

Welcome to your new XL model / made with the finest technique / with elephant odour inside upholstery / the axles are heat resistant / made in nice units… the bumpers, they’re alright / and the tyres, you get them from us, especially.

It all sounds like a group in perfect harmony, as if the tensions from earlier in the tour have abated somewhat. However, one notable feature is that there are a few – by Fall standards – quite flamboyant bits of musicianship, especially Riley’s keyboards on Deer Park and Hip Priest (for example the little solo around the four-minute mark in the latter). You have to wonder what MES made of it, especially considering his comments at the Geelong soundcheck: ‘None of that showing-off rock shit you keep adding in! Just play the fucking song in time and properly.’11

Sleeve notes from ‘Live To Air’.

The Fall headed to New Zealand in mid-August where they played five dates. Both Totally Wired and Lie Dream had made the NZ charts (reaching 25 and 17 respectively) and, to judge by Smith’s account in Renegade, they were well received12. The final date was recorded by local musician Chris Knox and released as Fall In A Hole in December 1983 on the Flying Nun label.

The album was only released in New Zealand, but UK imports quickly became much sought after. (Copies of the original vinyl LP, at the time of writing, still go for around £100.) In an interview with Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd, he describes MES’s displeasure at finding pricey import copies available in the UK: ‘Mark E Smith had already seen a copy in the UK and was not amused… my first contact with the overseas music business was an angry, demanding one. Desist from export, press no more copies, and give us all the income from all of the sales.’

The original release consisted of an 11-track album plus a 5-track 12″. The first 11 are a mixing desk recording; the remainder come from audience-recorded cassette. And you can certainly tell. The first 11 tracks on Hole have a more ‘professional’ sound than their counterparts on Live To Air, but somehow, to these ears, it isn’t quite as pleasing. Hard Life is a good example: the Melbourne version’s heavy, distorted tone provides an intriguing contrast to the brittle, astringent take on Room To Live; the Hole version falls between two stools, having a comparatively clean and crisp sound that, for me, doesn’t quite work as well. It’s interesting to hear (at 2:39) a slightly exasperated-sounding Smith instructing Riley to ‘turn it down Marc’.

That said, there’s plenty to enjoy here: the thunderous fury of Prole Art Threat is captured well, the introductory kazoo solo on Marquis is hilarious and Room To Live is even more lively than the Live To Air version and is well suited by the cleaner sound.

One of the most interesting features of the album is the first official appearance of Backdrop. First played on the Dutch tour back in April, this was the song’s twentieth performance; it would be played a further twenty-five times – the last being in November 1983 – but never got a studio recording. Somewhere between And This Day and Session Musician, it’s a brutal, relentless, complex and ambitious assault on the senses and is probably enough on its own to warrant acquiring In A Hole.

The final five tracks on the original release are of pretty poor quality; the only point of interest is MES’s slightly sneering introduction to Joker – ‘if you look pretty close, Marc Riley has a joker hysterical face. He’s happy, ‘cos he’s good.’ This is most likely a reference to the famous picture of Marc Riley that graced the front page of the Christchurch Press three days earlier:

Although this picture graced the cover of In A Hole, this of course had nothing to do with Smith, whatever he might have gone on to say. However, this article indicates that MES was certainly less than pleased by what he saw as Riley revelling in his minor celebrity status; an irritation that clearly hadn’t gone away by the time he wrote Renegade – ‘he’s parading himself like a chief swan to all these imaginary fans… It wasn’t exactly The Beatles in America.’13

In A Hole was released on CD in 1997. However, this particular version was mastered from a German bootleg copy; the sound quality is poor and there are several skips and drop-outs. A superior reissue (‘In A Hole +) was released in 2003. It contains six bonus tracks from other gigs from the NZ leg of the tour, including the group’s second and final performance of their unlikely segue from C’n’C into Deep Purple’s Black Night.

Fall frontman Mark E Smith with his plastic bags after arriving in Christchurch on August 17, 1982 for a Kiwi tour.

Happy Fall bassist and somewhat less jovial singer arrive at Christchurch 17/8/82

EDIT: After I’d published  YMGTA #11 (Perverted By Language) it was pointed out to me that in December 2018, the Set Of Ten box set was released, which includes three recordings that predate PBL. One of the discs contains a recording from May 3 1982 at Manchester’s Band On The Wall, which obviously fits in here. It sounds like a great performance (which is reinforced by this excellent review) and includes an early (and very different) version of Wings, although sound quality-wise it’s no more than an average audience recording. For the sake of completion (and to assuage my OCD) I thought I’d better add a note. It’ll be included in the rankings from YMGTA #12 onwards.

In The Wider World…
In August, the first CDs were produced in Germany and Charles and Diana’s eldest son was christened William Arthur Philip Louis. (It seems to have been a pretty slow month, news-wise.)

Dexys Midnight Runners’ Come On Eileen was number one throughout the month. The album chart was dominated by The Kids From Fame, which I remember sitting through every Thursday, waiting for TOTP to start.

The Album
After the critical acclaim and strong sales of Hex, most groups would most likely have toured the album to death and then tried to recreate its success. It is, of course, a cliché to point out that The Fall have never been like other groups, and inevitably they did nothing of the sort. A couple of months after the album’s release, Hex songs were only making up a minority of the sets which, as in the previous year, were dominated by new, unreleased material despite the group spending their summer playing to new foreign markets.

In Dave Simpson’s The Fallen, many of the ex-members that he tracked down alluded to Smith’s ongoing determination to avoid complacency at all costs. This desire most often manifested itself in sackings or finding multitudinous ways of keeping musicians on their toes – or, as many of them might have put it, making their life a misery. (Craig Scanlon has a slightly different take on this: ‘Mark created tension mostly because he was bored, drunk or couldn’t hack it.’)14

Of course, trying to pin down Smith’s thinking or motivation is a notoriously tricky business. It certainly seems believable that he found the notion of the group’s growing popularity distasteful, disconcerting – possibly even frightening – and wanted to demonstrate his contrary and nonconformist credentials. Whilst Brian Edge’s assertion that ‘Smith himself felt that the band were on the verge of becoming a supergroup’ rather overstates the Fall’s profile in 1982, there’s certainly some mileage in his interpretation of MES’s motives: ‘[RTL‘s] failure to deliver gave the band some much-needed breathing space… all that close scrutiny had become claustrophobic.’

Whatever his precise intentions, however, he (aided and abetted by Kay Carroll) certainly made the recording of RTL a challenging experience for the rest of the group. They were to take a more spontaneous approach, experiment with different combinations of group members (some being excluded from particular tracks) and employ guest musicians.  He extolled the merits of the new approach in an interview for Masterbag magazine:

“Room to Live” is an interlude… an aside … the songs are an overflow … it started off as a single, but then I decided to put down this other material I had, the songs all went together, and I wanted to do something instantaneous… to get back to the old Fall way of recording songs straight off the top of our heads! I thought we were getting a bit restricted by ‘Hex’, it was so ‘thought out’, planned, and like, intensive. That’s why I’ve shuffled round with the band, I didn’t want the same sound reproduced twice. We’ve only used one drum set on here, a bit of an experiment, and I excluded some of the band from certain tracks, shuffled them round a bit, and used some outside musicians. All of the Fall are on the record, but not all of them on every track … which I did to keep with this ‘instant’ thing that we’ve had in the past – the far past! The band weren’t even familiar with some of the songs, we just went in and did them which is how we always operated in the good old days! … and I think it’s served to stir them up a bit! I suppose I’m a contrary bastard – I like to do the opposite of what I’ve just done.”

Smith believed that all of this resulted in a ‘very underrated album’15.The Hanley brothers were less impressed. Paul, interviewed by Louder Than War in 2016  described recording RTL as ‘a fucking nightmare. You’d turn up and find Smith had only invited half the band, or brought in other musicians without telling anyone!’ His brother was even more disparaging: ‘Most of the tracks are one riff, if that; they’re not arranged properly and they’ve not been thought out’; ‘it’s pushing avant-garde to the threshold of dross’; ‘we could do with taking time to turn these ideas into proper songs’16.

The music press at the time tended to take the Hanleys’ side. In the NME, Amrik Rai described RTL as ‘frustratingly sketchy’ and ‘scarcely more substantial than a tawdry collection of scantily clad doodles’; side two in particular was an ‘indulgent hash of ill-researched experimentation’. In Sounds, Dave McCullough thought it lacked ‘bounce and zap’ (although bizarrely he seems to think this had been a fault with all post-Dragnet Fall albums). Looking back seven years later, Brian Edge described it as ‘misconceived and flawed’; it ‘could have been a passable EP, but… sounded like a flabby, overcrowded 12-inch single’17.

One way in which the album did follow Hex‘s approach was the cover, which was covered in similarly enigmatic text. Emblazoned with the legend ‘Undilutable Slang Truth!’ it also contained such enlightening phrases as, ‘The whining spawn of that Tent Moon ruled roost for moment. The visage was retard.’ Smith claimed (perhaps not entirely seriously) that the dog in the picture on the front cover was the same one that ate Karl Burns’ passport18.

The Songs
Joker Hysterical Face
A sprightly and exuberant track, propelled by a laid-back, loping guitar line and featuring some trademark winningly awkward transitions (e.g. at 1:16). It’s one of several from this album where the Fi5 blog brought to my attention how much I’d underestimated it in the past. It’s also one of only two tracks from the album that Steve Hanley considered to be ‘of any merit’19.

It was apparently written about some of Smith’s neighbours: ‘It’s about a couple who live sort of downstairs from us, where we were living, and they used to play Abba and all that stuff, they always used to have it on full blast. She was a divorcee. I used to know women like her, and it’s not very far from the feminist movement. Like the man is the main thing to blame.’ (Quoted in The Biggest Library Yet, February 1997.) Not that you can readily extrapolate this from the lyrics. Not quite sure why poor old Ted Rogers (of 3-2-1 / Dusty Bin fame) did to incur Smith’s wrath, but I did at least learn what ‘skriking‘ means. It was played 27 times in 1982, but then only made one further appearance, in 1984.

Marquis Cha-Cha
The unstructured nature of the recording process is clearly reflected in the spontaneous sound of Marquis.  Its slightly crazed exuberance actually makes it sound like the group are having a lot of fun recording it, although this clearly wasn’t the case: Steve Hanley, with a tone of weary frustration, recalls working with Smith and Burns ‘trying to create some semblance of structure’20 to the song. They didn’t really succeed; there’s a sense throughout that the track is only just about hanging together and it feels rather like three or four songs welded together. But somehow it works, even if it does have rather a demo/rehearsal vibe to it.

Marquis updates the Lord Haw Haw story to contemporary Argentina; the title, as Tommy Mackay points out, ‘cleverly puns on Mark E, Lord Haw Haw and Thatcher’21. In interviews at the time, Smith struck an aggressively jingoistic tone when discussing the song, staunchly defending The Falklands War. The following year, he fell back on the ‘I was joking/just being sarcastic’ defence; however, in an interview for The Telegraph in 2008, he returned to the subject:

I was always a Labour party member. I left because of the Falklands War. This was 1983, and local members were dead set against the war. I would go in the club and be told the war was a waste of money. We should just give the islands to Argentina. I was arguing, “Hang on. We’re talking about a military dictatorship, in a country that’s made a career out of hiding Nazi war criminals. You want to give in to that lot?” No one agreed with me, so I left.

It seems likely that neither Riley nor Paul Hanley played on this track. It was played live 39 times, the last of which was in 1985. In 1984, the group recorded a session version for the BBC’s Saturday Live that saw it twinned with Fortress:

Hard Life In Country
Hard Life is certainly not a fond memory for Steve Hanley, who describes it as ‘sounding shite. There’s nothing on it that anybody couldn’t do.’22 It was one of those RTL songs where Smith’s unorthodox methods seem to have particularly disconcerted the other members of the group. The Hanleys found themselves recording it with just Smith and what Steve described as a ‘long-fringed sap’ on guitar, this scenario causing Riley and Scanlon some consternation when they arrived later.

The ‘sap’ in question was Arthur Kadmon (credited as Cadman on the sleeve), a Manchester musician who had played in Ludus. It seems highly unlikely that Smith actually considered adding him to the group, although Kadmon may have been under the impression that this might have been the case. If he had been, it would have been an ultra-short tenure, even by The Fall’s standards. As Mick Middles writes in his book The Fall:

[Kadmon was] told to go and tune up and play a few test samples, which indeed he did: four chords, a tune-up and a finger loosening solo. It took just sixteen seconds.

“Thanks Arthur. That’s superb. That’s just what we wanted. you can go home now.”

“What? that’s it?”

“Yeah, thanks cocker.”

Hard Life takes on a less controversial subject than Marquis: ‘the city-dweller’s distrust of the country’23; or as the sleeve notes have it, ‘the harsh results of technology in yokel hang outs. Horrid truth behind all that romanticized green grass.’

It’s not an easy listen. Bleak, sparse and brittle, it strains at the leash throughout to break out into something more expansive and distorted. The hypnotic, trebly guitar scratches away like it’s trying desperately to escape from something malevolent, perhaps reflecting the oppressive, claustrophobic intensity of village life. Certainly it all gets a bit Straw Dogs towards the end: ‘The villagers are surrounding the house / the locals have come for their due’.

The ‘John’ referred to in MES’s spoken intro is presumably John Brierley, the founder of Cargo Studios, although perversely this isn’t the song where he gets his sole production credit (Smith and Carroll having decided that they could handle that responsibility themselves on all but the title track).  Although it was a fairly regular feature during the Australian/NZ tour, it had a relatively brief shelf-life as far as Fall setlists go, making only 17 appearances. The last one was at York University in November 1983 (sadly, four years before I began my degree there).

Room To Live
After several listens to the Live To Air and In A Hole versions, it feels disappointing that the wonderful country-blues guitar motif of those versions is absent here. That said, there’s plenty of fun stuff going on: there’s still some pretty nifty solo guitar work from Riley (even if it’s a little buried in the mix) and another guest, Adrian Niman, adds some pleasingly understated honking sax.

The title could be taken as a reference to Lebensraum (literally ‘living space’; Hitler’s justification for Germany’s expansion on the 1930s), although other than references to ‘foreigners’ and a ‘murder squad’ there’s not really anything further to support this link. There are some pleasingly random Smithisms here though: ‘a D.H.S.S.S. Volvo estate… with a Moody Blues cassette on the dashboard’; ‘some men want reporters with no wig’.

Detective Instinct
An atmospheric and creepy little number. There’s a general air of suspicion and malevolence about it, created by the insistent, pulsing bass and sparse, understated guitar fills, which sound as though they might have come from the soundtrack of a 60s spy/mystery/detective TV show. The percussion is also interestingly effective on this; pared down and minimal, almost disappearing in places, adding to the uncertainty.

There are several intriguing little details. At various points both a mandolin and a harpsichord seem to be drifting about in the background, and there’s also an occasional electronic ‘plink’ in the style of an early-80s video game. The very subtle bit of feedback around the four and a half minute mark is a nice touch too. The sudden swell in volume at 5:14 is not so subtle though. Working out the line-up on the different songs on this album is obviously problematic, but there do appear to be three guitar parts on this, so presumably Karl Burns contributed one of them.

It’s a pretty oblique lyric (I’m not entirely clear on what Simon Ford bases his statement that it’s ‘about an inept detective’24) but again has some choice lines, the best of which is, ‘He was a blubbering heap / he should have served himself up / preferably in a restaurant with meat’. Only made five live appearances in 1982-83.

Solicitor In Studio
The other song (alongside Joker) that Steve Hanley considered to be ‘of any merit’25. The first thing that strikes you about this is SH’s outstanding bass line: a thumping, funky, relentless onslaught that tirelessly stomps up and down the scale and drives the whole thing along with lithe muscularity. The Fall A-Z refers to ‘conjecture’ that Karl Burns played ‘lead bass’ on this. I can only presume that this refers to the fuzzy, melodic line that sits over the ‘main’ bass part, which I’d always thought was done on a guitar, to be honest. Anyway, whoever’s playing what, it all gels incredibly well into a lurching, aggressive slab of post-punk-funk.

Craig Scanlon thrashes away at the two chords with a scratchy, frenetic vigour that sits perfectly just away from the main focus, providing an unobtrusive but crucial backdrop. Riley dips in now and again with some discordant keyboard work (some especially nice splashes of colour just after four minutes). The lead guitar (or bass) has a wonderfully knotty, fuzzy tone; its primitive sound makes a great contrast with the comparatively smooth and silky bass line (e.g. at both the two and three minute mark). Great use of feedback too: for example echoing MES’s line about ‘high-pitched whines’ at 2:11.

It’s another lyric that’s hard to interpret much beyond identifying the scenario described in the title. I remember Magnus Pyke being a fairly frequent and mildly amusing feature of TV when I was a kid; I’d (thankfully) forgotten about the rent-a-quote Sir Anthony Michael Beaumont-Dark, who also gets a reference. It’s another one that disappeared from the setlist in 1983, but it did clock up 50 appearances.

There’s a great clip of the group performing the song on Granada Reports in 1982 that doesn’t show conclusively what Karl Burns is playing (it looks like a guitar, but there only appear to be four machine heads) but does illustrate Steve Hanley and Craig Scanlon’s love of the tank top…

Papal Visit
I don’t know how many – if any – other songs were written in response to Pope John Paul II’s 1982 visit to Britain. If there were any, I doubt any were anywhere near as peculiar as this one. It’s hard to argue with Steve Hanley’s assessment of this being an example of ‘pushing avant-garde to the threshold of dross’; there’s a distinct sense of just pissing about in the studio, frankly. Smith scrapes away randomly at a violin, intones a few lines about helicopters stripping the land and throws in a couple of samples of the pontiff’s speeches; meanwhile Karl Burns (?) thumps away the floor toms from time to time. You almost expect Melvyn Bragg’s voice to appear at the end.

And yet… there is something quite intriguing and almost hypnotic about it. It is self-indulgent nonsense, undoubtedly; but I’m quite partial to self-indulgent nonsense in the right context. And it is better than Crew Filth or Taxi (although that’s the very definition of damning with faint praise).

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
A 1993 reissue added both sides of the Lie Dream single. The 1998 Voiceprint version came with a bonus CD featuring four live tracks from April 1982. The 2005 Sanctuary reissue contains a different set of six live recordings from 1982-83, all of which are pretty horrible, sound quality-wise.

Overall Verdict
Room To Live‘s lukewarm (at best) reception was, in hindsight, unsurprising. After the tight, focused, relentlessness of Hex, it was perhaps inevitable that the loose, scatter-gun approach and seemingly rushed creation of RTL would lead to unfavourable comparisons with its illustrious predecessor.

The spontaneous, improvisational approach of RTL makes for a very different feeling to the preceding albums, but with the majority of tracks this actually works quite well and gives it a fresh, inventive quality. MES’s bloody-minded determination to avoid recording anything like what people expected them too is also refreshing. But there’s no denying that it’s a flawed and patchy release. The ‘record from scratch’ approach really works in places: Joker and Solicitor, for example, have a joyful, engaging exuberance; Hard Life has an immediate, brittle astringency that might have been lost in different circumstances. In places, though, you can’t help feeling that the songs needed more time and space to grow and solidify: in particular Room To Live, which only a few weeks later – as you can hear on the live recordings – developed rapidly into something much more satisfying than the album version.

My “Version”
I’m going to break all my self-imposed rules and convert RTL to what would have been an utterly cracking 20 minute 4-track EP:

Side 1: Joker Hysterical Face / Marquis Cha Cha (9:14)

Side 2: Hard Life In Country / Solicitor In Studio (11:26)

Rankings
As far as the albums go, it’s pretty straightforward at this point; although where RTL fits in may well become more problematic later on…

  1. Hex Enduction Hour
  2. Slates
  3. Grotesque
  4. Room To Live
  5. Dragnet
  6. Live At The Witch Trials

With the live albums, I really really enjoyed Live To Air, and it’s fully deserving of its top spot at this point. Like Therein, In A Hole has its ups and downs sound-wise, but you do get eleven high quality tracks, including Backdrop.

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  5. Totale’s Turns
  6. Live 1977
  7. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  8. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  9. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  10. Liverpool 78
  11. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  12. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  13. Live At Deeply Vale

As far as the singles go, Lie Dream and Look, Know are both solid entries, but aren’t quite in the league of the top two.

  1. How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
  2. Totally Wired
  3. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  4. Look, Know
  5. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  6. Rowche Rumble
  7. Fiery Jack
  8. It’s The New Thing

 

References

1The Big Midweek, p119

2Renegade, p120

3Thompson, p63

4The Big Midweek, pp126-128

5Renegade, p106

6The Big Midweek, p129

7Renegade, pp106-107

8The Big Midweek, pp135-137

9Renegade, p107

10The Big Midweek, p144

11The Big Midweek, p143

12-13Renegade, p108

14The Fallen, p198

15Renegade, p120

16The Big Midweek, pp126-127

17Edge, pp53-54

18Renegade, p120

19The Big Midweek, p128

20The Big Midweek, p127

21Mackay, p57

22The Big Midweek, p127

23Ford, p108

24Ford, p109

25The Big Midweek, p128

 

YMGTA #09: Hex Enduction Hour

“I feel guilty for spawning The Sugarcubes and Björk”

Image result for hex enduction hour

Details:
Recorded:  Regal Cinema, Hitchin, December 1981 (Hip Priest and Iceland in Reykjavik, September 1981)

Released: 8 March 1982

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, tapes, guitar
  • Marc Riley – guitar, keyboards
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar, vocals, keyboards
  • Steve Hanley – bass, vocals
  • Paul Hanley – drums, guitar
  • Karl Burns – drums, vocals, tapes
    With: 
  • Kay Carroll – vocals, percussion

Background
After the successful US tour, the obvious question on the group’s return to the UK was: who’s the drummer now? Paul Hanley seems to have been understandably anxious; as his brother commented, ‘six weeks is a long time to be out of the loop, especially when you know there’s a very competent and original drummer taking your place on the other side of the Atlantic.’1 However, for the group’s fifth Peel session, recorded at the end of August, Paul was back on the stool as they recorded Deer Park, Look, Know, Winter and Who Makes The Nazis? And he was still there as the group headed to Iceland in September. The visit was organised by Einar Örn (later of Sugarcubes fame) and involved three gigs (supported by Örn’s band Purkurr Pilnikk) plus a recording session in a ‘recording studio carved out of volcanic rock’2 that produced Look, Know, Hip Priest and Iceland (see individual songs below.) Kay Carroll’s impressions of Iceland were not overly positive: ‘No beer, no trees, no telly on Thursdays or in the whole of July, no cigarettes and blokes walking round with toilet rolls in their ears’ (a reference to overzealous officials monitoring the group’s sound levels)3. Smith’s reflection on the trip? ‘I feel guilty for spawning The Sugarcubes and Björk.’4

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Once the group were back in the UK, however, Burns was reinstated; this time alongside Paul Hanley. The Fall weren’t by any means the first group to deploy two drummers (there’s a lengthy list of examples here) but it was still an unusual move; from my own childhood, I remember that it was one of the main talking points around Adam & The Ants at the time. It was a move that would play a large role in defining the Fall sound over the next couple of years.

In November, Smith ‘received what for some would have been the ultimate accolade’5 – appearing on the cover of the NME. Strange to think it now, but appearing on the front page of the NME was indeed a big bloody deal back then.  The somewhat breathless article opens with a quotation from Derrida and goes on to describe MES as ‘the only really important writer and singer in the vast, myth-saturated culture of Pop’ and to say that he has addressed ‘questions of art, culture, politics that Pop has only too conveniently ignored for too long… with a severe and violent humour and a vision of incomparable breadth’.

By this stage, the group had left Rough Trade, Smith having tired of the ‘hippies’ who would ‘only send review copies to left-wing magazines instead of the daily papers’6.  They signed up with Kamera (‘fogey label’, as the album cover has it), which Smith described as an ‘old rockers’ label’ (indeed, earlier in 1981 they had put out Freddie Starr’s Spirit of Elvis) and about whom he was uncharacteristically positive in Renegade: ‘I have few good words to say about record companies, but they were very good; a world away from the limp stuffiness of Rough Trade.’7

The first product of this new relationship came in November with the release of Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul,  also the first recorded output of the dual drummer line-up. Lie Dream (as noted in previous posts) began life as an extension of Blob 59. Opening with a thumping drum beat (like an accelerated Totally Wired), Smith’s tribute to the Northern Soul scene is notable for its abrasive, atonal breaks that had, in Simon Ford’s words, ‘the weight and momentum of an articulated lorry’.8  It made an impressive 138 appearances live; after an eleven year hiatus, it returned for regular appearances in 1997-98.

The other side of the single was Fantastic Life. It’s a mark of the group’s productivity at this time that a song as strong as this could be relegated to being a b-side. Its nagging, insistent keyboards, Velvet Underground-style scratchy rhythm guitar and nifty pre-chorus lead guitar – matched with Smith’s exuberant vocals – make this an absolute joy. This article describes it as ‘an early forerunner of The Wonderful and Frightening era Fall; there are intriguing spaces where Brix’s sun-kissed garage pop sensibility would later be.’ Surprisingly, it was only played live 31 times, its last outing being in April 1983.

Shortly after Lie Dream‘s release, the group headed off to that rock ‘n’ roll mecca, Hitchin in Hertfordshire to record the rest of Hex. The studio was a converted cinema. The Regal Theatre had opened in 1939, showing Cary Grant in Gunga Din on its first night, and closed as a cinema in 1977 (its last showing being the dubious-sounding Secrets of a Super Stud). After that, it was converted to a studio and concert hall (hosting Spandau Ballet, the Thompson Twins and UB40) before being demolished and replaced by an office block in 1986.

In The Wider World…
Three weeks after the album’s release, Argentinian troops landed on South Georgia, setting in motion the events that would lead to the Falklands War (which in turn saddled us with bloody Thatcher for several more years). Mary Whitehouse’s legal case against The Romans In Britain, a private prosecution for gross indecency, collapsed.

In the music world, Britain came seventh in the Eurovision Song Contest with Bardo’s One Step Further (a bit of a let-down after Bucks Fizz’s glorious triumph the year before, but still a great deal better than we would do in virtually every subsequent year). In the singles chart, The Jam had recently spent three weeks at number one with A Town Called Malice (an end-of-disco staple from my teenage years) before being replaced, regrettably, by Tight Fit’s The Lion Sleeps Tonight (itself – even more regrettably – toppled by The Goombay Dance Band three weeks later).

The Fall Live In 1981
After returning from their US summer tour, the group played a further 21 gigs in 1981. After playing Sheffield Poly on the 4 September (where Who Makes The Nazis? and Look, Know made their debuts), they played the three gigs in Iceland, before returning to more familiar climes: Manchester, Blackpool, Brighton, Newcastle, etc.

ticket

flyer

The gig at Fagin’s in Manchester on 30 September marked the debut of the two-drummer line-up.  Notable support acts in autumn 1981 included The Nightingales, The Membranes, Virgin Prunes and Nico (who played with the group at Birmingham on 6 November). The last gig of the year, in London in December, featured the first performance of The Classical.

The Album
According to Smith – in typically enlightening fashion – the title ‘had something to do with witchcraft, and “enduction” I just made up’9. The cover was ‘just me with a felt tip’,10 he went on to say, and this is indeed a pretty accurate description. The cover is filled with typically random and obscure Smithisms: ‘Hexen Death Bubble’, ‘Cigs. smoked here’, Hexenkessel rozzer kidder: “Hail Sainsbury’s!”‘, ‘Flabby Wings’ and ‘Muscle hedonist vanity’. Smith describes himself as ‘Big Personality Face’; Karl Burns gets ‘Burns Babe – umpteenth break in down curve’. Whatever the meaning behind ‘hex’ and ‘enduction’, the ‘hour’ part was certainly literal (although according to my computer it’s actually one hour and sixteen seconds), as is liberally advertised on both front and back covers.

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The press release (links: page 1 / page 2) describes the ‘official new Fall product’ as ‘their most concentrated work to date’. In one of the headings, it also introduces the mysterious phrase (name?) ‘Rosso-Rosso’ which would reappear on the sleeve of Room To Live and in the lyrics of Marquis Cha-Cha. The first 50 minutes of the album, apparently, consists of ‘songs honed in from the last tours The Fall have performed’, distinguishing them from And This Day, which has its own entry (see below).

It also contains a rather odd warning: ‘THERE ARE NO BLONDE BIRDS ON THE COVER OR IN THE RECORD’ (something – with apologies for describing the future Mrs Smith as a ‘bird’ – that would, of course, change very shortly). The press release is rounded off with a contact address, accompanied by the message, ‘please do not expect a reply, as The Fall are not a condescending French resistance type group nor do they have warehouses packed with info kits on themselves’.

Reviews were almost universally positive. In the NME, Richard Cook simply described it as ‘their masterpiece’.  Hex was the first Fall album to dent the mainstream charts, peaking at number 71. It also reached number two on the independent chart, kept from the top spot by Pigbag’s debut.

fall-hex-enduction-hour-lp-orig-uk_1_1ae7dc09b35c56c37007bbb1acde9938

The Songs
The Classical
As I go through these albums, I’ve been referring back to each song’s entry on The Fall in Fives. There have been one or two occasions where I think I’ve been overly harsh (That Man, for example), but overall I’ve been happy enough with what I wrote, especially given the parameters I set myself. That said, I think I didn’t really hit my stride properly until I was 30 or so ‘batches’ in, and this one (covered in #010) reinforces that. It’s a bit thin, frankly; plus I only give it 9/10, which was a bit of a moment of madness…

The double drummers approach has an immediate impact; from the word go there’s a clattering intensity about the song. The breadth of the percussion also gives Steve Hanley a bit of freedom to add plenty of melodic touches to his muscular bass line throughout. The melodic lead guitar part makes an effective contrast with the overall abrasive atmosphere. The latter quality is explained by Stuart Estell (quoted on the Reformation site): ‘The Classical is, in muso-speak, bitonal – in two keys at once… the bass part is in a mode of A, while Scanlon’s scratchy guitar part is in something like C#. That’s why the sound of the thing changes so much when it gets to “I’ve never felt better…” – at that point Scanlon’s chords start following the bass part and suddenly everyone’s playing in the same key’.

The Classical is not an easy lyric to analyse, as you can gauge by the 100+ comments on its Annotated Fall page. In an interview with Sounds (quoted on TAF), MES says: ‘When we recorded that album we were sick of the music industry, the record was meant to be against that. It was our way of saying “fuck off!” to those people. “The Classical” is the song that sums it all up, it’s the anthem of the record.’ The sleeve notes, which reference Roy Castle and Clive James, don’t exactly make things a great deal clearer.

It’s a fascinating lyric, opening with the proud philistinism of ‘no culture is my brag’ and including the playful (‘I just left the Hotel Amnesia… where it is I can’t remember’), the enigmatic (‘there are twelve people in the world / the rest are paste’), the wry (‘made with the highest British attention / to the wrong detail’) and the hilariously abusive (‘Hey there fuckface!’)

Of course this all skates around the most controversial aspect of The Classical, the one that makes it the most controversial of all Smith’s lyrics. (After some deliberation, I’ve decided to go for ‘N-word’ rather than use the actual word, although there are sound enough reasons for adopting either approach.) Judging people retrospectively over these sorts of issues is always problematic, and it’s difficult to assess both the intent and impact of racist or sexist terms several decades after their use. Many people would undoubtedly point to the fact that in the early 80s a lot of terms that are now considered to be taboo would have had much less impact. There is a grain of truth in this. If I think back to 1982 (when I was 13) I don’t think I would have found a white person using the N-word anywhere near as shocking as I would now. But I still would have known that it was wrong, inappropriate; even in 1982, Smith must have been conscious of the effect his words would have.

Of course the easiest and most simplistic way to deal with the issue is to see it as a swipe at tokenism in the media, which is a plausible enough interpretation. And of course, Smith’s lyrical abstrusity often makes it difficult to disentangle his own words from those of the characters who populate the songs. However, it becomes much harder to excuse or explain Smith’s choice of language once you’ve read the interview that he did for Allied Propaganda fanzine in 1983, where he says that the offending phrase has ‘come true, and every programme you see about young people has now got a black boy in it’. He goes on: ‘…no black man’s going to come over to me and say “You are the fuckin’ oppressor”, because I’ve never oppressed him, and as far as I’m concerned he’s oppressing me, because I have to watch his music on TV’.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that Smith was a racist. I don’t believe that there’s any evidence from the rest of his career that reinforces the attitude demonstrated above. He frequently expressed a sincere appreciation of black blues, reggae, jazz and soul artists; it’s also worth remembering his long history of being deliberately difficult, contrary and provoking in interviews. His comments here do make uncomfortable reading though. It’s also worth noting that when the song returned to the set in 2002 (after a 17 year absence), that particular line was omitted. In November 2019, John Doran published a lengthy piece on the song’s lyric that’s well worth a read.

After being a stalwart in 1982-85 setlists, the 2002 revival saw The Classical clock up a further nine performances, bringing its total to 73.

From ‘Masterbag’ fanzine, Autumn 1982

Jawbone And The Air-Rifle
Some Fall songs evolve through their pre-release performances and end up with some quite radical musical and/or lyrical revisions. I haven’t heard any of Jawbone‘s first seven outings, but by its eighth appearance (at Acklam Hall in December 1980, which can be heard on The Legendary Chaos Tape) it’s already pretty much exactly in the form in which it would appear on Hex, 15 months and 31 performances later. (The only real difference is that the ‘Advertisements become carnivores / and roadworkers turn into jawbones’ lines are reversed.) After 44 appearances between 1980-82, its final outing was in March 1984.

The fact that Jawbone had had so many outings by this point is reflected in how taut and aggressive it sounds; the angular, grinding riff launches itself at you from the first second, and the group sound totally in synch as they drive relentlessly through the first minute of the song. The tempo changes are almost slick (very slick by Fall standards), and the way they pick up the pace (1:45 and 3:18) is joyfully uplifting.

The drumming is not as elaborate as on The Classical, and for much of the song Steve Hanley takes a more rhythmic role than on the opener, laying down a piledriver of a bass riff; however in the chorus, he follows the melody of Smith’s vocal, leaving the scuzzy, scratchy guitars to provide the foundation.

The slower sections in particular bring out the dark, gothic tone of Smith’s lyrics. The ‘rabbit killer’ goes out hunting late at night, finding himself in a graveyard. His misplaced shot ‘smashed a chip off a valued tomb’ and incurs the ire of the grave-keeper (‘out on his rounds’) who demands that the hunter step into the ‘light of the moon’ and explain himself; the hunter’s explanation is that he thought that he was a rabbit or a ‘sex criminal’ on the run. The grave-keeper then presents the hunter with a ‘jawbone caked in muck’ which is some sort of cursed relic from a Scottish ‘pentacle church’. Whilst he tells the hunter that it will make him ‘a bit of a man’, it seems that this curse has devastating effects: the rabbit killer can’t eat, has ‘mangled teeth’, loses his ‘bottle’ and seems to have a series of disturbing visions. It all gets very Wicker Man towards the end, with villagers dancing around prefabs and ‘suck[ing] on marrowbones and energy from the mainland’.

It’s one of Smith’s greatest lyrics, full of dark, ominous imagery and gnarled and twisted turns of phrase. As well as the aforementioned Wicker Man, you can hear the influence of some of MES’s favourite writers here – Machen, M R James, Lovecraft – but it’s done in a style that’s utterly all his. It also may be one of the Fall songs – alongside Sparta FC – that is most familiar with those who have never knowingly heard one of the group’s records, it having been the theme tune to Frank Skinner’s chat show in the 90s. Skinner – as you can hear here on his Desert Island Discs appearance, starting at 32:53 – was a late convert to the group but became somewhat obsessed and was tempted to just choose eight Fall tracks for his fictional exile (he went for Rowche Rumble in the end).

Hip Priest
Alongside all the ‘granny on bongos’, cantankerous dictator and multiple firings clichés that filled last year’s obituaries, this was probably the song that was most often referenced. The idea of an ‘alter-ego’ made it an obvious choice for journalists; something easy for them to hang a piece around. However, Smith was no Bowie: the Hip Priest was not really akin to Ziggy or The Thin White Duke, characters that Bowie fully inhabited and used to frame his albums and stage shows. Like most Fall songs, the lyrics are difficult to interpret with any confidence, but while there may be a fair bit of Smith in the title character, it is, as ever, hardly as straightforward as that. It’s not hard to imagine MES feeling as if he was ‘not appreciated’, it’s true, but there are other interpretations, including that it may even be directed at Danny Baker. As usual, Smith is less than helpful: in a 1982 radio interview, he said: ‘It was a bit of a joke on the group cos they’re all like Catholics…it’s meant to be a bit of a funny song…I have an image of Johnny Cash or somebody, I don’t know why…or South America.’

As ever, there are a range of intriguing possibilities around the origins of some of the specific phrases. The ‘last clean dirty shirt’ line may well have come from Johnny Cash’s (Kris Kristofferson-penned) Sunday Morning Comin’ Down (‘I fumbled in my closet through my clothes / and found my cleanest dirty shirt’). Interestingly, the ‘brown bottles’ phrase was revisited in 2010 on Cowboy George. Famously, the song featured in one of the closing scenes of Silence of the Lambs, which probably means that there are many people that you know who have heard The Fall without realising it.

It’s a truism to say that no other band sounds like The Fall, although you can (and I often did on The Fall in Fives) cross-reference various songs to a diverse range of artists, such as Sonic Youth, Can, Pavement, The Wedding Present, Beefheart and REM. But of all the group’s songs, this is the one that sounds most unutterably just like The Fall. One of the most striking things about it is the group’s control of dynamics. Over the years, I have listened to and thoroughly enjoyed many hours of the finest exponents of the quiet/loud dynamic – Explosions In The Sky, Pixies and early Mogwai spring to mind – but there’s something far beyond that here. Whilst there’s plenty of joy to be had when a band all stamp on the pedals and turn everything up to 11, the approach on Hip Priest is far more subtle and all the more effective for it. The quiet passages are so sparse as to be almost falling away from you; and when the group do explode (e.g. at 3:42) it’s not achieved with effects pedals, it’s organic, physical; attitude as much as volume.

I loved Steve Hanley’s book, and would recommend it heartily to anyone (although I doubt that anyone reading this doesn’t already own it). If I had one very minor criticism, it’s that there’s a slight imbalance between ‘life on the road’ and ‘how we wrote / recorded…’ stories (I’d have liked a bit more of the latter). But his account of Hip Priest‘s origins is one of the book’s particular delights. Describing how the song evolved a March 1981 soundcheck, he says:

Paul begins with a slow drumbeat, which captures all our attention. He’s just using the rim of his snare instead of the skin, and fusing it together with the cymbals and the bass drum. One by one, compelled by the rhythm, we begin to improvise around it, quickly realising something’s growing. We’re nurturing it with our tempered anguish until a hollow atmosphere begins to fill the empty hall. It continues to build but then, with a sudden unanimous exchange of certain eye contact, a dramatic drop is triggered. Intuition takes over as we induce the pressure again, knowing we’ve got the bare bones of something different. Absorbing the music, Mark Smith appears from the wings, locks on and, riffling through his mental portfolio, extracts an alter ego, intoning his Hip Priest into existence.

Who here would not have given their right arm (and possibly several other body parts) to have witnessed that?

Fortress/Deer Park
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the group took a little while to find a proper place for Fortress. In its early incarnations, it often prefaced Totally Wired, where to my mind it really didn’t work to its full potential. This may just be with the benefit of hindsight, but I think it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t fit just perfectly here.

After a slightly disturbing intro (featuring the intro from Trio’s Da Da Da) we get an exuberant, slashing guitar riff that’s not a million miles away from the one the group would use on Fol De Rol 35 years later. Its transition into Deer Park at around the one and a half minute mark is simply one of the most perfect and joyous moments that the group ever released. (There’s also an excellent fuller version of Fortress from one of the 1981 Iceland gigs, which includes several extra lines, including ‘You can wander about Oslo / but we are told that outside of England / the rest of the world is a smelly road / with holes for latrines, for urinals’.)

Deer Park is another relentless, aggressive assault of a tune; a wave of hypnotically jagged noise and fury. The lyrics are particularly impenetrable: who is the ‘King Shag Corpse’? What exactly is a ‘large type artist ranch’? Who are the Manchester/Scottish group? But it’s one of those where I find myself not worrying overly about what Smith is on about, because his snarling vehemence is complemented perfectly by the endless two-chord loop of Riley’s keyboards, the dual-drum clatter, the throbbing bass line and – above all – the dirty Stooges/VU-like fuzz of the guitar breaks. It’s all completely mesmerising. I was in the middle of reviewing this when I heard of MES’s death; sticking it on repeat at high volume and having a few glasses of wine felt very fitting.

Mere Pseud Mag. Ed.
I’ve always thought that it would have been preferable to have a ‘full’ version of Winter (which I’ll come onto shortly) close the first side and this open the second side, as the album would benefit from having a bit of a break in terms of relentless guitar assaults. That said, it’s a hell of a riff; it has real heft, in a ‘did you spill my pint?’ burst of aggression. The underlying heavily distorted guitar just before the two minute mark is a particular highlight.

It’s a derisive character assassination (‘his brain was in his arse’; ‘real ale, curry as well -sophisticate’) although it’s unclear at whom it’s aimed. It’s also one of those occasions where MES wilfully tries to cram a line (‘Mere pseud mag editor’s father’) into a space where it plainly doesn’t fit. It was one of the longest-serving songs as far as gigs were concerned, clocking up 149 appearances between 1982-2005.

Winter (Hostel-Maxi) / Winter 2
A masterclass in minimalism, Winter is to a large extent comprised of a metronomic bass line and a single harshly jangling chord (not for the first time, the Velvet Underground spring to mind; Venus In Furs in this case). That’s not all there is to it of course: Riley adds some carefully-applied texture with the keyboards, and Scanlon contributes some spindly solo work. In addition, Steve Hanley, not for the first time, is the master of solidity and restraint; letting the relentless throb of his mainly single-note part underpin everything, but timing perfectly his little runs up the neck (especially at both the beginning and end of Winter 2).

Having only ever had Hex on cassette or CD, I don’t know if the splitting of the track was any less irritating on vinyl. As soon as technology gave me the option to do so, I created and have nearly always listened to a ‘merged’ version – although I have been listening to the originals for the purpose of this project. (I’d post you my YouTube upload of this ‘glued-together’ version, but the buggers took it down – as did Soundcloud.)

According to the press release (see above) Winter, ‘is a tale concerning an insane child who is taken over by a spirit from the mind of a cooped-up alcoholic, and his ravaged viewpoints and theories’. The insane child is obviously the ‘mad kid’ who tries to grab the lead of his mother’s dog, and at some point wears ‘a black cardboard Archbishop’s hat with a green fuzz skull and crossbones’. I say at some point, because while the song is obviously in narrative form, it’s chronologically confusing in places. For example, Manny (presumably the ‘cooped-up alcoholic’) is in the library, hungover at half past three, but then we get: ‘Get the spleen at 3:15 / but it’s 3:13’. On the song’s Annotated Fall page, bzfgt and contributors make an admirable (and much more detailed) effort to unravel Winter‘s meaning.

There’s also an intriguing reference in the press release to ‘an earlier version [which] went into the “Clang” process of speech’, which is explained as where ‘the sufferer during speech makes sentences containing similar sounding words’. On looking this up, I discovered that (according to Wikipedia), ‘in psychology and psychiatry, clanging refers to a mode of speech characterized by association of words based upon sound rather than concepts’ and is often associated with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It’s easy to see many Fall songs being described as such, especially in the group’s later years; I’m not sure I can hear it in Winter though.

Winter was a regular feature in Fall sets throughout 1981, appearing 22 times. However, after its 25th outing in Edinburgh in April 1982, it was never played again.

Just Step S’ways
Hex‘s closest thing to a pop song, Step provides a bit of light relief after the intensity of the first half of the album. It’s not quite as mysterious a lyric as some of the earlier songs, although I’m unsure as to what ‘just skip out miss the ice bricks of Bacardi’ might mean. MES seems to be taking a general wry swipe at the modern world (‘this grubby place’) in general, disparaging both its ‘futurism’ and its tendency to wallow in nostalgia (‘who wants to be in a Hovis advert anyway?’) I’m not quite sure where Elton John playing in Russia fits in with all of this though. The sleeve is once again not terribly helpful in shedding much light on the song’s meaning: ‘”Lie Dream” 80% of 10% OR 6% over no less than 1/4 = ??????’

The stomping rhythm, tangy surf rock guitar and a comparatively clear and melodic vocal (I’m also quite fond of the little burst of ‘mouth trumpet’ in the intro) make it an engaging if rather slight little number. Played 29 times in 1981-82, it made a surprising one-off reappearance in 2007.

Who Makes The Nazis?
A (musically) curiously simplistic, almost childish song; an aspect that is further emphasised in the Peel version by the deployment of a plastic toy guitar. Again, the lyrics are opaque enough to make it difficult to do more than grasp at possible snatches of meaning; I tend to agree with bzfgt on TAF when he says that he is ‘not convinced the song is trying very hard to make a coherent conceptual point’. That said, there are a few great-sounding (if impenetrable) lines like ‘Buffalo lips on toast, smiling’ and ‘Benny’s cobweb eyes!’ The latter, according to a contributor on The Fall Forum, is a reference to Benny from Crossroads, which – given other examples of MES commenting on daytime television (e.g. A Lot Of Wind) – seems at least reasonably plausible. I’d always presumed that the ‘longhorn’ references were an image that MES had picked up on the long drives across the US on the previous year’s tour. bzfgt, however makes an interesting case for it actually referring to ‘Heck cattle‘, which does provide a link to Nazism.

Although not as controversial as the introduction to The Classical, Nazis also features language that now feels slightly uncomfortable, specifically ‘balding smug faggots’. Although it has been, regrettably, assimilated into UK English over the last couple of decades, it wasn’t a common term of abuse in early 80s Britain; or at least it’s certainly not one I remember being used back then (there were much more common terms for homosexuals). Just as I don’t think The Classical makes Smith a racist, I don’t think that this makes him a homophobe; again, it’s difficult to strip away whatever layers of irony there may be, or discern in whose voice the term is being used anyway.

Internet search filters must have a field day with any page reproducing the lyrics of this song: as well as Nazis and faggots, we also get, ‘Remember when I used to follow you home from school babe? Before I got picked up for paedophilia’. The link to Alex Chilton outlined in TAF is a tenuous one, but credit to Dan for working very hard to establish it.

The primitive rhythm and crude guitar/bass lines do have a pleasantly hypnotic quality, but I can’t help feeling that at four and a half minutes the idea is over-stretched, and it can start to drag. (For this reason, I probably just about prefer the Peel version, which is brisker and briefer.) The slightly disturbing backing vocals (not dissimilar to those that open Fortress) do make the song a little less one-dimensional; their bovine quality always puts me in mind of Meat Is Murder. Nazis was a regular feature on 1981-82 setlists, but its 32nd performance in New Zealand in August 1982 was its last.

Iceland
When I recently constructed my 10-CD Fall ‘Box Set’, poor old Iceland was the last song to not quite make the cut. Whereas I feel in retrospect that I slightly underrated The Classical, looking back at the Fi5 blog I think that I was possibly a little overgenerous with this one. I returned time and again to the theme of context on that blog; how your evaluation can be affected by when and where you listen, what’s going on around you, etc. Perhaps, looking back, my enthusiasm was at least partly inspired by the fact that the previous post saw me get my first like and retweet from one Mr S Hanley.

This is not to say that Iceland is in any way a bad song. It is, however, a strange mix of the eerie and the jaunty, and its meandering, improvisational tone is something that I’m not always in the mood for. Its improvised creation is documented in both Steve Hanley’s book11 and Colin Irwin’s article in Melody Maker. On the September 1981 visit to Iceland, the group spent a day in the ‘volcanic’ studio and knocked out Look, Now and Hip Priest, both in one take. After Smith instructed the group to play something ‘Dylanish’, Scanlon sat down at the piano and began ‘throwing two notes back and forth at each other’ (according to Steve Hanley) and was joined by Riley on banjo, making it ‘sound like a sitar’, according to Irwin. Steve Hanley briefly considered taking over percussive duties, but was deterred by a warning look from his brother and instead played the bass as ‘lightly’ as he can. Irwin suggests that it wasn’t improvised entirely from scratch, as he recognises ‘the abstract tinkering they’d done earlier’; nonetheless, there is certainly a hesitant feel to the performance; and you can hear, over the last minute or so, what Hanley describes as the music ‘ struggling to find a natural end’.

Smith’s contribution commences with a cassette recording he had made of the wind outside his hotel window (described as a ‘barren howl’ by his bassist). He then fishes out some of his scribbled notes from the trusty carrier bag and sets off on a rambling tale of being ‘humbled’ in Iceland; including an incident where he took a tumble over a pile of tables in a café (‘Fall down flat… without a glance from the clientele’).

At their last gig in Iceland, the group made their one, ill-fated (and apparently rapidly truncated) attempt at performing the song live. Steve Hanley – I think somewhat tongue in cheek –  described the recording as having ‘somehow harnessed a supernatural Nordic spirit’. The Hip Priestess’ summary (quoted here – the link given there is not correct though) is a characteristically well-written one:

Iceland is beguiling  but, in its own way, is also every bit as uninhabitable as the rest of “Hex”, it just unsettles in a different way, its gentle insistence developing into something more creepy, like an ageing crabby hand on your arm, keeping you sat exactly where you are until its owner, sat on the bar stool next to yours, decides otherwise.

And This Day
The song that formed a suitably epic conclusion to the Fi5 blog. Context rears its head again here, as the circumstances in which I listened to it on repeat (driving through some apocalyptic South Wales weather) served to enhance what can only be described as a dense, unrelenting slab of noise.

The sleeve notes strike a somewhat self-deprecating tone: ‘Desperate attempt to make bouncy good of 2 drum kit line-up’. It’s a bit of a divisive one: the A-Z says: ‘Seen variously by Fall fans as a multi-instrumental layered tour de force with astounding vocals to match, or as a stodgy, seemingly never-ending unmusical/unstructured racket’; The Annotated Fall says something similar – ‘it is passionately defended by some but dismissed as boringly repetitive and too long by others.’

The sheer, dense barrage of noise, the lumbering rhythm and in particular Riley’s spooky organ give it a warped, circus-like atmosphere; one that conjures images of a travelling freakshow/carny from a Tom Waits/Nick Cave song or Cormac McCarthy novel. As I said on the Fi5 blog, ‘Peering through the rain-lashed windscreen as I drove warily through Merthyr Tydfil today, it felt like a song that signalled the end of the world. Not many artists can conjure that up.’

It made 28 appearances 1982-83 and got a one-off revival in 1997 (see below). It’s not a song for the faint-hearted; in a 1982 Radio interview, MES commented that it ‘often finishes off a lot of audiences’. According to Steve Hanley12 the original recording was 25 minutes long before it was edited down to make the album exactly an hour long. It even exhausted Smith: ‘Twenty-five minutes is too long, even for us! I ran out of words quarter of an hour ago.’

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
The album has been reissued several times. The 2002 Voiceprint release included, logically, Look, Know (the single that followed Hex), plus its b-side I’m Into C.B. Interestingly, Smith – not exactly known for his love of turning back to the past – speaks very positively of the 2005 Sanctuary reissue in Renegade: ‘I’m pleased with the way Sanctuary re-issued it. They did us proud there. I know for a fact that a lot of kids have got into it as a result.’13 This is particularly interesting because three of the obvious tracks to include – the Peel and single version of Look, Know and Winter from the Peel session – were not included. This was because, according to thefall.org, they ‘were withdrawn from this reissue at the request of Mark E Smith’. As far as I know, no official reason was ever given for this, which makes their omission – especially when you consider the vast array of poorly-recorded and/or shoddy tracks over the years that MES must have approved – all the more puzzling and intriguing.

What the 2005 Sanctuary reissue does include is: Deer Park / Nazis from the Peel session and I’m Into C.B. from the Look, Know 7″, plus live versions of Session Musician, Jazzed Up Punk ShitI’m Into C.B. (the ‘Stars on 45’ version), Deer Park and And This Day (twice). The first three of these will be covered in subsequent posts. As for the live tracks…

I wrote about Session Musician in the last post. This is from a different date, but the same comments apply. Jazzed Up is an interesting one. It opens with some rather proggy sustained organ chords, then strikes up a rather menacing prowl involving some gentle hi-hat, rhythmic bass and meandering guitar. Lyrically it references Solicitor In Studio, but musically it’s obviously a close relation of Detective Instinct. It only ever got three outings in this form.

The ‘Stars on 45’ version of C.B. sees Smith – not for the first time – referencing the phenomenon that brought us this in the early 80s. He sings a bastardised version of the C.B. lyrics over  an uptempo medley that includes Psykick Dancehall, Fiery Jack and Leave The Capitol. Silly but fun. The first version of And This Day (from a soundcheck on the New Zealand tour later that summer) has MES’s vocals in a very prominent position, which just emphasises that they aren’t necessarily the song’s main attraction. It does however, also give you a good chance to listen to Riley’s frankly bonkers prog-psych keyboard work. The other one (its one-off 1997 revival) was part of that gig’s opening (you can hear the applause on Smith’s entrance) and is mainly notable for being dominated by waves of frantic slide guitar. It’s a pretty horrible recording though, and is only of minor interest.

The version of Deer Park (also from the ’82 New Zealand tour) is a much better recording, even if it is a little on the tinny side. However, it’s well worth a listen. In particular the section around halfway through, driven by some sublime, overloaded feedback-drenched guitar is astonishingly intense.

Overall Verdict
It’s an album that bludgeons you into submission. It’s not flawless: in particular I don’t think the sequencing always does it huge favours; the run of  Step / Nazis / Iceland feels comparatively lightweight in comparison to the first half’s relentless assault. But: the opening four tracks are as strong an introduction to an album that you’ll ever hear; Smith’s lyrics – whilst wilfully opaque for much of the time – are wildly, darkly inventive and intriguing (as he put it himself, ‘There’s a barrage of ideas going on there’)14; Burns, Scanlon, Riley and the Hanleys are consistently locked into a tight, remorseless machine that somehow shreds, coaxes, teases, batters and touches simultaneously. I didn’t set out to write nearly 7000 words about this album, but it was impossible not to; and that tells you everything you need to know. Well, everything I need to know, anyway.

My “Version”
A tricky one, and not one that I’ve actually made (beyond sticking the two halves of Winter together). But keeping (nearly) to my 35-45 minute rule, it would have to be:

Side 1: The Classical / Fortress-Deer Park / Winter (21:01)

Side 2: Mere Pseud Mag. Ed. / Jawbone & the Air Rifle / Hip Priest / And This Day (24:38)

Rankings
Reading over the above, I think it’s a pretty clear-cut decision…

  1. Hex Enduction Hour
  2. Slates
  3. Grotesque
  4. Dragnet
  5. Live At The Witch Trials

 

 

References

1The Big Midweek, p111

2The Big Midweek, p118

3Edge, p43

4Renegade, p114

5Ford, p101

6The Big Midweek, p125

7Renegade, p116

8Ford, p101

9Renegade, p115

10Renegade, p117

11The Big Midweekpp119-120

12The Big Midweek, p126

13-14Renegade, p115

 

 

YMGTA #08: A Part Of America Therein, 1981

“Anyone who wants a fifty cents refund send an airmail letter to the Outer Hebrides”

Front cover

Details:
Recorded:  America May-July 1981 (see below)

Released: May 1982 (US only – see below)

  • Mark E Smith – vocals
  • Marc Riley – guitar, vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Karl Burns – drums

Background  / The Fall Live In 1981
After Slates‘ release, the group played a dozen gigs in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The setlists follow a broadly similar pattern to those earlier in the year, a mixture of Grotesque and Slates material, with a few outings for Hip Priest, Jawbone and Winter. Pre-Grotesque songs are scarce, although John Quays does get a handful of run-outs. Both Deer Park and Fortress made their first appearances on this mini-tour, although not, as yet, paired up.

Front cover

The tenth date of the tour, at Hof in Northern Bavaria (22 May) did the rounds as a bootleg for many years before getting an official release in 2005 as part of the Live From The Vaults series. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany (Alter Banhof means ‘old train yard‘, apparently) consists of the ten songs from the Hof gig, plus five more from the following night’s performance in Berlin.

It’s the very definition of ‘historical interest only’, a truly ropy recording that would test the patience of even the most avid Fall bootleg collector. It does have some minor interesting features. It contains very early versions of Fantastic Life ( only its fifth performance), Fortress (third) and Hip Priest (seventh). But you don’t learn a great deal about these early incarnations, simply because you can’t really hear them properly (Hip Priest is especially wobbly). Fortress is paired up here with Totally Wired, as it was for most of its 1981 performances, and the transition doesn’t seem to work somehow; however, its segue into Deer Park on Hex is one of the most wondrous moments in Fall history so perhaps this is just the wisdom of hindsight talking. It also contains a rare recorded version of Session Musician, but I’ll come to that in the ‘reissues/bonus tracks’ section below.

Musically, the highlight is probably Prole Art Threat: live versions of this often sound a bit thin and anaemic, but here the overloaded distortion suits the track pretty well (I appreciate that this will give @VariousTimes more evidence that Prole is one of my ‘pet songs’!) Otherwise, the most interesting moment is in the intro to NWRA, when Smith asks for the lights to be dimmed because ‘we’ve lost enough weight as it is’, to which an English voice from the audience (thefall.org suggests that it might be Kay Carroll) responds, quite aggressively, ‘Well stop over-indulging, you wanker!’ If you’re thinking of investing in this one, I’d seriously recommend giving it a listen on Spotify before you decide to part with any cash.

Almost as soon as the European tour was finished, the group headed out to America. This involved a change in personnel: 17 year old Paul Hanley couldn’t get a work permit because of his age (and was in the middle of studying for his A levels anyway, so – not for the last time – one Mr K. Burns returned to the drum stool. The details of the tour are a little uncertain: both Simon Ford1 and Dave Thompson2 state that the tour started at the end of May in Oklahoma City, but thefall.org dates the Oklahoma gig to 29 June and Steve Hanley describes the tour as beginning in New York3.

What is without doubt is that the group worked hard that summer, packing in something like thirty gigs in around six weeks. Steve Hanley’s book4 describes the delights of touring in great detail: the distances (‘We’ve got two weeks to cover three and a half thousand miles?’), the tour bus music (‘Frank Zappa, that’s what you lot should be listening to. You might learn something.’), the drugs (‘Aided by a pair of invisible bellows stuck up his arse, [Burns] proceeds to finish all several remaining centimetres of the joint in one almighty suck.’) and the boredom of travel (‘Massive roads that go through nothing but desert for miles and miles.’)

Untitled

EDIT: After I’d published  YMGTA #11 (Perverted By Language) it was pointed out to me that in December 2018, the Set Of Ten box set was released, which includes three recordings that predate PBL. One of the discs contains a recording from June 23 1981 at Jimmy’s, New Orleans, which obviously fits in here. It’s a passable enough audience recording, but for the sake of completion (and to assuage my OCD) I thought I’d better add a note. It’ll be included in the rankings from YMGTA #12 onwards.

In The Wider World…
Bob Marley died on 11 May; two days later Pope John Paul II nearly met the same fate when Mehmet Ali Ağca shot him in St. Peter’s Square. Peter Sutcliffe was convicted of 13 counts of murder later that month. In the same month, the first AIDS cases were detected in Los Angeles. In slightly more cheerful news, Raiders of the Lost Ark was released on June 12, and a couple of weeks later, the first ever game of paintball took place in New Hampshire. Ricky Villa’s memorable goal won the FA Cup final replay for Spurs.

Adam & The Ants’ Stand And Deliver dominated the UK singles chart throughout May. The accompanying album, Kings of the Wild Frontier, was number one throughout March, April and most of May, before being replaced by the regrettable phenomenon that was Stars on 45 (referenced by MES on more than one occasion, of course, including this album).

The Album
The eight tracks on the original album came from five different performances on the US tour (see individual songs below). It was originally only released in America, not getting a proper UK release until 1992 (see Reissues below). Despite this, it reached number 9 on the UK Independent Albums Chart in 1983. The back cover commemorated a personal highlight for MES and Kay Carroll: a visit to Graceland.

Having never owned it on vinyl, I don’t know if this affected the sound, but it’s a pretty lengthy beast, both sides coming in at around 26 minutes.

The Songs
The N.W.R.A. / Hip Priest
The opening pair of songs come from the group’s final American date at Tuts in Chicago on 16 July. They get a somewhat portentous introduction (‘From the riot-torn streets of Manchester, England…’) before starting NWRA, the kazoo very much to the forefront in the opening section. After a slightly hesitant start, it turns into a pretty powerful, confident version, especially after the ‘switch!’ instruction. The sound is crisp, clear and well balanced here, and with the absence of keyboards (they’ve ‘broke down’ Smith explains after the song finishes), it’s intriguing to hear the interplay two guitar parts in far more detail than is usually possible. ‘You’re getting something unique’, Smith remarks at the end, ‘anyone who wants a fifty cents refund send an airmail letter to the Outer Hebrides’.

It’s also a particularly strong version of Hip Priest. Still unreleased, but already making its 25th appearance (it was a frequent choice on the US tour), the group have already honed this into something remarkable. The sparse, dry sound of the recording really suits the song, again allowing you to pick out more detail than is possible on the much more dense-sounding studio album. Again, the contrasting guitars are fascinating to listen to (especially around the 4-5 minute mark): one murky and thrashy; the other scratchy and frantic. SH, as ever, underpins everything with solidity and flair in equal measure; Burns shows masterful control of mood and tempo throughout; and MES is on imperious form. An astonishing version of an astonishing song.

Totally Wired / Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
Both tracks are identified as being from New York, although I’m not sure which of the half a dozen NY gigs they come from (answers on a postcard please – to the Outer Hebrides, obviously). Wired is still paired with Fortress (as you can tell from the characteristically cack-handed editing at the beginning) and is a fizzing, energetic version, featuring some particularly vigorous bass from Mr Hanley (the little burst at 2:42-2:44 is a fine example) and some excellent slashing, distorted guitar. Some interesting extemporisation from MES as well: ‘You don’t have to be a dye-haired, punk-fuck-shit-pop-fuck-shut-tick-tock-pad(?)… You don’t have to be strange to be strangled’.

Lie Dream is similarly tight, focused and aggressive. I don’t know if it’s just that my tolerance levels for live recordings have been altered by such repeated exposure to these live albums, but the sound quality on these two is excellent as well.

Cash ‘n’ Carry
The Fall played three dates in San Francisco on 11-13 July in three different venues. They played C&C at all three, and it’s not immediately clear which one this recording comes from. However, the ending indicates that it was followed by Lie Dream, which rules out the 11 July gig at The Stone, where it was followed by Gramme Friday. Also the improvised lyrics used in the 12 July gig at the Indian Centre identified on thefall.org don’t appear here, so this version must be from the 13 July performance at I-Beam.

The sound is a little thin and grating compared to side 1, but that’s not necessarily a totally bad thing as far as C&C is concerned, it being a pretty harsh and grim song at the best of times (and regular readers will know that I mean that in no way as a negative comment). It’s bleak, relentless and monotonous; just how I like it.

An Older Lover / Deer Park
A little easier to pin down, as the group only played Houston once, on 24 June at The Island. The sound quality takes a notable downturn here; there’s quite a lot of hiss and distortion on both tracks. I would also wonder about the speed of the tracks; Lover in particular sounds sluggish (and is a bit of a trial to get through, to be honest). It’s only Deer Park‘s tenth outing, and already it sounds bitingly taut and aggressive – Scanlon’s frantic guitar is particularly impressive. But there are several better versions to listen to.

Winter
The Fall played Memphis on 20 June (probably), when presumably Smith and Carroll  made their pilgrimage to the home of The King. It’s only the eleventh outing for the song, and whilst lots of the elements that made the studio version such a masterpiece are in place (SH’s rock solid bass line, the meandering guitar, MES’s intriguing story) they haven’t quite nailed this one in the way that they clearly had with Hip Priest. It’s not a bad version, it just hasn’t as yet coalesced into the wonder that it would become. Things are not helped by the ropy sound quality and the sense that the tape was running slightly too slowly (or should that be quickly? It sounds a bit lethargic, anyway).

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
A Part Of America Therein, 1981 didn’t get a UK release until 1992, when it was paired with a CD reissue of Slates. It didn’t get a separate UK release until 2004. This reissue added four other tracks from the US tour. Middle Mass and The Container Drivers (from Boston on 11 June) are both ok, but are not especially well-recorded or notable versions. The sound quality on Your Heart Out (from Palo Alto, California 8 July) is pretty grim and the song sounds a little bit old hat and simplistic by this point.

The most interesting addition is that of Session Musician. Never recorded in the studio, and only ever played 17 times (of which this version – from New Orleans on 23 June – is the eighth), it’s a lengthy, almost prog-like diatribe about (obviously) musicians. It’s not Smith’s most incisive lyric and feels rather awkward and ploddy in places. The sound quality (as is the case with all of the versions of this song that I’ve heard) is pretty dire too.

Overall Verdict
It’s a bit frustrating that the excellent performances and sound quality of the first (‘North’) side are let down by the slightly variable stuff on the rest of the album. Definitely a game of two halves, Brian. It does beg the question as to why the whole album wasn’t compiled from the Chicago / New York gigs. But that first 26 minutes really is top notch…

Rankings
Whilst Therein does dip in quality in the second half, side 1’s excellence takes it to the top of the list. Alter Banhof‘s dodgy sound condemns it to mid-table mediocrity.

  1. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  2. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  3. Totale’s Turns
  4. Live 1977
  5. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  6. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  7. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  8. Liverpool 78
  9. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  10. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  11. Live At Deeply Vale

References
1Ford, p95

2Thompson, p50

3The Big Midweek, pp97-101

4The Big Midweek, pp103-110