YMGTA #26 – Fall Compilations 1981-98

“It’s just daft deals I signed when I shouldn’t have done.”

Introduction
When Smith walked out on Permanent Records in early 1996, he proceeded to sign up to Jet Records for the group’s next ‘proper’ album. However, he also signed a deal with Mike Bennett’s Receiver Records that allowed them to put out compilations of previously unreleased Fall material. Receiver had previously been known as Pedigree Records and Speed Records and had also been a division of Trojan. Bennett had co-produced Cerebral Caustic with Smith and would go on to fulfil the same role for Light User Syndrome.  In a 1995 interview, Smith claimed that Bennett had worked with glam-rockers Sweet:

‘…the producer, Mike Bennett he’s really good ‘cos he sort of used to do The Sweet when he was about 17, y’know, so he knew what I wanted, he could get the drum sounds.’

Bennett’s own website, however, suggests that his only involvement with The Sweet was to create a 1996 remix album called Solid Gold Action: 15 Alternative Mixes. According to allmusic.com, this was ‘a collection of ’90s industrial/dance remixes of 70’s party hearty glitter rock’. Thankfully, it doesn’t appear to be available online.

The deal with Receiver led to a slew of Fall compilations emerging in the late 90s. This series of releases, which included not only the albums Sinister Waltz, Fiend With A Violin and Oswald Defence Lawyer but also various compilations of the material on those compilations, are, understandably, not entirely well regarded. Simon Ford, for example, commented that:

‘Compilation albums obviously have their place, especially for a band of The Fall’s longevity, but rather than introduce new listeners to the best of The Fall, or document in detail the band’s development, these compilations… merely represented The Fall as inconsistent and exploitative.’1

In a 2001 interview with Q magazine, Smith did express regret (at least to a certain extent) about the releases:

‘It’s just daft deals I signed when I shouldn’t have done. And I do apologise to my fans for that… but I also look at it the Elvis Presley way: if people can’t differentiate between the real stuff and the cash-ins, that’s their lookout.’

There had, of course, been several Fall compilations released earlier in the group’s career, and by the time we get to 1998, there had actually been nineteen (see Note 2 below). Considering the sheer volume of releases that had emerged (especially 1996-98), and the fact that the group were about to descend into one of their darkest and most chaotic periods, it seems appropriate at this juncture to review the compilation albums released up to this point.

Note 1Levitate was released in 1997 (in case anyone thinks I’ve forgotten it), but the two 1998 compilations below feature earlier material, so it seems sensible to include them at this point.

Note 2Many Fall compilations contain a substantial amount of live material, just as several of their ‘live’ albums actually feature studio recordings. Sometimes it can be hard to tell which is which. You could argue the toss about about which album should fit into which category (just as one can debate whether Slates is an album, EP or mini-album in perpetuity), but for simplicity’s sake I have gone with the categories identified on thefall.org’s compilation and live album pages.

Note 3: I am going to give the compilations a grade on a ‘Worth buying?’ scale, using the following criteria:

  • A: Worthwhile purchase, even for those who just have a few Fall albums
  • B: Contains enough interesting material to make it worth a few quid to the more than casual Fall fan; or serves as a useful introduction to the inexperienced
  • C: A few aspects of interest, but only for the really committed who have all of the ‘proper’ stuff already
  • D: Only of interest to the really hardcore completist
  • E: Even the hardcore completist should think long and hard before parting with cash

Fall Compilations 1977-93
The first Fall compilation was 77 – Early Years – 79, released on Step Forward in September 1981.

Image result for The Fall ‎– 77 - Early Years - 79

It compiles the tracks from the group’s first four singles – Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!, It’s The New Thing, Rowche Rumble and Fiery Jack – and throws Dice Man in for good measure. It was reissued as Early Fall 77-79 in 2000, adding the two songs (Stepping Out and Last Orders) that were the group’s very first appearances on record, from Short Circuit – Live At The Electric Circus.

If you’re not familiar with the group’s late 70s work, then it’s certainly a solid enough introduction. However, it’s worth noting that all of these tracks are contained in the 2004 reissues of Witch Trials and Dragnet.

Worth buying? B-

Hip Priest And Kamerads was released in March 1985. It contains both sides of the Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul and Look, Know singles, a couple of tracks from Room To Live and three from Hex. In addition, there are five live versions of Hex tracks, most of which are of good quality (although Jawbone is rather muffled and imbalanced) – this includes a version of And This Day from Hammersmith Palais in March 1982 that some consider to be the best.

Whilst you might get many of the songs here from regular releases, there’s certainly enough extra material here to make it a worthwhile purchase; plus it hangs together really well as an album.

Worth buying? A

Image result for the fall nord west gas

Nord-West Gas was a German compilation from 1986. It collects together a dozen easily-obtainable tracks from the Wonderful And Frightening This Nation’s Saving Grace era.

Anyone only just embarking on purchasing Fall albums should have these two high on their shopping list anyway, so this is only for serious collectors.

Worth buying? D-

In: Palace Of Swords Reversed was released in November 1987. A collection of album tracks and singles from the early 80s, it doesn’t contain a great deal of material that wasn’t available elsewhere, but back in the pre-internet days when it was far harder to track down music, it did serve a purpose for many people who struggled to find the group’s records.

Like Hip Priest And Kamerads, it’s a cracking album in its own right, full of top-notch material. It also features an intriguing live version of Neighbourhood Of Infinity, plus the impressively random Putta Block.

Worth buying? A-

In 1988-89, Beggars Banquet released two 4-CD Japanese box sets. Box One consisted of Wonderful and Frightening (the 16-track version), This Nation’s Saving Grace (ditto) and Hip Priest And Kamerads split over 2 CDs. Box Two contained Bend Sinister, The Frenz Experiment, I Am Kurious Oranj and Seminal Live. I’m not aware of there being anything actually wrong with them, but you’d have to be obsessed with owning everything to shell out the £40-50 they seem to go for.

Worth buying? D

458489 A Sides, released in November 1990, did what it said on the tin, rounding up the singles from the Brix era. How much you like it will depend on your opinion of this transitional period of The Fall; it’s a strong choice for introducing a newcomer; although, inevitably, it misses out on several of the more interesting moments from that period.

Worth buying? B-

458489 B Sides, also released at the end of 1990, contains a more varied and arguably more satisfying range of songs than the A-sides version. Most of the songs are available on the reissues of the relevant albums, but for someone who has only a casual knowledge of mid-80s Fall, it’s potentially a great eye-opener.

Worth buying? B

Front cover

The Collection was released in 1993 on the Castle Communications label. Founded in 1983 by Terry Shand (who went on to co-found media company Eagle Rock Entertainment), Castle Communications specialised in mid-price catalogue reissues. Examples of their work include Black Sabbath, Motörhead and Adam And The Ants compilations. These releases were characterised by cheap and nasty covers and a seemingly haphazard approach to plucking songs at random from the artist’s back catalogue. This is very much the case here on both counts.

It’s mostly made up of early 80s album tracks, A and B sides, plus a few live tracks from In A Hole, A Part Of America Therein and Totale’s Turns. It also includes the group’s (sadly rather pedestrian) Beatles cover A Day In The Life (up to this point only available on the NME compilation Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father) and the previously unreleased Medical Acceptance Gate, a curious and intriguing little outtake from 1983.

Despite the naff cover, rather overblown sleeve notes and seemingly indiscriminate track selection, The Collection actually has a fair bit going for it. A Day In The Life and Medical Acceptance Gate weren’t available elsewhere until 2007 and 2004 respectively; also, the early 80s live albums were not always easy to get a hold of at the time of The Collection‘s release. In addition, like Hip Priest And Kamerads and In: Palace Of Swords Reversed it hangs together well as an album. If you were going to knock up a CD-length compilation of live/studio tracks for someone with an interest but little experience of early 80s Fall, you might well come up with something reasonably similar (although you may well not have chosen W.M.C.-Blob 59).

Worth buying? B-

The Receiver Years 1996-98
Up to this point, the provenance of the songs on the compilations had been generally straightforward to ascertain. The advent of the Receiver compilations make things a great deal more difficult to unravel, however, as the sleeve notes are – as Simon Ford puts it – ‘minimal or inaccurate’2.

As an overview:

Three Receiver compilations were released in early 1996: Sinister Waltz in January, Fiend With A Violin in February and Oswald Defence Lawyer in April. In October, the three of them were collected together as a 3-CD box set, The Other Side Of…

In 1997, two further compilations were released which simply recycled a selection of the material from the three 1996 compilations: Archive Series (May) and the double-CD The Less You Look, The More You Find (July).

In November 1997, Receiver released Oxymoron and Cheetham Hill, both of which were largely a mixture of ‘alternative’ versions of Light User Syndrome tracks and other live recordings.

In June 1998, Northern Attitude featured a selection of tracks taken from the original three 1996 compilations, the two 1997 collections plus the live album 15 Ways To Leave Your Man – Live.

Sinister Waltz
It’s not clear why Sinister Waltz was chosen as the title, given that the song doesn’t appear in any of the compilations from this era: presumably it was considered to be a archetypal Fall title. By the standards of these things, it has a relatively inoffensive cover, featuring a rather pensive-looking MES. The less than informative sleeve notes are entertainingly badly written and facile:

‘All in all this CD is a catalogue of music which shows that The Fall are consistently good at what they do, yet another benchmark that all pretenders must strive to attain.’

A Lot Of Wind appears to be exactly the same as the version on Shift-Work, but does contain one minor change: the line ‘He’s the king of Granadaland’ (at 3:17) which was snipped out of the Shift-Work version is reinstated here. There’s some debate as to whether this refers to Fred Talbot or Tony Wilson. (Thanks to hippriestess for drawing this to my attention.)

Couldn’t Get Ahead is a raw and ragged but entertainingly energetic romp that feels like a live soundboard recording. Blood Outta Stone also has the feel of a live recording from the soundboard, but could possibly be a rough studio demo; either way, it has a hard, frantic edge that elevates it above the White Lightning/Dredger version.

Arid Al’s Dream is a proper obscurity. It originally appeared on a 1992 compilation called Volume 4, and was included on the 2007 reissue of Shift-Work. Its combination of scrabbling violin, twangy, reverb-heavy guitar and frantic drumming make it well worth a listen.

An instrumental version of The Knight, The Devil and Death is clearly a studio demo that lacks the overdubs and – above all – Cassell Webb’s vocal contributions that made it such an obscure gem. Chicago Now! is the Peel session version from January 1990.

Birthday was possibly the album’s greatest selling point, as the track had never been released up to this point (and never would be again other than on one of the ‘compilations of compilations’).  One of the group’s typically obscure covers, it was originally done by The Idle Race (one of Jeff Lynne’s early bands – the original is here). Like The City Never Sleeps, Lucy Rimmer provides the lead vocals, with no sight of MES at all. It’s all a little bog-standard indie-jangle-rock, but isn’t without its charms. There’s an interesting video of it being rehearsed on YouTube:

Pumpkin Head Escapes seems to be a studio demo, and a distinctly muffled one. The version of Wings also feels like a studio outtake; the vocals are rather buried in a muddy mix. Dr Faustus (as it’s titled here) is a curiously lo-fi version that feels like a tape of a tape of a tape soundboard recording, although no-one seems to know from where; there is actually something quite appealing about its grinding, dirty, fuzzy sound.

Telephone Thing is a studio outtake. The sound is much more dense and murky than the album version: Steve Hanley’s bass has a deeper, more resonant sound and there’s an air of chaotic abandon that arguably makes this a little more enjoyable than the original.

Black Monk Theme is just the Peel session version (of part 1, obviously). Gut of the Quantifier is an interesting one: it features a range of interestingly squiggly keyboard effects, some rather alarming barks and yelps from MES and some sustained distorted guitar that isn’t present on other recordings of the song. There’s a little crowd noise right at the beginning that suggests it’s a live recording, but from when and where is anyone’s guess. To round things off rather disappointingly, Edinburgh Man is just the Shift-Work version.

Melody Maker dismissed the album as ‘staggeringly OK’. The NME was slightly kinder, giving it 7/10 and describing its ‘refried schizophrenia’ as ‘utterly bonkers’, although suggesting, not unfairly, that the album was only ‘for the Fall trainspotter zone’. Around half of the tracks on Sinister Waltz are worth a listen. The rest of them, however, you probably already own or are distinctly unenlightening. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has never been reissued.

Worth buying? C+

Front cover

Fiend With A Violin
Fiend’s cover was a garish, bright red affair featuring lettering that appears to have been added by someone just mastering Microsoft Paint. The illustration itself (thanks to dannyno for the discovery) is an 1862 George Cruikshank illustration:

The ‘alternative version’ of I Feel Voxish doesn’t appear to be any different to the album take other than in sound quality, having a ‘taped off the radio’ quality to it. The Man Whose Head Expanded is more interesting. It’s a weirdly dark and abrasive industrial version; The Fall meet Einstürzende Neubauten. It’s hard to believe that this was from 1983 though; it sounds more like someone (Mike Bennett?) playing around with the song much later on.

The ‘alternate version’ of Ed’s Babe is basically an instrumental demo: it features a host of mildly interesting synth squiggles and effects, but is ultimately rather pointless and inessential. It’s hard to tell if What You Need is a dodgy live soundboard recording or a very rough studio outtake; the slight ‘boom’ on the vocals in places suggests the former, but it’s impossible to say definitively. Either way, it’s a pleasant enough, if rather thin-sounding grind through the song, Scanlon’s guitar in particular having a pleasingly scuzzy, distorted tone.

We then get fairly unremarkable takes of L.A. and Petty (Thief) Lout, both of which are unidentified live versions, almost certainly from 1985. Fiend With A Violin is basically a rough run through what would eventually become 2 x 4; it’s only vaguely interesting, and certainly not something for the casual listener. The live recordings of Spoilt Victorian Child and Bombast are both pretty thin and scratchy. Married, Two Kids (another live version of unknown origins) has a fuller sound, but still provokes a shrugging of the shoulders. Curiously, Haven’t Found It Yet seems to just be the Shift-Work version of You Haven’t Found It Yet with some incongruous crowd noise clumsily dubbed over the top of the intro. Gentlemen’s Agreement is yet another thin and ropy soundboard recording of unknown origin, although it is pretty clear that Craig Scanlon’s guitar is not in tune. Fiend With A Violin (vox) is little more than Smith mumbling over the demo of the  2 x 4  chords.

Whereas Sinister Waltz was a patchy offering with a few moments of genuine interest, Fiend is a pretty weak affair. Besides the unusual (although dubious) version of The Man Whose Head Expanded there’s really very little here that expands your understanding or enjoyment of the group.

Worth buying? E+

Oswald Defence Lawyer
The cover of the third Receiver compilation is rather startling: not in terms of the colour scheme or the the title font, but in terms of Smith’s attire. You didn’t often see him wear anything other than a shirt, but here he’s sporting a horrendous cable knit sweater that most charity shops wouldn’t even dare to put out on the racks.

The sleeve notes are not only less than informative, they’re also badly written and demonstrate a shaky grasp of punctuation.

Just Waiting is a pleasant enough if imbalanced (sound-wise) swagger through the Hank Williams song. Reformation only lists one known live performance of the song (3 October 1992 at Manchester Free Trade Hall), but suggests that this version might come from elsewhere. Oswald Defence Lawyer, according to a post by Stranger on the Fall Online Forum, comes from the group’s performance in Vienna, April 1988. The tinkling piano doesn’t make the song any less turgid and interminable. There follows a solid if unremarkable Victoria, date and venue unknown. Once again, the crowd noise has a curiously overdubbed feel – a recurring feature throughout the album.

The version of Frenz (again from an unidentified gig) is an interesting one. It’s a particularly sparse and fragile take on the song, and features a ‘chiselling rock’ percussive noise that has echoes of Tom Waits.

2×4Bad News Girl and Get A Hotel are all acceptable if not especially notable live performances, most likely from 1988 though once again it’s not clear from which gigs. Guest Informant sounds a little more like a studio outtake (possibly), but once again it’s really hard to tell. Big New Prinz is devoid of any crowd noise, but there’s an underlying amplifier buzz at the beginning and a few ‘drop-outs’ in the vocals that suggest a live soundboard recording. Reformation suggests that it’s from a 1992 or 1993 gig, but yet again nobody seems to really know.

Bremen Nacht features an unfortunate mix of muffled instrumentation and ‘boomy’, overly reverbed vocals and  probably comes from the same 1988 Vienna performance as Oswald Defence LawyerCarry Bag Man is another one to feature incongruous, overdubbed crowd noise. It also has a rather odd opening, with double-tracked ensemble vocals (that you’d almost describe as harmonies) and another spot of industrial-style percussion. Thereafter, it seems to be another (1988?) soundboard recording. It feels like a snippet of studio outtake grafted onto a live recording.

The conclusion is an energetic if rather hollow-sounding version of Bombast – a different one to that on Fiend With A Violin, whatever Reformation might say.

Overall, Oswald Defence Lawyer is nothing better than just about okay; really only for someone who owns most of the group’s material already, and certainly not worth parting with a great deal of cash for. The performances it contains are generally sound enough, but the overdubbed crowd noises especially give it rather a cynical atmosphere. The lack of information about the songs’ origins is also a frustration.

Worth buying? D

Oxymoron
Oxymoron has a hideously curious and distinctly un-Fall-like cover. Featuring what looks like a crudely drawn diagram from a Biology text book superimposed on a piece of crocodile skin, it’s also interesting which songs are listed on the cover; presumably Italiano‘s presence is there to entice the purchaser with the promise of new, unheard material…

The sleeve notes, as per previous Receiver releases, are full of dire prose and devoid of relevant information:

‘Mark E. Smith delivering his nail bitten wit over a dense thicket of edgy and at times menacing Rock and Roll.’

Things get off to an underwhelming start with Oxymoron itself; not that it isn’t a great song, but it is just the album version. Powder Keg is technically an ‘alternative version’, in that it has minutely faster tempo than the original, but the only substantive difference is that it features eight seconds of looped bleeps and guitar feedback at the end.

White Lines is at least an actual studio outtake. It’s pretty awful though, sounding like something that Orbital might have knocked about in the studio before discarding as unfit even for a b-side. Even Reformation has nothing to say about it.

Pearl City is a live recording (date and venue, yet again unknown), and it’s a decent enough, energetic version. Birmingham School Of Business School is also a live version, presumably from 1992. It’s a little thin sound-wise, but features some interesting clattering electronica and Scanlon is on top form.

With Hostile, we finally get something new and different. It’s a slowed-down, spacey take on the song; almost like a dub version. Particularly nice use is made of Brix’s vocals, which float around ethereally. Brix is also a key feature on Glam Racket, another live recording. It’s nothing special musically or sound-wise: in particular, Wolstencroft and Burn are – as Steve Hanley described3 – working in ‘more competition than complement’. But it captures the atmosphere of the 1994-95 live performances well: MES wandering off after 25 seconds, leaving Brix (‘Take it, babe…’) to shoulder the rest of the song. Which she does with some vehemence, adding a few expletives and delivering the ‘Star’ part of the song (‘Your act has lost all its appeal’) with real feeling.

Italiano is dreadful: a hamfisted house-techno mangling of Oleano, you’re deafened by the sound of the bottom of the barrel being scraped.

The version of He Pep! is an alternative mix. It’s not radically different in terms of musical structure or sound, but there’s some cutting and pasting of the vocals, which come in at different points to the original. Rainmaster presumably comes from the 1995 Phoenix Festival (the only known live performance of the song) and is a sprightly enough if very brief rendition. Behind The Counter and Bill Is Dead are further examples of unidentified, satisfactory but unremarkable live performances.

At this point, the album throws a genuine curiosity at you. E.S.P. Disco is is a mellow, understated version of Psykick Dancehall with most of the rough edges knocked off and a curiously soft and gentle sound.

According to the sleeve notes, the ‘masterpiece’ Interlude/Chilinism is ‘heard here for the first time in all it’s [sic] glory’. What actually happens is that the original is padded out with a couple of minutes of vague and pointless techno-lite filler. And then things are rounded off with a brutally truncated live version of Life Just Bounces. The album’s casual disregard for one of the group’s finest songs is indicative of Oxymoron‘s overall approach: there’s a cloying sense of ‘this’ll do’ that runs throughout the whole thing.

It’s not that the album is completely devoid of recordings worthy of your attention; but there’s not much more than an EP’s worth of them here.

Worth buying? D-

Image result for the fall cheetham hill review

Cheetham Hill
Released in the same month as OxymoronCheetham Hill has a slightly less horrendous cover, although it does look as though it should grace the 1983 debut album of a prog-metal band called something like Darkhammer. The image is actually one of Gustave Doré‘s illustrations for an 1866 edition of Paradise Lost (thanks again to dannyno).

The sleeve notes are once again badly written (featuring further misuse of the apostrophe) and less than informative.

The clumsy opening of Time Enough At Last sets the tone, sending you back to the days when you used to rush to hit ‘record’ to tape something off the radio. It’s yet another track that could either be a studio demo or a live recording. If it’s the latter, then nobody (including Reformation) knows where it’s from. It’s a satisfactory enough ramble through the song, the most notable feature being the ‘f*ck off’ that MES casually throws in at 2:46. A rather pointless 30 seconds of sound effect nonsense is tacked onto the end.

The compilation’s title track is almost the exact same version as that on Light User. The only difference is in the ending: in the original, the main track ends abruptly at 3:25 and we get a few seconds of heavily-reverbed voices; this ‘alternative version’ concludes instead with a very brief bit of fuzzy guitar and then a faint loop of Smith singing what sounds like ‘I’m a Brix toe’ or ‘I’m a brick stone’.

Free Range is a decent enough live version. It uses the same taped intro as the version on Live Various Years – which was recorded (possibly) in Munich in October 1993 – but despite its similarities it isn’t the same version, although it presumably comes from this period. The Chiselers is just the shortest version from the single with the intro and outro lopped off. US 80s 90s is an energetic, chaotic live version that’s from a May 1992 gig in Brussels.

Oddly, Reformation states that Spine Track (as it’s titled here) is a ‘a truncated version of the originally released track’, which it clearly isn’t. It’s a live version (of unknown origin) and a rather good one too: it rattles along at an unrelenting pace and sees both MES and Brix on fine form. Idiot Joy Showland  is also a live recording, but an undistinguished and rather thin sounding one.

Oleano is moderately interesting: it’s the same as the album version for the first three minutes, but then extends it by a couple more. It doesn’t do anything radically different, but it’s a strong enough song to warrant the bit of extra play time. The Joke is another ok-ish unidentified live recording, as is Ed’s Babe, although the latter is inexplicably truncated; Hit The North is also just a brief snippet. There follows a spirited enough romp through White Lightning (date and venue again unknown), but the fact that the sleeve lists it as White Lighting is indicative of the generally shoddy nature of the release.

Secession Man is exactly the same as the original album version, other than that it omits the keyboard ‘stab’ right at the very end. Last Exit to Brooklyn (Last Chance To Turn Around) is just Last Chance To Turn Around with a tweaked title. A live The Coliseum (date and venue unknown, but it has to be from one of three) isn’t, thankfully, the excessive length of the Light User version, but it is an ungainly, awkward mess (although not without appeal). Randomly, things are rounded off with a snippet of Eat Y’self Fitter – although it’s the first minute and a half, not – as Reformation suggests – the final ninety seconds.

Like Oxymoron, there’s a handful of worthwhile material here. But there’s also a pervading atmosphere of cynicism and shoddiness.

Worth buying? D-

The Compilations of Compilations
Receiver ploughed on with their exploitation of the group’s back catalogue with three further releases in 1997-98.

Archive Series (May 1997) consisted of a random selection of tracks from the original three Receiver releases. The Less You Look, The More You Find (July 1997) did something similar over two discs.

Front cover

Northern Attitude (June 1998) also added a few tracks from the live album 15 Ways To Leave Your Man. It’s hard to rate these three, as it depends if you already own any of the other Receiver releases. If you’re only going to buy one, then The Less You Look… is probably your best bet.

Smile…It’s The Best Of
In March 1998, Castle Communications (see above) released Smile…It’s The Best Of The Fall. It’s a totally random selection of songs from Perverted By Language, Slates, Totale’s Turns, The Light User Syndrome, A Part Of America Therein and  Grotesque. For hardcore collectors only, really, although I guess if a vaguely curious buyer with little knowledge of the group came across it in a charity shop they would at least get a collection of largely very good songs.

Worth buying? D

Front cover

Conclusion / My ‘Receiver Compilation’
A few of the earlier compilations – Hip Priest And Kamerads, Palace Of Swords
Reversed and the A and B-sides round-ups particularly – were perfectly decent releases that performed an obvious function, especially in the pre-internet age.

No sane person, however, would argue that the various Receiver releases contained enough material to be stretched over seven CDs, a double CD and a triple box set. And it’s a shame that they were, as this series of albums presented the group in a rather cynical and exploitative light. If the covers and in particular the sleeve notes had been of better quality, then the situation might have been improved, but there was at best a double album’s worth of worthwhile material here. And a single one would probably have sufficed:

Side 1: Spine Track / Arid Al’s Dream / Telephone Thing / The Coliseum / Frenz (22:44)

Side 2: Blood Outta Stone / Gut Of The Quantifier / Oleano / Hostile / Birthday / The Man Whose Head Expanded (21:23)

References
1-2Ford, p239

3The Big Midweek, p367

YMGTA #25 – The Light User Syndrome

“We are the elite gangsters of the damned, criminals of the damp.”

Image result for the fall the light user syndrome

Details
Recorded: The Dairy, London, early 1996
Released: 10 June 1996

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, tapes
  • Brix Smith – guitar, vocals
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Julia Nagle – keyboards, guitar
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums, programming
  • Karl Burns – drums, guitar, vocals
    With: 
  • Lucy Rimmer – vocals
  • Mike Bennett – vocals

Background
The second half of 1995 saw two significant personnel changes. Dave Bush’s departure had seemed inevitable for some time, and he was sacked by letter towards the end of the year. This was intertwined with the emergence of Julia Nagle. An ex-pupil of St Winifred’s (who did sing with the choir but wasn’t involved in their most famous moment), Smith embarked on a relationship with her when he was still involved with Lucy Rimmer. Bush, already in a precarious position, seems to have made some negative remarks regarding the group’s 1995 US tour that were fed back to Smith, possibly via Nagle, and that eventually led to the end of his association with The Fall. Bush’s version, as related to Dave Simpson in The Fallen, certainly ascribes the blame to Nagle:

‘She f*cked it up for me in the end. She kept telling Mark that I wasn’t happy, and I was, but eventually I got kicked out. She was his girlfriend and there was a campaign going on.’1

This version of events is supported by Steve Hanley (‘since our keyboard player wasn’t happy, she [Nagle] could always step in if required, was the gist of CV-accompanied letters she immediately began to send in’2. To be fair to Julia Nagle though, Smith had clearly been heading towards this decision for some time, and the circumstances described by Bush and Hanley may well have just been a catalyst and/or convenient excuse for him.

Even more significant in some ways was Craig Scanlon’s departure. Having been The Fall’s guitarist for sixteen years was, in retrospect, a remarkable achievement. A multitude of sources point to the fact that he had for years coped stoically with all of Smith’s foibles and mind games and abuse, and had always just kept his head down and ploughed on with playing the guitar and writing songs. But it seems that Brix and Hanley had both been correct in identifying that by 1994 he had lost his passion; not just for the group, but for playing the guitar in general.

Like Bush, he was sacked by letter: according to Steve Hanley, the letter stated that he was dismissed ‘because of his failure to maintain equipment’3. Brix’s take was that ‘he reached a point where Mark finally broke him. His passion for music and spirit were broken’4. One of Scanlon’s most notable achievements is that, amongst all Smith’s sackings, his is the only one that MES ever publicly regretted: ‘It was a bad decision… I do miss him.’5 In fact, in an interview with Dave Simpson6, Scanlon claimed that Smith had actually asked him to return.

Amongst all of the chaos, one constant remained: on 7 December 1995, the group recorded their 19th Peel session. Broadcast on 22 December, it consisted of He Pep!, Oleano, Chilinist and The City Never Sleeps.

Permanent also got their marching orders from Smith in 1996. He claimed (in an interview for City Life) that this was because the label had not supported The Chiselers as a good choice for a single.  He signed a deal with Jet records (best known for their association with ELO); he also made a deal with Receiver Records (owned by Mike Bennett who once again produced the album), the label that would subsequently release a series of dubious Fall compilations (some of which will be covered in the next post).

Front cover

The group’s first single for nearly two years was released in February 1996. It was Scanlon’s final contribution, which involved a clarinet as well as guitar, although the former was wiped from the final recording. Steve Hanley describes a less than happy recording process and is also highly disparaging of the final results:

‘What we eventually emerge with is an over-processed, convoluted, over-extended version…  It’s a self-indulgent montage of disjointed styles, none of which have any real connection with one another… There’s the bones of a decent song in there, buried by Mark and a producer with too much time on their hands.’7

Simon Ford also considers the song rather overdone: ‘The work’s convoluted structure and complicated arrangements perhaps serve best as an illustration of Smith’s state of mind at the time… It was The Fall’s Bohemian Rhapsody.’8 Smith himself – in a February 1996 NME interview – described The Chiselers as ‘a pain in the arse, it took eight bloody months to do ‘cos it’s got nine parts, 12 different speeds and eight different vocal arrangements’.

It’s hard to argue with Hanley and Ford’s comments, and it’s undoubtedly true that it may have helped to have a single, more focused recording. However, looking back on the different versions, there is a whole heap of joy to be had from listening to all three. The skittering drums, grinding guitar and the contrast between MES and Brix’s vocals are a strength in all of them; but there’s also a spirit of wild invention in, for example, the spacey synth/sequencer opening to Interlude and the plaintive double-tracked vocals towards the end of Chilinist. In addition, the shout of ‘Chiseler!’ followed by that raw, grinding riff (at 2:39) is a moment to be treasured. It continued the group’s run of mediocre chart placings, however, peaking at number 60.

Despite his long-standing objection to The Fall’s musicians working with other artists, a month later Smith appeared as a guest on a single by D.O.S.E. called Plug Myself In. An example of the burgeoning big beat genre, there were even more versions of the single than there had been of The Chiselersseven in total. It managed ten places higher in the singles chart too.

The label it was released on, Coliseum Records, was part of Pete Waterman’s PWL group – home of Kylie, Jason and 2 Unlimited. In the NME interview (above) Smith expressed admiration for Waterman: ‘he’s not about the “rock” world, he’s about the real world’; he also declared himself a fan of The Reynold’s Girls’ I’d Rather Jack – ‘a bloody great song’. Whilst this might seem like Smith being typically contrary and tongue in cheek, the song’s lyrics do express sentiments that align closely to the MES stance on ‘look back bores’:

‘Can’t they see that every generation has music for its own identity?
But why the DJ on the radio station is always more than twice the age of me?
Who needs Pink Floyd, Dire Straits? That’s not our music, it’s out of date.’

In The Wider World…
In England, the summer was dominated by the European football championship, sound tracked by Baddiel and Skinner’s Three Lions. England, inevitably, went out on penalties. Polls showed the Conservatives to be 21 points behind Labour, with a general election only a year away. Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal.

Top of the Pops moved from Thursday to Friday night, ending a 32 year tradition. When Light User Syndrome was released, Three Lions had just relinquished the top spot in the singles chart to The Fugees’ cover of Killing Me Softly. After a single week at the top spot for Gary Barlow’s dreary and forgettable Forever Love, The Spice Girls’ Wannabe -number one for seven weeks – saw the beginning of “girl power”‘s prevalence in the UK charts.

The Fall Live In 1995-96
1995 was a quiet year for Fall gigs, with only sixteen being played. The Chiselers debuted in April at Rennes, as did BirthdayRainmaster got its sole outing at the Phoenix Festival in July. Tracks from the new album didn’t begin to arrive in earnest until Autumn. The Coliseum and D.I.Y. Meat appeared on 8 October in Glasgow (although in the case of the latter, the Reformation site disagrees with thefall.org and dates its debut to ten months later). The group also opened the Glasgow gig (as they would do again on three subsequent occasions) with Tunnel, an instrumental that would eventually morph into the introductory section of Interlude/Chilinism. (This review of the group’s 23 October gig at London’s Astoria – the second time it was played – suggests that Tunnel was a completely different and distinct track, but you can hear it on The Fall Box Set 1976 – 2007 and it is indeed very close to Interlude.)

Stay Away (Old White Train) was played for the first time on October 24 in Cambridge, Craig Scanlon’s last performance with the group.

The Fall were not a great deal more active on the live front in 1996, not playing until the end of May and clocking up only nineteen performances in total. The first gig of the year, at the Hacienda, saw several tracks from the forthcoming album receive their first outings: Powder Keg, He Pep!, Oleano, Das Vulture, Spinetrack and Cheetham Hill. They played four gigs in the month of Light User Syndrome‘s release, Secession Man being debuted at the last of these at Sheffield Leadmill.

Front cover

In 2003, two official live albums were released which included performances from the summer of 1996; both also included live tracks from the previous year.

Live At The Phoenix Festival (which features, as can be seen above, an unpleasantly garish cover) contains nine songs from the group’s 1995 performance and a further four from 1996. It’s an FM radio broadcast recording from the BBC, and is, as a result, fairly clear sound-wise. A solid enough performance, it’s a little disjointed in places, despite Hanley and Wostencroft’s best efforts to pin everything down. MES is a little off-hand and disengaged on occasions and seems to struggle to keep with the group now and again – Idiot Joy Showland is a good example. There’s a thumpingly energetic version of Glam Racket, though, with Brix giving the ‘Star’ section a good amount of gusto.

As for the four 1996 tracks, He Pep! is a little lethargic, and Powder Keg sounds a touch under-rehearsed. There’s a strongly aggressive version of US 80s 90s though, and an entertaining 15 Ways that’s played at a hundred miles an hour.

Front cover

The Idiot Joy Show features ten tracks from the group’s gig at Cambridge on 24 October 1995, plus nine from their appearance at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark in June 1996. It also features two (inferior) recordings of songs from the Phoenix Festival that are also included in Live At The Phoenix Festival, which it incorrectly identifies as being from 1996 (this video shows that they’re actually from 1995).

It’s a bit of a sprawling mishmash, and whilst none of the songs suffer from terrible sound quality, many do feature distinctly imbalanced levels that can distract from the performances a little. However, it’s certainly not without interest: the version of The Chiselers shows a song very much under development; The Coliseum is an intriguingly ugly, fragmented and sprawling mess; the Intro to the second disc sees the group playing around (at least partly via the studio, it sounds like) with the drum and bass pattern that would go on to be Ten Houses Of Eve. It’s also interesting to hear what The Mixer sounds like without Dave Bush (thin and ropy is the answer). Cheetham Hill (on only its second outing) is also fascinating, managing to sound like a collision between Sleaford Mods and The Sisters Of Mercy.

The second disc, for no discernible reason, was released separately as Pearl City in 2004.

The Album
The album was recorded at Dairy Studios in Brixton, and – just like Cerebral Caustic – those involved found it a very difficult process. Creativity wasn’t the issue: Steve Hanley describes how the recent line-up changes had led the group to ‘establish new songwriting hierarchies’ and that ‘the competition for songwriting dominance between Si, Karl and Julia is raging and begins to translate into a new kind of energy’9.

The issue was with Smith. He didn’t even appear for the first week of recording10 and, according to Brix, he just ‘couldn’t get it together. He had a sore throat, he couldn’t get up, he was depressed’11. He seems to have done most (if not all) of the vocals on the last day of recording.

Smith himself admitted that many consider LUS to be ‘a whisky-rash of an album’12 and he alluded (albeit reluctantly) to his alcohol issues in the February 1996 NME interview:

‘I’ve had me problems. (Nods to beer) Skulk ’em down. Whisky. (Even bigger pause.) I don’t think this sort of stuff should be talked about because it’s… excuses. I hate all that… being self-obsessed and thinking about your diet and what you drink.’

Simon Wolstencroft provides a telling anecdote about the recording sessions:

‘In the middle of the night… he ran out of drink and went wandering into the private quarters in the main farmhouse. He stumbled into the studio owner’s parents’ bedroom.

“Where’s the booze, cock?”

As Mark retreated to the studio, the startled farmer came downstairs, shotgun in hand, to find out who the intruder was.’13

The album’s cover was a significant departure. The abstract designs of Pascal Le Gras were ditched in favour of a moody, sepia group portrait by Peter Cronin, the first cover to feature a group shot since The Frenz Experiment.

In the brave new mid-90s world of brash, patriotic and nostalgic Britpop, The Fall were becoming even more of a square peg in a round hole. They may have been admired vaguely by some of the current crop of guitar-driven 60s influenced rock-pop bands that were starting to dominate the British music scene, but the group – and Smith himself in particular – seemed to be descending into anachronism. They offered neither the stadium-friendly sing-along guitar anthems nor the dancefloor-friendly big beat rhythms that were currently garnering column inches and sales.

John Mulvey’s NME review was respectful but gently disparaging, rather like a new, young deputy headteacher reviewing the performance of a veteran Head of Maths:

‘The ingredients are pretty much the same as ever: pinballing rockabilly riffs; awesomely sludgy, chundering basslines… another Fall album to gather dust in a pile of several dozen not-entirely-dissimilar ones.’

‘Long may he rant’, said Mulvey, whilst giving the album a non-committal 7/10.

Chart-wise, it did a little better that Cerebral Caustic, but fell short of Middle Class Revolt, reaching number 54.

The Songs
D.I.Y. Meat
While you can question many of MES’s decisions regarding how albums were sequenced, there are no arguments about this as an album opener. A frenetic burst of hard-edged garage rock that opens with jagged, slashing chords, it’s not a million miles away from The Shadows Of Knight’s I’m Gonna Make You Mine.

The guitar’s sharp, bright distortion is a highlight, as is the unusual percussion, which sounds in places like someone is taking a drumstick to a dustbin. The occasional burst of sci-fi-style, almost theremin-like keyboard adds some extra variety to an otherwise straightforwardly heads-down rocker.

Urgent and frenetic, the fact that MES was forced to record his vocals in a hurry isn’t an issue here: his slurred, cackling aggression suits the song perfectly. Lyrically, it might refer to Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden (‘My garden is covered with cement’) or possibly Fred West; either way, there’s something slightly unsettling about the lyric (‘what you doing round that grave?’) that adds a bit of dark edge to the song.

There is a lack of clarity about exactly how often the song was performed live, but, surprisingly, it seems to have been in single figures.

Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain
One of those Fall songs that veers between the sublime and the ridiculous. Steve Hanley carves out a ludicrously flatulent, driving bass line that is the main focus of the whole track. Julia Nagle flings in a random series of atonal keyboard frills; either Wolstencroft or Burns (probably the latter) cuts through the whole thing with a recurring series of outrageously loud cymbal crashes that are reminiscent of Smile.

MES might have thought (or at least pretended) that he could speak German, but he really couldn’t. (Brix commented that ‘I think he learns it from Nazi war movies’14.) Vulture‘s title certainly doesn’t actually mean anything in German. The Annotated Fall suggests ‘The vulture and another one’, or even ‘The vulture lands on the nut-wagon’.

It was played live fourteen times, twice in the same gig on one occasion and as an instrumental in one other.

He Pep!
After an opening brace of tracks that suggested a continuation of Cerebral Caustic‘s back-to-basics approach, we are suddenly confronted with a salvo of programmed drums and twisted synth oscillations that almost suggest that Dave Bush hadn’t really left. A relentless, angry and confrontational track, it’s a great blend of early 90s style electronic-infused Fall, choppy, slashing guitar and thundering drums.

Brix’s vocals (‘cheerleader backup’, as she described them15) are a perfect foil for MES, who snarls and barks his way through the song with a desperate, ill-tempered intensity; Simon Ford comments that ‘Smith’s obvious poor health and frustration actually help the track’16.

Brix described the song as ‘another one of Mark’s odes to speed mixed with a rant about record companies’17.  The line, ‘I wrote a song about it / Conceptually à la Bowie’ made He Pep! the third Fall song to contain a reference to Bowie (the first two being Mere Pseud Mag. Ed. and Hard Life In Country).

It was played (approximately) 75 times, 1996-2001.

Hostile
A weighty, imposing and ominous tune, driven by rolling, tribal drumming and layers of scorched, distorted guitar. The lightness of Brix’s vocal again provides an excellent contrast to MES, who declaims the dark, enigmatic lyrics like some sort of bitter, world-weary Mancunian preacher.

The casual listener can only be impressed by the inscrutable but beautifully crafted language: ‘We are the elite gangsters of the damned, criminals of the damp’. But only a researcher as determined and resourceful as dannyno could have unearthed the fact that the song references the Neocatechumenal Way.

As Gladys Winthorpe commented: ‘the atmosphere… is quite unlike anything else encountered anywhere within the group’s immense back catalogue. It’s equal parts paranoia, tension, suspense and shadow.’ It was never played live.

Stay Away (Old White Train)
The inevitable cover arrives five tracks in, and it’s a sadly silly and throwaway affair. Based on Johnny Paycheck‘s 1979 single (Stay Away From) The Cocaine Train, Burns’ Friday night pub karaoke vocal places it clearly in the ‘might just about have been forgiveable as a b-side’ category.

Brix, to be fair, does try to inject a bit of energy into it. MES is also lurking about in the background as well, adding the odd haphazard slur. Played live twice.

Spinetrak
Thankfully, the album gets back on track straight away with a spiky bit of catchy punk-pop. It takes a similar approach to Feeling Numb and Don’t Call Me Darling from the last album, layering Smith’s acerbic style over Brix’s melodic surf-rock-riff. In common with several other Cerebral Caustic tracks, there’s also effective use made of contrasting guitars in either channel: a distorted thrash in one ear and a twangy riff in the other (the latter is almost certainly Brix; the former may well be Burns).

Whilst the Brix/MES vocal combination once again works well here, there is a certain hesitancy about his muffled contributions that emphasise the hurried way in which his vocals were recorded.

Even The Annotated Fall struggles to identify what a ‘spinetrak’ might be, making only a tentative and tenuous link to a mountain trail in the Quantocks. Both Brix18 and Simon Wolstencroft19 rated it as one of the best tracks on the album. It was played live 26 times 1996-97.

Interlude/Chilinism
The version of ‘The Fall’s Bohemian Rhapsody’ that actually made it onto the album was, perhaps, inevitably, the longest and most difficult one. There’s a hint of prog here (not for the first or last time), given the variety of interlinked sequences.

It opens with an expansive, spacey synth-driven introduction that once again suggests that Dave Bush is still around. This then morphs into a rolling snare-dominated section where once again there’s a pleasing contrast between Smith’s sneering drawl and Brix’s sweet, layered vocals; the guttural title refrain is presumably delivered by Karl Burns.

Things take a decidedly strange turn at 2:58 with a heavily reverbed and looped passage, before reverting to the previous pattern, this time with Brix’s vocal taking a far more aggressive role. Then, after a brief silence, we get an ominous floating synth line accompanied by a multi-tracked, crooning MES. Finally, the crowning moment: Smith’s throaty yelp of ‘chiseler!’ before the group launch into a scuzzy, distorted blast of the song’s main riff.

A divisive song: your evaluation will depend on how much you enjoy The Fall being expansive, experimental and a tad self-indulgent; fans of the group’s more sharp and concise moments will inevitably struggle with it. It was played 24 times 1995-98, before receiving a one-off revival in 2002.

Powder Keg
One of those songs that provides fuel for those that argue that Smith had some form of ‘pre-cog’ abilities, due to its lines about ‘Manchester city centre’ being a ‘powder keg’, the reference to Enniskillen and the fact that an IRA bombing took place in Manchester a few days after the album’s release. In a June 1996 interview, Smith stated that the song was inspired by his sister getting caught up in the 1992 Manchester bombing (the relevant part is at 25:55).

Leaving all that stuff aside, it’s a solid enough if somewhat unspectacular track, based around a pretty straightforward riff and a rather cheesy keyboard line. It has a slightly stilted, underdeveloped feel that may well be a result of the album’s hurried recording.

The existence of the Powderkex remix by D.O.S.E. (which eventually appeared on the bonus CD of the limited edition of Levitate) suggests that it might have been planned as a second single from the album. It was played live 27 times 1996-98.

Oleano
A melodramatic and urgent track, not entirely dissimilar in approach to Powder Keg. It’s driven by a trio of complementary guitars (an insistent, alarm-like chime, a choppy low-end rhythm and some fuzzy power chords), some melodic synth work and a solid, reverberating throb from SH. The way that the group suddenly ramp things up a 2:13 is a particularly pleasing moment.

There’s not much of an actual song here; you feel like you’re waiting for a chorus that never arrives. However, it’s one-paced relentlessness is matched well to Smith’s clipped interjections. Lyrically, it’s ‘a sketchy and obscure story of a nautical disaster’ (Annotated Fall), but even the intrepid researchers at TAF can’t find any link to any real vessel.

It was played live 31 times, 1996-98.

Cheetham Hill
A tawdry tale of kerb-crawling and soliciting (‘only way you stop is for passion at the station / Why you cruising? To be unfaithful’) which features a somewhat lumbering pun on Cheetham/cheat ’em. According to Simon Wolstencroft20, the line ‘don’t scratch my nice blue Merc’ refers to the day that Frank Lea of Jet records arrived at Smith’s house to sign the group’s new contract.

Producer Mike Bennett performs it as a duet with Smith (according to Reformation, MES often used to leave Bennett to sing nearly all of it himself on stage). Although Bennett doesn’t have the most distinguished singing voice, the contrast between his crooning and Smith’s almost spoken-word contributions is effective and gives a bit of variety to an album which focuses quite heavily on MES/Brix combinations.

Although his falsetto interjections are a bit of a bugbear to some, Smith’s vocals are generally a highlight here; his wry, nicely timed delivery makes his enunciation of ‘mission of passion’ and – especially – ‘Manchester’ amusingly effective.

The balance between the early-90s style electronics and the traditional guitar rock approach swings back a little to the former here, the siren-like sequencer giving it an almost rave-like flavour. The loping, almost jaunty rhythm goes well with the tongue in cheek lyrics, although it does sail perilously close to sounding rather dated.

It got 24 live outings between 1996 and 1998.

The Coliseum
The balance swings even further to dance/electronics elements on the album’s lengthiest track. It also finds the group sounding rather behind the times: The Coliseum‘s clunky indie-dance rhythm sounds like a ham-fisted attempt to capture the baggy groove of The Happy Mondays’ or Fool’s Gold-era Stone Roses.

Some of The Fall’s longer songs (Garden or Tempo House, for example) pass by in the blink of an eye; The Coliseum has outstayed its welcome by the time it gets even halfway through its eight minutes. In particular, the single grinding guitar chord that runs all the way through just adds to the monotony. It’s hard to fathom why it was allowed to run to such a length – it’s not as if the album was short on run-time.

It’s a shame, because there’s a germ of a good idea here, but things are not helped by Smith’s distinctly half-arsed delivery which just emphasises the whole ‘will this do?’ atmosphere of the track. The Idiot Joy Show version is an unholy mess, but it’s a great deal more rewarding that this one.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was only played live four (or possibly five) times, all in 1995-96.

Last Chance To Turn Around
As if one dreary, half-arsed cover version wasn’t enough, the group throw in another. It’s (loosely) a cover of a Gene Pitney song that was a fairly weak effort in the first place. The cheesy 80s-style brass section-effect keyboards are especially toe-curlingly awful. In addition, MES is very much in just-got-back-from-the-pub-which-song-is-this-again? mode. Never played live, thankfully.

The Ballard Of J. Drummer
Like Last ChanceDrummer is generally held in very low esteem by Fall fans (and is also one that was never played live). It’s an odd song; an interesting idea that was sadly underdeveloped and clumsily executed.

It relates the tale of Johnny Drummer, a stranger in town who extols the use of real drumming as opposed to everyone else’s ‘computer tricks’ – although after that it all gets a little obscure. The Annotated Fall suggests that the final line (‘Don’t ever follow the path of being hard and tough when your heart is soft’) refers to Karl Burns.

There are a few ponderous notes from Steve Hanley and some ominous mellotron-ish keyboards floating in the background, but overall the song is almost completely dominated by the militaristic snare drum. You can hear the group grasping for some sort of epic Spaghetti Western-style atmosphere (‘Johnny Drummer came to the outskirts of town’ gives him a Clint Eastwood in a poncho sort of air), but they fall well short of what they seem to be aiming for. It might have been interesting to hear what came of this one had a decent amount of time been spent on the album.

Oxymoron
You could view Oxymoron as a some sort of remix of He Pep! There’s certainly much overlap between the two, not least Brix’s ‘cheerleader backup’; you can imagine it being a bonus track on the 12″ of a He Pep! single. However, there is definitely enough invention about it to warrant its inclusion on the album

It’s focused around a thumping, overloaded drum track that seems to be a mix of Simon Wolstencroft and some programming, plus a fuzzy, chugging blues guitar part. There’s a pleasingly random ‘cut and paste’ feel to the whole thing, Smith’s vocals and the various keyboard/electronic sounds being thrown into the rather overcrowded mix with carefree abandon. This produces an atmosphere that’s an intriguing mix of playful and ominous.

The lyrics are a nonsense – ‘Mr. Moody’s scruffed up… Oh yeah! Mr. moody’s lair,
You pep!’ – but this suits the overall haphazard and chaotically creative tone of the song well.

It certainly strengthens the generally weak final third of the album: as The Annotated Fall has it, it’s the ‘scraggly cactus in the mini-desert at the end of The Light User Syndrome‘. It was never played live.

Secession Man
Another one that is not held in high regard by most Fall fans. Brix claimed that she refused to play on it21.

Someone presses the ‘disco rock’ button on a Casio keyboard, then experiments with the ‘Phil Collins horn section’ sound. MES sounds particularly half-arsed – even by this album’s standards – like it’s some sort of ironic joke to which he’s forgotten the punchline. And it trundles on for a seemingly endless nearly five minutes.

It was only ever played live once, at Sheffield Leadmill on 29 June 1996.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
The album was reissued in 1999 and 2002. Both added the other two versions of The Chiselers.

Overall Verdict
The Light User Syndrome is a curious and ultimately deeply frustrating album. Roughly speaking, half of it is excellent; a quarter is flawed if potentially interesting; a quarter is just poor. It also suffers from the curse of by then established CD age, in that it is bloated, indulgent and overlong.

Where the album really works, it combines the best elements of the early 90s indie-dance approach with the back-to-basic garage punk of Cerebral Caustic. Another strong feature is the MES/Brix vocal combinations, which often see them complement each other as well as they ever did in the 80s.

The biggest problems with the album seem to lie with the recording process and production. Simon Ford describes the production as ‘unimaginative and muddled’22; thehippriestess comments that ‘the recording… was too quick… with some fraught scenes and it shows – the production is rough, bordering on messy and there is an abrupt decline in quality at the tail end of what is a long album’. Whilst spontaneity was often a positive feature of The Fall’s work, there’s a feeling throughout The Light User Syndrome – even on the best tracks – that it would have benefited enormously from more time being spent on it.

Another problem is Smith himself. He was clearly at a low ebb at this point, and his performances (which seem to have taken place hurriedly right at the end of the sessions) see him struggling to do himself and the material justice. On some occasions, this approach works well – the energetic bark on D.I.Y. Meat, or the random interjections on Oxymoron – but in many places it feels like he’s floundering, only just managing to squeeze out some kind of coherent contribution.

My “Version”
If ever an album called out for a ‘version’, then it’s this one:

Side 1: D.I.Y. Meat / Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain / He Pep! / Spinetrak / Interlude-Chilinism (18:57)

Side 2: Powder Keg / Oleano / Cheetham Hill / Oxymoron / Hostile (17:58)

Rankings
If you were just ranking the ‘versions’ The Light User Syndrome would come much, much higher. However, its maddening inconsistency places it firmly in the bottom half; above the most of the early 90s albums though, as its highlights are greater in number and quality.

  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. Cerebral Caustic
  8. I Am Kurious Oranj
  9. Room To Live
  10. The Infotainment Scan
  11. Extricate
  12. Bend Sinister
  13. Dragnet
  14. The Light User Syndrome
  15. Middle Class Revolt
  16. Code: Selfish
  17. Shift-Work
  18. Live At The Witch Trials
  19. The Frenz Experiment

The Chiselers was full of invention, and is worthy of a respectable position. It’s not without its flaws, however, and to my mind clearly falls short of the current top ten.

  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. Free Range
  8. Behind The Counter
  9. Marquis Cha-Cha
  10. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  11. The Chiselers
  12. Cab It Up
  13. Cruiser’s Creek
  14. Hey! Luciani
  15. Mr. Pharmacist
  16. Couldn’t Get Ahead/Rollin’ Dany
  17. Look, Know
  18. Telephone Thing
  19. There’s A Ghost In My House
  20. Victoria
  21. Hit The North
  22. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  23. Rowche Rumble
  24. Fiery Jack
  25. Ed’s Babe
  26. High Tension Line
  27. 15 Ways
  28. It’s The New Thing
  29. White Lightning
  30. Popcorn Double Feature
  31. Why Are People Grudgeful?
  32. Oh! Brother

In many ways, Live At Phoenix Festival is a superior live album to The Idiot Joy Show: the performances and the sound are certainly more balanced and clearly recorded. But, of the two, there’s much more interest in IJS, which features a range of not always successful but often intriguing performances that is kind of the whole point of a live album. LATPF is a sound and enjoyable collection; IJS is patchy and frustrating but far more intriguing.

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. In The City…
  5. Nottingham ’92
  6. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  7. Totale’s Turns
  8. The Idiot Joy Show
  9. Live In Cambridge 1988
  10. I Am As Pure As Oranj
  11. Live 1993 – Batschkapp, Frankfurt
  12. Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
  13. Live 1977
  14. The Twenty Seven Points
  15. Seminal Live
  16. Live At The Phoenix Festival
  17. Live In Zagreb
  18. Austurbaejarbio
  19. BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
  20. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  21. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  22. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  23. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  24. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  25. Liverpool 78
  26. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  27. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  28. Live At Deeply Vale

References
1The Fallen, p189

2The Big Midweek, p402

3The Big Midweek, p404

4The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p378

5Ford, p241

6The Fallen, p199

7The Big Midweek, p403

8Ford, p241

9The Big Midweek, p407

10You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p205

11Ford, p242

12Renegade, p193

13You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p206

14The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p387

15The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p386

16Ford, p243

17-18The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p386

19You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p206

20You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p204

21The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p387

22Ford, p242

YMGTA #24 – The Twenty-Seven Points

“Look at the red-purple vomit stream.”

Image result for the twenty seven points

Details
Recorded: Live 1991-95 (although the cover says 1992-95)
Released: 7 August 1995

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, tapes
  • Brix Smith – guitar, bass, vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass, vocals
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums
  • Karl Burns – drums, guitar, vocals
  • Julia Nagle – keyboards
    With:
  • Kenny Brady – fiddle (Prague ’91)
  • Simon Rogers – machines (Bill Is Dead)
  • Dave Bush – keyboards (tracks Big New PrinzParanoid ManBounces)
  • Robert Gordon – bass, keyboards (Cloud Of Black)

Background
Released six months after Cerebral Caustic, The “Twenty-Seven Points” was, like Seminal Live, a hybrid of live and studio tracks. However, 27 was a more complicated proposition compared to Seminal‘s studio side/live side approach, weaving studio out-takes, home recordings, intro tapes and live performances together in an often intriguing if not always entirely successful manner.

The album was John Lennard’s suggestion: Smith was at first sceptical, but he eventually declared that, ‘I think this LP is one of the best we’ve done, really fascinating’1. The music press, however, were not impressed. Ian Watson in Melody Maker described it as a ‘pointless exercise’; Vox thought it a sign of ‘the decline of The Fall’2.

The Album
One of the more intriguing aspects of the album is the derivation of its title. In a 2001 interview with Q magazine, Smith said that:

‘The 27 points are what the Nazis brought in to take away everybody’s freedom in Germany. And they’re all contradictory points as well. Very similar to our government now. You can drive, but you can’t own a car. Things like that. You can read books, but we’re going to burn them all.’

This may be an example of Smith mis-remembering his history, as the plan drawn up by Hitler and Anton Drexler in 1920 had 25 points. Other suggestions for its origins have included T E Lawrence’s guidelines on military leadership, 27 Articles, the Spanish Falangist 1934 fascist manifesto and the 27 ‘depravities‘ outlined in Don DeLillo’s 1982 novel The Names.

The album’s Wikipedia entry states that ‘credits on the album are sketchy’. This is rather an understatement: attempting to work out what might have been performed when and where is a nigh on impossible task. For a start, the phrases used on the cover, ‘Live ’92 – ’95’ and ‘Prague – Tel Aviv – London – Glasgow – N.Y.C. – M/er’ are both misleading. The sleeve itself identifies Mr Pharmacist as originating from a 1991 gig in Prague and Life Just Bounces from Leeds. Furthermore, the group only ever played in Tel Aviv three times – two of which took place many years after the album’s release (2011 and 2016). This means that any tracks that did come from Israel are from the performance in October 1990 (the Reformation site and thefall.org disagree as to whether it was the 1st or the 9th).

Even if one accepts that the recordings are, unless otherwise stated, from Prague, Tel Aviv, London, Glasgow, New York or Manchester as per the cover, the origins are still difficult to unearth. The group played 29 dates in the named cities in the 1992-95 time-frame. Some of the songs featured very regularly in those sets – Free Range, for example, was played at 23 of those gigs – and there are no known setlists or bootlegs for a few of the dates.

Thankfully, on the Fall Online Forum, j temperance (who I shall refer to as ‘JT’ hereinafter) trawled through his obviously impressive collection of bootlegs and was able to identify a substantial number of the tracks. Most of the dates and venues named below are as a result of his sterling work.

The dates and venues are not the only misleading aspects of the information on the sleeve. The personnel credits are more of a reflection of Smith’s attitude to his musicians in 1995 than a true record of who actually played on what. In particular, the accelerating fall from favour of Dave Bush is clearly shown by the nonsensical claim that he only contributed keyboards to three tracks; Julia Nagle, whose first gig with the group wasn’t until March 1995 and is unlikely to have played on more than half a dozen of the songs here, gets a full band credit.

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There is one other live release that contains performances from this period. Live At The Astoria 1995 was released in December 2018 as part of Set of Ten. Like most of this box set, I haven’t actually heard it, although it does have two five-star (if not terribly informative) reviews on Amazon. (The Idiot Joy Show and Live At The Phoenix Festival both also contain 1995 material, but in both cases it’s combined with 1996 performances so will be covered in the next post.)

The Songs
Mollusc In Tyrol
Mollusc first appeared on Seminal Live, but this is a very different version, being four minutes shorter and not featuring any Smith vocals. Here, it’s just a one minute intro tape, although it is based on the same music – Craig Leon’s Donkeys Bearing Cups from his 1981 album Nommus.

Return
A worthwhile version of the song: it has a great deal more vigour than the album recording; whilst the sound is nowhere near as clear as the version on Nottingham ’92, it’s rather suited by the ragged, indistinct thrashed-out approach here. Still not the strongest tune by The Fall’s standards, but this is one of the best versions of it you’ll hear. Hard to know when or where the performance is from: it apparently doesn’t match any of JT’s 30ish recordings.

Ladybird (Green Grass)
A much better song than Return, but a less satisfying version. Nothing especially wrong with it, but it feels a little ragged and lacking in focus; plus Smith seems rather off-hand and disengaged. According to JT, it comes from The Academy in New York on 17 September 1993.

flyer

Idiot – Walk Out / Ten Points / Idiot Joy Showland
Idiot Joy Showland sets off at a frantic pace, MES sounding energised and well up for it. But then it all grinds to a halt after thirty seconds, Smith ordering the group off stage saying they’ll be ‘back in two minutes’. Clearly he’s unhappy about the sound, as he tersely warns Rex Sargeant that he’d ‘better get this sorted out’. When the group return for a spirited romp through the song, the sound does seem to have been improved; in particular, Scanlon appears to have been turned down a little and Hanley turned up to create a much better balance.

In the midst of all of this, we get Ten Points. A bit of MES spoken word, made up of a fairly random list that references It’s A Curse and, in particular, deploys several snippets from Glam Racket‘s lyrics. Demonstrating a similar style to the solo album he would release three years later, The Post Nearly Manit’s a mildly diverting interlude, although Smith’s often faltering delivery makes it feel a little half-arsed.

The walk-out makes this one of the easier performances to identify: it’s from Kentish Town Forum, 19 October 1993.

Big New Prinz
Another one that’s hard to pin down in terms of date and venue, especially as it’s one of the group’s most frequently performed songs. Even if you assume that the parameters of the front cover are correct (which they clearly aren’t) then that still only narrows it down to fifteen possible gigs. JT, who doubtless has dozens of bootleg recording of the song, can’t match it, but proposes that it might be from The Fridge, Brixton on the 28 January 1994.

It’s a sound, if not especially remarkable stomp through one of the group’s finest songs.

Intro – Roadhouse
Ninety seconds worth of the theme from Zulu. Hard to see the point really – especially as it’s plonked towards the middle of the album – although MES did claim that one of his ancestors did fight at Rorke’s Drift. From one of the Manchester gigs 20-22 March 1995.

The Joke
A perennial favourite on the group’s live albums. Introduced by a distorted, lo-fi recording that soon morphs into a cleaner version (similar to Bury Pts. 1 + 3 fifteen years later), it’s an entertaining enough if oddly disjointed take that features some rather incongruous piano work that’s somewhere between Little Richard and Aladdin Sane. This was presumably contributed by Julia Nagle as – if JT is correct – it comes from one the Manchester Roadhouse gigs mentioned above.

M.H.’s Jokes / British People In Hot Weather
‘M.H.’ being ‘Mike The Haircut’, and old friend of Smith’s who acted as a roadie on the group’s 1994 US tour. It’s nearly two minutes of inconsequential and not especially entertaining chat, followed by two minutes of a poorly-recorded British People (from 3 September 1994 at Sheffield Leadmill, according to JT). Not a highlight.

Free Range
From the same Sheffield gig as above, according to JT. It sounds like a pretty strong performance, and is notable for the prominence of Bush’s sequencers, but overall it’s just too muffled to be of much interest.

Hi-Tension Line
JT identifies this as being from 17 October 1993 at Paradiso in Amsterdam. It’s a fair recording with a good amount of vigour and pleasingly distorted feel about it; Dave Bush’s prominence is again notable.

The League Of Bald-Headed Men
Most likely from 1993, although neither JT or I are clear about exactly when. Once again, Dave Bush’s contributions are a clear feature, but it’s rather sluggish and also another one where the sound is distinctly muffled.

95: Glam Racket/Star
After a run of rather mediocre recordings, this is at least a little more interesting. It’s clearly two different versions welded together: the edit between the two (at 2:24) is distinctly clumsy and jarring. The first part (according to JT) is from the same Sheffield gig as Hot Weather and Free Range; the second is likely from late 1994, as it features Brix and her new ‘Star’ section. But whilst it’s a little more diverting than the previous few tracks, it doesn’t really add anything especially significant to the song.

Lost In Music
According to JT, this is from the same 1993 Amsterdam gig as High Tension Line. Once again, there’s not a lot more to say other than Dave Bush is clearly audible, whatever the sleeve credits might say.

Prague ’91/Mr. Pharmacist
Opens with a gentle and rather engaging bit of country-folk led by Kenny Brady’s fiddle, backed with a few squiggles of Bush electronica, before launching into an energetic if by now rather predictable thrash through Mr P (from 16 May 1991). Features some nicely thick and flatulent Hanley bass.

Cloud Of Black
One of two studio out-takes on the album, a left-over from the Shift-Work sessions, with musical contributions from Robert Gordon, one that album’s producers. It’s dull, sluggish, uninspired and unmemorable.

Paranoid Man In Cheap Sh..t Room
JT identifies this as being from the same Amsterdam gig as Lost In Music and High Tension Line. Similar comments apply: Dave Bush makes a significant yet uncredited contribution, and it’s a sound enough if unremarkable version.

Bounces – Leeds
Possibly based on a recording from 6 June 1994 in Leeds, it starts off energetically enough before descending into a frankly irritating ‘p*ssing about’ version featuring (presumably) Karl Burns’ ‘comedy’ vocals. Its brevity (under two minutes) is its most positive feature.

Outro
One of the more interesting bits of the album. Presumably some sort of pre-recorded tape, it features a naggingly insistent keyboard figure backed by some gently distorted and delicate guitar work. It’s rather lovely and intriguing.

Passable
Another one that (according to JT) is from Amsterdam 1993, and also another one that the sleeve credits suggest ridiculously doesn’t involve Dave Bush. A clear and well-balanced recording, but yet another that doesn’t really add a huge deal to one’s appreciation of the song.

Glasgow Advice
A distorted and incoherent MES rant over the top of So What About It? A pleasing little fragment; one of the better ones on the album.

Middle Class Revolt – Simon, Dave & John
JT dates this to the last of the 1995 Manchester Roadhouse gigs. MCR is one of those songs that is often best-served by its live recordings, and this is certainly the case here. It clatters along with some vigour, and Steve Hanley and Simon Wolstencroft are both solidly outstanding throughout. The most interesting factor, however, is Brix’s contribution. She dominates the vocals here, with Smith only offering the odd interjection. Smith wandering off to leave her to hold the fort was, of course, something that she identified as a key feature of gigs of this period. Exactly who constitutes the ‘holy trinity’ of Simon, Dave and John is far from clear.

Bill Is Dead
A rather thin and insipid version that sounds as though it’s not being played at the right speed. Oddly, Simon Rogers is credited as contributing ‘machines’. Hard to say where it’s from, but December 18, 1992 in Glasgow is a possible candidate.

Strychnine
Another one whose origins are hard to pin down, although it’s most likely from 1993. An energetic thrash that includes some nice solo work from Scanlon and a few entertaining screeches from MES.

War!
Another that JT identifies as being from Amsterdam 1993; and another that’s a sound enough version that doesn’t really add much to your appreciation of the song.

Noel’s Chemical Effluence
The very definition of a hidden gem: a murky, psychedelic slab of proggish repetition driven by a jagged, insistent guitar. Whilst there’s a long tradition of rock ‘n’ roll songs about life on the road, there are not many about the sanitary facilities on the tour bus; here the lyrics capture the details in an uncompromising and rather uncomfortable fashion – the ‘red-purple vomit stream’, for example. Craig Scanlon’s ‘Oh, have we finished then?’ moment right at the end is rather a joy.

Three Points/Up Too Much
A track which only featured on the CD and cassette versions of the album. Three Points is another brief piece of Post Nearly Man-style spoken word. The version of You’re Not Up To Much is another that JT is unable to pin down, although it seems likely it’s from May-July 1994 (it was only played eleven times anyway.) It’s an interesting version; not terribly well recorded, but it has a swaggering, distorted charm.

Overall Verdict
It’s easy to see why The Twenty-Seven Points received such lukewarm reviews, as it’s rather a sprawling mess and verges on the self-indulgent and pointless in places. The ‘proper’ live tracks are fairly equally split between the interesting, the unenlightening and the poor. The ‘interludes’ give it an intriguing ‘collage’ feel, but are also very varied. The two studio out-takes are polar opposites in terms of quality. The decision to include the Idiot Joy Showland false start and walkout is – if not exactly a highlight – a documentation of an important aspect of The Fall live in the mid-90s.

Rankings
Worth owning, but not the best starting point for delving into the live material. Arguably worth buying for Noel’s Chemical Effluence alone, but as a live album it’s certainly mid-table material.

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. In The City…
  5. Nottingham ’92
  6. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  7. Totale’s Turns
  8. Live In Cambridge 1988
  9. I Am As Pure As Oranj
  10. Live 1993 – Batschkapp, Frankfurt
  11. Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
  12. Live 1977
  13. The Twenty Seven Points
  14. Seminal Live
  15. Live In Zagreb
  16. Austurbaejarbio
  17. BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
  18. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  19. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  20. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  21. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  22. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  23. Liverpool 78
  24. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  25. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  26. Live At Deeply Vale

References
1-2Ford, p238

YMGTA #23 – Cerebral Caustic

“He looks like a f***ing skull, and he acts like a f***ing clown.”

Image result for cerebral caustic

Details
Recorded: London, late 1994
Released: 27 February 1995

  • Mark E Smith – vocals
  • Brix Smith – guitar, vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums
  • Dave Bush – keyboards
  • Karl Burns – drums, guitar, vocals
    With: 
  • Lucy Rimmer – vocals (Pearl City)

Background
The previous year’s surprise event that was Karl Burns’ reappearance in the line-up seemed minor news in comparison to the sudden and unexpected return of Brix in 1994.

In the first few years following her departure from the group had Brix had shunned writing or playing music and had become almost as well known for her relationship with celebrity violinist Nigel Kennedy (possibly the ‘hippy half-wit’ in The Reckoning, although he actually affected more of a punk look) as for her connection to The Fall. In 1994, however, she had started playing with Susanna Hoffs (of The Bangles) and had even auditioned – unsuccessfully – for the bassist role in Courtney Love’s band, Hole.

In her book1, Brix suggests that MES initiated the contact, but in a 1995 interview for Vox, both his (‘she called me up out of the blue’) and her versions have it the other way round. It’s hard to imagine the exact phrase that she ascribes to her ex-husband (‘Please come back. We need you back in the band to kick ass.’) actually coming out of MES’s mouth, but it does largely capture the spirit of the feelings he expressed in that Vox interview:

‘At the time, I was looking for a guitarist and arranger. I wanted either a really young kid or an old producer–someone to put some bite back into The Fall, to kick them all up the arse. When I told Brix, she immediately said she’d do it and got on a plane. I’d rather take a chance with someone I know than some smart-arsed kid who wants to be in Oasis. Brix is a great musician. She revitalised the new LP.’

Brix on stage in Toronto 13/09/94 (photo by David Fisher)

At the time, Smith and Brix’s public pronouncements suggested a sense of optimism and enthusiasm. This did not give the full story, however. Brix was, for example, shocked by the change in Smith’s appearance (‘he had aged decades’2) that she – not unreasonably – felt had been brought about by his lifestyle. Also, whilst she seemed pleased to be reunited with her old band mates (even Karl Burns) and took an immediate liking to Dave Bush, she soon identified that not all was well in the Fall camp. Craig Scanlon, in particular, she felt had ‘lost his passion’3, an impression echoed by Steve Hanley, who commented that at that time he appeared ‘ to be losing interest in playing the guitar’4.

Craig Scanlon, Phoenix Festival 15/07/1994

Brix soon discovered that Smith’s on-tour behaviour had hardly improved over the last five years. At the second gig after her return, in Edinburgh on 15 August, he punched both the sound man (apparently for the crime of eating a sandwich at the mixing desk) and Karl Burns. Steve Hanley: ‘He then proceeds to walk off stage so many times that at the end of the show half of the eight hundred people… demand their money back’5. One audience member shared his memories of the gig on thefall.org’s gigography:

‘Two other things stick in the mind: one was the drunk punk who started dancing on stage with Mark E Smith, who then pushed him into one of the poles supporting the marquee… which then began to list in an alarming fashion. The other was the fact that the shortened set was also due to the Fall having to finish by 10.30pm as the marquee was then being used for a show by the laughable Peter Powers – Stage Hypnotist!’

Brix described the following US tour as ‘absolute misery’6.  Smith – having parked himself in a suite at the Gramercy Hotel – insisted on the group repeatedly travelling back to New York after gigs, despite the distances involved. In addition, his difficult behaviour continued to intensify. At Rhode Island, he dragged the group off-stage after twenty minutes and threw a bottle at Dave Bush. He repeated the walk-off in Washington, although this time the group stayed where they were; on his return, Smith managed to get into an altercation with one of Simon Wolstencroft’s cymbals. He also alienated the road crew to such an extent (for example by having a gaffer tape boundary drawn out between the ‘group’ and ‘crew’ sections of the tour bus) that they flew home in disgust.

These were the early days of mass use of the internet, and Steve Hanley noted the potential impact of the phenomenon: fans sharing stories of Smith’s ‘nail-chewing, fag-smoking, obvious indifference’seemed to have a negative impact on ticket sales.

Following on from their encounter with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love the previous year, this tour saw the Fall make the acquaintance of a few other fellow musicians. Smith and Simon Wolstencroft attended Barry White’s fiftieth birthday party in a New York club (the drummer’s reminiscences of the night are here) where Smith had an intimate encounter with Lisa Stansfield. The group also met the up-and-coming Oasis towards the end of the tour, Noel Gallagher apparently offering Wolstencroft a job8 – adding Oasis to the impressive list of bands that ‘Funky Si’ was almost in.

From the Cerebral Caustic CD booklet

1994 also saw Smith’s case against Trevor Long come to court. In the early 90s, Smith had become convinced that Long was surreptitiously helping himself to the group’s money (as described in The Birmingham School of Business School – see the Code: Selfish post). The hearing didn’t start well for Smith when his designated taxi driver (Wolstencroft) was late picking him up due to being hungover from a Primal Scream gig the night before9, meaning that he arrived just in the nick of time. Smith, possibly unwisely, represented himself.

‘…the judge threw the whole thing out of court on account of Mr Smith being unable to remember the evidence he had given in the morning and therefore contradicting it in the afternoon. “Your life is a mess, Mr Smith!” declared the judge…’10

Inevitably, the MES version differs somewhat from other sources. According to him, his evidence wasn’t heard properly in court (literally) because the microphone in front of him wasn’t working, and the main reason that Long was acquitted was that Smith had ‘quoted a figure of £1200 when the actual figure was £1215’11.

After all the concerted promotional efforts of recent years, there wasn’t even one single released to support the album; in fact there would be an almost two year gap between 15 Ways and The Chiselers, released in February 1996. Peel sessions continued to roll around like clockwork though – number 18 was recorded on 20 November and broadcast on 17 December 1994. It saw the group getting into festive spirit, performing Hark The Herald Angels Sing and a cover of Jingle Bell Rock. They also played Numb At The Lodge (which would be re-titled Feeling Numb) and, for the first ever time in a Peel session, an old track. A year and a half after its release on The Infotainment Scan (and a full two years after its live debut) Glam Racket did feature some extra lyrics from Brix (which led to this version being re-titled Glam Racket – Star) but otherwise sounded pretty much the same as the same as it had in 1993.

In The Wider World…
Shortly before the album’s release, Bosnian Serb commanders were put on trial by the United Nations for crimes against humanity in the Balkan Wars. At the end of February, Barings Bank collapsed after broker Nick Leeson lost $1.4bn speculating on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The following month saw members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult kill 13 and injure over 5000 by releasing sarin gas on the Tokyo subway. Arsenal’s manager George Graham was sacked over allegations regarding illegal payments from agents. Eric Cantona received an eight-month ban for his infamous ‘kung-fu’ assault on a Crystal Palace fan.

In January, Céline Dion’s overwrought power ballad Think Twice became the first UK number one not to be available on vinyl; it spent seven weeks at the top of the charts. She was also at the top of the album charts with The Colour Of My Love. 1995 also saw a change in the pattern of chart entries: singles started entering high and then falling rather than climbing the charts gradually. Later in the year, the tiresome, tabloid-fuelled ‘Britpop battle‘ between Oasis and Blur saw the latter’s Country House beat the former’s Roll With It to the top spot.

The Fall Live In 1994-95
The tour to promote Middle Class Revolt kicked off in May 1994 and saw the group play fourteen UK gigs between May and September (plus a performance at a festival in Lithuania on May 28). The concert on 13 August in Glasgow was the first in Brix’s second stint in the group.

In September, the group headed across the Atlantic to play fifteen dates in North America (there is a collection of audience memories of the tour here).

The Cerebral Caustic material didn’t start to appear in the set until the group returned to the UK to play five gigs in November and December. Feeling Numb, Don’t Call Me Darling and I’m Not Satisfied were debuted at Bradford on November 24; The Aphid, The Joke and Pearl City at the next performance, in Manchester on 19 December.

Shortly after the album’s release, The Fall played at The Forum in London (on March 10), and then played four nights (19th-22nd) at Manchester’s Roadhouse (the first of which was an ‘album release party’).

Front cover

The 20-22 March gigs are compiled on the 1997 releaseIn The City… It’s an often overlooked entry in the admittedly overcrowded Fall live canon, but very much worth a listen. The sound quality is excellent – crystal clear and generally well-balanced (if lacking a little bottom end as these things generally do), and the group sound tight and energised. Brix provides some really strong and effective vocals (although she’s way out of tune on Dead Beat Descendent), including on Middle Class Revolt, which puts the album version to shame in terms of vigour and focus. An uptempo version of Gut Of The Quantifier is another highlight, but the best moment is an extensive – nine minute – version of Life Just Bounces (which also features on the A World Bewitched compilation) that thrashes the hell out of the tune in a joyful, abandoned fashion.

 

The Album
The group recorded Cerebral Caustic in late Autumn 1994 at The Pavilion Studios in London. It was recorded quickly: Simon Wolstencroft says that ‘the whole thing was written and recorded in twelve days’12; Steve Hanley that ‘the album is down in a week’13. Once again, the recording sessions were riven with tension. The studio was a tight fit for the then seven-piece, two-drummer group. Karl Burns rowed frequently with Smith and was once again given his marching orders for hotel-related mayhem – this time for detonating fireworks out of his window.

To add to the tension, Smith was clearly turning away from Dave Bush’s influence. In a May 1995 interview, Smith discussed the departure in the group’s sound that made Cerebral Caustic a very different proposition from the previous four albums. He describes the almost complete abandonment of the use of technology that had characterised much of the group’s early 90s output as a ‘very conscious’ decision:

‘…it was getting a bit sludgy, with the process we were using and that. As you probably know, it’s all computers in studios now, and they’re always losing the plot really. You can’t get to people like Craig and Steve and myself to play to drum machines, so if I hadn’t got Brix and Karl back, I think it probably would have ground to a halt.’

Steve Hanley describes the effect that this was having on the recording and also the sense that Bush’s days were numbered:

‘Dave’s giving it rock-sounding beats instead of effects, but there’s only so many beats that can go in. Every time he tries to do an effect, it is wiped out and we can all feel the chamber revolving.’14

All of this was to lead to rumours that there was a vastly different (possibly superior) version of the album that included more of Dave Bush’s contributions; this was fuelled partly by Smith’s comment on the promotional interview (see below) that, after the rest of the group had finished recording, ‘me and Karl did all the guitars again’. The bonus material on the 2006 reissue (again – see below) seems to disprove this.

LR
Lucy Rimmer in rehearsal, January 1995

Whilst Dave Bush was disappearing from the group’s sound, there was also a new name on the album sleeve.  Lucy Rimmer – credited with (barely audible) backing vocals on Pearl City – was Smith’s new girlfriend. Like Saffron Prior before her, she was organising the group’s fan club, rather reinforcing Steve Hanley’s point that, ‘every one of Mark’s girlfriends was involved in some way. His personal life was always mixed up with the band’15.

Cerebral Caustic was The Fall’s third consecutive album to be released on the Permanent label. Unlike the last two, however, it didn’t get a US release at the time, not coming out in the States until the 2006 reissue (see below) – although it did get a Japanese release.

The Japanese CD

Pascal Le Gras supplied the artwork for the fifth Fall album in a row (the group would go elsewhere for the next couple of albums, although they would return to him for 1999’s Marshall Suite). Cerebral Caustic‘s cover, however, was a marked departure from the bold, colourful, semi-abstract designs of the previous four releases. Brix considered the stark, gaudy skull image to be the group’s worst ever cover:

‘…the skull clown is Mark. It’s prophetic. He looks like a f***ing skull, and he acts like a f***ing clown. It’s him.’16

Perhaps even more curious was the back-cover image (see above) of Smith adorned with a crudely-drawn set of angel-wings.

In an interview for The Scotsman from March 15, 1995, Smith described the album as ‘very diary-ish… it wasn’t a nice time for me personally. I’m OK now but I thought it would be nice to get it down really fast’. He reiterated his aversion to nostalgia:  ‘A lot of musicians would gladly do Totally Wired every night. You just can’t have it.’ He also demonstrated a strong sense of optimism:

‘I feel a lot better than I have for a couple of years about the group actually… I think the possibilities are getting endless again. We’ve got a bit more jump to it.’

Despite this positive outlook, reviews were once again mixed, and overall were the most negative the group had received since Seminal Live. American magazine Trouser Press did describe Cerebral Caustic as ‘prime-slice Fall in all its caustic, cerebral glory’, and in Melody Maker, Jamie Conway proclaimed that Smith was ‘destined never to suffer from the creative fatigue which has plagued his peers’17. John Harris’ 4/10 evaluation in the NME was more typical, however, complaining that the album was ‘worryingly generic’, full of ‘predictable, drone-laden rumble’ and that several tracks had the ‘uninspired aura of recycled goods’.

Commercially, it fell short even of its predecessor’s mediocre performance, reaching only number 67 in the album charts – the group’s worst placing for eleven years.

The Songs
The Joke
The album’s return to a techno/dance-free back-to-basics garage rock approach is signalled as clearly as it possibly could have been on the album’s opener. It’s not the most innovative riff, perhaps, but for not the first or last time the group squeeze maximum energy from a few obvious chords. The interplay between Brix and Scanlon’s guitars (one in either channel) is a particular joy, one that makes this track an especially satisfying headphones experience. The two aren’t playing anything radically different, but the subtle variations give a seemingly straightforward song surprising levels of texture and depth. For example, if you listen from where the group kick in at 0:15, over the next few seconds you get a choppy thrash on the right but a more sustained lead guitar on the left. At 0:51-0:54, you get a similar lead/rhythm effect, where the left pulls a bluesy string-bend while the right hammers away on one chord. 1:52-2:01 is another particularly fine example. They work like this all the way through, circling around and colliding with each other, producing a gloriously ragged and layered fuzzed-up thrash.

Dave Bush is notable by his absence for much of the album, but there are traces of his work here: an underlying drum & bass-style rhythm that’s relatively unobtrusive (you might not even pick it up until it’s exposed right at the end of the song) but subtly adds a fizzing energy to the track.

Smith’s vocal fights its way belligerently through all these layers of sound, and he sounds energised, acerbic and casually aggressive. The ‘five years in a PC camp’ line might suggest a diatribe against political correctness, but as ever it’s not quite as straightforward as that. What ‘violent food’ or ‘multicoloured sweets
in bottom of white sweet pack’ might be, for example, is anyone’s guess. Some have suggested that Milan Kundera’s novel of the same title may have been a reference point. The book’s Wikipedia page claims that there’s a connection, stating that the song links ‘humourless Eastern Bloc authoritarianism to political correctness’. As the Reformation A-Z page says, in rather deadpan fashion, ‘this may or may not be accurate’.

The song was a particular live favourite, clocking up 129 appearances between 1994-2004, and featuring on no less than eleven of the group’s live albums.

Don’t Call Me Darling
Track two picks up the thumpingly energetic garage-punk baton and runs with it, due to some pleasingly scuzzy guitar and a strident, stomping almost glam-rock rhythm. The vocals, however, are the most notable feature.

Back in the mid 80s, Brix’s vocal contributions tended to work best where she offered a tuneful sweetness as a balanced contrast to Smith’s rough, off-hand acerbity. Here there’s rather a role-reversal: MES virtually croons his way through the song, while Brix is in full-on rasping shouty punk mode. In the promotional interview that features on the 2006 reissue (see below), Brix describes (at 2:29) how she was trying to use her voice in different ways and that her vocal chords would be ‘thrashed’ after singing the song. She just about carries it off, although her delivery does teeter on the irritating all the way through.

In the Vox interview, Smith was keen to point out that the song was not about Brix; on the aforementioned promotional interview, he claimed that it was about ‘being assaulted… being beaten up’. Once again, this isn’t really clear from the lyric, which is full of intriguingly well-crafted but obscure phrases such as ‘The long black hair
of wretched bluebottle darting all over to no avail’ and ‘they smell of oak panelling / voices thick with Bouncing Jackson’.

It was played live 21 times 1994-96.

Rainmaster
A simple and sparse track, based around a basic, descending twangy guitar line and a solid, unobtrusive rhythm track; there’s something underdeveloped and fragmentary about it. But – somehow – this works in its favour. There’s something fragile, vulnerable yet defiant about it; it captures a certain rawness that emphasises how the group are often at their best when they just throw around a basic idea and let Smith loose on it.

Even by Smith’s standards, it’s a lyric that defies any sort of rational analysis; but, as is often the case in these instances, there are some strikingly worded if impenetrable phrases that you cannot imagine coming from anyone else: ‘Curserer of blights once too often / In the ridiculous muggy envelope stained’; ‘Rainmaster in Basingstoke’s portaphone traffic / Maurique (?) assistant crap in hermitage’.

Despite his evident overall sidelining, Dave Bush once again manages to just about elbow his way into the margins of the song; a few squiggles and effects float about here and there, and a brief spot of drum programming peeks over the parapet right at the end.

According to Brix18, the musicians loved the song, which led MES to bloody-mindedly refuse to include it on setlists. Whatever the reason, the song was only played live once, at The Phoenix Festival on 14 July 1995.

Feeling Numb
Like Darling, this a stomping, largely straightforward rocker that once again has the MES/Brix vocal interplay as its point of focus. Here though, the roles are more traditional, Brix chirping away just on the right side of twee in contrast to Smith’s off-hand sneer. And whilst it’s not exactly Simon and Garfunkel, the moments when they join together to deliver the same melody are actually quite touching, albeit in a ragged, haphazard way.

It’s actually not as completely straightforward as it first appears: there’s a rather odd stuttering guitar part lurking in the background during the verses that adds an angular, unpredictable quality that rescues the song from becoming mundane.

In contrast to the preceding couple of songs, there’s an apparently clear meaning to the lyric, which makes direct reference to Prozac (known for its numbing qualities). It’s not too much of a leap to link this with the phrase ‘cerebral caustic’.  In the promotional interview, however, MES suggests that the scope of the song is a little wider: it’s about ‘satiation’, which includes how people ‘veg out’ with, for example, food and television.

As a bonus, there’s a particularly effective example of one of Smith’s trademark ‘Hup!’ exclamations to kick things off. It was played live 29 times between 1994 and 1997.

Pearl City
Smith covered a wide range of topics over his 40-ish years of lyric-writing; this was the only one (as far as I’m aware) that took its inspiration from a Chinese restaurant. Having said that, it’s not really the case that the song is about the restaurant – as The Annotated Fall quite rightly points out. ‘Cappuccino and a slice of quiche’ is something rarely served in that type of establishment, and seems more likely to be some kind of dig at yuppie (or what would be these days, hipster) pretensions. This is reinforced by the (rather sixth-form poetry-style) references to the fact that ‘no-one cares / about your world of stocks and shares’.

Smith discussed the song in a local radio interview in May 1995:

‘I’m very pleased with it. It was like a two and a half minute riff that Karl and me wrote at my house. When I came to develop it, I didn’t really know what to do with it. I just wrote about eight sheets of lines about Manchester over it and when I sort of randomly chopped it together it all came together really well.’

There’s a pleasingly skittering randomness about it, and Steve Hanley provides a solid foundation through his deep, snaking bass line. Once again, there’s an interesting guitar part lurking in the background, this time pulling some subtly blues-rock moves. However, there’s a slight air of something half-arsed and underdeveloped that, unlike Rainmaster, doesn’t quite cut it and leaves you just a tad unsatisfied.

It made 43 live appearances 1994-98.

Life Just Bounces
By now rather an old song (especially by Fall standards) having been played live since 1990 and first appearing on the White Lightning single / Dredger EP. The previous version was disappointingly sluggish; this take picks the song up, slaps it around the face and injects it with a hearty dose of adrenalin. The most aptly-named Fall song since Glam Racket, it’s framed around a simplistically effective ‘up-and-down-the-scale’ guitar line and is more than ably supported by Simon Wolstencroft’s thunderous drumming and Steve Hanley’s agile but muscular bass.

Smith’s distorted vocals are a treat too, full of vigour and belligerence. Many lovely touches as well: ‘rock group’ at 2:41; the ‘…and!’ at 3:50. The random way that the volume is cranked up over the final fifteen seconds is a nice touch too.

Played live, surprisingly, only 30ish times, it is simply a joy. Unless you’re hard of hearing and/or soulless, it inspires a beaming grin and a strong desire to crank up the volume.

I’m Not Satisfied
Unlike its predecessor, Cerebral Caustic had only one cover, a version of a Frank Zappa song from The Mothers Of Invention’s 1966 debut album Freak Out! It’s a notably straight cover by The Fall’s standards, following the structure, melody and lyrics of the original fairly closely.

It’s passable, if rather thin and throwaway. The heavy distortion on Smith’s vocals is only a partial distraction from his rather off-hand and apathetic delivery. That said, there’s something weirdly strung-out, sparse and almost desperate about it that does have a certain appeal.

The Aphid
The Aphid sees the group return to the full-throttle ragged garage-punk with which the album opened. Driven by a snarling, fuzzy guitar riff, it’s no-nonsense, relentless and full of aggressive intent. Lyrically, it may well have been inspired by Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, in which the main character imagines himself covered in aphids. There’s something intriguing lurking right back in the mix that might be a descant recorder (you can hear it best around 0:46-0:48).

Like The Joke, it’s a perfect example of The Fall doing a simple thing very very effectively. Surprisingly, it only got half a dozen live outings (all in 1994-95), and two of those were instrumental versions.

Bonkers In Phoenix
A Brix song called ‘Shiny Things’ that MES mangled and embellished with a wide range of outlandishly garish sound effects that were apparently intended to capture the experience of attending a festival. You can hear the original version on the 2006 reissue of the album, which confirms that it was – as Brix herself admits on the promotional interview referred to above – rather ‘girly and sickly’. In fact, it’s woefully twee and tuneless.

The notion of slathering a kaleidoscope of sonic effects over the song to capture the atmosphere of a festival is a potentially interesting and amusing idea; but it palls a long, long time before its six minutes are up. As a two minute ‘interlude’ or as a b-side it might have been just about forgivable; but it really doesn’t warrant taking up about a seventh of the album. It was played live twice, both performances in March 1995.

One Day
A driving, heads-down frenetic rocker. The prime force behind the song is a lively surf-rock guitar line, which powers along in the right channel of the stereo. On the left, there’s all sorts of stuff going on: a choppy, scratchy, almost skiffle-ish (acoustic?) guitar mainly, but also a selection of weird and wonderful random noises that scrape, screech and squawk away merrily. There’s also a very dodgy edit at 2:20.

MES’s blaring, abrasive vocals are a strong feature of the song, and his enunciation of  ‘vacuum breath’ (0:44) and ‘transparent or not’ (1:16) are both moments to relish. Oddly, it was never played live

North West Fashion Show
The by now obligatory novelty/p*ss-take/filler. It’s not quite as banal and pointless as Crew Filth, but it does have a similar level of self-indulgence and juvenile laddish ‘humour’ (for example in its references to ‘sheep-shaggers’). Never played live, unsurprisingly.

Pine Leaves
Just when you think the album is starting to lose its way, the group pull an odd and weirdly effective little gem out of the bag.

It’s a strange, fragile and wistful track. Based around a gently picked acoustic and slightly cheesy keyboards, the lyrical references to annihilation and concentration camps and MES’s slurred, whispering (often double-tracked) delivery give it a dark, enigmatic air. The indistinct dialogue sample lurking in the background adds to the generally mysterious atmosphere.

Tommy Mackay rightly identifies that the lyric is ‘packed with impenetrable… imagery revolving around death and annihilation during occupation and wartime’19. It actually starts off in a relatively straightforward fashion: ‘They gave their lives during the occupation / Arranged at the end of Japan… annihilation / a million dead here’, but soon evolves into some evocative but obscure imagery: ‘The corpor (?) of this leaden leaf
/ folding out with ghost / censure / still in the tub of side for bone shakes’.

It’s another of those songs that benefits greatly from listening on headphones. The section from  1:15-1:26 is especially affecting; Smith’s whispered vocal in the left channel contrasting with his almost delicate, breathy ‘ahhh’ in the right. The ‘reversed’ section just after the two minute mark is also lovely, adding to the melancholy strangeness. There’s all manner of interesting guitar detail too, such as the gentle, repeated figure that appears at 2:26. It’s just full of fascinating, interwoven layers, and is unutterably haunting. Like the previous two tracks, it was never played live.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
As mentioned above, the album did get a Japanese release. That version contained two of the remixes of Middle Class Revolt that eventually appeared on that album’s 2006 reissue.

The reissues of the group’s early 90s albums that came out in 2006 and 2007 were largely of good value. The bonus discs helpfully rounded  up the contemporary Peel sessions, non-album singles, b-sides, etc. They also contained a range of alternate versions and remixes that were generally interesting if not always essential.

The 2006 Sanctuary reissue of Cerebral Caustic, however, falls a little short in comparison. After the obligatory contemporary Peel session, the next ten tracks are ‘pre-release rough mixes’ of all the album tracks bar North West Fashion Show and Pine Leaves. If you expect these to reveal some kind of ‘lost’ superior version that reinstates all of Dave Bush’s contributions, then you’ll be sorely disappointed; basically, they sound like a tape of a tape of the album that was originally recorded from AM radio. It’s doubtful that more than a handful of those who own the CD have listened to them more than once.

The last three tracks on the bonus CD are a little more interesting. The ‘alternate’ mix of Bonkers In Phoenix is not exactly a pleasant listen (see above) but it does at least provide some relevant context for the track. The ‘promo interview’ (quoted several times above) also gives some valuable insight. By far the most interesting, however, is the Rex Sargeant mix of One Day. For much of its duration it bears virtually no resemblance to the album track, stripping away most of the ‘traditional’ instrumentation in favour of synths and sequencers; it’s only in the last minute or so that it starts to resemble the original version. Perhaps the only clue as to what the album might have sounded like had Dave Bush not fallen out of favour…

Overall Verdict
Cerebral Caustic is not, in general, a highly-regarded album amongst either casual or committed Fall fans. It’s often criticised for being rushed, simplistic, retrograde and generally shoddy. And it is undoubtedly all of those things to some extent; but, in many ways, these factors are what make the album. There’s a clear sense of reinvention, a desire to pursue a radically different direction. It also recaptures (as Infotainment Scan had to some extent) the group’s independence, their disassociation from everything around them.

There is an argument, of course, that The Fall were still in some way following the general musical trend. Independent/alternative music at the time had moved on from Jesus Jones to Oasis; less sequencers, more heads-down guitar-based anthems. But the bands in the emerging Britpop scene were plundering their parents’ Beatles, Kinks and The Who albums, not referencing The Stooges and Nuggets.

Brix’s role in the group and on the album was different to how it had been in the 80s. She was now more forceful, more independent and more inclined to stand up to Smith’s nonsense. This is reflected clearly in songs like Feeling Numb and Darling, as well as in the group’s live performances at the time, where she frequently stepped up to cover for Smith’s drunken, self-indulgent stage absences. She has less influence on the group’s overall image and public perception here, but her effect on the group’s actual sound is more notable.

Cerebral Caustic – like nearly all Fall albums – is almost wilfully inconsistent. Bonkers (whatever you might think of the concept) is excessively long for the sake of it; North West Fashion Show is one of the group’s more uninspired ‘novelty’ tracks; Satisfied and Pearl City might have been pretty good if not so casually tossed off. But three-quarters of the album is absolutely top-notch, full of dark, edgy intent that was clearly inspired by the intense, difficult and claustrophobic circumstances of its creation.

My “Version”
A bit more tricky than some others. as there aren’t really an ‘extra’ tracks to choose from…

Side 1: The Joke / The Aphid / Pearl City / Rainmaster / Feeling Numb / One Day (18:02)

Side 2: Life Just Bounces / Don’t Call Me Darling /I’m Not Satisfied / One Day (Alt. Mix) / Pine Leaves (18:33)

Rankings
Cerebral Caustic‘s sharp edges and gnarly, fuzzy garage-punk feel like the group settling back into what they do best – without reverting to any sort of cosy nostalgia. It’s undoubtedly uneven, and the tension surrounding its creation is palpable throughout. But that’s a fundamental quality of the group’s best work: the creativity that comes from a range of talented people being squeezed through an inhospitable recording process. Unfairly disparaged, it encapsulates the best of the group’s defiance. It does, admittedly, fall a little short of the uninhibited creativity of Slates or Grotesque, for example. But not too far.

  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. Cerebral Caustic
  8. I Am Kurious Oranj
  9. Room To Live
  10. The Infotainment Scan
  11. Extricate
  12. Bend Sinister
  13. Dragnet
  14. Middle Class Revolt
  15. Code: Selfish
  16. Shift-Work
  17. Live At The Witch Trials
  18. The Frenz Experiment

In The City… captures the group at a difficult time, but despite (possibly because of, to some extent) that, it’s one of the clearest, most coherent Fall live albums. It doesn’t have quite the same high points as In A Hole or America Therein, for example, but it has an impressive consistency and represents far better value than many of the group’s live releases.

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. In The City…
  5. Nottingham ’92
  6. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  7. Totale’s Turns
  8. Live In Cambridge 1988
  9. I Am As Pure As Oranj
  10. Live 1993 – Batschkapp, Frankfurt
  11. Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
  12. Live 1977
  13. Seminal Live
  14. Live In Zagreb
  15. Austurbaejarbio
  16. BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
  17. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  18. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  19. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  20. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  21. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  22. Liverpool 78
  23. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  24. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  25. Live At Deeply Vale

 

References
1The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p364

2The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p366

3The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p370

4The Big Midweek, p379

5The Big Midweek, p382

6The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p370

7The Big Midweek, p387

8You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p193

9You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p195

10The Big Midweek, p386

11Renegade, p195

12You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p196

13The Big Midweek, p398

14The Big Midweek, p397

15Ford, pp212

16The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p376

17Quoted in Ford, p235

18The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p375

19Mackay, p150

YMGTA #22 – Middle Class Revolt

“Get me a bottle of Pils and I’II be there in a minute.”

Image result for fall middle class revolt

Details
Recorded: Rochdale/Wrexham late 1993/early 1994
Released: 3 May 1994

  • Mark E Smith – vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar, spoken vocal on Symbol Of Mordgan
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums
  • Dave Bush – keyboards
  • Karl Burns – drums, guitar, vocals, kazoo

Background
To the surprise of most involved with the group, The Fall’s May 1993 UK tour saw the return of Karl Burns. Less surprisingly, Wolstencroft was less than impressed (‘I didn’t like the sound of this at all’1), echoing Paul Hanley’s concerns back in 1981. Burns had been hired to provide ‘percussion’ on the tour, rather than as an extra drummer, but Steve Hanley was also not entirely enthusiastic about his old comrade’s return:

‘What do we need a percussionist for when Si’s our drummer and Dave’s got enough effects to make it sound like a hundred people are playing percussion?’2

Hanley was also sceptical about the circumstances leading to Burns’ re-recruitment, which Smith had claimed resulted from a chance encounter in Prestwich, the bassist feeling that MES’s motivation was more that he ‘could do with an ally’3. If Burns really had only been hired for extra percussion, Simon Wolstencroft was determined to keep it that way: ‘It is very difficult for two people to drive the band without being telepathic. We weren’t, and I wanted to drive.’4 Burns was relegated to playing an Octopad, which he described as ‘a f*cking Dalek’s handbag’5. Hanley was not convinced that this added a great deal to the group’s sound, describing the new percussionist’s contributions as ‘a range of electronic drum sounds a clockwork monkey could produce’6. Burns seemed determined to secure a more substantial role, gradually increasing the amount of kit he had with him on stage. He was successful, at least in the short term: ‘Come July, Karl is infiltrating our cosy songwriting sessions. By August, he’s coming to America’7.

Hanley and Scanlon, New York 20/8/93 (photo by Dean Walcott)

The American tour in the summer of 1993 was a gruelling one, involving greater distances than any of the group’s previous excursions to the States – twenty dates in a month, and in excess of 9000 miles’ travel. By now, Burns had got his wish, and there were two full drum kits on stage. According to Steve Hanley, however, this double-drummer line-up was not recapturing the magic of the early 80s: ‘more competition than complement. They’re not gelling, they’re working against each other’8. This problem was soon solved, Burns being sacked after the eighth gig of the tour in Chicago on 28 August for causing damage to his hotel room and leaving Smith to foot the bill.

The funding for the tour was provided by Matador records, who had released The Infotainment Scan in the USA. Matador (who had recently gone into partnership with Atlantic) had only been set up in 1989, but had a big hit in 1992 with Pavement’s heavily Fall-influenced debut Slanted And Enchanted. Smith, of course, was famously disparaging of Stephen Malkmus and co. In a December 1993 Melody Maker interview, he said:

‘They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I don’t hold with that. I feel sorry for them, actually. I don’t get mad, I just can’t see the point of forming a group if you’re imitating someone else, it’s like, get a life, man. Get a real job!’

After the gig at the Roxy in Hollywood on 7 September, The Fall received a visit from an even more famous figure from the contemporary US music scene. Kurt Cobain, accompanied by Courtney Love, asked to join the group on their tour bus. It’s not clear who turned them down – Steve Hanley says it was him; Simon Wolstencroft says it was MES – but it’s possible that Cobain was intending to offer The Fall some support slots on Nirvana’s planned European tour in 1994. Smith offered his thoughts on the incident and the American grunge scene in a February 1994 NME interview:

‘…all those American bands, Pearl Jam and Nirvana are dead into The Fall. Nirvana tried to get into our bus, Courtney whatshername, the actress, tried it and we pushed her off. …they’re nothing more than glorified longhair guitar salesmen, y’know. Fucking idiots playing pub rock. Aye, pub rock, that’s what it is. If they were English you wouldn’t put up with it.’

Throughout 1993, as the group played their way across the UK, America and Europe, the main talking point about the group was becoming not the line-up or the music, but Smith’s increasingly erratic and difficult behaviour. Not that this was an overnight personality change for him, of course, but the unpredictability seemed to have increased substantially, as had the frequency of the incidents both on and off stage. During the 28 August gig in Chicago, he smashed up Dave Bush’s keyboards (apparently not feeling it was at all hypocritical to then dismiss Burns for his misdemeanours later that same night). A tour manager walked out after Smith threw a pint glass at his head; Dave Bush had hot tea thrown over him as he slept; Wolstencroft was hit in the back of the head by a beer bottle thrown by the irate singer. According to the drummer, ‘Mark’s disdain for people was becoming worse. He drank more and charmed less.’9

Smith’s behaviour wasn’t just alienating many of the people he worked with; it was starting to have a noticeable effect on the quality of the music. His on-stage antics, such as stopping and starting songs, frequently wandering off stage and berating the band mid-set led Steve Hanley to comment that, ‘each night involves struggle in some form or other’10.

This had not gone unnoticed by the music press. For example, Chris Roberts’ review of the group’s May 7 Manchester performance in Melody Maker noted that Smith spoiled their rendition of Lost In Music because he didn’t ‘even bother to recite the words, just sort of mumbles whatever here and there if anywhere, and deliberately neutralises the song’s dance dynamic… because of this wilful perversity, this Fall show isn’t as inspiring as it should be.’ He went on to describe Smith’s behaviour as ‘dated, dreary and undignified’. After a London gig in October, Johnny Cigarettes described MES as a man who had ‘started to believe his own press’ and accused the group of having ‘settled into a terminally workmanlike R&B rumble, with the dynamics and spark removed’11. The same journalist, a few months later, described Smith shoving an NME photographer and tipping a bag of expensive equipment over his head – ‘The gig that follows is a rambling, disinterested [sic] splatter through the set. Mark is obviously rat-arsed far beyond the call of duty’.

Front cover 1

The year did close relatively positively, however, with yet another Peel session and the release of a new single. Session number 17, recorded in December, saw the group run through four songs from the forthcoming album: M5, Behind The Counter, Reckoning and Hey! Student

The Behind The Counter single, was released over two weeks in December and featured four different formats (two CD singles and two 12″s). Of the five different songs that appeared on the various versions, three (the lead song, War and M5) would appear on Middle Class Revolt, albeit – as was becoming customary – in the form of slightly different edits/mixes. A not especially notable remix of Behind The Counter also featured on two of the formats.

Cab Driver was to be reworked as City Dweller on the album. This earlier version is more sparse, woozy and much looser in structure than the album take. The vocals, such as they are, mainly consist of multi-tracked samples of MES and others muttering unintelligibly a fair way back in the mix. The only distinguishable bit is the rather disturbing growling whisper: ‘He’s in there now, man: he’s listening right to us, I know he is.’

Happy Holiday is the only song that’s unique to the single(s). A disconcertingly jolly and jangly piece, it’s saved from being too bland and lightweight by some gently discordant sections and a series of rather odd vocal interjections, especially a Scottish-accented voice (possibly Burns) that extols the virtues of lamb, chicken and feta cheese. It was played live six times in 1993-94, although one was an instrumental and another lasted less than a minute.

Despite the use of all the different versions for promotion, Behind The Counter only reached number 75 in the singles chart.

Behind The Counter had been recorded at Suite 16 in Rochdale. In early 1994, the group started to record more material at The Windings in Wrexham. This, according to Simon Wolstencroft, was news to him, only learning that the sessions had started when told over the phone by Steve Hanley’s wife Heather. He arrived to find the reinstated Karl Burns on the drum stool, the group having already recorded Hey! Student12. Smith, of course, had plenty of form for this type of behaviour, and Wolstencroft can be forgiven for thinking he was being pushed out. It’s perhaps surprising (and certainly a testament to the drummer’s tenacity and fortitude) therefore, that not only was he still credited on the sleeve of Middle Class Revolt, but he was to last for another three years and three more albums.

Image result for inspiral carpets i want you

A couple of months before Middle Class Revolt‘s release, Smith made his one and only appearance on Top Of The Pops: not with The Fall, but with The Inspiral Carpets. Their single, I Want You, peaked at number 18 in the charts in March 1994; the group and MES appeared on the show on the third of the month.

Arguably the Oldham band’s best single, I Want You was a thundering blast of Madchester-flavoured 60s garage punk, which was well suited by Smith’s inimitable distorted contributions. The band and guest singer were interviewed together by Melody Maker in February. The band, all Fall fans, had contacted Smith, fully expecting to be told to ‘f*ck off’, but his response was, apparently: ‘Get me a bottle of Pils and I’II be there in a minute.’

In the interview, Smith was at pains to explain that ‘he wouldn’t normally do this kind of thing’, rather hypocritically stating that he was ‘very down on working with other people,’ considering it to be ‘f*cking phoney’. He then goes on to list a series of famous names that he claimed had asked for his collaboration, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Boy George, John Cale, The Blow Monkeys (!) and Dinosaur Jr.

The TOTP performance was sandwiched between a Michael Bolton video and Morrissey’s The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get. Smith, clad in black leather, doesn’t look entirely comfortable to begin with, almost as if he doesn’t know where to place himself; unused, perhaps, to sharing the stage with another front man. He soon warms up though, even performing a little dance (of sorts) at 1:50. Inspirals singer Tom Hingley keeps his eyes glued to the front, seemingly having to concentrate hard in order not to be put off by Smith’s melodic waywardness when they sustain the final note in the title refrain together. Not for the first (or last) time, MES avails himself (50 seconds in) of a written reminder of the lyrics, just as he had done in the official video. Entertainingly, he was later to be castigated for this by the young viewers of Saturday morning’s Live And Kicking.

Front cover

The second and final single taken from Middle Class Revolt was released a few weeks before the album. As was the case with previous singles, 15 Ways was a (very slightly) different edit from the album version. The two b-sides, Hey! Student and The $500 Bottle Of Wine would both appear on the album. The promotional device this time was a 10″ version on clear vinyl; as was the case with its predecessor, the promotion made little impact, 15 Ways only managing ten places higher than Behind The Counter by reaching number 65.

In The Wider World…
In the week of the album’s release, Ayrton Senna was killed during the San Marino Grand Prix, the Channel Tunnel was officially opened and Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the President of South Africa. In the same week, British police found human remains buried at the house of Fred and Rosemary West. The following month, Nicole Simpson (ex-wife of American football star O. J. Simpson) and her friend Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death in Los Angeles; four days later, Simpson was involved in a low-speed pursuit that was watched live by an estimated 95 million people.

In the UK singles charts, Prince’s The Most Beautiful Girl In The World was at number one. A few weeks later, Wet Wet Wet’s cover of The Troggs’ Love Is All Around began its 15-week (it felt like longer, I seem to remember) stay at the top, a feat only surpassed by Bryan Adams’ 1991 hit (Everything I Do) I Do It for You. In the album charts, Pink Floyd’s dreary The Division Bell was in the last of its four weeks at number one; it was succeeded by Blur’s Parklife.

The Fall Live In 1993-94
As noted in the previous postMCR material had started to appear in the group’s May 1993 UK tour.  The Fall toured America in August and September of that year (M5 was debuted at the first of these gigs in Philadelphia on August 19) and then played eight European dates in October.

Returning to the UK, the group played 10 dates to round off 1993. Happy Holiday was played for the first time (as an instrumental) in London on October 19; Cab Driver on 6 December (in Manchester); The Reckoning on the 27th (again in Manchester). They finished off the year with a one-off performance in Portugal.

There were a further six dates of the tour in January 1994; Hey! Student was debuted on the first of these, at Liverpool on 20 January. At the last gig before Middle Class Revolt‘s release – at Shepherd’s Bush on 29 April – Surmount All ObstaclesYou’re Not Up To Much and the album’s title track were played for the first time.

Following the album’s release, The Fall played a further 35 gigs in 1994, which included 15 North American shows in September. One of the UK dates was released recently as part of the Set Of TenLive at the Assembly Rooms, Derby 1994. I have to confess that I don’t own and haven’t heard this one. The reviews on Amazon suggest that it’s an audience bootleg that’s not great in terms of sound quality.

The Album
Middle Class Revolt (subtitled The Vaporisation of Reality) was the fourth consecutive album to feature the artwork of Pascal Le Gras. Like The Infotainment Scan, it was released in the US on Matador.

The group themselves – some of them, at least – did not rate it highly. In his book, Steve Hanley devotes only a single, non-committal sentence to it. Simon Wolstencroft thought it ‘a botched job’. Reflecting on  Smith’s Top Of The Pops performance, he said: ‘Typical, I thought, we had this sh*t album and Mark was lending his hand to a more commercial sound for another band.’13 Brix, who would return the following year to join the tour supporting the album, called it ‘tepid’ and ‘the nadir of the canon’14.

Dave Bush wasn’t keen either:

‘I wasn’t happy with Middle Class Revolt because I had a smaller role and I never really listen to it now. We recorded the album in a week and we’d done no prior writing for it. We just went in and made it up in the studio. That was amazing really, even though it was a sh*t album.’15

The music press received the album in a sympathetic if lukewarm fashion. In the NME, Ian McCann awarded it 7/10 (although he qualified this by saying that this was ‘by The Fall’s standards’, and that it would be 8/10 ‘by everyone else’s’). He noted that there were ‘signs that The Fall are pulling away from the techno-influenced looping of their two most recent albums’, which would doubtless have had Dave Bush nodding ruefully. He went on to say that, ‘within the endless list of Fall albums it makes sense’, which almost suggests a sense of nostalgia and tradition; and it was undercut by his admission that, ‘On its own, Middle Class Revolt is nothing special: we’ve been here before’.

Reviews were also mixed across the Atlantic. The Boston Globe commented that, ‘enough caustic barbs and wry witticisms snake through the dense mix to provide cerebral fun for those who like to carp along. Smith’s vocals are surrounded by this expansive spread of crazy sound – grinding guitars, floating keys, relentless rhythms, giddy pop hooks, pounding percussion.’ The Washington Post, however, felt that although Behind the Counter and Junk Man did ‘achieve the band’s characteristic clanking shuffle’, overall the album was ‘unusually smooth’ and that it was ‘counterproductive to polish up the Fall’s rant ‘n’ roll with clean keyboard riffs and a mild-mannered mix’.

It was also notable that all of the songs bar the covers were credited to ‘Smith / Scanlon / Hanley’, which seems unlikely. Wolstencroft, for example, claimed that he had a hand in writing the title track and City Dweller; it seems highly probable that he and Bush deserved a few co-writing credits here or there.

After the top ten placing of its predecessor, Middle Class Revolt only managed a rather mediocre number 48 in the album charts, the group’s lowest placing since I Am Kurious Oranj six years earlier. It was, however, an achievement that was only to be bettered by four of their remaining fifteen albums.

The Songs
15 Ways
The opening serves as rather a misleading tease, giving us twenty or seconds of Dave Bush-style lo-fi indie-techno crossover that suggests continuity from the ‘dancier’ elements of the previous three albums. But then the actual song lumbers into view, and lo and behold it’s a pretty straightforward indie-jangle-strum with a conventional verse-chorus structure. It has echoes of R.E.M. and even the dreaded Pavement. Smith’s vocal is fairly straight too, an earnest if slurred attempt to follow a recognisable melody.

Lyrically, its obvious reference points are twofold: as well as those superficial ‘analyse your life/relationship’ quizzes in Cosmopolitan et al, it also seems to parody Paul Simon’s 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. Its weary ennui may also reflect the beginnings of the deterioration in Smith and Saffron Prior’s relationship, which would end by the start of the following year. The Annotated Fall also suggests that there may be a link with Smith’s alleged fling with Lori Kramer of The Pendulum Floors and Paper Squares

It’s a solid opener: the sort of song that very few actively dislike, but rarely (if ever) features in anyone’s top ten. It was played live 43 times 1993-97; it got two further revivals – six on the 2004 US tour and four more in 2013.

The Reckoning
First played as part of the December 1993 Peel session, the track had gained a definite article by the time it appeared on the album. The opening line, ‘I phoned you up from Dallas’ (which was originally rendered on the Peel session as ‘I followed you from Dallas’) seems to have been inspired by the country song My Elusive Dreams. The ‘wandering’ tone of the lyrics (‘I’m left alone in Europe, consulting an atlas’) certainly seems to echo the sentiments of the C&W standard – ‘You had my child in Memphis, then I heard of work in Nashville / But we didn’t find it there so we moved on to a small farm in Nebraska, to a gold mine in Alaska / We didn’t find it there so we moved on’. The line, ‘you’re sleeping with some hippie half-wit, who thinks he’s Mr. Mark Smith’ is a particularly intriguing one, although its meaning/reference point is not entirely clear.

Introduced by a plaintive Scanlon arpeggio (again, quite R.E.M.-ish), The Reckoning has an affectingly melancholy and bittersweet atmosphere. Smith’s vocals are laid-back, almost lazy, but have a certain understated bite to them. His oddly off-beat timing and phrasing give the whole thing a woozy, fuzzy tone which suits well the whole ‘sat at the end of the bar after closing time’ vibe. Scanlon also contributes some nicely restrained layers of distorted fuzz (from 2:13) that gives the whole song a warm, mellow and reflective feel. 

A rather unfairly disregarded little gem, it was played 24 times, all in 1993-94.

Behind The Counter
A burst of energy to pick up the pace, it’s obvious why this was chosen as the lead single for the album. It has a swaggering, loose-limbed energy – reinforced by the regular staccato sections – that make it buzz with momentum. The Ibiza rave-style whistling, however, is rather irritating.

The lyric might be written from the point of view of ‘a lowly shop worker’16 (‘I’m getting thin / From waiting on’), but it’s too opaque to sustain much in the way of a firm analysis. Smith’s aside towards the end – ‘chill it, boy’ – is certainly a little moment worth treasuring though.

One of the most long-standing songs in terms of live performances, it was played 123 times between 1993 and 2003.

M5#1
Like Reckoning, this track underwent a slight title change between its single and album appearance, gaining a ‘#1’. Whether this is just a way of distinguishing the earlier from the later version, or whether it is a reference to junction 1 on the M5 motorway is anyone’s guess. There’s something going on here about the contrast between urban and rural life (‘It’s an evil roundabout that leads to the haywain / and you’ll never see good trains again’) but once again it’s challenging to work out exactly what. It does, however, seem that MES equates ‘crusty brown bread’ with life out in the country.

It’s a driving, forceful track, which fits well with the motorway motif, although the production here is particularly messy; it feels like everything is thrown together aimlessly and is, like much of the album, rather muddy. It was a popular live choice at the time, played 86 times 1993-97.

Surmount All Obstacles
Another track that has a notably muddy sound, but in this case it rather suits the intense and oppressive nature of the track. There’s not much of an actual song here; it’s more of a groove that MES growls over enigmatically (‘You must retreat into mysticism to find an origination’). Like much of the album, there’s a certain unrehearsed/undeveloped feeling, but its belligerent strangeness helps the track to get away with it.

It was only played live 11 times, all in 1994 (although it was used a taped intro in 1998).

Middle Class Revolt!
Like much of the album, there’s a sense with the title track of the group moving away from the indie-dance-rock crossover sound of the early 90s towards a more straightforwardly indie-guitar approach, although it still retains a fairly substantial emphasis on Dave Bush’s synths and sequencing.

The sound is quite dense, featuring layers of guitar and keyboard and very busy percussion. The melody is a little simple, obvious and repetitive, and MES sounds rather lethargic. As a result, the whole thing is a touch stodgy and sluggish, which doesn’t really suit or support Smith’s attempt to pick apart the pretensions of the middle class (for example mocking the foodie/nouvelle cuisine obsession – ‘Exhumes the cooked pigeon / his words indignant because it was cooked wrong’).

It’s uninspiring rather than unpleasant; one of those that certainly could have been much better. Simon Wolstencroft hated it, bemoaning the fact that the group ‘hadn’t learned it properly’ but were instructed by Smith to ‘just get on with it’17.

It was played live 22 times, all in 1994-95.

War
A cover version (of a Henry Cow / Slapp Happy song) constructed from Smith’s memory because the original wasn’t to be found at the time. As a result, it bears little resemblance to the original, but it’s still a strident, aggressive piece, featuring some disturbing chanting, underlying distortion and a guitar line that’s distinctly reminiscent of Martha and the Muffins’ Echo Beach.

You’re Not Up To Much
There’s something hypnotic and determined about this track; a simple, looping guitar figure (with the distinctive jangle/chorus/light distortion sound that’s prevalent throughout the album) drives it relentlessly; and there’s something at once uplifting and melancholy about the chord changes (e.g. at 0:33) where MES strains to get to grips with the melody. The mix of varying layers of backing vocals underneath Smith’s unadorned and laconic drawl is also nicely judged.

It’s a gently bitter lyric; the references to the fashion industry – ‘Too much Warehouse shop / Too many fancy hats / Clothes imitation’ suggest that it could be about Brix. She later commented that ‘two songs [on MCR] were clearly about me’18; if that was true then this would seem to be one of the likeliest candidates.

It was only played live 11 times, all in 1994.

 

Symbol Of Mordgan
It starts off interestingly enough, with some ‘flicking through the radio frequencies’ randomness. Thereafter, the majority of what we get is a faint and tinny rendition of some fairly mundane surf-rock style instrumental overlaid with a mundane football-related conversation between Craig Scanlon and John Peel. A few random cuts and reverse-play sections don’t really liven things up much. It commits the cardinal sin of making the late great John Peel seem boring.

If you’re struggling to get to sleep, there’s a transcript of the conversation here.

Hey! Student
It has an undoubtedly exuberant rickety energy about it, but it’s still The Fall re-hashing an old (very old by their standards) tune. That said, a Melody Maker interview from 1977 suggests that it was actually Hey! Student before it was Hey! Fascist.

MES occasionally identified some pretty soft targets (cf A Lot Of Wind) and this is very much a case in point. Castigating students – who to some extent must still have made up much of the group’s audience – for having long hair and wearing ‘sneakers’ (an oddly jarring Americanism coming from Smith) just feels rather childishly petulant.

He expanded on his views regarding students in a December 1993 NME interview:

‘It’s just the rate of their proliferation that scares me. Have you seen how many people have gone back to school now? Dead weird, innit? It just keeps the unemployment figures down and produces millions of half-educated old coots. I’ve got nothing against students as such, it’s just when you get old mates using words like ‘constructively’ and ‘comprehensively’… It’s all a fiddle to make us think they’ve cracked unemployment, the stupid bastards. There’s nothing worse than a half-educated man. Never forget that.’

Hanley and Scanlon in particular throw as much energy into it as they can, but it still feels like that rare thing: The Fall looking to the past. It’s hard to disagree with Simon Wolstencroft: ‘It felt like a step backward, musically’19.

It was played live 26 times 1994-97, and was revisited eight times in 2000.

Junk Man
The album’s second cover version, a take on The Groundhogs’ track Junkman from their 1971 album Split. How well you got on with this will depend on your feelings about (a) The Fall’s use of the kazoo and (b) Karl Burns’ ‘comedy’ caveman-style vocals. If you can cope with both, then it’s pleasing enough lackadaisical don’t-give-a-sh*t swagger albeit one that one can tire of pretty quickly. It was never played live.

The $500 Bottle Of Wine
Like I’m Going To Spain, there’s more interest to be had from the back story (or stories) than from the song itself. According to Steve Hanley, he talked to three goths after one of the gigs on the 1993 US tour, who explained that their dream was to be told to f*ck off by The Fall20. Hanley duly obliged. When the group arrived in Dallas, they found that said goths had sent them a bottle of red wine worth $500, which – lacking a corkscrew – they had to open with a drumstick21. Brix’s version involves her being given an expensive bottle of  1982 Pétrus by Craig Leon which Smith drank whilst she was away and declared ‘tasted sh*t’.

Given the fact that the group’s tour bus repeatedly broke down on the way to Dallas, requiring them to push it for part of the way22 and the lyric contains the line ‘Drive through the desert in 36 hours / But when we get the ending we took  / The 500 dollar bottle of wine’,  The Annotated Fall’s verdict that ‘Hanley’s account fits the lyric better’ seems justified.

On the plus side, Steve Hanley tries gamely to add a bit of funk and vigour to the song, and MES’s Elvis-style slur, ‘Get down the f***ing liquor store boy’ at the end is quite amusing. Other than that, it’s just a rather lazy piece of barroom blues, featuring some ‘funny if you were there’ singalong-in-the-studio drunken backing vocals. Another one that was never performed live.

City Dweller
An update of Cab Driver from the Behind The Counter single, City Dweller is one of the dwindling number of songs that demonstrate Dave Bush’s influence. Based around a sweeping techno-style synth riff and underpinned by a simple but forceful Hanley bass line, it’s sharper and more focused than its predecessor but retains some of its trance-like qualities.

Like M5#1, it seems to reflect Smith’s thoughts on urban life, perhaps even a sense of civic pride – ‘Get out of my city you mediocre pseud’ – which seems to be aimed at the ‘hillbilly cab driver’. However, there’s also a disparaging tone regarding Manchester’s ambitions: ‘Keep Olympic bidding’.

The production works better here than on much of the album; the dense, layered sound creates an air of mystery and confusion and it merges The Fall sound with dance/techno sensibilities more successfully than many other early 90s tracks. City Dweller (or Cab Driver, it’s difficult to say which) was only played live three times, all in December 1993.

Shut Up!
The album’s third cover saw the group revisit (The) Monks, who they’d first covered on Black Monk Theme. The original version is a fine piece of off-kilter psych-garage, and, to be fair, The Fall do do something interesting with it. They take the rather sparse and creepy original and completely pack it with layers of choppy guitar, swooping keyboards and wobbly, stuttering vocals; everything zooms about between channels seemingly at random which gives it an air of joyfully abandoned chaos. MES in particular sounds like he’s having a lot of fun.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
Like Infotainment ScanMiddle Class Revolt received a 2-CD reissue in 2006. The bonus CD (inevitably) contained the December 1993 Peel session and the tracks from the Behind The Counter and 15 Ways singles. There’s also a clutch of fairly unenlightening remixes, including three versions of the album’s title track. The ‘Rex Sargeant mix’ is a mildly interesting Mogadon-infused slouch through the song; the other two, however, are fairly unremarkable Ibiza-trance retreads that haven’t aged especially well.

Overall Verdict
At the time, Middle Class Revolt suffered from the fact that, to fans of the group, it simply didn’t contain enough in the way of new, original material. Apart from The Reckoning, Surmount All Obstacles, Middle Class Revolt, You’re Not Up Too Much and the throwaway Symbol Of Mordgan (tracks which made up less than half of the album), everything else was either a cover version or previously released. This, alongside the lazy, messy production gave the impression of inertia and a lack of inspiration.

Looking at the album retrospectively, however, it has probably suffered a little unjustly due its circumstances. There are plenty of strong tracks here: Behind The Counter (despite the whistling) is an energetic cracker; You’re Not Up Too Much, City Dweller and The Reckoning all have hypnotic charm; Surmount All Obstacles is admirably difficult and strange; M5#1 has a driven, sneering energy. Two of the three cover versions are inventive reimaginings too.

That said, the hurried, ‘this’ll do’ approach to its recording is reflected by its muddy, messy sound. There are several songs (the title track being a prime example) that sound as though they could have been a lot better with a bit more time spent on them. Overall, it has fewer low points than the previous few albums; but the there aren’t the high points such as Free Range or Paranoia Man; it feels a little flat and lacking in variety compared to its predecessors.

My “Version”
Side 1: Behind The Counter / 15 Ways / Happy Holiday / Surmount All Obstacles / War / Cab Driver (22:09)

Side 2: Shut Up! / M5#1 /Middle Class Revolt / The Reckoning / You’re Not Up To Much / City Dweller (22:11)

Rankings
Behind The Counter is, as I said, a cracker – one that might go a little higher if it wasn’t for the whistles. 15 Ways is fine, but no better than that.

  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. Free Range
  8. Behind The Counter
  9. Marquis Cha-Cha
  10. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  11. Cab It Up
  12. Cruiser’s Creek
  13. Hey! Luciani
  14. Mr. Pharmacist
  15. Couldn’t Get Ahead/Rollin’ Dany
  16. Look, Know
  17. Telephone Thing
  18. There’s A Ghost In My House
  19. Victoria
  20. Hit The North
  21. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  22. Rowche Rumble
  23. Fiery Jack
  24. Ed’s Babe
  25. High Tension Line
  26. 15 Ways
  27. It’s The New Thing
  28. White Lightning
  29. Popcorn Double Feature
  30. Why Are People Grudgeful?
  31. Oh! Brother

The material on Infotainment Scan/Extricate/Bend Sinister is stronger overall; Dragnet has an inventive energy a million miles away;  Shift-Work, however, is generally weaker. Which pits MCR against Code: Selfish. It’s very close: the latter has one track (Free Range) that towers over anything on MCR; but, for all its lackadaisical approach, there are fewer truly weak tracks on Middle Class Revolt.

  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. The Infotainment Scan
  10. Extricate
  11. Bend Sinister
  12. Dragnet
  13. Middle Class Revolt
  14. Code: Selfish
  15. Shift-Work
  16. Live At The Witch Trials
  17. The Frenz Experiment

 

References
1You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p172

2-3The Big Midweek, p354

4You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p173

5The Big Midweek, p356

6The Big Midweek, p355

7The Big Midweek, p357

8The Big Midweek, p367

9You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p182

10The Big Midweek, p367

11NME 30/10/93, quoted in Simon Ford pp225-226

12You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p184

13You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p185

14The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p369

15Ford, pp231-232

16Ford, pp228

17You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p185

18The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, p369

19You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p185

20The Big Midweek, pp370-371

21The Big Midweek, p374

22The Big Midweek, p373

YMGTA #21 – The Infotainment Scan

“There’s a lot of fellas in this country who won’t grow up.”

Image result for the infotainment scan

Details
Recorded: Rochdale, late 1992/early 1993
Released: 26 April 1993

  • Mark E Smith – vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums
  • Dave Bush – keyboards

Background
In November 1992, Phonogram announced abruptly that they were terminating their connection with The Fall: ‘Both parties felt the relationship had gone as far as it could, but we wish them every success in the future’1. The group had started recording their fourth album for the label at Cargo Studios in Rochdale (‘back to where we first started out’2) but in the uncertain financial climate, ‘jittery about the commercial potential of many of the bands on its roster’3, Phonogram had demanded to hear regular demos with which to monitor the group’s progress. (At the same time, they had jettisoned several other acts, including Julian Cope4).

This, inevitably, did not go down well with Smith:

I was fuckin’ haywire, me… How dare you fuckin’… The A&R guy on fuckin’ holiday in fuckin’ India or summat. So I rang that jerk and I go, We’ve given you three fuckin’ Top 30 LPs in three fuckin’ years, and this fuckin’ kid who’s fuckin’ just come out of fuckin’ business school wants fuckin’ demo tapes of The Fall! And he goes, Man, it’s the recession, mate…”5.

As the label had also reneged on its commitment to release the group’s records in America, Smith decided to cut and run. The settlement received from the label was never officially released, but it seems to have been anywhere between £20-£120k6. The group signed a deal with Permanent Records – a small label, but one that had a distribution deal with BMG. It was also run by John Lennard, a promoter whose relationship with the group dated back to 1985.

Front cover

The first product of this collaboration was the Why Are People Grudgeful? single, released on 5 April 1993. This was a cover, of sorts, being based on two different songs – People Grudgeful by Joe Gibbs and People Funny Boy by Lee Perry – although it also sounds a little like the riff from Kurious Oranj is being recycled. Reasonably light-hearted and bouncy, it does become pretty tiresome fairly quickly. After the disappointing sales of Ed’s Babe, Grudgeful reached a respectable number 43 in the charts. It was played live 33 times, the last performance coming in January 1994.

The b-sides on the different versions included Lost In Music and Glam Racket (like recent singles, alternative versions with only slight differences) and The Re-Mixer, a rather pointless and overlong techno-flavoured reworking of The Mixer.

The group also recorded two radio sessions around the time of The Infotainment Scan‘s release. Peel session 16 was recorded on 28 February 1993 and broadcast on 13 March, featuring Ladybird (Green Grass), Strychnine, Service and Paranoia Man In Cheap Sh*t Room. Two months later, they recorded Glam Racket, War, 15 Ways and A Past Gone Mad for Mark Goodier.

In The Wider World…
The week before The Infotainment Scan‘s release, the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidians’ compound in Waco, Texas came to an end. In total 76 people died, including the sect’s leader David Koresh. At the end of the month, Monica Seles was stabbed on court by a spectator whilst competing in Hamburg. In London, teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racially-motivated attack. The Grand National was abandoned after two false starts.

In the singles chart, The Bluebells’ Young At Heart (which had been re-released after being used in a VW advert) was coming to the end of a four-week stay at number one. R.E.M.’s Automatic For The People was at the top of the album charts.

The Fall Live In 1992-93
The Fall gigged sporadically throughout 1992. New material began to emerge from August, when their cover of Strychnine was played at Portsmouth on the 3rd. Ladybird and I’m Going To Spain followed two months later at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall; League Of Bald-Headed Men and Paranoia Man in November; Glam-Racket at the year’s final gig at Glasgow in December.

The first gig of 1993 (and the last before Infotainment‘s release) was in Sheffield on 7 April and saw Grudgeful, It’s A Curse (possibly – the limited evidence available is inconclusive) and Lost In Music debuted. A Past Gone Mad got its first outing at the next date on May 5 in Newcastle; Service followed three days later in Liverpool. By this stage, material that would emerge on Middle Class Revolt was already starting to appear in the set: Behind The Counter (instrumental at first), 15 Ways and War were all played in May 1993.

The Set of Ten box set, released at the end of 2018, includes Live 1993 – Batschkapp, Frankfurt, recorded at the group’s gig of 11 October.

Image result for Live 1993 - Batschkapp, Frankfurt

It’s a soundboard recording of generally good quality; nice and clear, if a little lacking in middle/bottom end. It’s an energetic performance, several of the songs (e.g. Ladybird and High Tension Line) being delivered at a distinctly sprightly tempo.  An instrumental version of Xanadu (as appears as part of Light/Fireworks) appears but is uncredited. The biggest point of interest is a lengthy, intense and rather sweary version of New Big Prinz in which an irritated MES appears to take someone from the audience to task at 1:21 (‘Just stop fucking around with it mate, alright?’). It’s not clear what ‘it’ is.

The Album
Despite the move to a smaller label, Infotainment achieved the group’s highest ever chart placement, reaching the heady heights of number nine in the album charts – a position they would never come close to attaining again. Smith clearly felt vindicated by his decision to leave Phonogram. In a 1993 interview, he said of the album: ‘I think that it’s the clearest thing we’ve done. You can hear everything, you know? I was pleased because we walked out of Phonogram and I thought, “Sod it. I’ll do it myself, pay for it myself.”‘

In Melody Maker, Dave Jennings commented that ‘The Infotainment Scan is the most light-hearted Fall album ever, the concentrated vitriol of the past replaced by good-humoured piss-taking.’ Keith Cameron, in the NME, said:

‘Musically. this album sees The Fall wound up a notch or ten beyond Code: Selfish… itchy techno beats and incidental burble underpin most tracks, and a palpable sense of bullish disquiet… pervades the finest moments here.’

The Songs
Ladybird (Green Grass)
A punchy, forceful opener, Ladybird‘s lyrics seem to have been at least partly inspired by that ubiquitous rock ‘n’ roll topic, the Thirty Years’ War (see here). It has a pretty straightforward structure, and is driven by a crunchy, fuzzy Scanlon riff. It’s one of a long line of Fall songs to reference insects, other examples being Neighbourhood Of Infinity, Free Range/So-Called Dangerous, Two Librans and Idiot Joy Showland.

The song opens with a potent drum/bass combination, the guitar not joining in until MES also does so. According to Gladys Winthorpe’s Emporium Of Particularly Underacknowledged Fall Compositions (quoted on the Reformation A-Z), this was also the case when it was played live:

‘During live gigs around this period, Craig did the same thing – i.e. didn’t start playing until MES’s vocals started – perhaps he was ordered to do it this way. This led to comical occurrences when MES was in full-on “do anything but sing” mode, and on more than one occasion, Craig would have to stand patiently for a couple of minutes waiting to start playing whilst MES wrestled with microphone stands, rifled through lyric sheets, looked for missing microphones, wandered off for a ciggy, etc.’

Ladybird was a frequent feature of setlists at the time, being played 64 times, but its last outing was in 1994.

Lost In Music
When the group were asked to contribute to the NME‘s charity compilation Ruby Trax, this was the other song that was in the running before they decided on Legend of Xanadu. Possibly the ultimate Fall ‘crossover’ song, it has probably been included on thousands of mix-tapes/compilation CDs by Fall fans trying to introduce non-believers into the wonderful and frightening world gently. The collision of Rodgers and Edwards’ slinky funk and The Fall’s angular dissonance makes for an intriguing mix, and whilst it does sound a little dated these days, there’s something undoubtedly endearing about it. A popular live choice 93-94, with 42 outings, but no later revivals.

Glam-Racket
Among the most aptly named of all Fall songs. Not for the first time, the group adopt a Glitter Band type stomp, and the whole thing bustles along with a fizzing energy. Whilst the main structure of the song is made up of a pretty traditional (if thumpingly assertive) four-chord structure, MES counters this with a largely melody-free series of declamations. His targets aren’t always clear, but there’s a clearly (and entertainingly) disparaging tone throughout. For example, ‘You post out sixty-page computer printouts on the end of forests’ seems to echo Smith’s comments regarding Sting from a 1991 Select interview:

‘What made me laugh was Sting’s concept album. It had a book in it about how hard it was for him to write the LP, and how concerned he was about the rain forest on 20 pages of this expensive quality paper made out of loads of trees.’

The lines ‘You are bequeathed in suede / you are entrenched in suede’ led many to believe that this was a reference to Brett Anderson and co. (given that they had supported The Fall in 1992 and demonstrated distinctly glam influences). However, in a 1993 Melody Maker interview, MES stated: ‘if you’ve got a job in the media, say in videos, you wear suede shoes and a suede jacket. They all do. The song has got fuck all to do with the group Suede, and they shouldn’t flatter themselves to think it is’.

Whoever/whatever it’s about, it’s a particularly joyful tune; one that pulls together a whole heap of influences and squeezes them into a bouncing, effervescent yet cynical tour de force. Not surprisingly, it had a relatively long live shelf-life – 79 outings 1992-97.

I’m Going To Spain
A track where the back-story is far more interesting than the song itself. Steve Bent was an actor who appeared on a variety of British soaps, including Crossroads, Coronation Street and Eastenders. In 1976, he appeared on the talent show New Faces, performing I’m Going To Spain, which described his desire to emigrate and escape from his boring factory job. The song (which included such memorable lines as, ‘The factory presented me with some tapes of Elton John / They packed me up some sandwiches / And I hate them, yes I hate the cheese and pickle’) would later appear on the Kenny Everett-compiled The World’s Worst Record Show.

All of this is entertaining and interesting enough. However, when listening to the actual song, the joke wears thin very quickly. As a b-side, it might just about have been forgivable, but listening to MES groping for the already vapid and vague melody is painful, and overall it is basically just a throwaway cover of a crap song. Remarkably, it was played live 44 times; most were 1992-97, but it did reappear: three times in 2000, once in 2003 (described here) and a final outing in 2010.

It’s A Curse
Taut and focused: the guitar sound is full and heavy on the distortion, but the choppy style makes it distinct and powerful. The synth parts blend in well, augmenting rather than distracting. MES has plenty of space to breathe here, and delivers a clear and carefully-timed performance, sounding world-weary and witheringly disdainful.

There are several lyrical highlights here: the incongruous use of ‘forsooth’, ‘by gad’ and ‘verily’; the spitting enunciation of ‘mindfuck’; and there aren’t many MES lines better than, ‘I do not like your tone, it has ephemeral whinging aspects.’

Notably, the song references ‘look back bores’ – a phrase philosophically crucial to the group’s (or Smith’s, at least) commitment to disparaging the negative effect of excessive nostalgia. It’s the first of three songs on the album to use Spangles as shorthand for this kind of lazy sentimentality.

The line ‘trying to get over’ is lifted from Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly (1:36). It was only played six (maybe seven – see above) times, all in 1993.

Paranoia Man In Cheap Sh*t Room
A driving, intense and urgent depiction of the desperation of the male mid-life crisis (‘When girls pass, puts head down, in the street’); there’s an impressively oppressive and anxious atmosphere throughout.

Smith may well have been inspired (not for the first time) by an episode of The Twilight Zone: Nervous Man in a 4 Dollar Room is about a small-time crook who gets embroiled in an argument with his own reflection in a hotel mirror. Spangles get another mention.

Paranoia was played played 17 times, 1992-95. It’s a track that captures exactly what it’s going for – anxiety, paranoia, intensity – exceptionally well.

Service
A dip in the album’s momentum, Service deploys a lethargic house-style piano motif that is distinctly sluggish and uninspiring. The fact that it bears a (very) passing resemblance to The Smith’s Oscillate Wildly is the second most interesting thing you can say about it.

The most interesting fact is that the lyrics contain the word ‘wolverine’ – also mentioned in Arid Al’s Dream, Bury, Session Musician and Clasp Hands.

It was only played 10 times, all in 1993.

The League Of Bald-Headed Men
Driven by a distorted, insistent guitar riff that threatens to break out into some more expansive thrash in places (e.g. at 1:28 and just before the three minute mark), the guitar part also bears a passing resemblance to Led Zeppelin’s Misty Mountain Hop. Like several other songs on the album, it seems to address the ageing nature of the group’s fanbase (see Ben Pritchard’s comments).

The rhythm section, however, plods along in a slightly pedestrian fashion, and while MES works hard to inject a bit of energy into the proceedings, he sounds a bit swamped by everything else going on. A solid enough tune, but there’s something just a little lumpen about it that disappoints to a certain extent.

The title might have been inspired by Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Red-Headed League (which, in Japanese, was translated as The Bald-Headed League). It was played 32 (possibly 33) times 1992-94.

A Past Gone Mad
With yet another reference to Spangles, Past is a further dig at nostalgia; in an interview with Select, MES expanded on his disdain for ‘look back bores’ –

‘There’s a lot of fellas in this country who won’t grow up…”A Past Gone Mad” is like, you turn on the telly or listen to the radio and it’s all ’60s music or ’70s music. And they go, It’s because they don’t make the tunes the same anymore… people in charge want to wallow in their past… really good groups just got an LP out get three lines, and then you get three pages on who Yes’ drummers were.’

This challenge to complacent nostalgia strikes its target with force, aided by the use of a sharp drum and bass rhythm (which the group wouldn’t return to until Levitate) that provides an urgent aggression – also matched by the sneering vocal. The contrast between the frantic electronica and the sweeping, epic guitar line is carefully balanced; MES’s lethargic, cynical drawl sits on top of it all with casual indifference. The track also includes a particularly striking line: ‘If I ever end up like Ian McShane slit my throat with a kitchen tool.’ Played 49 times, 1993-2000.

Light/Fireworks
One of the by now growing list of experimental / piss-take / filler tracks that tend to be rather divisive, there’s just about enough invention here to warrant its existence. It gives the impression of being the off-cuts from 5 or 6 different abandoned songs casually stitched together, but overall it’s the sort of thing that you’ll like if you like this sort of thing.

Why Are People Grudgeful?
See above.

League Moon Monkey Mix
A tiresomely quirky electro-remix of The League Of Bald-Headed Men; it sucks the life out of the song rather than adding anything of substance.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
Like the previous few albums, Infotainment received a double CD reissue, this one coming in 2006. The bonus disc contained the two radio sessions mentioned above, plus the tracks from the Grudgeful single. It also featured an assortment of outtakes, demos and alternative versions, most of which are pleasant enough if far from essential. There’s no real need for three more versions of Lost In Music – although, to be fair, Mix 14 is an interestingly woozy and spacey take on the song. The shambolic, folky Instrumental Outtake is also slightly intriguing, if oddly awkward and ham-fisted.

Overall Verdict
The Infotainment Scan is sometimes seen as a return to form, and it’s easy to understand this assessment. After the arguably patchy indie/dance crossover approach of Shift-Work and Code: Selfish (both of which undoubtedly still had strong moments), there’s a sense of renewed strength and independence about Infotainment. Whilst it’s true that not everything works, there’s a refreshing brashness and vigour that runs through the album. Despite its occasional mis-steps, there’s a sense of the group wrestling back control of its destiny and its essence. There’s a great deal more tension, more taught arrangements, more clearly expressed sentiments here than at any time since the 80s. And in particular, Smith seems to have a lot more to say (and many interesting ways of saying it) than he had done for a while.

The group’s (well, Smith’s) firmly espoused position regarding the negative influence of nostalgia and ‘look-back-bore’-ism finds its voice here;  it would define much of what MES would do and say thereafter.

My “Version”
Side 1: Ladybird / Lost In Music / Glam-Racket / It’s A Curse / Light/Fireworks (20:18)

Side 2: A Past Gone Mad / Paranoia Man in a Cheap Sh*t Room / The League of Bald-Headed Men / Strychnine / Lost In Music (mix 14) (20:26)

Rankings
The Infotainment Scan is more consistent and has more high-points than the 90s albums that preceded it; it falls slightly short, however of the skewed invention of Oranj. This puts it into close contention with Room To Live. It’s an interesting contrast: whereas RTL  was a deliberate departure, a knowing step away from its predecessor, Infotainment feels more like it is refining and strengthening what (recently) went before. The latter has the higher proportion (just) of tracks that don’t quite hit the mark, so the nod goes to RTL in a photo finish.

  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. The Infotainment Scan
  10. Extricate
  11. Bend Sinister
  12. Dragnet
  13. Code: Selfish
  14. Shift-Work
  15. Live At The Witch Trials
  16. The Frenz Experiment

With the singles, Grudgeful is a pleasant enough but relatively disposable entry:

  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. Free Range
  8. Marquis Cha-Cha
  9. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
  10. Cab It Up
  11. Cruiser’s Creek
  12. Hey! Luciani
  13. Mr. Pharmacist
  14. Couldn’t Get Ahead/Rollin’ Dany
  15. Look, Know
  16. Telephone Thing
  17. There’s A Ghost In My House
  18. Victoria
  19. Hit The North
  20. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  21. Rowche Rumble
  22. Fiery Jack
  23. Ed’s Babe
  24. High Tension Line
  25. It’s The New Thing
  26. White Lightning
  27. Popcorn Double Feature
  28. Why Are People Grudgeful?
  29. Oh! Brother
  30. c.r.e.e.p.

Live albums: Frankfurt 93 is a solid if unspectacular entry, but is definitely worth owning:

  1. Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
  2. In A Hole
  3. A Part Of America Therein, 1981
  4. Nottingham ’92
  5. The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
  6. Totale’s Turns
  7. Live In Cambridge 1988
  8. I Am As Pure As Oranj
  9. LIVE 1993 – Batschkapp, Frankfurt
  10. Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
  11. Live 1977
  12. Seminal Live
  13. Live In Zagreb
  14. Austurbaejarbio
  15. BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
  16. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  17. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  18. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  19. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  20. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  21. Liverpool 78
  22. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  23. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  24. Live At Deeply Vale

References

1Ford, p217

2The Big Midweek, p350

3Ford, p217

4Thompson, p130

5Select, May 1993

6Ford, p218

YMGTA #20 – Code: Selfish

“Impossible to work under Smith’s oppressive regime.”

Details
Recorded: Air Studio, London and Glasgow late 1991
Released: 9 March 1992

  • Mark E Smith – vocals, tapes
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums, keyboards
  • Dave Bush – keyboards, machines
    With:
  • Cassell Webb – vocals
  • Craig Leon – keyboards
  • Simon Rogers – keyboards

Background
Perhaps the key date of 1991 for MES was a personal one: on 27 November, he married Saffron Prior (his stag-do, which apparently involved Smith being dangled by his ankles from a window, is described in The Big Midweek pp337-340). For the group as a whole, however, the most important event was the promotion of Dave Bush to full band member. Making his full debut at the Cities in the Park festival in Manchester in August (see below), Bush’s influence on the next album was to be even greater than it had been on Shift-Work; Simon Wolstencroft noting that he ‘had started to shape The Fall’s sound in a big way’1.

During 1991, Smith became increasing convinced that Trevor Long had his hand in The Fall’s till. During the recording of High Tension Line, for example, Smith became highly suspicious when the manager arrived at the studio in a newly-purchased (although not actually new) Audi2. According to Steve Hanley, Smith’s animosity was mostly about someone having too much control of his money; trying to stop him, for example, just dipping into the group’s account to fund trips to the pub3. Smith’s suspicions would eventually lead him to take Long to court (unsuccessfully) in 1994; they were also to form the subject matter for the next album’s opening song.

In November, the group headed north, where – despite the supposed shortness of cash – they found themselves in the luxurious surroundings of Ca Va studio in Glasgow. It was a converted church still containing ‘a pulpit, mahogany panelling and crimson velvet cushioning’4 that, according to Steve Hanley, cost ‘silly money’5.

The comfortable surroundings don’t seem to have been overly conducive to productivity, however. According to Wolstencroft, the four musicians had spent much of the Autumn in Dave Bush’s home studio, but Steve Hanley states that the only song they took into the sessions was Free Range. Despite spending a month in Glasgow, they didn’t come up with a great deal of new, satisfactorily completed material: only five of Code‘s 12 tracks come from the Glasgow sessions. After Smith declared himself dissatisfied with the results of their Scottish residency (‘Mark decreed that we sounded “like a bunch of old men!” (even him))’6 the group headed to Air Studios in London, where, showing a slightly more Live At The Witch Trials-style pace to their work, they finished it off in five days.

In the new year, The Fall headed to Maida Vale to record their 15th Peel session. Broadcast on 15 February 1992, it featured Free Range, Kimble, Immortality and Return.

Front cover

The group’s first release in nearly a year (coming out on 2 March 1992, a week before the album), the single Free Range merged electronics with a more traditional guitar-driven approach in a similar vein to So What About It? and The MixerFree Range, however, demonstrated a far more hard-edged and aggressive sound that resulted in arguably the group’s best single of the 90s. Dave Thompson:

‘One of The Fall’s most ferocious …releases, war torn guitars and keyboards cut through with muttered samples, as Smith’s chilling vision of a pan-European society regulated according to the Nazi/Nietzsche-ian ideal was borne out by the near-simultaneous eruption of the war in the Balkans.’7

No song of this period better captures the potential of harnessing Bush’s crisp, layered sequences with the trusted Scanlon/Hanley/Wolstencroft axis and Smith’s drawling sneer. Unsurprisingly a popular choice live, it clocked up 107 appearances 1991-98, plus a one-off revival in 2002. Despite being accompanied by the usual cheap and shoddy video (see below), it reached number 40 in the charts, which proved to be the highest ever placing for an original Fall song. It was also the last time one of the group’s singles would grace the top 40.

The 7″/12″/CD single b-sides were all songs that would appear on the album: Everything Hurtz, Dangerous (without, at this stage, the ‘so-called’ in its title) and Return. All three – plus Free Range – are slightly different edits/mixes, although you’d be hard-pressed to spot more than the most negligible of differences.

The follow up single, released three months after the album, didn’t trouble the chart compilers at all. Ed’s Babe is a pleasant, if rather unremarkable slice of breezy pop, most notable for its catchy ‘D.I.Y.’ backing vocals. Allegedly (according to the Reformation A-Z – although it’s not clear who alleges this) featuring lyrics written by Craig Scanlon, it only made 15 live appearances, the last being in January 1994.

Front cover

Ed’s Babe was only released on 12″ and CD (a sign of the times) and both featured the same three b-sides. Free Ranger is (unsurprisingly) a remix of Free Range, one which whomps up the drum track and turns ups the reverb; this actually takes a little edge off the song, making it distractingly busy and sound somewhat hollow in comparison to the focused, driving original.

Pumpkin Head Xscapes features – like Everything Hurtz – some Slade-inspired spelling (although at least ‘hurtz’ makes some semblance of sense). It’s an uptempo, funky little number with, like Ed’s Babe, quite a catchy hook: ‘We’re coming, we’re coming, Leo’. (The Annotated Fall suggests a link with a character in a 1951 Kirk Douglas film – the scene in question is at 1:17:13 – although it’s not clear what any of the rest of lyrics might have to do with its plot.)  Steve Hanley contributes some marvellously fluid bass (see the detailed review here), but the choppy two-chord guitar – although it gives the song momentum -does pall after a while.

The Knight, the Devil and Death is an oddity as well as an obscurity in it’s one of that small group of tracks that doesn’t really sound at all like The Fall. Mostly this is because of MES’s absence (although that could be some of his trademark violin work around the one minute mark), the vocals being provided by Cassell Webb, but it also has an earnest, almost post-rock sort of vibe. It’s full of nice textures (for example the two contrasting guitar parts, one chorus-heavy, one fuzzily distorted), has a marvellously overblown finale and is an intriguing and atmospheric piece overall. Neither Knight nor Pumpkin were ever played live.

In The Wider World…
The violent break-up of Yugoslavia continued: at the end of February, 613 Azerbaijani civilians were massacred at Khojaly; on 1 March a shooting in Sarajevo saw the first deaths in the Bosnian War. White South Africans voted to end apartheid. John Major announced that a general election would be held on 9 April (this being the one with Kinnock’s infamous ‘We’re alright!’ speech). The Duke and Duchess of York announced they were to separate, one of the events that contributed to 1992 being what the Queen described as her ‘Annus Horribilis’. Punch, Britain’s oldest satirical magazine, announced its closure.

On TV, the final episode of children’s classic Rainbow aired on 9 March; shortly afterwards, the cosy comedy-drama Heartbeat was broadcast for the first time – it would go on to clock up a remarkable 372 episodes over the next 18 years. Shakespears Sister were in the middle of an eight week stay at the top of the singles chart with Stay. In the album chart, Simply Red’s Stars was enjoying the last of its three weeks at number one, soon to be replaced by Madness’ greatest hits package, Divine Madness.

The Fall Live In 1991-92
After five months off, the group undertook a 12-date European tour in May-June 1991. Several of the Shift-Work tracks got their first live outings on this tour: A Lot Of Wind, Edinburgh Man, Shift-Work, The Book Of Lies, The Mixer and The War Against Intelligence.

ticket

Their first UK gig of the year was Dave Bush’s debut as full band member. ‘Cities In The Park’ was a two-day open air show held in Heaton Park, Manchester on the weekend of  3-4 August, which featured The Wonder Stuff, The Beautiful South, OMD and Buzzcocks amongst others. The Fall acted as a last-minute replacement for The Soup Dragons, and played on the Saturday night, presumably third on the bill (see flyer below). There isn’t an official release for this gig, but there is a fairly widely-circulated bootleg available (there are also a few videos of the festival on YouTube, but The Fall seem to have been airbrushed from the event). There’s a review of the performance here.

Image result for Cities in the park - 1991 - Heaton Park, Manchester

The bootleg, although of no better than average audience-recorded sound quality, is an interesting listen. The group open with the first performance – albeit a highly truncated one – of Two Face! which is played at a cracking tempo (about 50% faster than the studio version). Free Range also gets its debut, and sounds impressively fierce despite the tinny sound. There’s some sort of sound failure during Pittsville Direkt, leaving Wolstencroft, Hanley and Smith to perform an almost dub version of the song. The closing Shift-Work is also notable for some energetic thrashing from Craig Scanlon that gives the track a totally different feel to the melancholy album version.

The Fall played three further gigs (in Manchester – where Time Enough At Last was debuted – Newcastle and Coventry) before making their second consecutive appearance at the Reading Festival. A rather shaky video of the whole performance (see below) shows MES sporting a striking gold lamé shirt and deploying a headmaster-style lectern for his lyric sheets. In contrast to the 100mph version of Two Face! played three weeks earlier, the opener Time Enough At Last is played at an almost funereal pace. In a post-gig interview for Radio One8, Hanley and Scanlon expressed doubts that The Fall had the right equipment or songs for such a large festival; however, the sluggish Time aside, the video shows the group on fine, fierce form.

The group rounded off 1991 with five UK dates in December, where Gentlemen’s Agreement, Return, Birmingham and Dangerous were given their first outings.  The journey back from the Blackpool gig on the 3rd was to be immortalised in Crew Filth (see below).

The group only played around half as many dates in 1992 as they had the previous year, but still managed to visit Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Greece. A recording of the one of first gigs of the year, from Nottingham Polytechnic on 15 March, was released in 1998 as Nottingham ’92.

Nottingham ’92 is (and this is something that you’re not able to say often enough) a really good quality Fall live album. The sound is about 8.5/10 – a generally crystal clear soundboard recording with just a few moments of imbalance – and it captures the group in top form. There are several highlights and/or moments of interest: ‘It’s a bit like James’ MES announces at the beginning of Free Range; the vivacious rendition of Married, 2 Kids (its first performance); Smith’s disparagement of Immortality (‘I’m already fed up with this, it sounds like Italian disco, let’s wrap it up’ – at 3:08); plus a stomping version of New Big Prinz (incredibly joyful, fresh and forceful, despite it being its 64th performance in four years).

The support act on the 1992 UK tour was Levitation, the band formed by guitarist Terry Bickers following his departure from The House of Love. They didn’t last long, leaving the tour after only three dates, alleging that it was ‘impossible to work under Smith’s oppressive regime’. MES countered that the band had taken up to an hour and a half sound-checking and were using too much dry ice. One of the replacements on the rest of the tour was the as-yet unsigned Suede.

The Album
For Code: Selfish, released in March 1992, the group once again used Pascal Le Gras’ distinctive artwork. Craig Leon once again produced, this time joined by Simon Rogers (his first involvement with The Fall since Frenz); both also contributed keyboards.

Dave Bush wasn’t the only one trying to pull The Fall away from a traditional guitar/bass/drums sound. Smith, always sceptical about the whole ‘Madchester’ craze, was increasingly derisive of the contemporary tendency to hark back to the mainstream guitar rock of the 70s. In a February 1992 NME interview, he complained that there were ‘too many bloody guitar bands’ and ‘cheap Sonic Youth imitators’ – ‘all that crap’ that he’d been trying to ‘go against’ in 1979.

‘That’s why I keep The Fall at arm’s length, on the other side of town. I’ve seen all this shit before. It’s not just because I’m old, it’s because it’s no good. I’m into having a bit of taste, I’ve got taste, The Fall have got taste. That’s why I formed the bloody group in the first place, so I could hear something I like.’

The album sold well, reaching number 21 in the charts, just four short of Shift-Work. Reviews were again positive: in the NME, Dele Fadele described it as a ‘triumph’, a ‘bouquet of barbed wire, emblazoned “F- You”, that even the uninitiated will find hard to ignore’. David Cavanagh in Select was one of the few dissenting voices, declaring Code to be a ‘disappointment’ and ‘the worst Fall album in years’ (although his credibility is severely dented by his description of Free Range as ‘pretty bitchin’).

The Songs
The Birmingham School Of Business School
After a disconcertingly wonky and spooky opening that’s reminiscent of Black Sabbath, we get a brief burst of house/techno before the group lurch into a rattling assault that, despite MES’s repeatedly derisive comments about ‘Madchester’, is not a million miles from a lot of what in the early 90s was classed as ‘baggy’. However, despite its superficially contemporary feel, it would be unfair and simplistic to compare Birmingham to the likes of Groovy Train. There’s a whole heap of depth and edge here that was almost entirely lacking from the general indie-dance crowd of the early 90s. That said, you can’t help feeling that this song might have been even more powerful if it had been recorded ten years earlier or later…

Despite that, Birmingham is undoubtedly an expansive and ambitious opener: Smith’s vocals (including the somewhat disturbing ‘wah-wah-wah’s) are effectively menacing and sneering throughout; Simon Wolstencroft and Steve Hanley lay down a formidably solid rhythm track. But it’s Craig Scanlon that’s the star here. As well as the cascading harmonics that populate the rhythm throughout, he forges a meandering yet focused bluesy solo guitar that’s just a joy to listen to. It complements the song deftly; it treads the fine line between considered restraint and abandoned wig-out with careful balance. It is, as Stewart Lee observed, a guitar solo ‘that sounds contemptuous of the very idea of guitar solos’.

The lyric is largely aimed at Trevor Long’s management practices (‘the theft of its concealment’) and includes a recorded answerphone message to him, but also finds time to have a dig at Birmingham’s view of itself as Britain’s ‘second city’ – ‘Olympic bidding again and again’ referring to the city’s bid for the 1992 Olympics. It was played 28 times, all in 1991 and 1992.

Free Range
See above. (But re-read it while sticking it on at full volume, obviously.)

Return
A rather thin idea stretched over four minutes, there’s not a lot actually wrong with Return, but it’s rather uninspired and one-paced. The guitar and keyboard riff churn away aimlessly, whilst MES meanders away casually, not really sounding particularly engaged with what he’s doing. In the booklet accompanying the 2007 reissue, Daryl Easlea rather overstated its worth: ‘a cynical masterpiece over a violent chug’. Really ought to have been a b-side at best. Had more setlist longevity than much of the album though, being played 39 times 1991-96.

Time Enough At Last
A gentle melancholy strum with a fairly conventional structure. Smith’s vocals strike a moving tone, and there’s an affecting sense of ennui. Like Return , it feels like a thin idea being stretched out, although not to the same extent; its plaintive air and wobbly melody just about carry it successfully through its four minutes.

Time is one of several Fall songs where MES may well have taken inspiration from The Twilight Zone, in this case a 1959 episode with exactly the same title as the song. In it, Burgess Meredith (who will always be The Penguin to me) plays a man who loves reading (but never has the time) who survives a nuclear war and finds himself surrounded by books in the ruins of a public library. (I won’t spoil the ending, but should you wish you can see it here.)

One of Ben Pritchard’s favourite Fall songs, apparently. Only on the setlist 1991-92, played 28 times.

Everything Hurtz
Given Smith’s recreational habits, it’s perhaps surprising that there aren’t more hangover-related Fall songs. Whilst it isn’t his most insightful lyric, ‘pursuing the fuel’ is a pleasing euphemism for a heavy night. He certainly captures that dreaded morning-after feeling: painful (‘big fat pain in my chest bone’), skint (‘got a big fat no no in my chequebook’), sensitive to noise (‘got the disease tinnitus’) and struggling to speak properly (‘speakin’ like I’ve got Tourette’s’).

It’s also not the group’s most musically inventive moment, being a fairly standard indie-rock chug driven by a fuzzed-up but rather restrained guitar riff. MES’s litany of woes almost give it a bluesy feel, but there’s only just about enough Fallness to the sound to stop it being snared in the early-90s indie-dance-crossover trap. It was played 29 times 1992-96.

Immortality
Described by the NME as ‘Techno being shagged by The Fall’s steamrolling rock machine’, Immortality is basically a more mainstream and carefully controlled version of Birmingham. It grinds away dutifully, but suffers from a general atmosphere of ordinariness. Inoffensive but verging on dull. Smith himself (at its first live performance) declared ‘I’m already fed up with this, it sounds like Italian disco, let’s wrap it up …. ‘,  which may well explain why it only got two further outings, all in March 1992.

Two-Face!
After teasing us with a snippet of some of Dave Bush’s indie/techno crossover, Two-Face! suddenly lurches into action, lolloping along with bouncy funk. Simon Wolstencroft is particularly excellent here, certainly living up to his ‘funky Si’ moniker. The NME, rather bafflingly, described it as ‘like sprinkled sandpaper’. hippriestess does a far better job:

‘Scanlon and Hanley are enjoying themselves for sure, weaving around Wolstencroft and each other with aplomb, Scanlon in particular firing inventive chords into the heart of the beast in all the right wrong places. They are soon joined by Bush’s buzzing descending synth line which is approximately the size of Finland and, of course, by MES. This is one of those songs where Smith functions as a fifth instrument, his delivery a rhythmic device but as sonically unruly as one would expect.’

It’s not without its shortcomings: it’s not Smith’s most inventive lyric, and it’s also rather longer than it needs to be. Nonetheless, Two-Face! has enough energy and humour to make it one of the strongest tracks on the album. It was only played live seven times, all in 1992.

Just Waiting
And so we come to the obligatory cover version… and it’s one of the better ones. It was originally recorded by Hank Williams (as ‘Luke The Drifter’). Unusually for a Fall cover, MES actually adds melody to the song: Williams’ version is delivered as spoken word, whereas Smith adds a wry, lop-sided drawling melody. He also adds to the lyrics in his inimitable fashion: ‘The cretin is waiting for U2 to come on MTV again / but the producer is waiting for the blonde bird’.

The middle eight is a little stilted, but other than that it swings along with a joyfully deadpan swagger. The metronomic drums leave it in danger of straying into monotony, by Craig Scanlon rescues it halfway through with some nicely understated country/blues guitar work. The only clearly identified live performance of the song was on 3 October 1992 at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester; however, the live version that features on the Oswald Defence Lawyer compilation is (according to the Reformation A-Z) ‘definitely not‘ the same performance. Either way, it clearly wasn’t played very often.

So-Called Dangerous
Like Immortality and Return, Dangerous is inoffensive but feels a little thin, underdeveloped and uninspired. It’s a rather aimless indie-dance-rock shuffle that spends its nearly four minutes going nowhere very fast. By far the most interesting thing about the song is Peter Kimpton’s explanation of how he might have inspired the lyric ‘Same again, sir? / How can you have the same again?’ It was played twice in December 1991, and seven more times the following year.

Gentlemen’s Agreement
A less than promising opening comprises of some rather limp and lacklustre piano chords (that sound like a slowed-down sample from an Italian house track) and a somewhat banal Casio-keyboard style drum pattern. Overall, it does verge on the shapeless and soggy, but Scanlon’s delicate guitar and – above all – Smith’s genuinely tender vocal just about rescue it from mediocrity.

Simon Ford9 suggests that it’s another song about Trevor Long; Simon Wolstencroft that it was about sexual etiquette whilst on tour10 – neither interpretation is really borne out by the lyric itself. It was played 26 times 1991-92.

Married, 2 Kids
An unusual one for The Fall in terms of musical style: the swinging rhythm, slide guitar and r’n’r piano give it a barroom blues feel; you could almost imagine the Stones covering it. Smith’s laid-back drawl suits both the musical feel of the song and the lyrical content well. His vignette of married life is cynical and depressing, as you might expect, but also laced with dark, wry humour: ‘aftershave like mustard’; ‘peculiar goatish smell’. The Annotated Fall points out an interesting connection: the Thomas Harris novel The Silence of the Lambs (the film version of which used Hip Priest as part of its soundtrack) contains these lines:

‘Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it’s the smell of schizophrenia.’

The Ian McCann NME interview also links the track to Trevor Long: ‘There’s a tie-in with “Married Two Kids”: Mark says the guy only started conning him once he’d had two kids.’ It was only played live 11 times, all in 1992. Its engagingly bleary-eyed swagger ought to have rounded the album off nicely…

Crew Filth
One of the most divisive issues (there are, of course, hundreds) amongst Fall fans is regarding the merits of the various piss-take/experimental/filler tracks that pepper the group’s back catalogue. Some find them tedious, self-indulgent and pointless; others celebrate their inventiveness and humour. Personally, I generally fall into the latter camp. However, even I – and the people that I know who are in the same camp as me – struggle to find anything positive to say about Crew Filth.

Recorded on the tour bus as the group returned from their 3 December gig in Blackpool, it’s basically the sound of a pissed-up group pissing around to a Casio keyboard preset. At best self-indulgent and tedious; at worst it flirts with being offensive – the line about ‘we kept our backs to the walls’ has, to be charitable, not aged well. Skulking at the end of the album, this may well be The Fall song with the smallest ownership-to-listens ratio. Rather a low point to conclude things.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
A 2002 CD reissue included Ed’s Babe and Free Ranger. Like Extricate and Shift-WorkCode: Selfish received a double CD reissue from Fontana in 2007. The bonus CD rounded up all the b-sides plus the 1992 Peel session; it also added two further tracks.

Legend of Xanadu was a cover of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich’s 1968 number one. It was The Fall’s contribution to the 1992 NME 40th anniversary charity album, Ruby Trax, in which the group found themselves nestled between the unlikely pairing of Cud’s version of Status Quo’s Down Down and Sinéad O’Connor’s take on Doris Day’s Secret Love.

Xanadu is lively enough, and is certainly a more successful charity contribution than A Day In The Life; however, it does feel a little carelessly tossed off, and while you don’t go to The Fall for melodic crooning, MES is woefully tuneless.

Noel’s Chemical Effluence, however, is an obscure little gem, albeit one that had already been released on 1995’s semi-live double album The Twenty-Seven Points (and will be covered properly when we get to that release).

Overall Verdict
Whereas Shift-Work flirted with contemporary indie-dance crossover approaches, Code: Selfish embraced them more openly. Although So What About It? and The Mixer made clear use of Dave Bush’s ‘machines’, they were generally traditionally structured songs that were ‘flavoured’ with a spot of techno. Several songs on Code, however, are clearly constructed via the ‘programming in Dave’s home studio’ approach. When this comes off – most notably with Free Range – it gives the group an impressive contemporary bite. Too often, though, it leads to shapeless grooves like Return and Immortality that meander aimlessly.

In a sense, songs like Immortality revisit the ‘repetition, repetition, repetition’ mantra of old. In the early 80s – and various other points in their back catalogue – The Fall made a career-defining virtue out of relentless repetition. However, where this worked effectively was when it was supported by wildly inventive creativity, especially lyrically. The songs on Code that rely on this approach simply lack this quality. Compare, for example, ImmortalityEverything Hurtz or Return to C’ n’ C-S.Mithering or The N.W.R.A.

As with all Fall albums, however, there’s still a lot to celebrate. It contains one of their most satisfying covers; their strongest, most vital single of the 90s; and ‘out of nowhere’ crackers like Married and Two-Face! An entry point for those not quite ready for the more difficult aspects of the canon? Yes. Frustratingly patchy again? Yes.

My “Version”
Despite the fact that we have entered the age of the CD with this album, my versions will always have a side one and a side two…

Side 1: The Birmingham School of Business School / Free Range / Pumpkin Head Xscapes / Time Enough at Last / The Knight the Devil and Death (21:44)

Side 2: Two-Face! / Just Waiting / Married, 2 Kids / Ed’s Babe / Gentlemen’s Agreement (21:14)

Rankings
Starting with the easiest decision, Nottingham ’92 is a strong entry in the wildly uneven world that is Fall live albums. Whilst lacking some of the high points of the top three, it captures this incarnation of the group extremely well, both in terms of sound quality and performance.

1 Live To Air In Melbourne ’82
2 In A Hole
3 A Part Of America Therein, 1981
4 Nottingham ’92
5 The Legendary Chaos Tape / Live In London 1980
6 Totale’s Turns
7 Live In Cambridge 1988
8 I Am As Pure As Oranj
9 Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
10 Live 1977
11 Seminal Live
12 Live In Zagreb
13 Austurbaejarbio
14 BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
15 Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
16 Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
17 Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
18 Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
19 Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
20 Liverpool 78
21 Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
22 Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
23 Live At Deeply Vale

With the singles, Ed’s Babe is pleasant enough, but struggles in comparison to many of the other releases so far. Free Range, however, is well worth its place in the top ten at this point.

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 Free Range
8 Marquis Cha-Cha
9 Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
10 Cab It Up
11 Cruiser’s Creek
12 Hey! Luciani
13 Mr. Pharmacist
14 Couldn’t Get Ahead/Rollin’ Dany
15 Look, Know
16 Telephone Thing
17 There’s A Ghost In My House
18 Victoria
19 Hit The North
20 Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
21 Rowche Rumble
22 Fiery Jack
23 Ed’s Babe
24 High Tension Line
25 It’s The New Thing
26 White Lightning
27 Popcorn Double Feature
28 Oh! Brother
29 c.r.e.e.p.

Code has similar shortcomings to Shift-Work that keep it below Dragnet. Whilst it is more uneven than its predecessor, its high points elevate it above Shift-Work. Just.

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 Extricate
10 Bend Sinister
11 Dragnet
12 Code: Selfish
13 Shift-Work
14 Live At The Witch Trials
15 The Frenz Experiment

References

1You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p164

2The Big Midweek, p346

3The Big Midweek, p347

4You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p164

5The Big Midweek, p346

6The Big Midweek, p347

7Thompson, p125

8Ford, p212

9Ford, p215

10You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p164

YMGTA #19 – Shift-Work

“His tongue is dirty. And his musical ideas, very clear.”

Details:
Recorded: FON Studios, Sheffield and elsewhere late 1990 / early 1991
Released: 15 April 1991

  • Mark E Smith – vocals
  • Craig Scanlon – guitar
  • Steve Hanley – bass
  • Simon Wolstencroft – drums, keyboards
  • Kenny Brady – vocals, fiddle
    With:
  • Cassell Webb – vocals
  • Dave Bush – machines
  • Craig Leon – organ, guitar
  • Martin Bramah – guitar (Rose)
  • Marcia Schofield – flute (Rose)

Background
Shortly after Extricate‘s release in February 1990, Smith moved away from Edinburgh. In a Melody Maker interview he described the experience as ‘pretty painful’:

‘I was nearly in tears and I went to this pub round the corner carrying all these plastic bags full of me clothes and stuff.’

Home addresses became somewhat irrelevant in 1990, however, as the group embarked on a gruelling year on the road (see the ‘live’ section below).  On the tour, Bramah and Schofield became an item (or, as Steve Hanley rather coyly puts it, ‘Martin and Marcia discovered just how much they have in common’1). Simon Wolstencroft noted that the two of them were spending all their spare time on tour together – ‘visiting museums and the like… once we were off stage we didn’t see them’2.

Not for the first time, group members’ relationships – either within or outside The Fall -proved to be an anathema to Smith. Steve Hanley described MES as being ‘unable to handle being around a couple on tour that he’s not a part of himself’3; Wolstencroft even suggested that the parsimonious Smith was irritated by a paid-for hotel room going to waste4.

Smith’s relationship with Schofield had been under strain for some time. According to Wolstencroft, she described it as having been ‘all I quit/you’re fired/I quit/you’re fired for a few months’5. The principal point of conflict had been regarding her working with other musicians, which Smith – somewhat hypocritically, given his recent collaboration with Coldcut – declared to be unacceptable.  In the summer of 1990, she had decided to leave, but was persuaded to return for the Australian tour by the group’s new manager Trevor Long. However, it was Long who informed her and Bramah in the small hours of 15 July (after their final Australian gig) that they were booked on the next flight home.

As ever, Smith’s interpretation of the sackings differed somewhat from those of the rest of the group:

‘Martin was always a fill-in, really, and Marcia is a brilliant keyboards player, great image and all that. But I wanted to change the sound, make it even more sparse than it is already. I think the two of them were really out of sync with us, so I sent ‘em home.’6

Despite Smith’s desire for a stripped-down sound, it was clear, given the nature of most of the songs in the current set, that someone was going to have to fill in on keyboards. Saffron Prior (at the time the group’s office manager and by November 1991 the second Mrs Smith) attempted to take on the role, but was unable to master even the five-note riff to Hit The North7. In the end, at Steve Hanley’s suggestion, roadie Kevin “Skids” Riddles (‘eighteen stone of hairy-arsed Motorhead roadie’8) who had previously played in metal bands Tytan and Angel Witch stepped in to play keyboards on the rest of the tour, plus that August’s Reading Festival.

Front cover

The group’s next single, released in August, had been recorded before Bramah and Schofield’s departure. White Lightning was a rockabilly number first recorded by The Big Bopper in 1958 and covered by George Jones in 1959. The Fall’s take is entertaining enough, but its ramshackle, drunken collision between Chuck Berry and Status Quo verges on end-of-a-long-night karaoke and feels a little lazy and obvious. It was one of the group’s most frequently played songs, however, clocking up 275 performances, often as an encore. It reached 56 in the singles chart.

The b-side, Blood Outta Stone, is a great deal more interesting. A 60s-style psychedelic jangle, with all manner of odd background sound effects and a really strong MES performance, it’s a bit of a mystery as to why this wasn’t the a-side.

The 12″, limited numbered edition 12″ and CD (entitled The Dredger EP) featured a variety of extra tracksZagreb is driven by a forceful delay/wah-wah string-bending guitar line and a techno-flavoured sequencer and features an enigmatic MES performance. It was played 24 times, including a one-off revival in 1999. The longer version (Zagreb Movements I+II+III) morphs into The Funeral Mix (one of the other extra tracks) towards its conclusion. Funeral itself is a pretty dull slab of instrumental indie-dance crossover that was never played live.

Life Just Bounces (which appeared on the 12″ and CD of The Dredger) marks the first appearance of one of the group’s finest songs. This version is a little on the sluggish side compared to later ones, but it’s worth noting how excellent Mr Wolstencroft’s drumming is here. (We’ll get back to this tune on subsequent posts.)

A promo 7″ of the single came with a miniature bottle of White Lightning tequila.

Promo tequila miniature

In December, the group released their fourth single of the year. High Tension Line‘s title (and refrain of ‘step down’) seems to have been inspired9 by The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, a 1962 piece by avant garde composer La Monte Young. However, beyond the title, it’s hard to see much of a connection between Young’s minimalist piece and HTL‘s accessible and relatively melodic indie-jangle. The single is a strong enough tune and a fairly solid entry in the group’s collection of a-sides, if not especially ground-breaking. In Sounds, Andy Peart rather overstated the case with his description of ‘a raw, rough thunderbolt built on hypnotic repetition, deadpan aggression and melancholy’. In the same issue, Andy Stout veered the other way, rather harshly describing it as, ‘innocuous, inoffensive and ultimately as bland and tasteless as a microwave chicken tikka’. Perhaps due to it being the group’s fourth single release of the year, it sold relatively poorly, its peak of number 97 in the charts being The Fall’s lowest performance since Living Too Late four years earlier. In the Andy Peart interview, Smith expressed indifference to such matters:

‘I don’t care about the Top 40 but I have to pretend I do. Anybody who goes on Top Of The Pops is a ponce.’

The video for the single is a rather cheap, confusing and shoddy affair. It features Smith in an SS uniform, albeit with the insignia covered up. The relevance of this is unfathomable (as bzfgt on The Annotated Fall puts it, ‘if it provides any valuable clues I’m too thick to dope it out’). Smith’s explanation, as ever, didn’t really clarify matters:

‘I made everyone cover up the SS symbols and swastikas. I’m very anti-Nazi, actually. What they did was criminal. They put German art back about one hundred years.’ 10

The b-side featured the unlikely sound of The Fall attempting a Christmas song. Xmas With Simon, featuring jaunty whistling, cheesy keyboards (courtesy of Wolstencroft) and some startlingly delicate and plaintive (‘Jesus… it’s Christmas’) backing vocals is at once terrible, hilarious and delightful. You can’t help but wonder what committed Christians would make of the notion that the messiah’s birth surrounded by animals led to ‘no set amount to the number of diseases’ or his death at 33 being ‘as good a time as any’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was never performed live.

The bonus track on the 12″ was Don’t Take The Pizza. Oddly, Simon Rogers received a writing credit for the song, despite having left the group three years earlier and claiming in a 2006 interview that he didn’t even remember the track. Featuring a bouncy bass line reminiscent of Oh! Brother, it’s solid enough if not exactly indispensable; it does however contain one of Smith’s best put-downs: ‘you dopey randy acid clone’. It was played only five times, all towards the end of 1990.

Shortly before Shift-Work’s release, the group recorded their 14th Peel session. Broadcast on 23 March 1991, it featured The War Against Intelligence, Idiot Joy Showland, A Lot Of Wind and The Mixer.

In The Wider World…
On the 9 April, Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union; meanwhile, Soviet troops began to leave Poland. In the UK, George Carey became Archbishop of Canterbury. The children involved in the Orkney Islands satanic abuse case were returned to their families after the case was thrown out of court. The consistently unpopular Poll Tax (Community Charge) was replaced with Council Tax.

On TV, Prime Suspect (starring Helen Mirren) was aired for the first time. Monty Python’s Life Of Brian had its TV premiere twelve years after its release, as part of Channel 4’s Banned series. On Terry Wogan’s chat show, former footballer David Icke gave an infamous interview where he appeared to claim to be the son of God. (The comments on that YouTube video are as startling as the video itself.)

In the UK singles chart, Chesney Hawkes’ The One And Only was in the middle of a five-week run at number one. The unspeakably tedious Eurythmics were at the top of the album charts (where they would stay for nine weeks) with a greatest hits compilation. You can see the Top Of The Pops chart rundown from two weeks before Shift-Work‘s release here.

The Fall Live In 1990-91
Following Extricate‘s release the Fall played 75 gigs in 1990. A punishing schedule saw them perform 20 UK dates in March: Popcorn and Chicago debuted on the first night in Poole; Theme from Error Orrori and British People In Hot Weather followed on the 8th at Liverpool; Butterflies 4 Brains first appeared on the 22nd in London.

poster

On the 29 March, the group opened the European leg of their tour in Amsterdam, which was followed by a further 19 dates that took in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and the Balkans, finishing on the 26 April in Paris. Zagreb was first played in Belgium on 31 March and White Lightning in Berlin on 9 April.

After a couple of US dates in May, the group headed off to Australia and New Zealand for a 12-date visit in June and July, Life Just Bounces receiving its debut at the last of these gigs.

poster

Following Bramah and Schofield’s sacking, The Fall played three Japanese dates before returning to the UK for the Reading Festival. The group appeared second on the bill on the last night of the festival. They opened with the first ever (albeit instrumental) performance of You Haven’t Found It Yet and also debuted Blood Outta Stone, which you can see from 6:30 in the video of the whole performance below.

(I’m not sure who ‘Martin Shepherdson’ is…!)

The group ploughed on into Autumn and Winter. They played Israel and Greece in October, before returning to the UK for a one-off gig in Norwich where High Tension Line and Don’t Take the Pizza got their first outings. On the 1 November, they played at a festival in Barcelona. ‘El Festival de Tardor’ (Autumn Festival) lasted for two months and featured hundreds of artists (including Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson) as well as dance, street music and theatre. You can read an intriguing review here – ‘Smith doesn’t sing, but rather he goads, bellows, vomits and corrupts. His tongue is dirty. And his musical ideas, very clear.’ This gig was also notable as it saw the start of Dave Bush’s association with the group, at this stage working backline.

The Fall rounded off their marathon year with a further dozen UK dates in December, where Idiot Joy Showland (on the 2nd in Nottingham) and Pittsville Direkt (6th, Edinburgh) were debuted.

The Album
Much of Shift-Work was written only a short time before the recording sessions. According to Steve Hanley, the group had only recorded four songs with Grant Showbiz in late 1990, and by January still only had ‘a handful of rough ideas for the rest’11. Dave Thompson asserts that ‘much of the new album was written on the very eve of the recording sessions, as Smith raced to replace the clutch of collaborations that he and Martin Bramah had already completed before the guitarist’s departure’12.

As a result, unlike previous albums, the majority of songs on Shift-Work were not repeatedly ‘road-tested’ on stage before their release. Only Idiot Joy Showland, You Haven’t Found It Yet and Pittsville Direkt were performed before the album went on sale. Most were not played until the European dates in May that marked the group’s return to the stage after the exertions of 1990. It is also notable that most Shift-Work songs had (even by The Fall’s standards) only a brief shelf-life on the setlist. Only Idiot Joy Showland racked up a significant number of appearances (92); You Haven’t Found It Yet, A Lot Of Wind and The Book Of Lies didn’t make it into double figures and So What About It?Rose* and Sinister Waltz were never performed live at all. Also, there were no ‘late period revivals’ for these songs – the performance of Idiot Joy Showland in December 1997 at Bristol was the very last outing for any of the dozen songs on the original LP. Only White Lightning (a bonus track on the CD) had any real longevity.

The cover art was provided by Pascal Le Gras, a French artist who went on to have a long association with the group. A Fall fan from the moment he heard the group on radio (‘I was stupefied and immediately ran to the record shop’13), he approached Smith after the group’s Paris gig in April 1990 to offer his services. Smith described him as ‘a sublime genius’, even if he could ‘hardly understand a word he’s saying’14.

Another notable feature of the album was the emergence of Dave Bush. Bush was an experienced sound engineer who had worked with The Clash and Echo and the Bunnymen, who started working with The Fall in late 1990. He was not initially a fan of the group (he thought they sounded like ‘Les Dawson playing piano’15) but soon became so. Smith seems to have taken a shine to him, and although he only got a ‘with’ credit on Shift-Work (for ‘machines’) Steve Hanley observed that during the time that the album was recorded it was ‘starting to feel like he’s more band than crew’16. Simon Wolstencroft remembers he, Steve Hanley and Craig Scanlon ‘spending more and more time at Dave’s home studio in Stockport, getting to grips with the new writing method, on a PC’17.

Once Bush became a Fall enthusiast, he became determined to drag the group into the 90s: ‘When I hear you guys play, I’m hearing extra sounds in my head that I can produce alongside… you [SH] and Craig make a good noise together. But it’d sound banging with loops and beats and sequences and sub-bass’18. Although Bush did not receive any songwriting credits on Shift-Work, his influence can already be heard in the electronics on So What About It? and The Mixer.

*On the Fall Online Forum, asiffromheaven says that he is sure that the group played the song in Sydney on 11 July 1990.

NME
NME Review 20 April 1991

Smith was nervous about how the album would be received19, but his fears proved to be groundless as the music press once again queued up to lavish the group with praise. In the NME, Stephen Dalton gave the album full marks, describing it as a ‘no-contest knockout’ whose songs came ‘thundering out of the trenches with all barrels blazing’. In Melody Maker, Jon Wilde thought it represented The Fall at their ‘awkward, bloody-minded, self-respecting best’20. The public seemed to agree: Shift-Work reached number 17 in the album chart, their highest placing yet.

The Songs
So What About It?
The album’s opener defiantly announces the group’s new direction. Smith’s cry of ‘Fall advice’ seems to occasionally morph into ‘Fall advance’ (to these ears anyway – and to bzfgt‘s) which appears fitting given the track’s venture into sequenced electronica. The combination of Scanlon’s crunchy, fuzzy power chords and the hard-edged synth sequencing gives it an almost anthemic tone, which flirts with feeling dated but actually holds up pretty well in retrospect. It’s touch and go though: despite Simon Wolstencroft’s assertion (which titled the last entry) there is something just a little ‘baggy’ about SWAI?‘s sound; you can hear it especially in the opening seconds where the guitar/dance rhythm combination almost puts you in mind of The Farm et al. Smith’s drawling, disdainful nearly melodic (if occasionally off-key) vocals strengthen the sense of defiance captured in the track’s title.

Idiot Joy Showland
Perversely – perhaps with intentional irony – SWAI?‘s musical nod to the contemporary fashion for indie/dance crossover is immediately followed by Smith’s famously withering put-down of the whole Madchester scene. In a Sounds interview in December 1990, he claimed that, ‘I’m very glad now that I stated at the beginning of the year that The Fall want no part of the Manchester scene.’ He expressed derision for the likes of Shaun Ryder and co. – ‘The Happy Mondays upset me very much… they practise their north Manchester accents’.

Showland nails completely the shallow, bandwagon-jumping nature of said ‘scene’: ‘The shapeless kecks flapping up a storm’; ‘Your mystic jump suits cannot hide your competitive plagiarism’. Smith also finds time for a dig at Paul Gascoigne and his tears at Italia ’90 – ‘Your sportsmen’s tears are laudanum’ – revisiting the distaste for the middle-class/mainstream takeover of football that he first expressed a decade earlier in Kicker Conspiracy. It also reflects the derision he felt for non-musicians such as sportsmen getting involved in the music industry: as he said in the December Sounds interview, ‘I seriously object to boxers and footballers releasing records because it’s too easy’.

It’s a conventionally structured and melodic song and has a strong hook, driven by Scanlon’s searing guitar line. There’s an impressively muscular, busy bass line from Mr Hanley too. The transitions between verse/bridge/chorus are a touch awkward, but that just helps it to retain its sense of Fall-ness. MES once again makes a serious effort at actually singing, although he rather skirts around the melody in his inimitable fashion. One of only two Fall songs (the other being Ma Riley) to deploy the word ‘cock’.

Edinburgh Man
Smith’s paean to his (briefly) adopted home is a poignant and melancholy piece that sounds pretty much unlike anything else in the back catalogue other than Bill Is Dead. By MES standards, the sentiment is largely delivered without irony (although it does contain a brief disparaging comment about the city’s festival). Possibly the most genuinely sentimental Smith performance on record, it’s saved from becoming saccharine by the odd touch of levity (the little laugh at 3:12 on ‘cobble stones’) and the touch of Elvis that appears towards the end. Scanlon’s two-chord strum is simplistic, but heartfelt simplicity is ultimately the song’s strength.

One of the few Shift-Work songs to have any sort of longevity on the setlist, it was played 37 times, surviving until 1995.

[Rather than posting the album version, which anyone reading this has doubtless heard hundreds of times, here’s a particularly lovely live version done for MTV in 1991 (although it’s a shame that someone turns Craig’s guitar down at 1:08).]

Pittsville Direkt
A dark and intense if slightly sluggish song which features some atmospheric slide guitar. Nothing especially wrong with it, although there’s nothing much outstanding about it either. MES’s sneering, lethargic vocals work well enough, and Cassell Webb’s backing adds a haunting atmosphere. It’s not entirely clear where ‘Pittsville’ might actually be, nor what ‘they don’t ask your telephone silk’ might mean. Played 28 times 1991-92.

The Book Of Lies
Possibly inspired by the Aleister Crowley book of the same name, which is undoubtedly the most interesting thing about it. Both MES’s vocals and (I think) Kenny Brady’s are teeth-grindingly tuneless to an irritating degree, and they’re coupled with a bland, nonedescript poppy backing track, insipid lyrics and a woefully simplistic and repetitive melody. Only played live five times, all in 1991.

The War Against Intelligence
According to Simon Ford, this was due to be the album’s title until ‘the Gulf War started and Smith decided to change the title to something less controversial’21. However, the notion of MES avoiding controversy in this manner does seem a little unlikely (cf Victoria Train Station Massacre). The lyrical theme is certainly as relevant now as it was 28 years ago, considering today’s ‘tl;dr’ / fake news culture, although it’s not exactly clearly expressed: ‘They stuck out its golden horns and volunteered its essence’.

It’s a jaunty, poppy track, buoyed by Kenny Brady’s prominent violin part. A little repetitive and obvious, but not offensively so. It was only played live 15 times 1991-92.

Shift-Work
The title track has a gentle, understated insistence to it that’s highly affecting and absorbing. It floats along in a melancholy and rather moving fashion, accompanying perfectly the sad tale of a couple falling apart because of incompatible work patterns. The rather odd use of ten (as opposed to nine) to five was later revisited in the group’s cover of Lost In Music.

And it contains, of all things, a bass solo from Steve Hanley (at 2:29) which is a delightful, unflashy little interlude that subtly adds a lot to the song. A rather underrated little gem, it only got 20 live outings, the last coming in 1993.

You Haven’t Found It Yet
Continuing the melancholy theme, YHFIY sees MES exude ennui as he undertakes an aimless drive around London, including ‘flashy Camden Town’. Like the title track, there’s a gentle, understated atmosphere that’s genuinely affecting, largely created by Scanlon’s gently strummed chords. Like Edinburgh Man, there are some light-hearted touches, for example the little chuckle at 1:44.

There are also some rather odd turns of phrase, such as ‘mental saw-down of your head’, which even Smith himself seemed a bit perplexed by: ‘I got the record out to check the lyrics and I couldn’t f***ing work them out’. After being used as the (instrumental) opening to the group’s 1990 Reading Festival set, the song was only played five more times, all in 1991.

The Mixer
Kenny Brady’s insistent violin melody is an integral part of the song, but it’s Dave Bush who seems to have the greatest influence here, especially in the delay-heavy Ibiza/rave-style synth pattern that opens the song and reappears throughout. There’s a decent song lurking in here somewhere – it has a plaintive melody that MES delivers quite sensitively and the megaphone is wheeled out to give a nice bit of texture – but it’s all swamped by the cheap and tinny drum machine, cheesy handclaps and frankly irritating castanets.

A Lot Of Wind
As a recently-divorced musician, it is perhaps not surprising that Smith ended up watching a lot of daytime TV. Wind describes how MES, ‘desperate for entertainment’, switches on the television and is appalled by the banal nonsense that those involved are spouting. Sadly, in terms of wit, incisiveness and inventiveness, Wind‘s lyric is a long long way from, say C’n’C-S Mithering or I’m Into CB. Frankly, his lyric is almost as inane as the TV he’s deriding:

You see them selling carpets
You see them in the shops
You see them on the kids’ programs
And they talk a lot of wind

It’s a thin idea, musically as well as lyrically: a simplistic marching drumbeat, a scratchy one-chord guitar and an uninspired bass line. Kenny Brady does his best to inject some energy, but his grinding violin ends up just grating.

The only real point of interest is that Fred Talbot (the ‘weatherman… [who] used to teach all our friends’) was a teacher at Altrincham Grammar School For Boys which Simon Wolstencroft attended.

Rose
The gentle and melancholy theme of side two continues with Rose, the only track to feature Bramah and Schofield. The repetitive two-chord jangle (a sort of C86 update of Flat of Angles) is pleasingly plaintive and Smith mumbles along mournfully in seemingly heartfelt style. However, it’s let down by the slightly hamfisted wah-wah and the irritatingly twee flute. Overall, it’s a little flat and unconvincing.

Sinister Waltz
The most intriguing and inventive song on the album. An odd, almost gentle but also somehow malevolent music box/carnival atmosphere is rendered even more peculiar by Smith’s mysterious ‘he must come down’ mantra, apparently delivered down a crackly telephone line. Weird but strangely lovely, it makes for a great album closer.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
The original cassette and CD versions included High Tension Line and White Lightning. A 2002 reissue added Blood Outta Stone and Xmas With Simon. The album was also released as a double CD with Code: Selfish in 2003.

In 2007, it was reissued as a double CD, disc 2 containing 18 bonus tracks. This included all the tracks from White Lightning/The Dredger and the High Tension Line singles, plus the March 1991 Peel session, three rather pointless techno-flavoured remixes of So What About It? and an equally uninspiring remix of The Mixer called (wait for it…) The Re-Mixer.

There are two further tracks. Cloud Of Black is a monotonous affair, featuring a basic Casio keyboard style rhythm, a lazy three-note riff and a Smith vocal that he appears to be delivering whilst struggling to stay awake. It has ‘out-take’ written all over it. It’s a totally different story with Arid Al’s Dream, however. Perversely thrown out on an obscure 1992 various artists compilation,  its spindly, atmospheric guitar line, clattering ‘chorus’ with frantic violin and thundering drums and energetic, engaging MES vocal performance leaves you scratching your head as to why it didn’t feature on the album.

Overall Verdict
Shift-Work  is a divisive album. For those raised on the angular, abrasive Fall of the early 80s, it’s just too soft, too poppy; insipid in comparison to Grotesque or Hex. For many others, the early 90s material was their gateway into the wonderful and frightening world and therefore inspires affection. Shift-Work tracks did not generally fare well on the Fall in Fives blog, but they actually make much more sense when taken as a whole.

Like all Fall albums, there are moments to treasure; like the majority of their albums, there are eminently forgettable moments as well. And, not for the first (or last) time, the decisions regarding what was included and what was left to b-side/compilation obscurity are frequently perplexing.

Whilst there is much to love about the album, it has two key weaknesses. Firstly, there are too many songs where the group sound like they’re following musical trends rather than ignoring them or forging their own. Secondly, the fact that the material was largely composed in a hurry, without being tried out on the road, is painfully apparent in places: there are too many half-formed or thin ideas (e.g. A Lot Of Wind or Book Of Lies).

My “Version”
If ever there was an album that cried out for a ‘version’, it’s this one…

Side 1: So What About It? / Blood Outta Stone / The War Against Intelligence / You Haven’t Found It Yet /High Tension Line / Edinburgh Man (22:57)

Side 2: Zagreb (Movement II) / Arid Al’s Dream / Shift-Work / Idiot Joy Showland / Sinister Waltz (22:07)

Rankings
I was actually quite surprised how much I warmed to Shift-Work, which I would always have considered one of my least favourite Fall albums. As I mentioned above, it makes much more sense as a whole album; the process of writing the Fi5 blog often led to its individual tracks floundering and paling in comparison to both early and late period Fall selections.

That said, there are some weak tracks here, and nothing that compares to the group’s greatest moments. The songwriting is marginally better than Frenz overall, and it’s not as inconsistent as LATWT, but it lacks the invention and angular aggression of Dragnet.

  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. Extricate
  10. Bend Sinister
  11. Dragnet
  12. Shift-Work
  13. Live At The Witch Trials
  14. The Frenz Experiment

The two singles are both okay, but neither make much of a dent on the list when you consider what went before:

  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. Telephone Thing
  16. There’s A Ghost In My House
  17. Victoria
  18. Hit The North
  19. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  20. Rowche Rumble
  21. Fiery Jack
  22. High Tension Line
  23. It’s The New Thing
  24. White Lightning
  25. Popcorn Double Feature
  26. Oh! Brother
  27. c.r.e.e.p.

References

1The Big Midweek, p323

2You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p148

3The Big Midweek, p323

4-5You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p148

6Select, quoted in Thompson, p113

7The Big Midweek, pp326-327

8The Big Midweek, p328

9Ford, p206

10Vox, June 1991

11The Big Midweek, p333

12Thompson, p119

13-14Ford, p209

15Ford, p205

16The Big Midweek, p333

17You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p157

18The Big Midweek, p334

19-21Ford, p208

YMGTA #18 – Extricate

“We didn’t look baggy. We didn’t sound baggy. We were The Fall.”

Details
Recorded: London, Oxfordshire and Somerset mid-late 1989
Released: 19 February 1990

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

With:

  • Charlotte Bill – flute, oboe
  • Kenny Brady – fiddle
  • Craig Leon – vocals, organ
  • Cassell Webb – vocals
  • Mike Edwards – guitar

Background
The saga of The Fall’s ever-changing membership took a surprising twist in 1989, when  Martin Bramah rejoined the group after a ten-year absence. Bramah had achieved some critical acclaim and modest commercial success with The Blue Orchids; he had also briefly formed a band called Thirst with Karl Burns in 1987 who released one EP, Riding The Times. In Simon Ford’s Hip Priest1, Bramah suggests that he offered his services to Smith directly, although Steve Hanley claims that it was initiated by himself and Craig Scanlon2.

Whichever was the case, Bramah seems to have made a remarkably smooth transition back into the group. Marcia Schofield was initially sceptical (‘Who’s that? Oh no! He’s one of Mark’s friends from down the pub’) but was soon won over by the songs that he’d brought with him – ‘Fucking hell, this guy can actually write’3.

In December, the new line-up recorded The Fall’s 13th Peel session. Augmented by Kenny Brady on violin, they performed forthcoming album tracks Chicago Now, Black Monk Theme and Hilary, plus Whizz Bang, which was not broadcast at the time. Their first single, released in January 1990, was Telephone Thing. Produced by Matt Black and Jonathan More of Coldcut (for whose debut album Smith had recently provided a guest vocal), its funky wah-wah guitar and cut-up vocals (very much de rigueur in a lot of contemporary music) marked a striking departure in sound for the group, although it still retained an essential Fall-ness.

It sounds a little dated now, but its slightly shambolic funk-shuffle does still have a certain ragged charm. Plus, it features one of Smith’s more memorable lines: ‘How dare you assume I want to parlez-vous with you, Gretchen Franklin nosey matron thing!’ (Smith made the unlikely claim that he didn’t know that Gretchen Franklin was the actress who played Ethel in Eastenders.) The 12″ also contained two distinctly inessential alternative versions of the lead song. It made it to number 58 in the charts. A regular feature on the setlist from late 1989 to summer 1990, after a ten-year break it was frequently played 2002-04, clocking up 87 appearances overall.

The b-side was British People In Hot Weather. MES’s take on Mad Dogs and Englishmen, this mocking take on how the British behave on the rare occasions that the sun comes out contains some great lines, such as ‘Beached whale in Wapping / his armpit hairs are sprouting’. Whilst Smith’s mixture of disdainful sneer and levity (he even sounds on the verge of laughter on a couple of occasions – e.g. ‘Serpentine’ at 1:14-1:18) is effective, it’s dated by its production: the hollow, reverb-heavy drum sound, the scratchy pseudo-funk guitar and, above all, those Art of Noise-style keyboard stabs. It was played live throughout much of 1990, and then made a handful of appearances in 1991 and 1994, appearing 35 times altogether.

Front cover

A month after the album’s release, Popcorn Double Feature was the somewhat unlikely choice for the next single (see ‘the songs’ below). As was the prevailing trend, the single was released in multiple formats which included four b-sides of highly variable quality. Pick of the bunch was Arms Control Poseur. A lurching, swampy slab of gloriously ramshackle yet controlled noise, everything from the startling blast of harmonica to the raw, distorted randomly soloing guitar to the depth-charge keyboard effects meshes together perfectly. MES is in fine form: a reserved, deadpan delivery, with some of his most enigmatic lines – ‘Parliament connives a diseased access company’‘I made a calendar that wasn’t there/to find whether it was the first of December/or not’. It was only played 17 times, the last of which was in December 1990.

Butterflies 4 Brains (a retitled version of Whizz Bang) is a lazy, dreamy, woozy piece of psychedelia, featuring a gentle and understated MES performance. It was only played live six times, all in 1990.

Zandra (which was never played live) has a few positive features: the understated 60s garage riff is pleasing enough; the ‘drop-out’ (at 1:04) – consisting of the rhythm section plus a shrill but delicate organ – is a nice diversion; there’s also a bit of bluesy lead guitar over the last thirty seconds or so that threatens to elevate the song a little. But overall, it’s all just a bit mundane; not helped by MES’s contribution, which is both phoned-in and buried in the mix.

As for Black Monk Theme Pt. II… Whatever made the group think that giving the song a hi-NRG/Eurovision treatment, complete with manic Casio keyboard handclap effects and tortuous key changes was a good idea, God only knows.

In The Wider World…
Shortly before the album’s release, Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison. Polls showed that Neil Kinnock’s Labour had a 17-point lead over the Conservatives. Rioting against the new Community Charge (Poll Tax) led to 37 arrests in Brixton. The UK and Argentina resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since the Falklands conflict eight years earlier.

On TV, the Mitchell brothers made their screen debut in Eastenders (in an episode that one presumes featured Gretchen Franklin). In the singles chart, Sinéad O’Connor was in the middle of a month-long run at number one with her tearful rendition of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U. Phil Collins’ …But Seriously was in the third week of its seven-week stay at the top of the album charts. The Top Of The Pops chart rundown from the week of Extricate‘s release is still full of dross, but there were some brighter spots: The House of Love were at number 28 with Shine On and The Wedding Present actually appeared on the show with the excellent Steve Albini-produced Brassneck (although David Gedge looks less than enthused about having to mime).

The Fall Live In 1989-90
The new Fall line-up played its first gig on 12 July 1989 at Cambridge’s Corn Exchange, where Bill Is Dead, The Littlest Rebel and Pinball Machine were debuted. After playing Manchester Free Trade Hall the following night (where I’m Frank got its first outing), the group’s next two performances were at the Tucano Artes Festival in Brazil.

ticket

On the 29 August 1989, The Fall played at John Peel’s surprise 50th birthday party at London’s Subterrania, alongside The House of Love and The Wedding Present. They resurrected Mere Pseud Mag Ed (a Peel favourite) and also played a cover of Gene Vincent’s Race with the Devil (‘we learned this especially for John’s birthday’) which would eventually appear on The Remainderer.

Five days later, at Bradford, Sing! Harpy, Black Monk Theme and And Therein… were played for the first time; Telephone Thing and Hilary followed the next night in Aberdeen. After Extricate‘s release the Fall played a further 75 gigs in 1990.

Front cover

The group in this period are captured in Live In Zagreb, released in June 2001. They played Zagreb on 15 April, although there is some doubt as to whether this recording is actually from that show (Dave Thompson asserts4 that it’s from a German gig on the same tour). It’s a fairly ‘clean’ soundboard recording, although it suffers (as these things often do) from the vocals and drums being overly prominent at the expense of the bass and guitar. This results in I’m Frank, for example, sounding rather odd, as the absence of the driving fuzz guitar gives it a distinctly different feel. Another notable moment is MES instructing the group to pick up the pace with Hit The North: ‘faster, faster!’

The Album
The bulk of the album was produced by either Craig Leon (whose Donkeys Bearing Cups had formed the basis of Mollusc In Tyrol) or Adrian Sherwood (of On-U and Tackhead fame). Craig Leon’s wife Cassell Webb also contributed backing vocals/keyboards. The cover was a piece by Anthony Frost, who had been writing to Smith since the release of Dragnet5.

The dawn of the twentieth century’s final decade saw the music industry and press obsessed with ‘Madchester‘ and all things ‘baggy‘. Phonogram, the group’s new label, may well have thought that The Fall’s Manchester background (‘from Salford, Mark would say to any journalist trying to lump us into Madchester’6)would enable them to cash in on the The Fall’s NW credentials. Simon Wolstencroft hoped that they would ‘get swept along on Madchester’s coat tails’7. However, despite the wah-wah funk of Telephone Thing, the group clearly resisted the temptation to align themselves to the ‘Madchester’ scene:

‘We weren’t ever going to be baggy. We didn’t look baggy. We didn’t sound baggy. We were The Fall. And Mark was right in seeing Madchester as a fleeting fad.’8

After their lukewarm (if relatively kind) reviews of Seminal Live, the music press breathed a sigh of relief at being able to get back to showering The Fall with praise. In Melody Maker, Jon Wilde extolled their ‘extraordinary… regenerative energies’; ‘They seem to possess this enormous power of renewal.’ He described Extricate as ‘another magnificent Fall LP. Possibly their finest yet.’ In the NME, James Brown awarded it 10/10 – declaring its diversity to be its main strength, he proclaimed it to be:

‘…a fine album glittering with brilliance. Mark E Smith may have been resting on his reputation and experimenting with tutus for a while but once again his music and not his conversation has delivered the strongest statement possible.’

Extricate saw the group achieve their second highest UK chart placing so far, the album peaking at number 31.

The Songs
Sing! Harpy
The opening, dominated by Kenny Brady’s piercing violin, provides a creepy and foreboding introduction which is followed by a stealthy, lethargic swamp-blues swagger that suits MES’s cynical drawl well. There’s a clear ‘borrow’ here, this time from The Stooges’ Little Doll (if you’ve never heard it, then you really should give it a spin, if only to hear the astonishingly blistering solo that takes up most of the second half of the song.)

Whatever Smith might have said, it’s pretty clear that this is about Brix: ‘She gripped me like a hawk/her talons were quite famished’; the notably prominent violin (given that Brix was at the time dating Nigel Kennedy) seems unlikely to be a complete coincidence.

It suffers a little (in retrospect) from the dated production; the drums in particular have that tinny, reverb-heavy sound so prevalent at the time. But there’s an impressively dark and sinister tone to it, despite the arid production. Plus, it contains some choice MES enunciation – can-ab-is (2:13) – and some entertaining Elvis-style ‘uh-huh’s.

It was credited to ‘Beddington/Smith’ – Beddington being Bramah’s ‘official’ surname. Harpy was regular feature in the setlist throughout the first half of 1990, but its 42nd performance in July of that year was its last.

I’m Frank
A rather slight song, but one that sports a memorable and impressively fuzzy guitar line that just about cuts across the tootling flute and (once again) echo-laden drums. It’s endearing and catchy without having much depth. Apparently a tribute to Frank Zappa, although it’s hard to spot any sort of direct connection.

It’s not clear whether MES contributed anything other than vocals to the studio recording, but you can see him playing (if that’s the right word) some guitar in this video clip of the song. It was performed 66 times, lasting on the setlist until 1994.

Bill Is Dead
As I covered in the previous post, MES had recently been through a very difficult time, partly due to the death of his father. This song was clearly borne from this period, although ‘Bill’ was actually a friend of his father. A gentle, melancholy Scanlon tune is backed by a surprisingly melodic(ish) and sensitive vocal. It’s an undoubtedly notable song in the group’s canon, featuring a delicate melodicism that hadn’t really been heard from The Fall up to this point. As such, it’s obvious why many Fall fans rate it highly.

And yet… I have tried to be objective throughout these posts, but I have to confess that Bill isn’t really to my taste. I find it a bit mawkish and saccharine; and the ‘Came twice / You thrice’ line is embarrassingly nauseating.

It stayed in the setlist as far as 1995, making 59 appearances altogether.

Black Monk Theme Part I
The Monks were a somewhat unhinged 60s garage rock band who had previously gone under the unlikely moniker of The Torquays. And if you listen to any of their back catalogue, they are clearly the sort of band that you can easily imagine MES liking. Theme is basically a cover of I Hate You, a song from The Monks’ 1966 album Black Monk Time.

It has a loping, lethargic groove that is supported well by Brady’s keening violin and the slightly cheesy organ breaks. Smith’s stuttering vocals add to the manic atmosphere that treads a skilful line between daft and intense. Not the group’s creative peak, but lots of fun nonetheless. It was played regularly throughout late 1989 and 1990, before bowing out in December 1990 on its 53rd performance.

Popcorn Double Feature
One of the group’s less satisfying covers, Popcorn is a pretty straight rendition of The Searchers’ 1967 single. The original isn’t an especially inspiring song, and the group’s take is not unpleasant but is generally half-arsed and frankly rather dull. MES’s contribution is particularly ‘phoned-in’.

Simon Wolstencroft:

‘I didn’t like it. The singing was terrible and I just thought: what a waste. We had the backing of a major label, Madchester was at its peak, and this was what we gave them as a single. It bombed.’9

Indeed it did, reaching only number 84 in the charts. It made 33 live appearances, all in 1990, before disappearing.

Telephone Thing
See above.

Hilary
Credited to Smith alone, but most likely a Bramah-inspired tune, there’s something ineffably 80s about Hilary. Partly, it’s the lyrics – ‘Hilary, where’s the sixty quid you borrowed off me’; I’m sure it was you in the new Audi / outside Sainsbury’s’ – which are reminiscent of any number of C86-style shamblers. But there’s also Bramah’s twangy, reverb-laden lead line which brings Lloyd Cole & The Commotions to mind.

Smith’s off-kilter phrasing is particularly pleasing (for example in the way that he squeezes the line about ‘bull’s blood’ into a space it has no right to inhabit), although his frequent uh-uh-uh-uhs are somewhat off-putting, and Marcia’s backing vocals are just the wrong side of twee. Still, it’s an enjoyable tune, although very much of its time. Played 37 times 1989-91.

Chicago, Now!
A dark and atmospheric track with deep, sinister guitar and bass lines and malevolent keyboard flourishes. Quite a tuneful (relatively speaking) croon from MES as well. Not sure what any of the lyrics have to do with Chicago, but the hi-de-hi part towards the end is an entertaining diversion (perhaps MES is an admirer of Gladys Pugh?) Played only 13 times, all in 1990.

The Littlest Rebel
Solid if unspectacular, although MES’s vocal emphasis is a little odd and grating in places (‘little-EST reb-ELL’) and there’s a touch of rhyming dictionary about the lyrics. The insistent drumbeat and harmonica blasts provide an American railroads atmosphere, and there’s an interesting 60s psychedelica vibe going on in the chorus. Played 31 times, the last time in December 1990.

And Therein…
A sprightly, skiffle-ish feel (one of Bramah’s riffs) that contrasts nicely with MES’s somewhat dolorous vocals. A bit one-dimensional, although pleasant enough.

Smith was clearly fond of it:

‘Martin Bramah wrote a good tune and it conjured up the Salvation Army to me. It was quasi-religious and country-and-western, which I’d always wanted to do. I love the way they give a message over, these stories. Get to the beat of it, that’s what I wanted to do. Great guitars and a bit of sixth-form poetry cobbled together!’ 10

As a result, it had a long shelf-life, being performed 155 times 1989-2003.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
The original CD and cassette contained Arms Control PoseurBlack Monk Theme Part II and British People In Hot Weather (all discussed above). It also featured Extricate, like Perverted By Language a title track that never made it to its own album. Extricate features a looping, driving riff and a sprightly MES vocal that works well, although it has a definite unfinished feel about it.

It was reissued in 2007. This re-release features all of the b-sides mentioned above. It also contains Theme From Error-Orrori This originally appeared on a 1990 compilation called Home and wasn’t even credited as The Fall – it was listed as being by Mark Smith, M. Beddington, S. Hanley, S. Wolstencroft (M.Beddington being Martin Bramah, of course). It has a Slint/Fugazi atmosphere to it: dominated by a heavy, ponderous bass and drums pattern, with Bramah contributing the occasional bit of understated bluesy soloing. It does have the overall feel of an unfinished idea, but there’s still a lot to like about its heavy, doomy shuffle.

Overall Verdict
To some extent, Extricate feels like a step backwards: after the strange and wild (if patchy) inventiveness of Oranj, it harks back to the clean, clinical sound of Frenz. In addition, it certainly suffers in a similar way from the production values of the late 80s/early 90s, especially in the drum sound. But it is more satisfying, as overall the quality of the songwriting is much better than Frenz. That said, it does lack a bit of edge; overall it’s just a little too polite, even in its best songs.

My “Version”
It’s an album that definitely benefits from a bit of shuffling and adding b-sides…

Side 1: Sing! Harpy / Hilary / Butterflies 4 Brains / Black Monk Theme Part I / Chicago, Now! (22:27)

Side 2: I’m Frank / Extricate / The Littlest Rebel / Theme from Error-Orrori / Arms Control Poseur / And Therein… (22:36)

Rankings
Very hard to separate Extricate from Bend Sinister. The former just about gets the nod as the songwriting is more consistent. Just.

  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. Extricate
  10. Bend Sinister
  11. Dragnet
  12. Live At The Witch Trials
  13. The Frenz Experiment

With the singles. Telephone Thing gets marks for inventiveness and is ahead of some of the well-known covers. Popcorn, unsurprisingly finds itself in a relegation spot.

  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. Telephone Thing
  16. There’s A Ghost In My House
  17. Victoria
  18. Hit The North
  19. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out!
  20. Rowche Rumble
  21. Fiery Jack
  22. It’s The New Thing
  23. Popcorn Double Feature
  24. Oh! Brother
  25. c.r.e.e.p.

Live In Zagreb is one of those pleasant if inessential Fall live albums, the very definition of 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 In Cambridge 1988
  7. I Am As Pure As Oranj
  8. Live 1981 – Jimmy’s Music Club – New Orleans
  9. Live 1977
  10. Seminal Live
  11. Live In Zagreb
  12. Austurbaejarbio
  13. BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
  14. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  15. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  16. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  17. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  18. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  19. Liverpool 78
  20. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  21. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  22. Live At Deeply Vale

References

1Ford, p196

2The Big Midweek, p311

3Ford, p196

4Thompson, p115

5Ford, p199

6-7You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p135

8 You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p136

9 You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide, p143

10 Q magazine, May 1992

YMGTA #17 – Seminal Live

“I have never seen five thousand yobbos in my life.”

Image result for seminal live

Details
Recorded: Side 1 – Rochdale and Edinburgh, early-mid 1989; Side 2 – live in Manchester and Vienna 1988 (possibly – see below)
Released: 19 June 1989

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

Background
The day after the release of Kurious, the group recorded their 12th Peel session:  Dead Beat Descendant / Cab It Up / Squid Lord / Kurious Oranj. which was broadcast on 31 October.

At the end of 1988, The Fall seemed to be a commercial and creative peak. As Simon Ford summarises:

‘Everything should have been more wonderful than frightening in the world of The Fall. The group had just helped attract sell-out audiences to… one of the most prestigious theatres in the world, and was supported by a record company capable of releasing and promoting two well-received albums in a year… Smith had collected together a team of musicians at their creative prime… What could go wrong?’1

Ford goes on to answer his own question: ‘just about everything’2.

Smith announced that the group were parting company with Beggars Banquet. He felt that ‘it was time to move on… I think it will be good for us to have a change’3; or, as Steve Hanley put it, ‘far from adhering to the age-old adage, “If it’s not broken don’t fix it”, with Mark it’s more a case of “If it doesn’t need fixing, break it”‘4.

In addition, the Smiths’ marriage proved to be irretrievably broken. On the 4 January 1989, MES left Brix and moved to Edinburgh, driven north by Simon Wolstencroft. (Brix’s account of the separation is detailed in pages 244-252 of her book.) In February, the group headed off to Munich for a gig that was broadcast on German TV (the second guitarist who can be seen – for example on Cab It Up – was Phil Ames, Brix’s guitar technician). On the flight, there was ‘an empty seat on the plane, the last call for Brix Smith going unanswered’5.

MES spent the first half of 1989 largely in self-imposed exile in Edinburgh. He did, however, record a handful of tracks with The Fall (that would appear on the first half of Seminal Live). He also ventured for the first time into the role of guest vocalist, one that he would return to several times in his career. (I’m) In Deep featured on Coldcut’s What’s That Noise? album; it’s a fairly unremarkable bit of late 80s techno-pop, but it did demonstrate the potential for Smith’s vocals to provide an effectively acerbic contrast to dance/electronic music – something that would prove highly successful several years later in his collaboration with Von Südenfed.

A difficult year for MES was made even worse in May, when his father died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of just 59. In a Melody Maker interview in March 1990, MES recalled the difficult times of 1989: ‘I distinctly remember this time last year I felt totally shit, you know. Shit really shit. Probably the worst ever.’

In The Wider World…
A fortnight before the album’s release, the solitary protest of ‘Tank Man‘ quickly became an iconic image, as he stood in front of a convoy of Chinese Army tanks the day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In the UK, police arrested 250 people for celebrating the summer solstice at Stonehenge. The race for the first division title reached one of its most dramatic conclusions ever, as Michael Thomas’ last-minute goal clinched it for Arsenal.

On the day of Seminal Live‘s release, BBC2 broadcast in the mornings for the first time. Over the next few weeks, John Craven left Newsround, and Robin Day left Question Time. Jason Donovan’s anodyne cover of Sealed With A Kiss topped the singles chart; Simple Minds’ Street Fighting Years was the number one album. The chart rundown from Top Of The Pops on 15 June 1989 demonstrates that chart music hadn’t really improved since 1988. (And I’d obviously – and sensibly – blotted from my mind the fact that Clannad and Bono had a hit single together.)

The Fall Live In 1988-89
The group played eight UK dates in December 1988. At Leeds on the 13th, Squid Law was debuted. The last gig of the year, at the Town and Country in London on the 21st, was to be Brix’s last until 1994. The Munich TV appearance was the group’s only performance in the first half of 1989.

ticket

The Album
Seminal Live is the very definition of a ‘contractual obligation’ album. The LP featured a first side made up of a very mixed bag of studio recordings; the second side was filled with a random selection of recent live tracks.

The music press were surprisingly forgiving, if not exactly glowing with praise. The Record Mirror review described the album as ‘merely plundering The Fall’s back catalogue, conveniently fulfilling the band’s contractual obligations with Beggars Banquet as they move on to greater things’. In Sounds, Richard Cook saw it as ‘a valediction – part celebration, part clear-up.’ Andrew Collins in the NME was optimistic for the group’s future and (rather generously) felt ‘the very fact it’s not crap is remarkable enough’. However, he also described the album as ‘a parody of a thrown-together clause-filler’ and worried that this was a sign of them ‘cruising’.

Marcia Schofield was not so forgiving:

The worst piece of sh*t I’d worked on in my life. No songs, no ideas. Done quickly and cheaply in a terrible studio that sounded awful. I thought, “What are we doing? This is really crap”.’6

The Songs
Dead Beat Descendant
As I said in the last postDead Beat Descendant is a prime piece of Brix-era Fall; one where her sunny, west-coast surf-rock twang sits perfectly with the group’s angular aggression. Just let down ever so slightly by the very 80s drum sound, but a corker nonetheless.

Pinball Machine
Whilst you could pick up some vaguely country influences in some of the group’s early 80s work, they went full-on yee-haw here. MES had a well-known fascination with country truckin’ songs, and here he gives full vent to his enthusiasm for the genre. He makes a seemingly genuine attempt to sing it in a proper, unironic country style, and, despite his melodic limitations, just about pulls it off. He sounds like he’s really enjoying himself, although it does very much seem like something he recorded after an afternoon in the pub: the vocals veer all over the place, presumably the result of Smith wandering drunkenly around the studio whilst it was recorded. The group deliver a spirited, if somewhat ragged backing, with Steve Hanley adding some rather lovely just-about-in-tune banjo.

The original was recorded in 1960 by Lonnie Irving, who died that same year. It’s actually quite touching (both the original and The Fall’s version), although probably best appreciated when you’ve had a couple of drinks yourself. It was played live twice, on consecutive nights in July 1989.

H.O.W.
H.O.W.  (which stands for ‘history of the world’) is a frustrating song, in that it’s one that feels as though it could have been so much better if it had had a little more time spent on it. There is a dark, foreboding atmosphere about it that is greatly appealing. Hanley’s bass line (which sounds like a slowed-down Dr Feelgood riff) virtually takes turns with the drums, which gives it an interesting stop-start rhythm. However, it does sound distinctly under-rehearsed; the keyboards seem to be in a different key, the guitar doesn’t sound properly tuned and the timing is way off on several occasions (1:41, 2:55 and 3:21 are notable examples).

MES is on particularly enigmatic form; a deep, understated vocal that contains some profound-sounding phrases – ‘I am the one who stamps on all ages, Jet trains, lead paint, stamps on border forms,  A rigid adoption of codes you had concocted.’ It’s pretty impenetrable stuff (for an interpretation, see The Annotated Fall, where the level of analysis is way out of my league: ‘here the narrator is a fictionalized congelation, rather than an anthropomorphic source of real evils’).

One of those intriguing ‘what if?’ moments from the group’s back catalogue. It was never played live.

Squid Law
Based alternately around a descending, scuzzy guitar figure and a stomping, staccato riff, there are a lot of layers to the sound that benefit from a listen on the headphones. In particular, there’s a fuzzy, frantically scrabbling bit of distorted lead underlying the main guitar part. There’s also a little dab of quite delicate synth/keyboard work around the three minute mark that, rather randomly, puts me in mind of someone ‘swishing’ through a bead curtain. (This may well just be me, I realise.) ‘Gladys Winthorpe’ (quoted in the A-Z) describes this version as ‘rather tatty’, which I think is a little harsh; although there is the odd occasion where it does sound slightly under-rehearsed (e.g. the mis-timed guitar at 1:31).

Mollusc In Tyrol
Now I love a bit of ‘difficult’ or ‘experimental’ stuff as much as (in fact, probably a great deal more than) the next man, but this has ‘filler’ written all over it. In the context of this album, it just feels like padding things out. And it’s also not actually that sonically interesting; whilst there are a few vaguely intriguing rumbling noises around the three and a half minute mark, overall it’s too thin, shrill and one-dimensional to benefit from repeated listens.

The music actually comes from Craig Leon’s Donkeys Bearing Cups from his 1981 album Nommus. The original has a far fuller, less astringent sound and is much more pleasing on the ear. Leon would go on to make performance and production contributions to the next three Fall albums. [Thanks to Sam Smyth from the Agents of The Fall Facebook group for pointing out this omission in the original post.]

2 x 4
Recorded at Vienna on 16 April 1988.  2×4 is a great song, but this is no more than a solid enough version. The only thing to note (other than SH utterly nailing the riff as ever) is the presence of a few extra ‘swooshing’ keyboard sounds.

Elf Prefix / L.A.
After a Post Nearly Man / Papal Visit-style intro (which seems to be studio-recorded) we get another unremarkable version (also recorded in Vienna) of a solid Fall song.

Victoria
It’s a pretty thin version: the guitars are buried way down in the mix, and the vocals (both MES’s and the backing) are a melodically dubious in places. There’s nothing actually significantly wrong with it, but it’s a bit unenlightening.

The most interesting aspect is where it was actually recorded. The sleeve says that the second side was ‘recorded in Vienna and Manchester 1988’. Victoria was played in both cities in that year; the Reformation site suggests that this version is from Manchester (where it was played at the Ritz on the 8 March), and thefall.org (by not including it in the list of tracks from Vienna) seems to support this. However, if you watch this video of that gig, the version of Victoria doesn’t appear to be the same one as that on Seminal Live. In particular, at the end of the song (52:20 on the video), MES turns to Wolstencroft and clearly says ‘Simon!’ – which is not present on the SL version.

Pay Your Rates
The most interesting live track on the album, it’s intriguing to hear this version of the group thunder through an ‘oldie’. I’m not sure about the twinkly keyboard fills, but overall it’s an admirably fresh update of an old tune.

Introduction / Cruiser’s Creek
This is a particularly odd one. Firstly, it features an introduction from an apparently ‘tired and emotional’ Bill Grundy (‘I have never seen five thousand yobbos in my life… a bit later, I’m going to tell you about how I made the fortune of punk rock.’)

Secondly, although the sleeve notes say that the live tracks were recorded in Manchester and Vienna 1988, both Reformation and thefall.org gigography page indicate that Cruiser’s Creek wasn’t played in 1988 at all. This review suggests that it might come from The Festival of the Tenth Summer in July 1986. [Edit: this was confirmed to me by Pete Conkerton via the ‘Mighty Fall’ Facebook group, who was there.]

It’s not an especially enlightening version of the song anyway; what appears to be a soundboard recording that isn’t at all well balanced.

Reissues & Bonus Tracks
The CD and cassette versions added live versions of Kurious Oranj, Hit The North, Frenz and In These Times. The first two are the same versions that appeared on the recent Cab It Up single. Both are lively enough takes, although Oranj suffers from cheesy-sounding keyboards that are far too prominent in the mix – something that’s also true of In These Times. It’s also a bit of a mystery as to where or when this version of Kurious Oranj was recorded; it wasn’t ever played in Vienna, and the only performance in Manchester was sixth months after Seminal Live‘s release.

Frenz doesn’t even seem to be a concert recording, sounding more like it’s being played live in a studio. It’s a perfectly satisfactory run through the song, but the extra two minutes don’t really add anything of note.

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

Overall Verdict
Seminal Live is misleadingly titled, neither word providing an accurate description of its contents. The first side is a frustration: four decent songs that, with a little more time spent on them, could have formed the basis of a strong EP at least. On the second side, only Pay Your Rates really adds much to the canon of Fall live recordings.

Considering all the turbulence surrounding the group at the time, one can perhaps have some sympathy with Andrew Collins’ view that ‘the very fact it’s not crap is remarkable enough’. That said, you can also see where Marcia Schofield was coming from, as Seminal Live is, overall, a little shoddy. It’s interesting to speculate about what the album could have been had Smith not been so hell-bent on severing the group from its connection with Beggars Banquet. But it is what it is: an album that’s more an interesting historical footnote than a satisfying piece of work in itself.

Rankings
Tricky: I don’t feel you can rank it among the studio albums, although it’s not a ‘proper’ live album either. But it has to go in the latter category really. In terms of atmosphere, it doesn’t suffer from the flaws of Austurbaejarbio or BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert, but it isn’t much of a ‘historical’ document in that way that, say, Live 77 is. So it sits very much mid-table at this point.

  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. Seminal Live
  11. Austurbaejarbio
  12. BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert
  13. Live 3rd May 1982 Band On The Wall Manchester
  14. Live 1980 – Cedar Ballroom Birmingham
  15. Live From The Vaults – Alter Banhof, Hof, Germany
  16. Live From The Vaults – Glasgow 1981
  17. Live From The Vaults – Oldham 1978
  18. Liverpool 78
  19. Live From The Vaults – Los Angeles 1979
  20. Live From The Vaults – Retford 1979
  21. Live At Deeply Vale

 

References

1Ford, pp183-184

2Ford, p184

3NME 10 December 1988, quoted in Ford, p184

4The Big Midweek, p309

5The Big Midweek, p310

6Ford, p190