Open The Boxoctosis
Telephone Thing
Mountain Energei
Green Eyed Loco-Man
Theme From Sparta F.C.
Mr. Pharmacist
Walk Like a Man
Middle Mass
Janet, Johnny & James
The Joke
Mere Pseud Mag Ed
Contraflow
Big New Prinz
Dr Buck’s Letter
White Lightning

The Herald:

NEIL COOPER February 24 2004

“Mark E Smith Presents The Fall,” announce posters for what must be their millionth countrywide slog. After a quarter of a century, punk’s greatest cabaret turn this side of John Lydon appears to have become not just compere of his own sideshow, but promoter, too. With new wife Elena on both keyboards and management duties, no wonder the latest line-up look like a bunch of terrified YTS lads doing their best so as not to upset the gaffer lest they get the sack.

For the time being, at least, they needn’t worry. Because, coming hard on the heels of the umpteenth album, Country On The Click, this is the tightest, most relentless The Fall’s uniquely luddite brand of chugging garage punkabilly has been for some time. And with fellow veteran John Cooper-Clarke as warm-up man, ricocheting well-worn one- liners off pop culture ephemera like a post-modern Bernard Manning, this really does feel like Mr Smith’s old time revue of vaudevillian peculiars.

Ambling onstage 40 minutes late to the accompanying dirge of a solitary bass note, a sober-looking Smith sports a solitary leather glove à la Michael Jackson or Gene Vincent, a man who also toured himself into oblivion. New material is rattled through without a word alongside teasing snatches of old favourites and crowd-pleasing cover versions, Mr Pharmacist, White Lightning, and even, bizarrely, Divine’s Walk Like A Man [sic]. Oddest of all is when, on the magnificent Glitter-beat encore of Big New Prinz, vocal duties are shared with a man whose suit, moustache and curly perm give him the air of a 1970s Eurovision runner-up. “Appreciate him,” Elena snarls, and we give him a big hand, knowing he’ll be back.

Edinburgh Evening News:

Heroes of punk era pure poetry

With two heroes of the punk era on the stage, you might be forgiven for thinking that this was a show for old-timers and nostalgia junkies.

But you’d be wrong, because the punk poetry of John Cooper Clark retains a freshness and energising youthfulness which belies the look of the man.

Stick thin and sporting a pair of pitch black sunglasses with casual coat and unruly hair, he looks like Ron Wood at a teddy boys’ convention, yet speaks like a sharp pastiche of any end-of-the-pier comedian you care to lambast.

In the midst of the not-unexpected heckles, he kept his nerve with an assured delivery, the crowd-pleasing wife-jokes masking the true intelligence of his poetry.

Mark E Smith, on the other hand, is a man of very few words. As The Fall entered the stage to a hammering pre-recorded guitar riff and launched into a tightly co-ordinated (and loud) aural assault, his shambling presence – messing about with microphones and turning the guitar off – made him resemble some old jakey who’s just there to annoy the band.

Then he sang in such assuredly distinctive tones that you remember he single-handedly IS The Fall – and that’s why they’ll be remembered as quite possibly the greatest indie band ever.

David Pollock

Edinburgh Gig Guide