- W.M.C. Blob 59*
- Lie Dream of a Casino Soul
- Prole Art Threat
- Totally Wired*
- Jawbone and the Air Rifle*
- An Older Lover etc*
- Printhead*
- Middle Mass*
- Winter
- City Hobgoblins
- Slates, Slags, etc.*
- English Scheme*
- Fit and Working Again*
- Spectre vs. Rector
- Leave the Capitol
- The Container Drivers
- C ‘n’ C
- S Mithering
NOTES
75 minutes
Released as Live from the Vaults – Glasgow 1981 but only the tracks marked with an asterisk
Final performance of W.M.C. – Blob 59.
A reasonable soundboard. The gig is beset with sound problems with MES making a series of pleas to Grant Showbiz to get the monitors sorted.
Generally the gig is very good indeed with a wide variety of material.
Smith is less than complimentary about St Helens (repeating an often used regional slur about the gene pool of the town) during the start the closing C ‘n’ C which has a serious amount of new wordplay.
Rab Crangle’s recollections –
It had been almost a year since I had cemented my friendship with Sock – when my student card managed to get my unconventionally named friend into Glasgow Tech for our first Fall gig. Typical – you wait ages for a Fall gig and then two appear on your doorstep within 3 days. Already obsessive fans, we had gorged ourselves on Totale’s Turns, Grotesque, Elastic Man and Totally Wired, which had all been released in the intervening period.
A pity then that the Glasgow Plaza was far from an ideal venue – from memory (and bear in mind that I am writing this many years After the Gramme), the hall resembled a school gym and contained a ‘stage’ of no more than 18 inches high. And there were only about 60-70 people in attendance. We couldn’t help wondering whether, despite needing no convincing of the genius of Mark E Smith, we were in a dwindling band of adherents and the Fall were on the way down. Even allowing for the fact that this was a Monday evening, it seemed a derisory turnout.
Apart from watching most of the gig at the side of the stage, my only real memory of the performance is of some bewilderment that there were so many songs neither myself nor Sock had heard before – and indeed a modern day webcheck shows that more than half of the set list that evening had still to be released on vinyl. By the end of the gig, we were ready for a drink – except that there was no bar. The ludicrous by-laws applied by Glasgow City Council at the time prohibited licenced public venues from charging the public for entry to hear live music (although the ‘members only’ student unions got away with it), so the Plaza was an alcohol free zone. This no doubt contributed to the audience adopting a somewhat over-respectful and reverential mood towards the band – I bet Mark E Smith hated it. We departed the venue in thrall to the Fall, but slightly deflated by the sparse attendance. Still, two days later it was on to….