Broadcast On 10th December 2009, The Fall appeared on the Sky Arts channel in a “back to basics” show called From The Basement. It’s a programme with a simple concept featuring groups that are horribly described on the Sky Arts website as “credible”. There’s no audience and no presenter. Other groups that have performed on the show which your average Fall fan (a definition in which I wholly include myself) will almost definitely be familiar with are Iggy and the Stooges and Radiohead. Other groups with names such as White Denim and The Raconteurs will probably have your average Fall fan shrugging his or her shoulder pads. Let’s be honest, whenever The Fall have appeared on TV they just don’t seem to fit on whatever programme they’re on. The last Fall appearance on british TV was, I think, on The Jools Holland show in May 2005, just after Robert Plant and his band did some ridiculous ethnic hand-clapping. Although the show got infinitely better when The Fall came on, their performance was nevertheless lacking something, it never quite seemed to take off, unlike many of the live performance the group had been giving at the time of the Fall Heads Roll material.
The performance kicks off with the mid to late 2008 intro song show Is This New. The sound is strikingly clear and it’s obvious right from the start that there’s a real cohesion to the group. The sound has shifted away from the bludgeoningly repetitive rhythmic smash that characterised the earliest incarnation of this particular assemblage of the group. Everyone sounds good, there’s evidently an emergent confidence among the musicians. Immediately noticeable is the clarity with which Pete Greenway is playing. There’s no evidence of the embellished fumbling that marked his earliest guitar playing in The Fall, it seems he has found the Fall sound which he wants to make. Smith prowls between the cinema matinee curtains at the rear for a minute or so to let the group bed in before he deems it necessary to shamble up to the microphone and delivr the inevitable and insensible introductory references to “the long long days”, cheese, “The Fall” and to speculate on the puketastic authentic-Northern-pub-style carpet, all in perfectly slurred timing. There’s also an brief and beautifully obscure reference to Timmy the Tortoise having a heart attack. Timmy the Tortoise was a ship’s mascot during the Crimean War who died in 2004 at the age of 160. Two and a half minutes in and that’s the first song done. It both looks and sounds like it’s going to be a good ‘un.
Elena provides the introductory howling for the next song, Wolf Kidult Man. It’s taken at a nicely drawn out pace and showcases the link between The Fall and heavy rock that surfaces every now and again in songs such as (Jung Nev’s) Antidotes and D.I.Y. Meat. It’s fairly primal stuff concerned much more with rhythm than melody. Elena’s keyboards emphasize this point as it’s shown to be one finger, one note plonking, polished off with squelchy knob twisting to good brutal effect. Smith wants to keep it short and powerful and gives the cut signal just over two minutes in before there’s any opportunity to do anything ridiculous like improvise or develop the basic theme. Quite right too.
The next song is the epic 50 Year Old Man, largely based around one chord. Smith whips out a dictophone and plays it through the mic. It has on it some tuneless whistling that adds precisely nothing but somehow something to the song. It’s perhaps an entirely random element thrown in by Smith to keep things off kilter. It could have added something great, it didn’t, so Smith sticks it back in his pocket. But not before waving his microphone in front of the monitors to get some whining feedback of the type sound engineers spend three quarters of their time trying to avoid. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I for one am glad he does things like this. Then he wanders out towards the camera where the stage isn’t properly lit. Then he pulls his “Newsnight” face. Got to keep the cameramen on their toes too.
Superficially, 50 Year Old Man has a cobbled together, improvised quality to it. Infact, I think it’s a carefully put together piece of work, musically. Instead of developing the melody, instead it comprises similar sounding but swiftly evolving individual musical parts that connect and diverge throughout the song. There’s a ham-fisted intricacy to it that’s quite interesting. Initially it seems quite monotonous and sludgy but repeated listens reveal a deliberate attempt at structure and nuance. Added to which, the song itself, like most Fall songs, continues to shift and evolve each time it is played. Each time, it seems to be a new approach, a different avenue for The Fall to explore. 50 Year Old Man lends itself well to this evolutionary process.
Last song is Latch Key Kid which reveals itself to be the joker of the pack as it sounds less rehearsed and more like a jam. It’s a throwaway, almost cheeky number that staunchy rejects the whole idea of serious music played on an Arts channel. And of course, Smith does a trademark bit of tuneless keyboard playing, grabs his pink plastic bag and leather jacket and looks like he’s about to leave. Instead though, he ambles off to the side, gives Elena the toy megaphone that doesn’t work (and which to her credit, she continues to sing through regardless) and leans over her keyboard playing some more tuneless squiggles before fiddling about liberally with an amp. THEN he leaves.