Birthday Song
Touch Sensitive
Cyber Insekt
And Therein
He Pep! (two attempts)
F-‘Oldin’ Money
Levitate
The Caterer
The Joke
Ten Houses of Eve
Shake-Off
Tom Ragazzi
A Past Gone Mad
This Perfect Day
Jung Nev’s Antidotes
Big New Prinz
White Lightning

NOTES

A very good audience capture with some chatter which is not intrusive,
and in fact rather adds to the ambience. One problem is that the
vocals exceed the peak levels and distort/cut out every now and then
but for all that a remarkable capture.

By this time Ed Blaney had started managing the group. His band
Trigger Happy were one of two support acts on the evening resulting in
a very overcrowded venue being full of exceedingly intoxicated by the
time The Fall emerged.

A puzzle of the evening is Julia’s guitar being too loud and her
keyboard patches being unfamiliar which is easily explained by the
fact that she had no amp or monitors and the wrong keyboard on this
occasion – and was relying on a pre-amp.

That she was positioned by the drums and bass amp in a small venue
clarifies her inability to pick up on the house mix given the extant
sound levels. Despite some complaints about her performance from
reviewers of the time its a testament to her professionalism that she
delivers a good performance for the most part.

Surprisingly starting with “Birthday Song” which features some fine
extemporisation from MES the group soon leaps into an excellent and
muscular performance of the extant material. “He Pep” gets two
readings and gets better as the song progresses. “Levitate” is well
delivered (at one point an audience member asks “Is that your mates
beer?”) with a good twangy guitar sound from Julia and a simple back
beat from Tom that develops into a excellent wall of sound when
Neville kicks in. The group stops. Mark says “There’s one more verse”
and the group pick it up almost immediately for a both memorable and
notably unique reading. At some point a rather inebriated young lady
climbs on stage and attempts some sort of courtship dance with MES.

Also around this time the PA was in danger of toppling over into the
audience until Julia brought this to the club owners attention.

The technologically driven “The Caterer” suffers from a microphone
distortion and is mostly drums and keys. A fantastic dance feel to
this with chittering synths closing matters – someone shouts for
“Hilary” – guttural synth noises and chittering repetitive percussion
sounds with the Free Range rhythm riff morphs into a version of “The
Joke” which would not be out of place on “Fun House”. Some excellent
scratchy guitar from Wilding and Nagle on this.

“Ten Houses of Eve” is excellent – driven guitar – a fine backing vocal
from Neville – and probably one of the most muscular readings of the
song I have heard. The “quiet” section is a mad melange of guitar
picking, MES extemporisation, and unique keyboard patches. When the
guitar kicks back in its breath-taking.

A suitably abrasive version of “Shake-Off” follows which defies
description. MES is a little anglo-saxon with the lighting engineer
over the brightness of the equipment – someone continually howls for
“Free Range”. “Shake-Off” starts again – a little more restrained this
time. MES tends to indulge in slurring on some of the words and the
vocals peak badly on the song.

The rarely played “Tom Ragazzi” gets its sixth and final outing.

Julia’s unfamiliarity with the keyboard is at its most apparent during
an excellent “A past gone mad” with Mr Smith mentions the “long long
days” for all you conceptual continuity freaks out there. The keyboard
patches appear to be standard MIDI fare without the Nagle tweaks.
Notwithstanding that minor quibble this an excellent reading where the
power of the band shines through.

Pre-encore matters conclude with a keyboard led version of “This
Perfect Day” which despite the keyboard patches (see previous para) is
unique. Great motorik drumming from Tom and Julia holds it together
with some sonorous notes. The chap who wants “Free Range” continues in
vain and the set concludes with a seriously good reading of
“Antidotes” with excellent guitar excess and stately keyboard sounds.

The one person who loses out throughout the whole affair is Adam Helal
who suffers from the mix on the version I have. Unfortunately I do not
have the two encores – reviews of the time describe a bit of a car
crash on “Big New Prinz”.

All in all this is one to own as this is probably one of the better
captures of this iteration of the gruppe, equipment problems
notwithstanding, with MES in fine form and his band of strolling
players delivering on a number of levels.

Highly recommended.