Behind the Counter
Telephone Thing
Green Eyed Loco Man
And Therein
Mere Pseud Mag Ed
Contraflow
F-‘Oldin’ Money
Touch Sensitive
Mountain Energei
Theme from Sparta FC
Mr. Pharmacist
Janet, Johnny & James
Way Round
Big New Prinz
Bourgeois Town
Dr. Buck’s Letter

NOTES

Michael Little, from the Washington Post:

At the Black Cat, the Fall Gets Down
Mr. Smith — Mark E. Smith of the Fall, that is — came to Washington Thursday night, and his constituents were out in force to greet him. “I still believe in the R and R dream / R and R as primal scream,” Smith sang on 1978’s “Live at the Witch Trials,” and if his show at the Black Cat were any indication, his faith in rock-and-roll remains intact.

This year marks the Fall’s silver anniversary, but concertgoers didn’t experience any tender moments, given that the notoriously dyspeptic Smith has fired or otherwise alienated about as many troops over the course of his remarkably prolific career — 80 albums and counting — as Custer lost to arrows at the Little Bighorn. Smith, who is 46 but doesn’t look a day over 58, has been known to auto-destruct when exposed to stage lights. But the mercurial man from Manchester, England, was the model of decorum Thursday, even if he did go on 40 minutes late and sneaked the occasional peek at the lyric sheet.

For a band that has been together only briefly, the current incarnation of the Fall was impressively tight, abandoning the band’s early shambolic sound for an organ- and guitar-driven drone reminiscent of the Velvet Underground. “Telephone Thing” featured cool wah-wah guitar and a repetitive funk riff, and “Foldin’ Money/Kick the Can” and “Sparta FC” were just great straight-ahead rockers, albeit with Smith’s vitriolic warbling to lend them a tang of desperate living.

Like his celluloid predecessor, Smith has staked his career on the proposition, “Either I’m dead right or I’m crazy!” The verdict, fortunate for us, is still out.