Thursday, 31 October, 1985 –  Klub Krackers, Liverpool, England

Wings
Bombast
Clear Off
Gut of the Quantifier
I Feel Voxish (x2)
What You Need
Dktr Faustus
Barmy
Paintwork
L.A.
2 x 4
I Am Damo Suzuki
Couldn’t Get Ahead
Spoilt Victorian Child
Rollin’ Dany
Totally Wired


NOTES

A phenomenal 88 minute plus spectacular – a good audience recording with some limited chatter. Sound is generally great but there is annoying feedback in places, and at times the volume of the band causes a bit of distortion.

Some notables here tonight with the last outing for “Wings” for a long time, and run-outs for “Totally Wired” and “Rowche Rumble”. The fourth and last performance of Rollin’ Dany.

Matters commence with a hyperfast “Mansion” on tape which slows down and fades into spoken word and then a collection of violent chords. A stunning version of “Wings” commences things proper. This version of the band, as I have said on more than one occasion, had this song down to its core brilliance, driven by Burns unforgiving drumming.

“Bombast” suffers a little from wow and flutter from the recording and the drums seem to drown out the rest. A laconic “Clear Off!” feels a little restrained amongst all of the other numbers tonight and the over use of cymbals and sharp keyboard tone seems to lose the core of the performance somehow.

Things are rectified with an amazing version of “Gut of the Quantifier” where I think we hear the first outing of Mark singing “Bourgeois Town” in the intro, a rant about the North West of Nowhere and then a consummate performance with brinkmanship on the tension building and release, and chaotic guitar sound taking the sound to somewhere altogether alien. Internal rhythmic turns make this a maelstrom of intense sound,

For technical reasons “I feel Voxish” gets two outings, I assume because the monitors have failed at some point – as MES conducts a period of volume increasing in a self deprecating fashion – at this point on the recording a punter starts whittering on next to taper. However one should not complain as version 2 is somewhat superior to its shorter predecessor. Said puter continues to shout unintelligible things which tend to detract from what is an immense wall of sound.

“What you need” is initially, like “Clear Off!” a little lost in the overall intensity of the gig, however Hanley saves the day with the trademark bass twang and the double keyboards add a unique sense of purpose, and as it develops it becomes a relentless festival of repetition.

Unfortunately the good “Dktr” is cut short but is welcome prior to his visit prior to the sharpish end and demonstrates again the power of this iteration of the gruppe in layering the sound into laminal walls of noise.

A strange ultra fast 46 seconds “Paintwork” (I think) precedes “L.A.”, It has the bones of the riff but there is some unintelligible ranting from MES which implies it is something else. Very good reading of the latter which holds together well as the guitars weave riffs around rock steady beat and driving Hanley riffing.

The three guitar line up with Rogers could play some amazing stuff when on full tilt and never more so tonight than on a blistering “Damo” which has complex interweaving lines which slowly collide and collapse into a memorable coda.

A memorably sloppy “Wired” is a mass of unforgiving rhythm, the fact that Brix forgets to drop the beat on the response makes it all a bit power pop, but I’m being churlish, this is wondrous stuff, a thorough going over in fact, probably one of the best versions on record. The Fall at their best.

Matters conclude on a similar high with the ghost of Nervous Norvus chasing MES around the hall in an unforgiving mad dance, for some reason the very clear vocals on the preceding track are lost, one can only assume the taper has moved to the rear of the hall?

Highly recommended – some exceptional performances here despite the aforementioned glitches and noisy adjacent crowd.