- Crap Rap
- Fiery Jack
- Rowche Rumble
- Muzorewi’s Daughter
- In My Area
- Choc-Stock
NOTES
What remains of the gig was released as part of Totales Turns. The gig was assumed to be in Doncaster as logged on the cover of Totales but as Alan Savills review indicates it was actually in the mining town Bircotes.
Alan Savill from the Biggest Library Yet #17 (although he has the date wrong)
My first encounter with the Fall was, I’m almost ashamed to admit nowadays, a rather brief and blurred affair. It was a dingy Notts venue, sat against the wall between the DJ’s booth and the bar, a vantage point that successfully blocked my vision of 95 per cent of the stage. Unfortunately, I was in the grip of that teenage ceiling spinning experience, bought on by drinking a mere two pints of snakebite, while trying to express my undying love to a young lady of my age in a similar state of alcohol induced stupor. All I really recall was that everyone else I knew kept going on about how the bass was too loud and distorted.I was too drunk to have noticed and confess any band playing that night would have been playing second fiddle to my ham-fisted attempts at teenage rites of passage. I have no recollection of the date, only my age, which means it must’ve pre-dated my sixteenth birthday in the spring of 1979.
My second experience of The Fall was altogether more satisfying. I was still in the company of the same young lady and by now we’re both obtained an abnormally large appetite for the demon drink. This particular night (4 November 1979) we visited the leisure centre in our village to watch a local Stooges covers type group who were appearing third on the bill – The Uncool Dance Band. They were pretty unmemorable, likewise the second band The Kick-Starts. The venue was merely a gymnasium with all the ropes and apparatus pushed back, up against the walls. There was no stage, the bands played at floor level beneath one of the basketball nets.
The main band appeared, they were like nothing I had seen or heard before, I was totally captivated. The bass wasn’t too loud or distorted either. I rued not paying them more attention the first time I’d seen this scruffy troupe shuffle onto the stage some months earlier. Within the confines of the gym were a good number of irritating Sid Vicious clones playing on the gym ropes, making oh so ironic ape noises. One of them sported the slogan on the back of his studded leather jacket ‘It’s not what you wear, it’s what you are.’ Doubtless the punk-by-numbers copycat displaying this statement and his identically attired friends had totally missed the point put over by such wise rhetoric, but it would have made an apt banner to hang above the main turn for the night, belting out their message which such intensity and conviction that the whole thing threatened to spill over into a violent skirmish with the front row at any time.
Like I said, there was no stage and there was no security presence either. Mark Smith was quite literally giving the crowd his undiluted vitriol confrontation at a face to face level. The effect was awe inspiring. This Bircotes gig has since been released for posterity, though in typical Fallesque fashion it was never documented properly. The Bircotes action was released under the incorrect heading of Doncaster! on the Totale’s Turns album. ‘Donny’ is actually eight miles north of Bircotes and in a different county, but the Fall were travelling so much on their hectic, amphetamine-fuelled touring schedule back then (and they didn’t have Garbage’s tour bus) that such a minor geographical faux pas can be forgiven.
The very next day I travelled over to Sheffield and purchased all the Fall vinyl I could lay my hands on, a spend-thrift shopping addiction I’m still in the grip of when it comes buying Fall records, even the rip-off ones that labels put out against the wishes of MES. I had to wait two whole weeks before The Fall were ‘In My Area’ again, due south in that godforsaken barren wasteland called Retford. This proved to be the first of many occasions when I couldn’t get home from a gig but travelled anyway, besides what’s a ten mile walk home for a fit, healthy 16 year old!? The Fall were just as good as in Bircotes, even if they were playing in a ‘proper’ venue (though if the truth be known it was really a cramped sweatbox). I’ve seen better gigs than the 4/11/79 one, many times since, but I would never have thought this possible back then. I wonder, how many other Fall fans can say they’ve seen Mark E. Smith exerting himself in a gymnasium!
I have no idea what became of The Uncool Dance Band, they probably went down Harworth Colliery to find gainful employment like most of the male population of Bircotes did. Nor do I know the present whereabouts of my snakebite consuming lady friend of two decades ago, but if you’re out there Liz, do you still have that Dragnet poster we nicked off the entrance doors on the way out that night?