HIP PRIESTESS

I have no idea if anyone is still reading this but, just in case, I’ll draw your attention to this...(in the unlikely event you’re not already aware).

Steve Pringle’s first major creation was “The Fall In Fives”, in which he allowed a randomiser to put every song ever recorded by The Fall into groups of 5, which he then blogged about and reviewed in those groups. Once this was done, he plopped on the ol’ thinking cap and elected to devour the Fall’s catalogue in a different way - he was going to cover every release. All of ‘em. Live albums, compilations, limited edition CD singles, the lot. he named this “You Must Get Them All”, after John Peel’s 2nd most famous quotation about the group. 

The blog was an absolute delight and acquired an impressive following, including several ex-members. I loved it - YMGTA was also a relief for me on an individual basis. Someone was doing it *properly*. And not just properly, brilliantly. When compared to what I did over here, I felt like a 4 piece guitar band hearing “Revolver” in 1966 - I was redundant but in the most glorious of ways. 

The blog is now a book which is due later this month by mail order and in store come the autumn. This is shaping up to be the tome Fall fans deserve; a complete overview from an articulate, critical fan. Pringle is neither a sycophant nor an apologist but he is both an enthusiast and a fan - you can tell from the writing that he loves The Fall like no other. The book is said to be different from the blog in some respects and this seems normal; you can’t embed a YouTube video in a book. But what’s clear is that it will be roundly based on the bog and will therefore share its insight, its careful factual research and its keen ear. You can order it here - http://www.route-online.com/all-books/you-must-get-them-all.html

Part 4 - I’ve Been Duped...

It was to be expected that some of those who brought us some of the less essential Fall releases would also respond to Smith's death. One of worst was the first to arrive and it came from perennial recyclers Secret Records; a repackaging of 10 live tracks from the 2002 “A Touch Sensitive” DVD – already reconfigured multiple times – on an LP titled, and this absolutely beggars belief, “Best Of” and credited to “The Fall & Mark E Smith”, a credit never once used on a release in Smith's lifetime (a few gig posters, yes but never a record). Released just 3 months after Smith's death for about £18-20, this received the derision it deserved and, judging from the number of copies for sale on Discogs and their current asking prices, it appears to have sold just a little more than fuck all.

But even this was overshadowed come March 2019 when Ozit/Dandelion released what has to be The Worst Fall Release Ever. Pressed into horrid orange vinyl, the contents of “Mark's Personal Holiday Tony Tapes” were staggeringly poor. Proudly labelled as “Non-Record-Store-Day Release” (was it turned down?) the record boasted just 8 tracks. The album tried to elide its rotten contents by calling all the tracks “Mark's Personal Holiday Tony Tapes”. Track 1 was a 6 minute version of “Last Nacht” from “I Am Kurious Oranj”. The released track doesn't actually feature within the 6 minutes so this is probably an outtake and therefore probably not owned by Beggars Banquet. There is a drop out lasting several seconds that has gone uncorrected and it's about 4 minutes longer than it needs to be, confirming the brevity of the version used in 1988 to be bob on. Tracks 2, 4, 6 and 8 are live tracks from 1981, all of which had already been released on the otherwise unimpressive “Northern Cream” DVD. What is barely credible is that tracks 3, 5 and 7 are also “Last Nacht” but not further alternates, rather being Track 1 cut into 2 minute pieces and simply repeated! Did they think we wouldn't notice?! Utterly awful, thoroughly exploitative and an absolute disgrace. They also stumped up a 30 minute DVD of MES being interviewed. This bore the thoroughly unappealing title “30 Minutes On A Manchester Slag Heap”. I only ever saw this for sale on eBay but a couple of clicks confirmed that it was Ozit/Dandelion product being sold by them through that channel. The cover was of a slag heap rather than of MES. Enough said.

OK, let's tidy up, what's next?

The immediate future sees 2 vinyl releases in the August “drop” of the now-staggered, socially-distanced RSD2020; a double LP of “[Austurbæjarbíó] - Reykjavík Live 1983” on the now inevitable splatter vinyl and a single LP of  “Cerebral Caustic” on multi-coloured “bonkers” (their word, absofuckinglutely not mine) splatter vinyl because of course it is. That's all for RSD this year, a move which represents far better judgement by the organisers. A studio album out of print on vinyl for 25 years and a properly sought after live release on the format for the first time? Yeah, that fits well with what RSD was meant to be back when we all queued up for a “Bury Pts 2 + 4” 7” in 2010.

Now, a fun wee question mark was raised over “CC” when the RSD website credited the release to Demon rather than Cherry Red. It appears Demon have the Permanent Records catalogue and have also announced clear vinyl reissues of “The Infotainment Scan”, “Middle Class Revolt”, “The Twenty-Seven Points” and, perhaps most interestingly, “The Post Nearly Man”, all on clear vinyl with expanded artwork from Pascal LeGras. It looks as though these are coming in under the £20 mark (£25 for T27P) and I reckon they'll be popular – I fancy nabbing MCR and TPNM myself. A bit of a downer that all of these, except, oddly, “The Post Nearly Man” were recently rescheduled from September 2020 to January 2021 but hey ho – probably Covid-related, much like everything else.

As for Cherry Red, whilst one report had it that “Are You Are Missing Winner” was next, they are finally releasing a 3CD/2LP edition of “Imperial Wax Solvent” in October. This includes the much-discussed original mix by Grant Showbiz and a previously unavailable live set from shortly after the album's original release. This is, basically, exactly what we wanted. Hurrah! Can't wait.

Thanks to the speculation re: AYAMW, there was a little disappointment in come quarters and I can certainly see a healthy audience for a straight single LP pressing of that as it was only ever available on a picture disc vinyl before. Here's hoping they won't go for a double splatter vinyl with unnecessary extras (“Where's The Fuckin' Taxi? Cunt” on vinyl? Come on, SPARE US).  

To yr present authors surprise, an expanded edition of “The Frenz Experiment” was announced for release by Beggars Banquet/Arkive in October. I had reckoned a new vinyl edition was likely as it was the only studio album on BB not yet afforded a new pressing and the addition of a second LP with various singles tracks was no surprise either, given that there are similar packages available for “TWAFW”, “TNSG” and “Bend Sinister”. A very pleasant surprise however is the inclusion of the group's Janice Long session from 1987, their only unreleased Radio 1 session. Also, “A Day In The Life” has been licenced for the this also (it was the only studio recording from the era missing from “5 Albums”). The Long session and “...Life” are only on the CD version. As such, this release very much follows the pattern of the “Bend Sinister” reissue from 2018 and is likely inspired by the near ecstatic reception and healthy sales that release enjoyed. Nice that the CD edition is £12 this time, having been more like £22 for “Bend Sinister”.

Let Them Eat Vinyl are responsible for the illustration...they are planning an almost ludicrous onslaught of Fall vinyl. Their website currently lists an almost unbelievable THIRTY ONE Fall LP releases for the three months running September to November. Thirty-one. Now – this includes “Interim” which is already on the shelves but it also includes the “Live From The Vaults” releases. It was assumed from the inclusion of two of these on Cherry Red's “Dragnet” 3CD box that these were part of the Fall Sound Archive deal that MES cut with CR in the years before his death which makes this a bit interesting. Also, LTEV are also claiming they will release “The Post-Nearly Man” on vinyl in October, which clashes with Demon's schedule – they originally had Smith and The Fall's albums for Permanent Records releases slated for reissue in September but all except TPNM have been moved. Meanwhile, “Cog Sinister” are about to release TPNM on CD! After being unavailable and highly prized for 2 decades, we're now set for 3 separate reissues within 2 months!  Anyway, the vast majority of the remaining LTEV are discs from the 2 “sets of ten (really eleven)” although also included are the excellent “I Am Pure As Oranj” and the first vinyl edition of “The Light User Syndrome” since its original release in 1996. Caveat Emptor, as the saying goes.

Narnack are also hinting that a 3LP “Fall Heads Roll” isn't too far off. Having teased this for a couple of years, Early in 2020, it was announced that the label was folding. This announcement was deleted and Narnack immediately moved on to asking fans to suggest what additional material could be added to this new version. Never one of their best, there would have to be some impressive outtakes to persuade yr persent scribe to cough up.  

Elsewhere, Phonogram have yet to succumb to new vinyl pressings of their albums, despite the prices fetched on the collectors market for these, especially “Code-Selfish”. This may be partly due to what seems to have been a relatively low take-up for their 6CD box set from 2017. Titled “The Fontana Years”, this was just the 2CD editions of the three albums from 2007 in a box. It therefore looked weak next to the “Singles 1978-2016” box set as well as providing nothing attractive to the faithful who already had them. It hit the shelves at £35-40 a time and, unsurprisingly, remained there and can now be scored for around £20.

The much requested expansion of “The Real New Fall LP” with the original, very different mix of the album has yet to appear. At last count, contractual wrangles between the UK and US were said to be in the way but who knows? If “Levitate” can reappear, surely this can too.

Of course, we never know what else the less-salubrious end of the market will have for us but we shall approach with due caution.

The cold reality: what we get now is all there is. Mark E Smith now exists for Fall fans on paper, on magnetic tape, on vinyl and in combinations of 0 and 1. A sad fact. But it is clear that the appetite for The Fall is, if anything, increasing. Hindsight is presenting The Fall in a particularly clear light. In such a stylised, filtered and carefully marketed world, full of covert strategies and manipulative messaging, The Fall are reassuringly flawed, human, real. Their jagged edges, their constant state of flux, their DIY presentation and their disinterest in convention draws in the curious. The quantity of music suits an insatiable, want-it-all-and-now culture and, having made their albums for the vinyl format as well as bringing us so many magnificent 3-4 minute singles, their music is almost perfectly suited to today's market place where vinyl albums mix with song-by-song streams. People who love to write about music always loved The Fall and it seems that this is every bit as true today as it was in the days when we never had to wait any more than a few months for a missive of some sort, be it an album, a single, a Peel session or even just an entertaining interview.

Given that The Beatles – the most lauded rock/pop act of all time - have finally reached a generation to whom their blithe optimism means absolutely nothing, it is impossible to say how anything in music will be regarded 20 years from now. But for now, at least, The Fall endure. Their vibrations remain intense and powerful. And we, the people, dance to the waves.

Part 3 - “ I thought we had some kind of agreement but with you it was just prurience”

So, where were we. Ah yes....Record Store Day 2019.

It was, perhaps inevitably, a heavy day for Fall fans. Lead-in times both for the manufacture of vinyl records and for participation in RSD are such that Smith's death came too late for the impact to be evident in the 2018 event but for 2019, we were absolutely flooded in a way that caused some, quite rightly, to question the judgement of the organisers in allowing so many obvious vultures to swoop in for an easy bite. 

The “monitor mixes” from the 2CD edition of “The Unutterable” were pressed to vinyl for the first time. “Whoo-fucking-pee” quoth the faithful and you will have absolutely no difficulty acquiring it today should you be down to few enough marbles for it to seem like a good investment. BMG hold the rights to the group's Rough Trade recordings and went with a box set of five 7” singles under the awful title “Medicine For The Masses”. This was the exact same format as “The Rough Trade Singles Box” from 2002 although with the bonus of containing the correct Peel Session versions of “Container Drivers” and “New Puritan” (Castle/Sanctuary had updated the 5 disc CD edition once they had acquired the rights to the BBC tracks but the vinyl edition of Italy's Earmark Records retained the Grotesque and Totale's Turns versions used in the initial pressings). Given not only that none of this material is any way scarce but that an excellent single LP release had been given to all 10 tracks in the box (Peel takes included) by US imprint Superior Viaduct in 2018, it was perhaps inevitable that “Medicine For The Masses” pretty much flopped on the day and can now be acquired brand new for a good £10 less than the asking price on the day itself.

Ah yes, Superior Viaduct, let's not forget them. A well-regarded reissue label with a smattering of current artists, they had already issued some Fall vinyl in 2016/2017, putting all the studio albums up to “Perverted By Language” back onto vinyl as well as the first 2 singles and the eternally category-defying “Slates” 10”. Following Smith's passing, they have (almost) completed the task with the aforementioned “Rough Trade Singles” LP and a new pressing of “Totale's Turns”. These editions have been very well received and have been praised for the quality both of the mastering and of the pressings but they remain largely inaccessible to UK fans due to licensing restrictions preventing the editions from being imported. As such, you'll hafta pick these up on a one-to-one basis off your own bat.

Right, back to Record Store Day 2019. We also had the “opportunity” to buy a number of live albums. 5 of them, in fact. All of these had previously been released on CD towards the end of 2018...so this was going to be called Crap Rap Part 14 but it's now called “Stop Releasing Every Gig You Can Find On Some Mouldy Third Generation Maxell C90 on a double LP”

Live albums have always been canon with The Fall. “Totale's Turns” was their 3rd LP release, “Live In London 1980” was issued by Chaos Tapes with the group's permission in 1982, “Fall In A Hole” was allowed until copies were exported. We had “Seminal Live” and “The 27 Points” mixing live with studio, as did “I Am Kurious Oranj” with several tracks recorded during the original Edinburgh run of the ballet. Even the “Perverted By Language Bis” video was largely live material. Even once the shark was jumped in the late 90s/early 00s with the endless recycling of those outtake/live compilations, there were official live missives, such as the excellent “Last Night At The Palais” in 2009, the wonderfully titled but patchy “Uurop VIII-XII Places in Sun & Winter, Son” in 2014 though to the terrible “Live In Clitheroe” in 2017. So, all in, it comes as no surprise at all that over 20 more live albums have been added to The Fall's discography since Smith's sad departure from this realm.

There were no less than 5 live albums dumped merrily onto the shelves for RSD 2019, 3 of them doubles. On their own, this would have been an outlay of over £100...in fact, if you wanted the full RSD Fall, you'd have had little or no change on the day from £250. For exactly no unreleased music. No unreleased music? What were these live albums then? Let's wind back to late in 2018... (I told you this was tough to do in any kind of linear fashion).

Arriving via the PledgeMusic site, “Set Of Ten” released by “Cog Sinister”, worked like this: 10 previously unreleased live recordings were contained in a sturdy square box with spiffy new artwork from Pascal LeGras. The tariff? £100. Ouch. Now, a handful of them were announced as separate releases, however, if you bought the box you would receive an exclusive disc – a recording from Derby, 1994. Cometh the hour, the Derby CD was one of the first to be released on its own. Huh.

A small amount of digging revealed that this set was the work of Rob Ayling. With the dates running from 1980 to 1999, the general opinion re: Set Of Ten was that these tapes were very likely to be in Ayling's possession due to the “Live From The Vaults” series on Voiceprint, Ayling's previous imprint, from 2005. When that series was announced, the five releases were said to be simply the first batch.  It could therefore be deduced that these tapes had been destined for future batches. At the time, there was a minor dust-up over them and no further volumes were issued. Whatever the motivations, presenting an 11 CD set of old bootlegs with so little quality control being put into the audio and asking £100 for it felt like cold ash in the mouth. Worse still, PledgeMusic went bust before many customers could receive their sets, leaving them to either claim chargebacks on their credit cards or simply out of pocket as ordinary creditors to the failed business. It must have been galling for those who lost money to see the CDs arriving on their own and several cut onto expensive vinyl.

I've picked up a couple of the CDs separately and these have been largely fine. Recording quality is listenable but obviously audience derived. The best one by far of those I've heard is “Live 23rd June 1981 @ Jimmy's Music Club New Orleans”, a great recording of a full-tilt Fall performance from a critical time in their existence (pictured) . There's a palpable tension, possibly due to the return of Burns, brought back not just out of practicalities but also to even the group up a bit, now that Smith was beginning to reconsider the wisdom of having a team of childhood friends for a group. Rehiring Burns was designed to put some grit back into the machine and it worked. Having a full set from this line-up is a worthy addition to the canon and it should be snapped up before it vanishes – this is the only one of the “Set Of Ten” CDs that seems to be thin on the ground. The artwork and credits show the level of care taken over the release; that is – pretty much none. The CD artwork has the 6 piece “Hex” line-up – Karl Burns is the only drummer here as Paul Hanley was at home doing his O Levels. However, the sleeve credits Paul Hanley and not Burns, adding a credit for Duncan Burndred, who was the group's driver at the time. The info had been sourced from the “Slates & Dates” press release which credited Burndred with “the rest” (ie anything other than music and management). Likely pilfered from thefall.org, this missive was retooled for the artwork without any real consideration.

However, it seems there was sufficient demand out there and, cometh the tail end of 2019, cometh another Set of Ten, given the snappy title...”Another Set Of Ten”. They must have been up all fucking night thinking of that one. Again, it has 11 discs. It does get interesting here insofar as most of the tapes come from between 2009 and 2013 suggesting not only that there wasn't much left from the original “Vaults”- destined batch but also making it unclear from whom these tapes were being licenced. They are, of course, under no obligation to discuss such matters publicly and, indeed the current incarnation of Cog Sinister would likely feel aggrieved at having the question asked. They are, after all, a legitimate enterprise. 

A quick skwizz at the Discogs page tells you that “Another Set Of Ten” is not a triumph; all the tapes are listed as being audience tapes, one disc has just six songs from the gig and several others are also incomplete and/or mislabelled. The main contributor to the Discogs entry (to whom, hello!) notes that the tracklistings appear to be taken from photographs of setlists uploaded to thefall.org's justly revered and thoroughly sublime gigography but, where the setlist didn't match what was played, no attempt has been made to correct this. They haven't even matched up the content with the tracklistings!!! At time of writing, these ones are just starting to slip into the shops on their own, possibly Covid delayed as you could get them via online retailers for a while. The cover for a Manchester gig from 2009 looked like a sick joke and it was hard not to think similar (albeit at lower pitch) about the inclusion of an infamous Motherwell gig at which MES was completely plastered and Brix had quit the band an hour or so before the show. What's next? Worthing? Brownies?

Yet it is very hard not to be continually tempted. There's some juicy setlists in these discs and the artwork at least has some effort – Pascal LeGras has done a very fine job here and his art certainly gives the right feel to the releases. I'm guessing that was the plan. I’ve got my eye on a few. It’s a disease this, I tell you...

Anyway, one way of the other, 5 of the “Set Of Ten” discs found their way onto vinyl on RSD, courtesy of reissue imprint Let Them Eat Vinyl and all of these are still easy to score, should you wish. The whole Gonzo/Let Them Eat Vinyl hookup is interesting for scholars of who-owns-what in terms of The Fall's catalogue. As above, we know that BMG have the Rough Trade recordings but LTEV's “Grotesque”, issued in 2017, states it is licensed by Sanctuary.

LTEV have also been putting some of the other lesser releases from the catalogue onto vinyl, including 2 mid 90's live albums (Phoenix 1995 and “The Idiot Joy Show” - nothing that was wasn't available for buttons on CD in the early 00s) as well as “Interim”, the demos and live cobble-together that attempted to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2004. The latter had never been pressed to vinyl before and with bloody good reason.  Yr mileage, as always, may vary.

Whilst not The Fall, acolytes will doubtless want to know that Ed Blaney issued a 2CD edition of “The Train”, containing the full 40-minute “(Part Three)” CD, a similarly lengthed alternate version and a clutch of remixes. Blaney also uploaded a properly touching tribute to Smith on YouTube, including reminiscences with other friends of Smith.

Part 2: Cherry-picking

Cherry Red had been releasing The Fall's new music since 2011's “Ersatz GB” and we already knew that Smith had signed a further deal with them to look after what portion of the group's catalogue he owned. They had already made a start with the handsome seven disc “Singles 1978 - 2016” box set they had released late in 2017 (alongside a cut-down three disc “A Sides” collection). The set had originally been scheduled for release in 2016 but the production deadline for the all-important Christmas market was missed and the set was held back until after “New Facts Emerge” - from which no singles were taken - had been released. Following Smith's passing, the seven-disc edition sold out and was unavailable for a short time before Cherry Red did the decent thing and made a few more.

A reissue of  1997's “Levitate” had been in the works for a while; Smith had signed off the tracklisting and there had been a trailer of sorts with a Record Store Day-only 7” of “Masquerade” in 2017. Given that the album had been in contractual limbo for quite some time with original vinyl copies fetching 3 figures on the open market, Cherry Red's first posthumous release felt like a public service,  doing the right thing both by Smith and by the fans. Released towards the end of May 2018, the new 2CD/3LP edition was justly well received and some kindly reviews appeared with mostly positive re-evaluations of one of their most awkward albums. Hindsight benefits the record; if it sounds like they were falling to bits, it's because they were and now that we know not just what happened next but how the whole story of The Fall continued for another 20 years, it has context. For the record (Portugal), yr present author is no more fond of the album than she was 7 or 8 years ago but “Ol' Gang” has clicked into focus and the second disc puts those great b-sides from the “Masquerade” CD singles back onto the shelves so it would have to be considered necessary.

Less impressive was “58 Golden Greats”, released at the end of 2018. A 3CD set in a clamshell box, this was, in essence, an extended version of the classic “50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong” collection from 2004, extending the tracklist to cover the remainder(er) of the group's career. It actually expands on the original in other ways, adding several songs from the era covered in the original version; the puzzling omission of “Big New Prinz” is corrected for one thing and other singles are added such as  “Oh! Brother” and “Dead Beat Descendent”. Perhaps Beggars Banquet were more co-operative this time. Whilst one could always quibble with any attempt at a Fall “best of”, yr present author was not taken with this one and my purse remained closed. 58 was an unwieldy number (why not a round 60?), the cover artwork – a spoof of a different Elvis Presley sleeve – was far from appealing and the entry-point value of “50,000...” was lost, a 3 disc set at £17 being too big a serving at too high a price for the merely curious. However, it looks as if I'm just flat-out in the wrong. As we'll continually see, Cherry Red aren't just experienced, they are also smart and do not lack savvy. I'm sat here keyboard-griping while “58 Golden Greats” is sold out. Enough said.

In 2019, Cherry Red announced the beginning of the Fall Sound Archive, the title of which gave the air of a mission to preserve The Fall's work for future generations. Inevitably, they were starting with 40th Anniversary editions of “Live At The Witch Trials” and “Dragnet”. There was early disappointment. The 3CD edition of “Live At The Witch Trials” contained the exact same music as the 2CD edition from 2004 but spread over three discs. Any thoughts that the decision at least preserved the sanctity of the original 11 song album were hampered by the 3CD edition of “Dragnet” containing, as disc 1, the exact same running order – with single and outtakes – as the 2004 CD edition. The other two discs were 2 of the little-loved “Live From The Vaults” series (of which, more later, sort of..). The archive was perhaps, not so deep.

However, the plus points were the vinyl editions, which had been hatched with obvious care. Using the rare US edition of “LATWT” with an alternate sleeve and revised running order was a clever touch and one that acknowledged that the Fall's audience would need something more than just a nice colour of vinyl before they indulged the album yet again. Similarly, “Dragnet” came with a reproduction 7” of “Rowche Rumble”, a record which originally came with the thinnest paper sleeve in the history of music. That's not to say that we didn't get coloured vinyl, oh we did - “LATWT” came of red vinyl to match the US sleeve and “Dragnet” on black and white “splatter” vinyl. These both sold well, sold quickly and sold out, now being tricky to score except on the Discogs etc market. But perhaps more to the point, they suggested that Cherry Red's experience and nouse would, at minimum, keep things interesting.

Later in 2019, the Kamera catalogue came under Cherry Red's microscope and it was another mixed set of releases. For CD buyers, a 6 disc set called “(1982)” was developed. This contained “Hex Enduction Hour”, “Room To Live” “Fall In A Hole” various single and live tracks and the “Live To Air In Melbourne” album which had previously snuck out in the late 90's when MES was broke. There was no new music to be had here at all – everything had previously been released. As such £40 was too rich a price tag for many and the edition is still easily available. The new vinyl edition of “Hex” was well particularly well presented. For the first time, the 60 minute LP was cut onto 4 sides of vinyl – a long overdue move, this did the album real justice on the format and would have to be considered an essential for those who insist on twelve-inch slabs of wax for their music. A pleasing, sturdy fold-out sleeve showed that corners were not being cut, the vinyl again matched the colour scheme of the artwork and it also came with an excellent reproduction of the sterling “Look, Know/I'm Into C.B.” 45. What spoiled it a little bit was the inclusion of a third LP with Peel Session #5 on one side and some of the live tracks from the 2005 Sanctuary 2CD on the other. All this really did was drive up the price – a double LP with the 7” would have been perfect and would have been less heavy on the purse *NB – this didn't stop me buying it – that's my copy in the picture...). “Room To Live” was given a vinyl reissue too, this time as a double LP with sides 3 and 4 being the live tracks from the 2005 Sanctuary edition. Again, this didn't quite feel like the right choice – an alternative idea would have been a single LP with a 7”. Given that the classic “Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul/Fantastic Life” single had been added to the popular, widely owned German pressing, why not add a repro of that instead? It would have cost less and added more value to the package.

Despite these whinges “(1982)” would have to be considered an elegant, practical solution to a latter-day problem and demonstrates why Cherry Red remain a market leader in catalogue reissues. Can you really sell compact discs of these albums yet again? How else do you present the music in this format? The answer to parcel the whole lot together and present it as a “year-in-the-life” was a smart one that was only hampered by an optimistic £40 price tag (which translated to as much as £58 in stores) and the artwork being based on “Hex” which could have given a more casual customer the notion that the set was Hex and 5 discs of “other” material. The bottom line here is that there is nothing else in the cupboard; as with the IAKO ballet and the Hey! Luciani play, fantasies about things like the unedited “Winter” and the full 20+ minute “And This Day” ever appearing are exactly that – fantasies. Were they ever preserved, they're gone and anything that did turn up, almost 40 years hence would likely be in such a state of degeneration as to be unlistenable. From now on, all that can be done is to keep this material out there and try to present it with a fresh angle. That's precisely what Cherry Red have done here.

Come 2020, come the challenge of reselling what is not just one of the most widely-distributed but also one of the worst Fall albums: “Reformation Post TLC”. Cherry Red stuck to type with a double LP pressed into blue and red coloured vinyl, again matching the colour to the sleeve. Undoubtedly a handsome package, this version was snapped up with some enthusiasm although it does seem that sales were likely harmed by coinciding with the early, uncertain, often panic-stricken days of the Covid-19 pandemic reaching the UK. The 4CD edition was daunting: the whole album and 2 CDs worth of outtakes and rough mixes, followed by the “Last Night At The Palais” CD. The “Last Night At The Palais” DVD was not included. Time has passed, time has healed and it is clear that RPTLC is a terrific EP stretched out beyond the energy of the participants. There is even a strong 40 minute single LP to be had within its contents but, hey it was what it was. With almost all of the unreleased mixes having no vocals, interest wears off before we got to the excellent live disc but, on the other paw, Cherry Red have done exactly what we want; it is highly unlikely that there is anything left from the album sessions; this is the whole lot, every scrap. Up to us now what we do with them.

****************************

Now, if you're thinking I've skipped something, you're right but the story of The Fall's posthumous discography is difficult to tell in a linear fashion. So I invite you, friends, to join me in a diversion. Cast your minds back to Record Store Day 2019.  

Cherry Red played a good hand by releasing a new vinyl edition of the superb “Imperial Wax Solvent” album. As with “Levitate”, vinyl copies were going for silly money, Universal having allegedly pressed a mere 500 for the world. It was a shame that Cherry Red therefore added only another 500 copies, this time pressed into yellow vinyl. These were almost entirely snapped up on the day and copies of this edition are routinely offered at £50-60.  “IWS” had, of course, been out of print since 2008, having been deleted less than 6 months after its release. As such the RSD edition of  “IWS” could be said to have undersold the record somewhat. Unless, of course, a properly “available” edition, maybe with that unreleased original mix of the album was to follow at some point...more on that later.

The Fall – The Post-MES Years

It is now two and a half years since the passing of Mark E Smith and, therefore, the end of The Fall. In her show, “Savage”, comedian and writer Alice Fraser notes that “only the unfinished contains the infinite” and there was something not just sad but also oddly inappropriate about The Fall being finished and the catalogue therefore finite. Of course, the music industry doesn’t work like that and we have had no shortage of opportunities to add to our Fall collections since January 2018.

On the whole, the array of releases that have emerged since Smith’s cruel and premature death have been every bit as mixed a bag as one could have expected had one been sufficiently engaged with those which appeared in his lifetime. The quality, price and value of these additions to the catalogue have all the highs and lows we had come to endure from the mid '90s forwards and range from the essential to the unnecessary, from the delightful to the unedifying, from the respectful to the vulturous (in the aftermath). This is going to take a few posts so let's call this Part 1 and let’s leave those that beggared belief for now and look at those that rewarded belief in Beggars...

Beggars Banquet could be said to have waded in quite quickly but we need to be fair to them. The Arkive, as the catalogue and reissues division of the label is known, had long noted the ever-growing market for vinyl and had been quietly putting some classics from the BB catalogue back onto plastic for quite some time. It was, therefore, inevitable that they would do this for The Fall. After all, they had already included the group among their “Omnibus” editions and also in their “5 Albums” series. There was precedent: in 2015, The Arkive took over the LP pressings of  “The Wonderful And Frightening World...” and “This Nation's Saving Grace” again, having previously licensed these to Vinyl 180. Each was appended with an accompanying second LP which pulled together the singles and b-sides from around each of those albums: “The Wonderful And Frightening Escape Route To...” and “Schtick: Yarbles Revisited” respectively. A few copies of these were made available separately too, just in case they were accused of double dipping. Fair play.

In August and then October 2018, two further vinyl-only reissues were added – a respectful enough distance. First up was a new pressing of  the “458489” A-Sides collection. White vinyl was used to match the artwork and new inner sleeve was designed but, given that this was quite a long LP to start with at 17 tracks, it was a shame that the opportunity wasn't taken to press it onto two discs and use the full length “Cruiser's Creek”. This was followed by a 30th anniversary reissue of  “I Am Kurious, Oranj” on, inevitably, orange vinyl with the original gatefold sleeve restored as well as a reproduction of the programme for the Edinburgh Festival run of the ballet from 1988. However, the versions of  some tracks match to the longer takes on the original cassette and CD editions rather than the original vinyl and a small audio clip from the show that featured on the 1988 first press LP fell by the wayside too. Whilst the programme added value, the decisions regarding the audio made it feel like a “collector's item” rather than a proper reissue of the original vinyl.

The new edition of “IAKO” brought renewed requests for film of the ballet to be released. Over the last decade or so, it has become apparent that there was more footage captured than was thought at the time but that this is either in an antiquated format (Ellen Van Schuylenburch has this, it seems) or has been lost/wiped (the BBC). It seems likely that this simply isn't coming – even if Van Schuylenburch does have a full shoot, the condition of the tapes after 30+ years would be an issue, as would the cost of making any kind of transfer and restoration. The likelihood is that the cost involved simply couldn't be recouped for such a niche item. As frustrating as it might be, as with the “Hey Luciani” play, this one has evaded capture. Still, all is impermanence.

However, in 2019, the real boo arrived. The remastered and expanded reissue of “Bend Sinister” finally (FINALLY!) emerged, the gap in the Beggars Banquet years filled at last with the first new edition of the group's divisive 1986 album since....well, since 1986. This is actually quite astonishing given how regularly many of their albums have been retooled but all credit to Arkive; for one thing they can't be accused of flooding the market and for another, when they did the job, they did it right. Whilst there were a few exhales at the price (£22.99 felt like a lot for a double CD but was, I suppose, a relative bargain for the 2LP set), the results were an absolute joy and this is – in fairness to everyone – the only release since Smith's death that has told us anything we didn't already know about The Fall.

All that trolling, snidey waffle about the album being mastered either too slow or entirely from cassettes was killed off once and for all. The layer of fog lifted from the album in the remastering process demonstrates that the group were not necessarily playing at concert pitch in every session and that only 2 of the album's songs came from Smith's fabled wonky Maxell; we had already guessed “Riddler!” was one of them due to the audible wobble and hiss at the end of the track but it turned out the other was “Terry Waite Sez”. We were partly compensated for the latter with an alternate, slightly longer mix taken from a studio master but your bottom line here is that “Bend Sinister” had never sounded better and the album's long shadow was finally cast off. It turned out that the relative griminess wasn't actually a core part of the album's sound (unlike, say, “Dragnet”) and letting the light into “BS” was a relief as well as a thrill. The second disc collected the group’s 1986 singles and their flipsides (every one of them absolutely first class) as well as their Peel Session from that year and a few alternate takes for the faithful, the best of which was an early stab at “Entitled” which crackles with raw energy. Oh, and the previously cassette-only “Town And Country Hobgoblins”, now with both channels audible. 

OK, it took a looooong time but the Beggars Banquet years have now been perfectly preserved; the Omnibus editions of “TWAFW...” and “TNSG”, the 2CD “BS” and the “5 Albums” set give us great sounding versions of all the released material as well as an array of contemporaneous outtakes and live tracks to expand and round out our view of what remains, for some, a controversial era of The Fall's tenure but is, for most, one of their most persistently rewarding periods.

Well, where better to finish than at the very beginning?

"Repetition” was played at the group’s first public live performance, at North West Arts basement on King Street in Manchester in May 1977 and the song appears on their first known setlist, thought to date from 1976. The gig was organised by the Manchester Musician's Collective and Smith remembered it during the 2004 BBC documentary, “The Wonderful And Frightening World Of Mark E. Smith”, noting correctly that the show was headlined someone who “made symphonies out of bird noises”. This was Trevor Wishart who was likely performing material that would appear on his 1978 album “Red Bird (A Political Prisoner's Dream)“. “Repetition” was recorded later that year at the behest of Buzzcocks manager Richard Boon as part of a four-song EP intended for the group’s own New Hormones label. However, this didn’t come to pass and the record lay unreleased until August 1978, when it was picked up by Step Forward Records shaved down to three songs (a never-released version of “Frightened” was nixed) and issued on side two of the “Bingo Master’s Breakout” 7″, side one being “Psycho Mafia”and “Bingo Master”. “Repetition” ran for a full five minutes on the record and was as much a statement of intent as it was a song and it remained pertinent to Mark E Smith’s approach to music until The Fall’s final recordings.

Early in the song, Smith sings “we've repetition in our music and we're never going to lose it”. It’s worth pointing out that they had little choice. The group were far from skilled musicians and, indeed plans to have Smith as the guitarist and Martin Bramah as singer were frustrated by Smith’s inability to become even moderately proficient on the instrument. Simple, repeating figures were pretty much beyond all the musicians except Tony Friel who had been playing bass for some time. Thus, Bramah opts for a queasy 4 note descending figure, Una Baines for some simple stabbing chords, Friel doesn’t stray any real distance from a three note pattern and Burns holds things down in one of his most restrained performances for the group - he fiddles with his hi-hat a little at one point but he largely keep the fills simple - he was right out of his idiom (in contrast with his muscular work on “Psycho Mafia”) but reacts well. Meanwhile Smith delivers a lyric that, to all intents and purposes, rubs it in, consistently referring back to his core proposition and how much the group “dig” repetition. There’s a nice piece of wordplay where he calls upon those who are “sick of fancy music” to get with them...that this sounds for all the world like “sycophancy” is unlikely to have gone unnoticed. It’s not completely clear how we’re to take the reference to Richard Hell’s “Blank Generation” towards the end of the song; appending “same old” and “groovy” to the phrase certain suggests a level of sarcasm and, therefore, disdain but ambiguity would be another stream Smith would follow. All in, it’s an attractive if simple sound picture and couldn’t help but intimate that something was afoot.

Many of The Fall’s most exciting and fully realised moments are based on the simplest of repeating figures, one or two chords, three or four notes, the success or otherwise hinging on the players, the sound, the performance - the theory is that, if this blend is suitably potent, Smith can engage at his fullest and make the picture complete. “Deer Park” is one chord, Marc Riley just about squeezing in a second by moving a maximum of two fingers. Scanlon budges just once from the two chord trick that all six and a half minutes of “Eat Y’Self Fitter” hinges around. and that’s to pretty much run his hand up and down his fretboard in apparent frustration. “Blindness” is built on a three note bassline. Late period live favourite “Auto Chip 2014 - 2016″ is effectively one chord and can be found on YouTube in a performance that stretched to a full 19 minutes. In an interview with Channel 4 News early in 2016, Smith specifically stated that repetition remained part of his musical strategy. Maybe Smith already knew something of how the brain processes repeating figures but he certainly learned how musicians responded to being hemmed in like that, itching to deviate but disallowed from doing so. This was The Fall’s bedrock and Smith built on it for 40 years. What an extraordinary life’s work. 

The Venn diagram of The Fall and Mark E. Smith is impossible to draw - Smith was only one part of The Fall but, simultaneous, The Fall was only one part of Mark E. Smith. But, with Smith’s death comes the end of The Fall. With that, I’ll  leave you back where it all began. The circle had to complete one day.

Thank you Mark. And thank you to all The Fall’s members and other contributors. My life, at times, simply wouldn’t have been tolerable without you. 

By the time The Fall came to record “Code: Selfish”, they were on a bit of a shaky peg with Phonogram and the initial sessions were hard going. A month in Cava Studios in Glasgow (since converted into flats) produced, according to Steve Hanley in “The Big Midweek” just 5 finished songs. A speedy job for, say, U2 or Tears For Fears but perilously slow for The Fall and a worrying indicator.  

One would never have known as the first song to be heard was certainly their best single for Phonogram and one of their very best overall. The music was written by Simon Wolstencroft and, broadly, is what might have happened had “So What About It” from “Shift-Work” been worked on by the full band rather than Smith adding a vocal to the demo. Fading in on a distant keyboard and sampled radio sounds, it bursts into full view on its sharp synth riff and the second the group fall into place behind it, we’re cruising. Smith delivers a dense, cryptic lyric which never overwhelm the track, fitting in well with all the synth swooshes and occasion programmed interjections. Scanlon’s sea-sick guitar interjections keep things human (and indeed, distinctly Fall) and the track appears to finish with an audible sigh of exhaustion. A video was made, which is worth viewing if only to see The Fall having a Who’s The Most Uncomfortable contest while they ride around London in an army truck. This was The Fall at their most accessible and energetic but with Smith sacrificing none of his desire to apply his lengthy, encoded tracts to even the group’s most ostensibly commercial work. 

At first, it looked like it had worked, when “Free Range” became the group’s first self-panned single to make the top 40, albeit at 40. But it turned out the album’s birth pains were ominous. Whilst to these ears, “Code: Selfish” was a cracker, it received divided reviews with many finding the album a tough chew. Also, in a ridiculous own goal, the album version of “Free Range” cuts into a markedly inferior mix after the first minute. Before long, Phonogram were asking for demos of the group’s new material. An affronted Smith declined to co-operate and the group were let go with a severance payment which they duly spent recording “The Infotainment Scan”. But no matter what happened next, this is one of The Fall’s finest singles and it still sounds fresh, vibrant and - oh, come on, why not - as much FUN as it did in 1992.  

Right, a couple of outright bangers for you as we take this series to a conclusion.

Summer 1988. I have now been in the midst of a full-on obsession with The Fall for some months, my respect and enjoyment having turned to adoration under the spell of the “Palace Of Swords Reversed” compilation cassette. I have just turned 15 and have been given some money for my birthday. So naturally, I buy a Fall album; “Live At The Witch Trials” on LP. This is met with considerable consternation from my parents who feel I’m spending far too much money on records and especially on the horrible noise this particular mob are attempting to describe as “music”. So my next purchase needs to be more stealthy. In an HMV store on Union Street in Glasgow (today, a branch of Poundland), I find a cassette called “Escape Route from aie The Wonderful And Frightening World Of...The Fall”. Holding a whopping 16 songs and coming in at a princely £5.79, this was snapped up quickly and was ported home in my jacket pocket. Hah! Fooled ya this time.  

By the time night had fallen, this was my most prized possession, The tape effectively compiled their 1984 recordings, omitting only a clutch of alternate versions - it’s not completely clear why the 12″ “C.R.E.E.P.” was used rather than “c.r.e.e.p.” but no matter, all the songs are here from the 9 song LP and the surrounding singles. The running order - dictated by MES - kept the LP sides intact but spread the single tracks around. Therefore, the tape closes with “No Bulbs”. Well, of course it does. How the hell could you follow THAT?

“No Bulbs” is The Fall on full thrust with Smith bemoaning his living circumstances and, by extension, his relative poverty. Unable to find his only belt within the clutter, some of which appears to have belonged to a previous tenant, he switched on the light, only for the bulb to burst. The core of the song therefore appears to be Smith’s dark amusement that a tenant could leave behind “years of hippy craft” but not something usual like a bulb. Or even a belt (this should, of course, be contrasted with the following year’s “My New House” but, y’know...another time...). 

However, this is one of those occasions where the lyrical slant doesn’t make all the difference because the genius of “No Bulbs” lies in the group performance and a finer example of how The Fall could take a few simple figures and turn them into a masterpiece of dynamic, relentless rock and roll, I challenge you to find. Smith’s voice is effectively another instrument here and has to complete with 2 drum kits, two guitars, some sparkling keys (sounds more like Smith than Paul Hanley which would make sense if this was a live take) and the ever reliable Steve Hanley holding down a cleverly restrained bassline. This is nothing less than the rollercoaster thrill of being flung about by one of The Fall’s greatest incarnations. They drop you straight in; one bash of a snare drum and we’re off, riding an insistent pummeled throb, a wave that builds and builds and then breaks and then builds again - the creation and release of tension throughout the song is thrilling and Smith gets right in, delivering his lyric from the very edge of a screech and the regular “hup now!” only gees things along that little bit more. Absolutely a group performance, “No Bulbs” is the Fall at their most rousing, their most electrifying, their most unremitting, their most immutable. If anyone should doubt the sheer power and originality of what we’ve lost, play them this. 7 minutes and 50 seconds of the fucking best.

The turn of the decade found The Fall in good part. Despite a swift deletion by Universal, “Imperial Wax Solvent” had been well-received and the group were enjoying a successful live schedule. New songs slowly took over in the setlists and the group signed to the high-profile indie Domino for their next album. A quick look at the back cover of “Your Future, Our Clutter” suggests that this relationship was already in trouble and, indeed, the deal continued no further after its release. However, “YFOC” was afforded a critical reception that bordered on the ecstatic and breached the Top 40 album chart, partly thanks to the release of a handsome double LP edition with two additional songs.

The final track on the standard 9-song tracklisting was the album’s most remarkable and enduring moment. The first part finds Smith in a wistful, reflective mode that had been eschewed for many years, a hushed, actually sung vocal tone that - if memory serves me right now, hadn’t really been heard since “I’m Going To Spain” in 1993. If feels especially potent heard now as it seems, at least in part to be a reflection on aging and, possibly, poor health, Smith looking out his window onto a rain-soaked day from an armchair rather than a pub stool. Talk of vitamins not changing his life takes on an extra charge given how Smith seems to have suffered prior to his passing and the line “you gave me the best years of my life “ can’t help but tug even harder than it did at the time. A reference to the television show “Murder, She Wrote” makes one think of long afternoons with nothing to do but channel hop which sounds like Smith’s idea of Hell itself but that, in itself, suggests an inability to do anything else rather than a conscious choice. It’s startlingly revealing and, again, given recent events, it’s a deeply emotional listen. The group take the song with a light touch, Greenway’s guitar chiming with just a hint of distortion, both supporting Smith’s tenderness and acknowledging his toughness.

But this is The Fall and this is Mark E. Smith so it’s never going to be that simple. The songs fades into some harsh looping synth-textures and Smith returns to his more traditional style of delivery as a plaintive keyboard melody pokes through the hum and grind of Poulou and (AFAIK) Archer’s machinery. A line that occurs in both sections is “Nobody has ever called me Sir in my entire life“ - if one takes this figuratively, it suggests Smith has felt a lack of due respect and, as such, mirrors his line from 12 year earlier from “Big New Prinz”- “he is not appreciated” which, in turn, had been borrowed from “Hip Priest” 6 or 7 years before that. That it occurs both in the gentle melodic section of the song and the harsh noise section suggests that Smith both mourned and celebrated his outsider status, a theme present throughout his entire canon. 

The song ends with a thoroughly creepy whispered section from MES, now alone, echoing against the sudden silence. Smith takes a moment to mark the passing of Sky Saxon of The Seeds but sets this against the world-news-status death of Michael Jackson the same day. It’s not completely clear what he means by “recording of lost London” but, for me, this ties in with the lack of respect and appreciation Smith feels elsewhere in the song, that something particular was lost with Saxon’s death and that this went unheralded. His closing remark is one of the most striking conclusions to any Fall recording; “You don’t deserve rock and roll.”. He takes a breath and the song stops. It always took me a moment to recover from that. Today, it’s almost that bit too much. 

For this listener, it’s still a bit odd to consider how 1986 is considered by many to be beginning of a decline of sorts. Each single was charting higher than the next and “Bend Sinister” put the in the Top 40 of the UK Album Chart for the first time. Considered now, it’s easier to see than it has been for a while. Much of “Bend Sinister” and its surrounding singles was a return to the shadows. Having stood proudly in broad daylight on “This Nation’s Saving Grace”, there is, in a way, a retreat of sorts in evidence as the group move towards the audibly crepuscular. But “retreat” is the wrong word as this implies avoidance as opposed to pursuance. In amongst the pop covers and brightly hewn 7″ a-sides, Smith and Co. were exploring dark corners. One of the darkest, most prescient and very very best was found on the 12″ of “Mr Pharmacist” and on cassette and CD formats of “Bend Sinister”. I’ve argued for this before - and much of what’s below will be familiar to anyone who read the Forgotten Frenz series - but I can’t leave it out because “Auto-Tech Pilot” is one of the very best Fall songs ever.

Built around a descending 4 note bassline from Steve Hanley, the song arrives in a musical stealth attack, the group coming creeping over the horizon - the tension is palpable and is created by a single note guitar twang lulling away at the back and the slow arrival on all sides of various eerie clanks, bleeps and plucks, odd unplaceable noises and burbling computer sounds, likely the product of some of the machines that Simon Rogers was wont to bring to Fall sessions (see also - his sampling keyboard, without which “Shoulder Pads” would never have existed). A distant piano line arrives, also likely to be Rogers - it feels like distant bells when set against such a dark, dank sound picture. The overall effect of these ever building intrusions is that Hanley is being staked out then ganged up on, as if the group are trying to overwhelm him, throw him off-course. At 1m 33s, they almost succeed but Hanley out manoeuvers the bastards, shifts gear, accelerates and gets the fuck out of there. Wolstencroft is first on his tail, hammering away at his kick drum and Smith makes a superbly timed entrance, his delivery staccato and panicky, his lyric darkly predictive. Indeed, his suggestion that “this computer thing is getting out of hand” has proved one of his most prescient lyrics. The song’s thrust appears to foresee a future in which technology has become overly dominant and what happens the night some/all of that technology fails and pilot-less aircraft start to fall from the sky; sound effects are used to reinforce this, starting low in the mix at 2m 17s and at their most prominent at 3m 14s. Given that Smith has left the building at a time in which we are to expect driverless cars on our roads any month now, the song now has an extra chill. Brix is unusually quiet; she doesn’t appear vocally and only after what seems to be a sharp edit at 2m 42s is there any guitar which I would identify with her style - a harmonised riff sitting nicely to the front and side of the bassline. There are a few minor fluffs to indicate that the song was completed quickly but given how much has emerged about The Fall’s recording strategy during this period, it would be wrong to infer that it was rushed or intended for b-side status - “R. O. D.“ and, in particular, “Gross Chapel/British Grenadiers” also have mistakes that were let through. 

Shortly before Smith’s death, in a what-to-expect round-up, Beggars Banquet’s catalogue arm, The Arkive, confirmed that work was finally in genuine progress on a remastered and expanded “Bend Sinister”. It is unclear if and when this will emerge but I hope it does - as, more than any discussions about whether or not certain songs play at the right speed, it will be a superb opportunity to finally given “Auto Tech Pilot” its due as one of The Fall’s most grippingly tense and thoroughly idiosyncratic creations.

Few Fall songs exist in as many distinct versions as this - in fact, if one were to discount after-the-fact live albums and all those remixes of “Hit The North”, this might be the winner...

“The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On The Click)” is one of the very best Fall albums, a superb end-to-end listen not even on speaking terms with the mediocre, let alone the misfire. The line-up were great songwriters whose skills meshed well; it’s hard not to feel wistful that Jim Watts’s return to the band (as heard on Peel 24)  turned out to be short-lived given how large his contribution to “TRNFLP” bulks and Dave Milner brought a tight groove and several songs, including “Mountain Energi” which came very close to making this 20. “Sparta” was re-recorded before making it to the finished album and was then re-recorded yet again for release as a single “Theme From Sparta F.C. #2″ which actually dented the UK singles chart. Yet, they still weren’t finished and “#3″ turned up on offcuts/rehearsals etc piss-take “Interim”. Clearly, everyone involved knew it was a peach.

Built on a descending guitar riff and a one-chord verse, “TFSFC” relies to a great extent on arrangement and performance but this edition of The Fall was no slouch at either and the group blend pulsing power chords with thundering drums, Greek backing vocals from Elena Poulou and an excellent Smith lyric, re-profiling his football fan from “Kicker Conspiracy” 20 years later, the character now evolved seemingly into a full-time hooligan. Smith’s eye for the fine detail brings his composite to vivid, unsettling life - our character mugs old women in the paper shop (denoting the cowardice of picking an easy target) , wears a “fleecy jumper” (likely just a fleece) and the threatening “where you are going, clothes won’t help” (could be prison but sounds more like the grave). Smith’s verses are moulded around a full-band sing-a-long with regular interjections that saw it quickly established as a live favourite. It’s impossible not to smile when hearing “Sparta”; this was the sound of The Fall on full, everyone pitching their best and achieving something sublime. The popularity of the song was likely what led to it being retooled altogether for single release in 2004. This version (#2) had Simon “Ding” Archer on bass, took the pace up a notch and is delivered at high temperature - the sing-a-long is shouted, Smith is audibly Pro-tooled into place and Sparta is razed by sheer fire power. It’s great fun but many prefer the more dynamic, subtle album version. Others speak for the unreleased “Country On The Click” take, a synth-inflected mix for which a video was made and included on the CD single of “#2″. Something for everyone then!

“Sparta” was a regular feature of the group’s live sets for over a decade and will be fondly remembered by fans as a highpoint of many a gig. The delight of “Sparta” was how much notice it served that The Fall were well and truly on form. “#2″ would be shortly followed by Peel 24 and the group’s stock was soon higher than it had been since the early 90′s.

Found on YouTube, here’s Peel introducing the album version with a brief “wrong track” moment of the type we loved him for so much.

“This Nation’s Saving Grave” is regularly picked out as one of The Fall’s greatest albums, if not the greatest full stop. It’s easy to see why.

Let’s recap. The end of the group's 1984 tour was marred by the theft of the group’s equipment. Smith, for reasons not really clear to anyone, blamed this on Paul Hanley who decided that enough was enough and quit. Unbeknownst to him, Steve Hanley had also walked out of The Fall - his new-born son was seriously ill, a fact of which the group (Paul excepted) were unaware. As unlikely as it seems, neither knew the other had called it a day until they had separately returned home to Manchester. As Steve reports in his superb book, “The Big Midweek”, a placatory Smith visited him and an agreement was reached - Steve was officially on paternity leave, the group would carry on with just Burns on drums and a sub would be sought until Steve was ready to return. (NB - Smith would also try to rehire Paul Hanley in 1986 but was unsuccessful).

Enter Simon Rogers, a classically trained guitarist who made Smith’s acquaintance when attempting to score “The Classical” from “Hex Enduction Hour” for an orchestra at the behest of Michael Clark. Rogers duly sat in on bass, recording the “Couldn’t get Ahead” and “Cruiser’s Creek” singles. When Hanley returned, Rogers stayed on, moving to guitar, keyboards and occasionally a second bass. Brix was particularly fond of Rogers and together, they would create the most melodically focused edition of The Fall thus far. But never forget, Steve Hanley - described by Smith as “The Fall sound” was back, Craig Scanlon continued to keep his territory and Burns was, by several accounts, pleased to be back to being the group’s sole drummer. To put it crudely, the blend of noise and melody was at its most rewarding for the casual listener. Add to this John Leckie’s crisp clear production and all the ingredients are there for a Fall album that anyone could enjoy. all they needed was the songs. And oh, did they have the songs...

“Gut Of The Quantifier” is absolutely electric. Boasting one of those titles, it crackles with intent from the moment it rolls into view on some deliciously recorded drums and a double tracked Smith almost rapping his way through the introduction. When he declares “this is a cool group”, it sounds neither crass nor boastful. Just a statement of fact. On three thwacks of his toms, Burns cues in the rest of the band. The tension breaks like a knackered dam as 22 strings vibrate, twang and chime with a verse and energy that is totally thrilling - Hanley lines up alongside Burns and at least one guitarist to hold the main riff down. Harmonics chime, someone adds an almost countryesque motif deep in the mix (possibly Scanlon) and Smith lines up a verbal firing squad. His target? The sudden philanthropy the music industry had acquired in the preceding 9 months or so and how shallow and inadequate he had found this. Now, there’s a debate to be had about whether or not motive is relevant in these circumstances (if you donate £5 to a charity out of kindness, the charity has £5, if you donate £5 to salve your guilt, the charity still has £5 but anyway...) but what Smith had caught is that the greed and gluttony of the industry had continued unabated throughout. This is where “stick it in the gut” is a clever turn of phrase - it could mean someone gorging themselves, it could also mean someone being deserving of having something sharp run through them. Harsh. Given that Smith reckons even the Good Lord would be unimpressed, his intent is clear and his sharp, engaging delivery is matched by a band performance brimming with sheer verve; Burns and Smith enjoy a cowbell/voice dialogue in the quiet, tension building sections and the final explosion is just incredible as one guitarist just goes wild on their fretboard while Burns batters his toms like they’ve just insulted him. It’s an absolute fucking blast. I mean, they must have known how good it was, right?

The Fall knew how to open a side of vinyl and “Gut Of The Quantifier” ushers in possibly their finest side ever, at least in terms of invention and surprise. “This Nation’s Saving Grace” is already heralded as a go-to and a starting point for the curious. As time goes on, this position will likely cement and yr present author is fine with this. But, you have a vinyl copy and your new listener is a little short when it comes to attention span, start with side two. Start here. If the person has two working ears and a soul, they’ll never look back. Just the sound of The Greatest Band In The World at their imperishable best.

A quintessential Fall track, “M5″ has a slightly odd history.

It was originally released on the limited edition second 12″ of “Behind The Counter” at the end of 1993 but as the A-side of said platter. Also, the track is credited to Smith/Bush/Wolstencroft on this record but to Smith/Scanlon/Hanley when it was included on “Middle Class Revolt” in a different mix the following year. It was given a Peel Session airing but that version took the song a bit too fast for these ears.

The lyric appears to refer to the M5 motorway which runs from Birmingham to Exeter hence, one presumes “there's a slip-road up right ahead, leading to the agragarian” (likely a deliberate chew on “agrarian”). However, it’s also worth noting that M5, M6 and M7 are all postcodes in the Salford area which would tie well with “But I'm city born and bred, too many car fumes in my head, just a well read punk peasant”. The “PM” is therefore obscure. Is it the M5 at rush hour, Salford at rush hour or some connection between the two that I’m not smart (or local) enough to understand? One way or another, this should have been an A-side in its own right as it captures both the motorik feel of haring down the titular motorway and the intensity of an urban sprawl. Smith’s lyric borders on the wistful but, in a cunning inversion of the usual rock musician moan of wanting to escape the smoke for the fresh air (”we’re getting our heads together in the country, man”), Smith instead rejects rural living as his idea of hell, not just preferring but advocating the inner city; “M5 to the country straight ahead, it's stuffed to the gills with crusty brown bread, can they not understand, there's nothing worse than a bored man?” Indeed, he goes so far as to include the truism that the devil makes work for idle hands, which makes it likely that the brown bread is representative of someone with too much time to kill (and therefore, the time and energy to make their own bread) rather than him being anti-bread. For Smith, having such time to spare was the worst fate he could imagine, his work ethic rejecting the very thought. Meanwhile, the group clearly enjoy going for a burn down the highway with Dave Bush’s swirling synths front and centre and a cracking Hanley bassline taking the rear for once. Scanlon’s guitar chimes rather than roars, leaving space for Bush and MES to dominate the track. Karl Burns was back playing with the group again by this time, having rejoined in 1993 - my ears only hear one drummer but Wolstencroft was also contributing keyboards and programming around this time. My ears think it’s Burns on drums by dint of being that tiny smidge behind the beat but they’ve been wrong before...

I’ve picked this because I think circumstance has caused it to be undervalued when it should be heralded as one of Smith’s most revealing character pieces. The relative failure of “Middle Class Revolt” remains a bit of a mystery and the album deserves a reappraisal. “M5″ has such a joyful forward thrust that Smith’s hangdog distaste creates a real tension.That the man who wrote about how much he hated London would find the countryside even worse (a theme also covered in “Contraflow” in 2003) speaks of someone who had long since found home and was, perhaps, becoming progressively more and more irritated by what he found when he left it. Just two years later, The Fall would have one of their lightest years as a live act in their entire history. 

If I was ever to find myself on Desert Island Discs, I think this would have to be my choice. 

“Smile” opens side two of “Perverted By Language” and was also the first song they chose to play when making their national television debut on The Tube (the other being “2 x 4″, which would not appear on record for a full year). To not only start a side of vinyl with Scanlon’s discordant, unyielding riff but to greet a television audience with it is quite the act of bloody-mindedness. The riff not only chucks a skin-itchingly jarring sharp note into the mix but runs on a 5-bar pattern, rather than the usual 4. As such, the track never quite settles down and swiftly turns into an extraordinary high-wire act, continually on the very edge of coming to grief.  “Smile” is THE perfect example not just of the incredible control The Fall were able exert over the noise they made but of how hard they sometimes had to fight for that control. For me, this is the only iteration of the Fall that could pull this off with such aplomb - Smith, Scanlon, Steve Hanley, Paul Hanley, Burns. Maybe it was having 2 drummers and no “lead” musician but this Fall boiled the sound down to its otherworldly essence and the results were potent. With Paul Hanley keeping rhythm and Burns free to interject, adding drama and emphasis, Scanlon and Steve Hanley audibly wrestle with their own creation as Smith delivers one of his most brutal takedowns; the poor soul who has incurred the Smith wrath here is unclear but, as time goes on, we find that fewer and fewer of them were composites or characters so maybe some day we’ll know. 

If any one sequence shows how tight and intuitive this Fall was, it comes when  Smith audibly instructs the group to “take it down”. The group reduce themselves to a whispered backdrop while Smith delivers a verse almost sotto voce whilst making room for interjections and some exquisitely hissed delivery. He then raises himself and the group again, instructing them “up up up UP UP UP UP UP!”, his scream of the title being almost delirious. Work like this can only be done when everyone is absolutely in it together, playing at once and AS ONE and this is something that was sometimes sacrificed as things went on; some later albums were allegedly recorded by the musicians in sessions Smith didn’t attend, adding his vocals later.

Whatever restrictions, financial and practical, The Fall had to endure at this time, they were rendered as nothing when faced with the sheer kinetic force of recordings and performances like this. No wonder they kept going when others would have caved in - if you could do this, would you chuck it for a regular job without a fight? Didn’t think so. Thank all that is good and pure that they didn’t either. A masterpiece.

Possibly the first “surprise” choice but this song ushered in a whole strand of Smith’s lyricism that would be a constant source of some of his most compelling texts. It also shows how important having the right musicians behind him actually was, something he would sadly neglect at various points along the way.

For early fans of the group, “Dragnet” - the group’s 2nd album - may have come as quite the surprise. All of their recordings up to that point had been clean and simple, the sound of little more than the group playing together as-live in the studio but well recorded and spacious. Whilst “Rowche Rumble” certainly had a dense, chaotic feel, the willfully fuzzy, boxy, low-fi sound of “Dragnet” was probably pretty bewildering at first. Talking 3 days to record and mix (one more than the bright, sprightly “Live At The Witch Trials”), parts of the album sounded as if it was being played through a tin-can on the end of a piece of string, into a cardboard box at the bottom of a well. OK, not really but it was certainly a contrast. Smith claimed it as deliberate and the apocrypha has a tale of the studio asking not to be credited. Smith was happy enough to return to Cargo Studios in Rochdale several times; it was later named Suite 16 (when owned by Peter Hook) and even later Gracielands (when owned by Smith’s fellow Coldcut collaborator, Lisa Stansfield).

“A Figure Walks” is a haunted creation. On the original insert, Smith advises that it was based on a true story of a late-night walk during which he felt he was being followed. He couldn’t see by whom because to the hood on his anorak “restricted vision by 2 thirds”. He also states that the song breaks away from fact towards the end. If the first part is therefore true to life, it suggests that MES was maybe in something of a mood as he walked; “ Who is not irascible, He is no genius “ He may even have had a spat with the group...the track hits its musical and emotional peak when we learn more about the “Figure”;

“It's got eyes of brown, watery Nails of pointed yellow Hands of black carpet It's a quick trip to the ice house”

Being “iced” is a common slang for being killed so our protagonist likely meets a nasty end. Smith’s description here is quick but vivid. One album later, he would be painting more lurid mental images with tracks like “Impression Of J. Temperance” but this marks the beginning of the bleak domestic horror stories that would run through The Fall’s work. The group handle the necessary dynamics here with an expertise that belies both their youth and how long they’d been playing together. Craig Scanlon and Steve Hanley had played their first gig with the band in May and Yvonne Pawlett left a mere week before the recording date, something to which Smith alludes elsewhere on the album (Before The Moon Falls - “we were six like dice now we’re back to five”). Yet, perhaps falling back on their history with Riley and, indeed, Riley’s familiarity with drummer Mike Leigh with whom he had played for most of the year, they were together able to exercise an impressive control over such an audibly tense construction. The result is every bit as thrilling as you could hope for and served notice that, now that they were under Smith’s sole jurisdiction, The Fall were going to sail into some seriously deep waters.

(NB - gotta laugh at the wrong line-up being depicted in the YouTube clip, eh?)

This one totally speaks for itself. There are times I think the 7″ containing this and “Wings” might be the greatest piece of vinyl ever pressed.

This video is a key Fall artifact because of how damn funny it is. The group’s videos struggled to capture them because it wasn’t a natural mode for them - they’re often unintentionally amusing due the sheer awkwardness that was regularly visible in the group’s faces. It could be the nature of how this was made and by whom but everyone seems to be having at least a modicum of fun - not a look often associated with this era of The Fall. Maybe Smith was in high spirits having not long met, married and made a Fall member out of Brix. Anyway, less yap, more Fall. “Kicker Conspiracy” is the group at their imperishable best.