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.
In Part 2: we’ll have a good look over the hefty contribution the Cherry Red label has made to keeping The Fall’s work on the shelves.
