Simon Wolsencroft used to set up a fake bass drum mike on Mark Smith's side of the drum kit, and the actual microphone was hidden inside the bass drum, well away from Smith's drunken tinkering. Smart move considering! Steve Hanley had a more direct approach....the first time Mark Smith fucked with his amp during the gig, Hanley threatened to rip Smith's lungs out if he ever touched it again. And he never did!
Rest in eternal Power Al my Pal. Mark recognised your individuality and let it be seen on this night. I hope you are both partying in the after life. You both Rock! RIEP Mark E Smith and Al G AKA Mad Al!
The Fall were a notoriously mixed bag Live but on nights like this when they are all plugged in to the same current you can feel the surge and the static. So lucky to have caught more of these nights than the disappointing ones.
Doing the half time scores at main road. Taking the piss in the Salford boozers. Blowing smiths and new order away. Miles ahead. On form best band in the🎶world
It pays to talk to no one just one line from the brilliant post punk poet Mark E Smith truly fantastic always was and will always be missed RIP hope your having a Pint and a cigarette see you on the other side one day
That drunken crap only ever happened later on in The Fall. I saw them hundreds of times in the 70's, 80's and early 90's, and he never did that rubbish. In fact, the last time I saw them live was on the Glasgow Renfrew Ferry, and it was the first time I'd seen them in years, and Smith was wasted, walking off stage for ages, and coming back on and fucking about with everyone's amps, totally destroying the sound. He just looked and sounded like a drunken buffoon. That's was the last time I saw them live, and it was embarrassing.
Great band must have been a nightmare being in the band wondering when you were getting dropped with all changes in the line up RIP Mark E Smith I was a fan from day one and will be till I shuffle off this mortal coil...We are The Fall ahip, now Pay your Rates
"Grotesque..." is the L.P I recommend to anyone who asks: "where should I start?" with The Fall...I love the way it starts with what is ostensibly a "straight-up" "punk" song and then goes: "WA-HEY!", does an 180 degree turn and becomes, dare I say it, wonderfully melodic but still off-kilter enough to not alienate the "avant-garde" aspect of the band. And there is not ONE duff tune on it, it's just banger after banger: New Face In Hell, English Scheme, Container Drivers, Impression of J. Temperance, The N.W.R.A...in fact I think it's as "poppy" as the reductionists/pigeon-holers say about the Brix-era stuff (which I don't really accept, tbh--she wrote some great songs and made the band a bit more visually "stylish" and played some smashing guitar but that's it, and I'm not trying to denigrate her contributions AT ALL because SHE RULES!). "I Am Kurious Oranj" could easily be pre-Brix records, same as a lot of the Cog Sinister EP's like The Dredger or Plan For Escape Route.
@@epiphanyx3705 Amen. Up until his death it was only really Nick Cave who'd SUSTAINED an artistically viable career coming out of punk. Not sure if Cave released an album a year but in terms of sheer output and LONGEVITY I'd put him second behind the Great M.E.S. Not many bands can sustain a career for that long, AND make some of their best work in the final decade-and-a-half of it's existence, AND keep touring...it's remarkable, really. What was there, one, possibly two years when The Fall didn't release an L.P?! Other than that it was a new record every year, accompanying tour, then do it all over again. Not content to entertain the "look-back bores" he (and the band, of course) were doing gigs of brand new material, in many cases material that hadn't seen an official release, but we lapped it up! How many other bands could get away with doing that?! Nope, they're just content to play the hits and the crowd pleasers over and over again like fucking automatons. For good or ill The Fall always came with FRESH material on tour with one or two "crowd pleasers" (Mr. Pharmacist, Big New Prinz and latterly Blindness)...nah, we'll never see their like again. Even Nick Cave doesn't make an album a year. And in spite of all that, he STILL was not appreciated!
Hilarious! Yes, he does! I figured he turned down the volume, but it was too quick - you were right - and (Pritchard?) takes it calmly, turns it back on. Mark just didn't know how to talk to people onstage - he talked to the amps and mikes more - jesus I have Never seen anyone fk with his mikestand so much! OCD...
Been on a Fall tear recently, bought a bunch of EP's, prromos, I bought this single and my two "Grails": Fall Heads Roll and the baby blue The Real New Fall LP on vinyl. Not to mention the excellent Cherry Red reissues (Hex sounds amazing across four sides of vinyl), Dragnet, Room To Live, about 30 LP's, EP's and singles. I ggggot the great I Am Kurious Oranj Beggars reissue on orange vinyl and the New Big Prinz promo 12". I was talkig to this lucky sonuvabitch who bought the UK pressing of The Real New Fall L.P for $17:99 from a bargain bin--AND he owns the original artwork to the "Grotesque"! Worth every penny, one of the best lyricists of all time fronting one of the most orginal bands of all time. M.E.S is dead, long live M.E.S!
@@thomasroberthillmclean4638 Fall Heads Roll and The Real New Fall L.P weren't exactly cheap! Since the last comment I managed to score a U.K pressing of "The Real New Fall L.P"--and guess what?! The fucking thing was SIGNED by M.E.S!!! And the seller didn't realise 'cause he sent it out with the inner sleeve behind the cover (I store all my L.P's that way now), here's the pictures on the Fall sub: www.reddit.com/r/thefall/comments/jjst8d/the_real_new_fall_lpaction_records_uk_pressing/ The seller is a huge fan too and met M.E.S a lot because he played his Scottish home city many times and he'd get at least a couple of things signed at every gig. He must have so much signed stuff he literally forgot! I also got the new Cherry Red Imperial Wax Solvent double (I also have the previous Cherry Red RSD edition on translucent yellow vinyl that came out in 2018, I think? ) but this new copy is on 180gm "bonkers" translucent green spattered vinyl--the other disc is an unused version of the LP with a couple of extra songs, a bargain for 25 quid and £4:50 postage and a brilliant slab of post-2000 Fall music. Do you know Demon are re-issuing The Infotainment Scan, Middle Class Revolt and 24 Points on 140gm clear vinyl early next year? They've put out The Post-Nearly Man and a "bonkers spatter" RSD version of Cerebral Caustic, the latter of which was part of the first RSD drop this year along with a beautiful 180gm merged orange and yellow vinyl double of [Austerbaejarbio] Iceland, 1983, dunno if you've heard the CD version of that, it's been out a few years in that format I think? It's mostly stuff from Perverted By Language, with an incredible version of Eat Y'Self Fitter. Sorry for the blogpost! Keep rockin' records! :) EDIT: However much they cost, it's WELL, WELL worth it to me, they're my pride and joy and I coveted those records since I started collecting again, I've got one module of my record shelves that's all Fall stuff. AND my local record shop has a seperate Fall section (there's LOADS of Fall fans taking into consideration the smallish size of my town), I've had some great stuff from there--Big New Prinz 12" promo, a sealed copy of Sub-Lingual Tablet (which seems to have shot up in value recently according to Discogs but more importantly is a smashing LP), couple of LP's and a good few E.P's. He had a first pressing of Hex for 30 quid last time I was in; if it's still there when I've got the money I might get it. But I'd really like the German Line Records re-press from 1986; they reissued a bunch of Fall stuff in that year on white vinyl. I have a lovely, near mint copy of Perverted By Language from them which plays beautifully. Discogs have got several copies of it (Hex, I mean) but only one that's NM/NM and it's not cheap. Not "Real New Fall L.P" money, I think it's around fifty pounds.
@@thomasroberthillmclean4638 Btw, I didn't buy 'em all at once, I started (re) collecting about three months before the first UK lockdown. I bought all those Stereolab 3-disc remasters first, got them all on the limited (1000) clear vinyl apart from Dots And Loops which I got on regular black vinyl, then I saw Cherry Red were doing these "Fall Sound Archive" remastered reissues --the black and white spattered "Dragnet" vinyl is lovely to look at, even better to listen to, and as for Hex, Andy Pearce, the engineer (is it an engineer who remasters records? Hhmmm, I need to know the answer to this one!) on all the releases has done a fantastic job on 'em all, but the stuff he's pulled out of Hex is incredible, there's stuff I haven't heard before on there.
@@steve-bk1qd Ouch! Didja get a good price for it? And was it the first, limited edition run? The prices for even relatively recent stuff, like a first pressing of The Infotainment Scan, are insane--thank god Demon are re-issuing it in the New Year (it was supposed to be released Jan 8th now it's been put back to early March--and the first release date my go-to E-Bay record vendor got was early October of this year but they kept being pushed back and back due to "licensing issues"...doesn't bode well, they're (Demon Records, I mean) are putting out Middle Class Revolt and Twenty-Four Points all on 140gm clear vinyl...still, they did a good job with the first RSD drop Cerebral Caustic reissue/remaster. Heck, even Sub-Lingual Tablet is climbing steadily upwards to the fifty quid mark for a NM copy and I bought a sealed copy from my local record store for £15! This was a couple of weeks before RSD drop #1....oh and if you're interested Demon HAVE released M.E.S's first solo LP, The Post Nearly Man, in the same clear 140gm format. Only heard a couple tracks off it but I actually don't mind spoken word stuff at all so I might take the plunge. I remember "The Horror In Clay"--that's off P-N.M, right? Or is it from Panda, Pander, Panzer? I can't fucking remember...just bought a dreaded Ozit LP of a 2013 live show in Clitheroe...I can't believe they've "resurrected" John Peel's Dandelion label, same label art, too, cheeky bastards, is NOTHING sacred to them?! They deserve to be consigned to Record Label Hell for their crimes against Beefheart alone!
@@68majortom I think it's certainly about that but the references to 2001 and Thus Spoke Zarathustra make me think it has multiple subtexts...unfortunately I can't access The annotated Fall site atm; is it down for you, too?! Doing my bloody 'ead in
@@68majortom Excuse my stupidity, I didn't realise it came out in 1992, I actually forgot I have the 12"! But not Code:Selfish. Yet! Someone should reissue that LP, until then I'll have to hold my breath before I go and check Discogs!
entice the mothers into view yes boy wailing we don’t have the brochure yet but this one sings as it mows the lawn this one entice the mommies to take a look when the brochure gets here it will have the order form inside
Remember The Falls song ' No Bulbs' ? well i recently created a video to go with that song, its in my recent uploads on my channel, or simply just type in The Fall No Bulbs and look for my username on the first page.
YES!!--He was a neighbour but my first proper bird in Brixton took me to a Fall gig on a wet Monday night in shitty Croydon. My second bird reminded me about the fall yrs later after prison in US. 20 yrs later, I returned three Xmass's on the Trot and he and tet missus happened to be in The George every time to help get my tail from under my legs, fill me with booze and a tenner each time, fix my black eyes and were consistant all three times in their advice for me to return to Mcr, and fight the assumed and unquestioned enemy from my own turf, working class turf of invention and under-employment. They've closed my radio show, closed my elected Press n Media Officer position in Mcr's 'Unite community Branch'. and follow me around to display my Crown Jewels on prime time tv. A very influential spirit lives and thrives with the inclusion of a skinny kid/man sacked from Salford Docks, whose 'Dock Gate 6' was where I had my first confrontation with two coppers in a white Jag Mk 2. Have seen the Fall 4-5 times and spent 3 Xmas evenings with him and his Xtremely patient X wife. There's no 'magic' in my report here, and I've yet to find a day without finding something new in the endless results of much HARD (but surely enjoyed) WORK--full time in claustraphobic ???? studio's. I'm going to spend my afternoon looking for a cheap guitar and amp with the £125 quid left out of my Gov't pocket money. My Mum, like many of the psychiatric nursing community left over from Prestwich--the biggest hospital of its 'type' in Europe didn't 'like' him, and gossiped in the pubs,---IT PAYS TO TALK TO KNOW ONE!!! Thankyou ever so much Marki---a bit of support for unemployed working class fighters for socialism goes a long way, and you don't seem to have 'gone' anywhere M8! Pity we can't have another drink/s in the George though--it went before you! PS--If I can't get through, I'll use the phone--lol---Chris.
This is what you get when you have Fall fans in the band. It's like a bad tribute band. They rocked this up way too much. I wonder what the current lineup would do to it.
You ave to remember that mark was very picky and subject to his own colouration,like lots of genius creatives ,he was a pain in the arse. Some folk i ve talked to intimated that being too clean with the intruments was nt too good sometimes. There was lots of musicians who played with mark et al ,over the many years. i think mark wanted the fall to be a constantly moving social/cultural industrial estate ,imho a sort of revealing the pre modern and present post industrial spiritual and cultural desert.....where we are more and more screaming...'Mr. Pharmacist'.
