I don’t think I’m exaggerating to venture the proposition that The Fall remain one of the best and most significant bands to emerge from the hotbed of the punk scene. Certainly the most important of the bands that formed from that legendary Sex Pistols Free Trade hall gig which kickstarted the likes of Buzzcocks/Magazine, Joy Division/New Order, Simply Red, John Cooper-Clarke, and ultimately The Smiths. The Fall brought a Northern working class eye to the world of art and music, with a wry intelligence and a swift boot up the backside of the London cognoscenti. Their run of early pre-album singles gave rise to a new voice…the white (c)rap that talks back. The little oiks who rose up to bite the hand that supposedly feeds them, and, like a thorn in the side of all that came along in its wake, the curmudgeonly Mark E. Smith was a constant reminder that they weren’t all that.
With Mark E. Smith’s demise there was a spate of cash-in badly formatted “live” albums released, with a lack of quality control, and a lack of…quality. The surviving members decided that they would wrest the reputation of The Fall from the hands of the ruthless, and trawl extensive audience recordings of live shows, finding all the best bits. First came the “Slates Live” EP, followed swiftly by “Grotesque Live”, both of which presented The Fall in their natural environment – sometimes a bit rough, even ropey, but often visceral and fizzing like a firework, as fresh ideas explode in your face, words tumbling into place or flying off into space. Like “Fiery Jack” himself, the band were always playing songs from the next album rather than the new album, and they released singles that didn’t feature anywhere else, which is why this release makes such perfect sense.
From the first single released November 1978 we have both “It’s the new thing” and “Various Times”, both versions much more immediate than the (still excellent) studio recordings, but here the statement of intent crashes into your ears on the wave of Karl Burns’ dexterous drumming and Yvonne Pawlett’s atonal Bontempi. The version of “Rowche Rumble” sounds so brutal the tape recorder seemed to be having trouble capturing its essence without melting.
“Fiery Jack” still has the excruciating yet delightfully out of tune lead guitar spider scrawls, which captures the feel of a working men’s club version of Can. In “Psykick Dancehall” Mark Smith is so fired up his voice occasionally slips out of the range of human hearing. Either that or he’s having a ‘mental orgasm’. I always thought “How I Wrote Elastic Man” was about music press analysis, but here Mark introduces it about Science Fiction writers, and, given his predilection for Arthur Machen and H.P. Lovecraft, that figures. Nice to have a rather jaunty “City Hobgoblins” gracing the album as it’s always been one of my favourites. I often chuckle to myself when in Manchester about a ‘large black slug’ gracing the steps of the Piccadilly esplanade. In fact I can’t drive anywhere near Manchester without being reminded of a Fall song, from Haslingden to Cheetham Hill, not to mention Prestwich. The Fall are synonymous with large swathes of the North. Everywhere you look is a reminder, from dark satanic grottoes, to slick glass skyscrapers, it’s all mirrored through Mark E. Smith’s speed fuelled visions.
The sleeve notes for this release were written by Jarvis Cocker, who points out that The Fall presented the North not as a Hovis advert, but as a surreal, ‘alien and inexplicable’ landscape, creepy and mysterious, and regarded the band as ‘something new to believe in’. To anyone who was there, and those of you who weren’t, there is no better vicarious pleasure than this artifact of a time when music actually meant something, and seemed to have the ability to change things, or at least affirm that we’re not alone, and through recognition, things may seem better.
Review by Andrew Wood
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