13:58, 16/09/2006

Fall Heads Roll

The Fall, Galtymore Ballroom, 15 Sept 2006 (photo: Pike1957 on The Fall forums)

The Fall, Galtymore Ballroom, 15.09.06

It was a beautiful, cheesy old dancehall in Cricklewood, a distant suburb of London Jennie and I had never visited before and probably never will again.

There was nothing particularly psykick about it, but by fuck the chandeliers were huge. I'll be willing to bet there was a breakout going on in the Bingo complex opposite. Yes, it was a great and surreally appropriate venue for the best gig I've seen in many years, by the best band in the history of the multiverse.

The first surprise was when the band came on and started playing an extended instrumental intro. They were all different (except Elena aka Mrs Smith on one finger keyboards). I read later that The Fall had undergone one of its regular seismic upheavals and the collossally tight, incredibly brutally skilful band onstage last night had only played once together before. It was even a different lineup from the night before, the band having lost a guitarist and then a bass player since the two gigs in Shoreditch at the beginning of the week.

And earlier in the year, the lineup had also changed when the core of the even more previous line-up, which had been together over the course of the two previous albums, had walked out four dates into the US tour.

Mark E Smith seems energised by the turmoil. He was a snarling, deafening presence in the barbed core of hooks and riffs that the band was laying down. He'd cut an increasingly lethargic figure of late but last night he was upright and imperious, surveying the audience and the balcony as if about to address some Victorian space-age British empire in his mind's eye.

He had his usual struggle with the mike stands, and was clearly feeling the heat, shedding a leather jacket and a weird, spangly black and silver pinstripe jumper early in the set. He seemed to delight in un-nerving the outstanding new guitarist, often standing and singing (shouting) right behind him. There was a lot of amp fiddling as well; the guitarist looking understandably nervous every time Mark disappeared from his peripheral vision to muck about with the settings behind him.

Some of the new stuff was fantastic, with the medley of new songs "Fall Sound" and "Reformation" at the core of the set being particular standouts. "Theme From Sparta FC", that amazing dissociated Greek Football Yob Anthem that is used as the theme for Final Score (↓) these days, was played at about twice the speed of the recorded version and literally left the audience gasping.

Mark reads the football results on Final Score. Priceless. Watch it through.

Every song was a highlight but the encore was especially special, the band rescuing Garage Punk classic "Mr Pharmacist" from the band's 80's past and then bludgeoning the audience into oblivion with an absolutely MASSIVE version of "Blindness" from the last album, Fall Heads Roll (which you would be criminal not to have in your CD collection) which Mark humorously and unusually candidly introduced as being about his "backstage experiences" - blind drunk is somewhere in our personal backstage rooms that we've all been, after all...

It was Jennie's first ever Fall gig and I was jealous of her as she witnessed one of the best I've ever seen (and I've been to a few). We trooped back to the C11 bus stop in the increasing chill for the long journey back to Archway talking excitedly about all aspects of the show, the nagging refrains and tangled web of sound still echoing in our heads on an infinite delay, as fronted by a strange wizened man who knows more than you, sir, and you madam, and you and you about what it's like to lead the best music group in the world.

The gig last night brought home to me how much I owe musically to the various incarnations of The Fall over the years, from the 80's almost-pop sounds,via the 90's eldritch cross-pollination with dance and techno, to the current rocking behemoth.

My Electric Shocks song "Life is Sweet" is so palpably a rip off of "Mr Pharmacist" (which was a cover anyway) that I cringe sometimes (even though I was quite open about it at the time I wrote it).

In fact in every incarnation of my songwriting, I can detect Fall influences, direct or otherwise. The Six Inch Killaz song "Velcro" is pretty much a lift from the early Fall classic "Psychomafia", while several of my current group, Deathline's songs have some debt to pay, especially "Labradoodle", which is three parts "Blindness" to one part 80's track "Living Too Late".

(Having said that, I noticed that there were distinct similarities betwen the Fall's new number "Fall Sound" and our own "C'mon C'mon", so maybe the traffic is finally flowing the other way. Yeah right.)

Elvis Costello once said something to the effect that that great new music often comes from people trying to emulate their heroes' and falling short. My stuff falls very short indeed, but I'm trying Mark, I'm trying.

Cheers!

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Fall Heads Roll

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