The Fall play Ashton Witchwood, Manchester (0161 344 0321) on Sun 28 Feb, Mon 1 Mar, Tues 2 Mar. Also London Forum on 14 May. Proably more dates to follow in May.
The new single "Touch Sensitive" will be released either on 22 February or 1 March as a CD and a 12".
Inch, recorded with Manchester producers DOSE and Spectre, will be released on February 15 on the Regal label. The track will be backed with three remixes. Hear the intro here.
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Dragnet has appeared on Voiceprint's New Release schedule. You can order it if you like from www.voiceprint.co.uk.
Price: 12.99, Cat No: COG113 Information: This album was originally released in October 1979, it was the band's second release and is now issued on CD by Cog Sinister, The Fall's own label. This was a dark experimental recording, using strange tempos and a wide range of influences. Smith's lyrics were full of outrageous rhymes and complex images reeking of hatred, injustice and fear. By now Smith was the only original founder member: Mark E. Smith - lead vocals; Craig Scanlon - lead guitar; Steve Hanley - bass guitar; Marc Riley - guitars and vocals; Mike Leigh - drums. Specially remastered, with full lyrics printed and produced by Grant Showbiz. At the time NME called the band: "Influential, arrogant, accurately hypercritical of rock apathy"
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GrahamC:
Maybe it's time for this Grant Showbiz extract from 'Making Music' magazine (date unknown)
How did Showbiz actually start out? "I worked first for Steve Hillage as a guitar roadie. I lived with him when I was about 15, moved in and helped him set up a studio, and he taught me the basics. But I was a hopeless roadie. It all finally came to a head when I handed him a guitar that was completely out-of-tune, and after this excruciating racket he looked at me like, 'You're dead'. "Then I met a band called Here & Now - I suppose they were proto-crusties - and I'd bought a mixing desk, so insisted I do the sound. In those days the desks would have maybe four controls; input gain, treble, bass and middle and that was it, so they just let me learn, and by 1976 we came into contact with bands like ATV and The Fall. "The first recorded thing I did was a live recording of ATV, and then I did 'Dragnet' for The Fall. They knew I'd worked with Gong, and assumed I'd produced Steve; they'd heard the ATV stuff and thought I knew what I was doing, although I didn't really. So I guess I started off by not thinking about it too much," he smiles, before adding; "I even engineered it all."
Graham points out that on Peelie's sleevenotes for the Sessions CD, he gets the address wrong for TBLY. It's 19 not 199 Wellington Street, there is no 199.
He's also put a list of all Peel sessions at
http://members.tripod.com/~GColeman/fourteen.html
In the latest Q, D Quantick gives the Peel Sessions a four star review and says what the world really needs is a proper Fall box set. More product please!
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Simon Christian:
Peel and Walters and Riley were on R4's Front Row this evening plugging the live sessions thing. Bad idea that I reckon. They played a clip of Mess O My after a Riley bit "the place will eventually turn into a museum, you get a real sense of history when you're in there, maybe one day they will have a square of carpet with my name of it"
Riley "When I was a toddler, i.e. about 15, and in a punk band, there was two aims really. One was to get a record out, and the second one was to get a Peel session. And I unwittingly became involved in one as a roadie for The Fall (cue Mess of My, then faded into background while Riley continues) The thing about recording a John Peel session is that you get in the van in the morning, in our case you drive 200 miles, get out, unload the gear, record everything in a pretty quick time, I mean you would do four songs for a session. Now normally you would take, even for bands like The Fall you would take two or three days to record four tunes. In this case you'd have to have it all done and dusted by 10 o'clock at night, so you would get into the studio, wheel everything down all the catacombs in Maida Vale, set up and do the deed. And I remember, I think it was the third session we did, we recorded the first track, made a right old racket, as we did, went in to start listening back to it, make sure we were happy with it, and I turned round to look at the producer, and his pipe had gone out. This is the truth, his pipe had actually gone out, and he was asleep.
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Subject: <fallnet> MES/M. Clark/Brix
From 'Hail The New Puritan', Channel 4, 1986. I'm transcribing this from an audio tape, but as I remember this sequence simply featured the three of them sitting together in front of a dark background.
Note: at several points shown here in square brackets their voices are double-tracked, mostly saying the same thing out of sync, but with occasional variations.
**
MES: The refusal of genius to fulfil its destiny has been a problem of mankind's since 1911. Pap-art nor ghoulish tinkering is not science. That old geek philosopher Alvin Stardust once said "Bob Geldorf (sic) for President, that's my motto." This denial of [creation towards/creation gave] M. Clark, a man who doesn't know where that reality is, or where that hack lives, but gleans that [something/something] is future, and unbeknown but half-told has the [quirk that makes him] innovate.
Brix: How can we quantify the mongolisation of [class and soccer via Frankie Goes To, and Ipswich]/Oxford United [gross imposition of obscenity?]
MC: I'm the Scottish yin. I cannae recompense for my glory-grabbing. Read 'gold', no glory.
MES: How can we quantify the destruction the Polish have wrought on us? Some wash so much their features are eroded. Stick that in the gut of your average British ad anti-aye(?) Leftist qualify merchant.
Brix: Round my rein (reign? rain?)... (starts laughing)... they all embrace the persuaders of Lavender Hill, (laughing) fireworks in hand, like perfume pelt from rooftops gathered. The windowsills on smokeless South-West homes.
MES: Mm, but computer trust will be the death of the American brain. Can we, er, rise out of this? Can we shirk the republican bog?
MC: Menfolk were deft, but the real populist was steeped in panache. I glittered with spirits of cheap liquor and newsagent perfume. And newsagent perfume. And newsagent perfume.
MES: Well, Mike, this is the scab you must take on. The computer hamlets, inefficient in their cock-ups, are not something to dance past.
MC: Thank you.
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stve:
Just like to say that recent listening of the 3 december Fall shows reveal a band of much excitement and promise, breaking loose at times in ways not heard since that undisciplined mob of 81/82 - and that be praise I'd imagine you'd spot.
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Paul Gill:
From a review of Live Under A Blood Red Sky
"Larry Mullen gives it The Fall, featuring Mark E. Smith on vox"
?!??!
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Studio/5552/u2a.html
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The Inertia tour dates have mysteriously disappeared (Pere Ubu have definitely withdrawn).
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Recent news....
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990128 Peel Sessins CD review
990118 Uncut pieces, Marcia interview, NZ art
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990110 NME LA2 review, modern rock sociology
990103 Manchester Ritz reviews
981220 Bristol F&F and London LA2 reviews,
cut-out-and-keep guide to recent reissues
981214 NME & MM short pieces
981206 Dazed and Confused interview
981130 Nottingham 92 sleevenotes
981123 NME and MM news
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981116 nothing special
981109 Peel session reactions
981102 Melody Maker singles review, Action Records
details
981026 St Bernadette's Hall reviews, Astoria ticket
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981019 various
981009 NME interview, TBLY #13
981005 F-olding Money lyrics, couple of PNM reviews,
Simon Rodgers' career
980927 Live Various Years details/review, 1994
interview
980920 more snippets
980914 bits & pieces
980907 NME interview, Post Nearly Man reviews,
Mojo's How to Buy The Fall, Something Beginning With O
980831 Inertia tour details
980825 various snippets
980817 Observer interview, Manchester and LA2 gig
reports
980811 Melody Maker interview, Live Various Years
details, previews. Rick.
980802 Spoken word LP press release, Northern Attitude
key & sleevenotes, Edwyn Collins, TBLY #12 details
Old stuff: Nov 1997 - July 1998
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