The Fall play Edinburgh at Queens Hall, Edinburgh on Sun 22 Aug. This gig is part of the Flux Festival. Tickets @GBP10 can be bought on-line via the Flux Festival website or by telephone 0870 90 70 999 or 0131 220 4349 or 0131 668 2019
They also play Reading Festival on 27 August, Leeds Festival on 28 August on the Radio 1 Evening Session Stage. Tickets (GBP 33/day) from 0541 500 044, 0171 344 0044, HMV, Ticketmaster. Other details here.
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Artful will be releasing the new Fall single "F-Oldin' Money" (from The Marshall Suite) on the 26th July on 2 CD singles (CDARTFUL3/CDXARTFUL3) b-sides will contain album track remixes and alternate versions.
ALSO the new single from The Clint Boon Experience 'You Can't Keep a Good Man Down' released on Artful/Booney Tunes on August 9th features Mark E. contributing vocals to the b-side 'Now I Wanna Be Your Dog', recorded live and spontaneously at the Monarch in Camden on April 19 this year, and continues the Inspirals/Mark E. connection...this track will only ever be available on this single, CD-CDARTFUL31...7"-7ARTFUL31
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From Tripwire (May/June
edition)
"The Marshall Suite"
The Fall
New-uh Fall album. New-uh Fall review-uh. And "The Marshall Suite", their 700th album finds Mark E. Smith in wonderfully trashy form. The Fall (basically Mark E. Smith and whichever session musicians he can tolerate this time around) sound like the ultimate garage band here - still fresh, pumping and very very silly. Even The Cramps couldn't compete with rockabilly punk of this calibre. Muffled singing, thumping drums, twangy guitars and deadpan backing vocals ("hey hey hey hey").
'F-oldin' Money' with it's handclap rhythms and surreal lyrics about going down to the social and "getting my hands on some f-oldin' money" is a hoot (as well as being a virtual cover of Summertime Blues). Smith drawls curiously over the top of everything like a pissed rapper on amphetamines. As in all the best Lassie films, he seems to be urgently trying to tell us something but we just don't know what it is. The absence of a lyric sheet doesn't help either. So it's probably best to just settle back and enjoy the racket.
"The Marshall Suite" is lo-fi garage at its sleaziest. The upbeat echoing drumming is relentless throughout, and sounds as though it were recorded in a friend's bathroom. But unusual touches (like the shimmering mandolins on 'Bound' or the high pitched metallic guitars on '(Jung Nev's) Antidotes') allow us to distinguish one track from the next. Just. No real departures or musical growth is on offer here fortunately, allowing us to enjoy this year's Fall album in relative discomfort. And for those of us who care about such things, some of the song titles this time around include 'Anecdotes And Antidotes in B#', 'Early Life Of Crying Marshal' and 'Mad.Men-Eng.Dog'. It should keep John Peel happy at least. (2.5 stars)
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From: Sam Macklin
Subject: Meltdown.
After being the lone voice of dissent re the godawful Forum gig a while back, I'm pleased to be able to report that Mark E was fantastic at Meltdown. Great to see Julia back - talented collaborators make a world of difference. I actually enjoyed the whole evening (South Bank gigs=guaranteed entertainment) but have to admit that Mark made most of the rest of the bill seem rather conventional and cowardly (the people sitting near us took against him rather strongly). It was a great distillation of the Post Nearly Man sound and proved that Mark *does* give a fuck about putting on a good show after all. My favourite moment: "Now, I have prepared an essay on devolution. English Glasnost!"
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From the book, The Accidental Evolution of Rock 'n' Roll by Chuck Eddy. From the chapter entitled "Repetition, Repetition, Repetition, Repetition, Repetition, Repetition":
Similar tricks work for Mark E. Smith (who says he's the "Mick Jagger of right now") and The Fall, who named their first 45 "Repetition", named another tune "Neighbourhood of Infinity," and peaked, repetition-wise with the aforementioned 5:16 "Various Times" (about imagining you're a Nazi among other things) and 8:04 "Music Scene" (which has various and sundry incidental keyboard crashes and radio signals and sax signals). Mark E. says the three R's are "repetition, repetition, repetition." In lots of songs he just repeats a title over and over. Which can be a drag - certain spans of dry didacticism leave me unmoved, un-anythinged. There's too much proto-Sonic Youth quiet-unto-loudness cornballism and elevator-horror mood music.
On the other hand, lots of Fall stuff is the raw gnaw of discontent, the loather's leap into something infallible - rough wraparound murk-blues-unto-excelsis drone with mundane household words spasmodically and (sort of) rhythmically spoken or shouted or declaimed or poeticised or laughed or squealed or panicked, with new slang or pronounciations invented on the spot. All over syncopation with a real grasp of history: doowop, rockabilly, garage bands, gunk-metal, Kraut-rock, Beefheart, Lennon, Dylan, dub reggae. The Fall turned Diddley/Stooges grooves into dirge progressions ("Elves") and hooks from Status Quo's "Pictures of Matchstick Men" (or Jeff Airplane's "We Can Be Together"?) into hopped-up hillbilly music ("How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'"). They tried Jackson Five beats and disco ones, too.
When The Fall stumbled on a groove, they rocked it. They were at least as rock 'n' roll, and certainly no more arty, than Prince. (Anyway, nobody says you can't be both.) In the high-strung early days (1977-1979), their rhythm already had a fairly straightforward Farfisa-punk push. But it improved into a dense, drastic, and anything-but-immobile pore-congestion when they instituted a double-drum (plus keyboards/voice/bass/zither/percussion) rhythm format on their 1981 "Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul" single and 1982 Hex Enduction Hour LP.
The Fall have been fairly influential in 90's indie-rock circles, supposedly inspiring Pavement (whose vocals and rhythm section are basically wet noodles) and definitely inspiring Girls Against Boys... etc.
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Pete C:
From some paper or other:
"....As for the nasty homes, try inspecting the domestic arrangements of the killers in the first two Lecter books (well evoked in both movies) with their vast gruesome rooms full of disintegrating corpses, their bits of bodies in the bath, the terrible music in the background, and don't forget the slaughterhouse to which young Clarice was sent at 10 years old...."
Terrible music?!
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Recent news....
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990624 Meltdown reviews, Calvin Klein
rubbish
990613 not much
990606 NME Forum review
990526 Wire interview, more reviews...
990517 Salisbury, Sheffield, Cheltenham, Cambridge,
Southend, Luton, London reviews
990509 Leicester, Leeds, Birmingham, Brighton,
Salisbury reviews; NME fave songs bit
990426 Guardian interview, Brix interview, more
album reviews, MES' radio session
990419 more Marshall Suite reviews, NME chat, live
at Sound Republic XFM session, tbly#15 out
990411 Couple of Marshall Suite reviews, Live 77
details, 1985/1987 interviews
990330 Touch Sensitive reviews, Marshall Suite
details
990320 Shake-off lyrics, tour details
990314 MES Escape interview
990308 Ashton Tuesday reviews, Falling Through
Time part 1, Dragnet reissue
990302 Ashton Sunday and Monday reviews
990221 LP announcement, Inch reviews
990214 not much
990207 various stuff
990128 Peel Sessions CD review
990118 Uncut pieces, Marcia interview, NZ art
collection
990110 NME LA2 review, modern rock sociology
990103 Manchester Ritz reviews
Old stuff: Nov 1997 - Dec 1998
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