5 Favourite Songs by The Fall

Subject: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 03:18 PM

Seeing Mudcat's gone a bit poptastic of late...

Early: Frightened
Classic : Middlemass
Brix era: 2x4
Post Brix: Bill Is Dead
Recent: Mexico Wax Solvent

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 03:33 PM

It's good that you're giving us at least until September to consider it!

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 03:46 PM

What we really need is a thread called: "Five favourite putdowns by Suibhne Astray".

;-D

One is, of course, required to sift through the last 10 years of his posts before making a final decision.

So who wants to start?

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 04:28 PM

Who the hell are The Fall?

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 04:39 PM

They were a band by Albert Camus.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 05:22 PM

.. reminds me.. I'd completely forgotten I've got a "The Fall" CD boxset somewhere...???

Must be a good 15 years since I last listened to any of it,
and buggered if I can remember any of the songs..

But it was very good at the time, and a great solid drum and bass sound.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Bobert
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 05:33 PM

Never heard of The Fall... Info por favor???

B~

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 06:01 PM

Info por favor???

The Fall are one of the more enduringly aspects of the UK's popular culture; cherished, curmudmeonly, charming and challenging by turns. Over here the arrival of a new Fall album is truly folkloric event - at once evocative of timeless continuity, yet replete with vibrant renewal.   

Fore more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_%28band%29

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 06:44 PM

I gave up on the Fall after Wonderful and Frightening - three duff albums in a row was enough for me - so my list is skewed towards the earlier stuff. But when they were good they were really good. In no particular order:

Gut of the Quantifier (I'm telling you now and I'm telling you this...
Winter
Leave the Capitol (All the paintings you recall, all the sidestepped cars)
Fantastic Life
The N.W.R.A. (Junior Choice played one morning, the song was 'English Scene' - mine! - they'd changed it around, added a grand piano and turned it into a love song, how they did it I don't know)

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:12 PM

Slags, Slates etc
Marquis Cha-Cha
Fiery Jack
Container Drivers (Peel session version)
New Face in Hell

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:16 PM

three duff albums in a row was enough for me

So what's so duff about Room To Live, Perverted By Language & Wonderful & Frightening World? Cherished classics yielding some firm favourites, off the top of my head: Joker Hysterical Face, Garden and Copped It (feat. Gavin Friday). Coming in after Hex anything would have seemed wonky, but at the time we welcomed Room to Live with open arms, likewise Perverted by Language (Tempo House, Eat Y'self Fitter..) and W&FW which I'm enjoying afresh in the new boxed edition.

I'm with you on Gut of the Quantifier (from This Nation's Saving Grace, post W&FW; I must admit I lost off a bit around Bend Sinister) & I regard Winter as one of MES's finest lyrics (He had a parka on and a black cardboard Archbishop's hat with a green-fuzz skull and crossbones. He'd just got back from the backward kids' party. Anyway then he seemed the young one, but now he looked like the victim of a pogrom ) & Slates is a miniature masterpiece. Fantastic Life is up there with Look Know, Lie Dream & CB. And anything off Grotesque is pretty sacred in my book, though the Part of America Therein version of NWRA is about as perfect as music gets for me.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Bobert
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:19 PM

Sorry, I missed them... I'll Google them later and check out their stuff... I do have a couple UK popish bands I really like... Catherine Wheel, IMHO, is the shits of all shits (good thing) when it comes to UK popish...

Also love the Devlins...

B~

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Elmore
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:28 PM

My favorite song about the fall is "Lady of Autumn" by Beggars Velvet.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Bobert
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:36 PM

I just checked them out... Kinda garage band-ish but with some interesting songs... At least the few I could find... I liked "!5 Ways"... The video was purdy cool with the lead singer sitting at a typewriter as if he was going to type out "15 ways" to leave your man...


B~

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:45 PM

All I can say is, I'm getting really tired of this "top five" shit. I suppose repetition has a certain appeal to some, but it bores me to tears. We have five "top five" threads going now - this one is the only one that appeals to me....
Thanks, Suibhne.

What I like about Mudcat is that for the most part, it's a Website for musicians, not a fan site. Fans think in terms of "top five." Musicians think about how they can perform a song and make it their own. Each song counts, not just the top five.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Bobert
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 08:13 PM

Come on, Joe... It's fun... Ain't like it's eating up the entire Mud kingdom... Don't open threads you don't like... I mean, these bands ain't exactly contemporary bands so it ain't like "slam book" mentality...

Now be a goof Joe Offer an' tell us what your 5 favorite Dylan or Beatles tunes... It will make you feel all better...

I promise...

B;~)

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:37 AM

Bobert, my personal opinion is that if you want to post repetitive crap, you should post it below the line. These are five threads in the music section, five basically mindless threads that repeat the same theme - and yeah, they get a lot more traffic than the song discussion threads that I love, so the song threads get pushed back and what people see at the top of the forum menu are these worthless "top five" threads. If it were one thread, I wouldn't mind - but it's five.

-Joe Offer, disgusted-

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 03:24 AM

New question: which is your favourite worthless "top five" thread?

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 03:44 AM

When I pick the top 5 songs by some artist or group whose work I truly admire and really know well, Joe, what I'm working from is not fandom, but pure absolute LOVE of the music itself, and I am remembering what particular songs most inspired me and brought me the most joy....and gave me enthusiasm to pursue music myself.

I can't see what problem there is with that. (?)

I'm not familiar with the group "The Fall", so I can't comment on their music.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 04:29 AM

I'd have thought most musicians would be glad there were fans who were interested in the music - otherwise they'd just be playing to each other.

And most musicians I've met are obsessive music fans - it's often what got them started in the first place. I always remember reading an interview with a UK indie band a few years back when the singer disclosed that he wasn't really that interested in music. My reaction to that was 'in that case, why on earth should I listen to your records?'...

With a band with as diverse and extensive an output as the Fall (they have been going for 35 years, after all), its always interesting to see which part of their ouevre people relate to. And I don't know if it was his point in starting the thread, but by doing so Suibhne has reminded us that not everyone's engagement with music is via the Big Three of classic rock.

Meanwhile, I'm Totally Wired.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: glueman
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 04:33 AM

"What I like about Mudcat is that for the most part, it's a Website for musicians, not a fan site."

That's also its greatest weakness, hence the interminable adversarial threads. The Fall did an excellent version of R. Dean Taylor's 'There's a Ghost In My House'.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 04:37 AM

Hmmm. Well, I guess I will go to Youtube and find out who "The Fall" are. Sounds interesting.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 05:55 AM

I've always thought Bingomaster's Breakout (1978) sounded like it could be a Jim Eldon song, though whilst I could imagine Jim singing A hall full of cards left unfilled / ended his life with wine and pills / there's a grave somewhere only partly filled / a sign in a graveyard on a hill / reads..., I couldn't imagine him writing it somehow, which isn't to underestimate Eldon's writing, just Mark E. Smith's agenda as a song-writer / storyteller is always more oblique somehow. That said, it's interesting that whilst Smith writes:

Two swans in front of his eyes
Colored balls in front of his eyes
It's number one for his Kelly's eye
Treble-six right over his eye

Jim pulls off something very similar in Barr and Darr:

He's got wattles like a cockerel
and he strutts like a cockerel
and his mates another cockerel
You should hear them squark

To my mind, both evidence a rare cunning with respect of the popular songwriting tradition, touching on a vernacular disregard for poetic convention whilst manifesting something well and truly wrought in terms of impression and image.

At his most Classically Gothic, Mark E Smith gifts us with gruesome yarns, the most inspired of which is The Impression of J Temperance which could have been written by Edward Gorey, albeit differently perhaps. The Englishness of The Fall is the flipside to that of M R James (a key influence) but with Smith's warehouse base, near a city tide / brown sockets, purple eyes / and fed with rubbish from disposal barges we're in a very different world to James's landscapes of spires, cloisters, branchlines and private chapels, but no less remote somehow, and just as vivid in terms of its folklore and provenance with respect of the tradition of such things.

*

Pip - did you ever hear This? Talk about folk-process...

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 07:47 AM

PS - Here's the single version of Bingo-Master's Break-Out in which Mark E Smith sings in his native Salford brogue, sounding not unlike Jim Eldon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjO2ZbrIT6s

Here's the complete words by way demonstrating the poetic genius at work here. It's vivid vignette of vernacular life in all its grotesque chamelessness, yet remains utterly impassive as far as anything so vague as message goes. Like the best Traditional Folk Songs and Stories, it's as fantastic as it is utterly mundane; it celebrates the weirdness of the commonplace. Fantasic life indeed...

Two swans in front of his eyes
Colored balls in front of his eyes
It's number one for his Kelly's eye
Treble-six right over his eye

A big shot's voice in his ears
Worlds of silence in his ears
All the numbers account for years
Checks the cards through eyes of tears

Bingo-Master's Breakout!

All he sees is the back of chairs
In the mirror, a lack of hairs
A light room, which he fills out
Hear the players all shout

Bingo-Master's Breakout!

A glass of lager in his hand
Silver microphone in his hand
Wasting time in numbers and rhyme
One hundred blank faces buy

Bingo-Master's Breakout!

Came the time he flipped his lid
Came the time he flipped his lid
Holiday in Spain fell through
Players put it down to

Bingo-Master's Breakout

A hall full of cards left unfilled
Ended his life with wine and pills
There's a grave somewhere only partly filled
A sign in a graveyard on a hill reads

Bingo-Master's Breakout

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 11:24 AM

all its grotesque chamelessness

By which, of course, I meant to say charmlessness but in the context of MCR Vernacular Life I could just have easily meant Shamelessness as in Shameless, which remains a favourite in this house even after God knows how many years. Also key to the MCR-VL is the sit-com Ideal in which The Fall feature as integral to the cultural mythos of the thing (have they ever featured on Shameless? I don't think they have though I've read that MES is a fan) with not only various Fall songs being used as part of the soundtrack, but a cameo by Mark E Smith himself playing the part of Jesus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7m_pCtvU94

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 11:29 AM

arrrrgggghh... (see my comment on Rolling Stones thread)

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 11:45 AM

I'm getting really tired of this "top five" shit

Now I'm sorely tempted to start a "top five shits" thread but I'll resist...

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:05 PM

When it comes to spirituality, Suibhne, or rather...to the lack of spirituality, I might better say...cynicism is its own punishment, and it lives in the nasty hole it dug for itself.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:10 PM

BD - Is does one good to listen to other types of music. Indeed, any appreciation of Folk & Blues must not only be aware of the roots & branches of popular music, but entirely passionate on how such things operate in terms of cultural process. The Fall rarely touch upon such idioms as Blues and Folk (though they did once cover Pinball Machine and MES requested of the band something vaguely Dylanish when they went into the studio (in Iceland) to record Iceland for Hex in 1981) but their music is just as rooted as any other and with 35 years of clues, riddles, shards & references the deciphering of which would keep a team of folklorists & ethnographers busy for another 35.

BC - that would be a top thread; given the subjective nature of the experience it would have to be wholly anecdotal. Like the time when on the opening night of the Glastonbury Festivlal in 1984, I was so stoned I dropped my specs into a toilet trench. The retrieval, though succesful, was so traumatic that it resulted in three days of constipation which was eventually relieved under a bush somewhere near Avebury midst birdsong, hawthorn leaves, sunshine, megaliths, dancing skyclad hippys and earthly leyline energies that connected me to the eternal via big block of Gold Seal Charas which proved the kost divine laxative imaginable. Transcendental Bowel Evacuation in a veritable G-spot tornado that outlasted all temporal considerations. Definitely in my top 5, but maybe not my #1 Number One...

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:12 PM

When it comes to spirituality, Suibhne, or rather...to the lack of spirituality, I might better say...cynicism is its own punishment, and it lives in the nasty hole it dug for itself.

Care to be less cryptic, LH?

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:14 PM

#1 Number Two that is...

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 01:09 PM

"BD - Is does one good to listen to other types of music. Indeed, any appreciation of Folk & Blues must not only be aware of the roots & branches of popular music,.."

I have listened... I am aware of roots... I prefer the roots.

I simply 'wish' there was a quiet spot where we pedantic root aficionados could gather without distractions. Being very eclectic has some virtues, I suppose, but those who ARE eclectic seem to view all venues and discussions as 'free range'. *wry grin*

Ok... I've done my bi-annual complaint. I'll go away now.............till more egregious intrusions occur. ☺

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 01:12 PM

I was saying that I didn't find that last video you posted to be terribly apt or worthwhile, Suibhne.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 01:42 PM

Very moving Suibhne!

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: glueman
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:57 PM

Mark E. Smith, rather like your other fave P. Bellamy, is someone I respect, admire even and certainly wouldn't quarrel with his place in the pantheon, without actually liking him, let alone wishing to meet the man. By contrast I can think of a number of performers with less solid artistic credentials who I warm to much more. On Jim Eldon I agree however, a man in touching distance of genius.

OTOH I was reading a forum on an entirely unrelated topic the other day, where a poster happened to be in the same off license as Mark E. at Christmas and he wished all and sundry a very merry one as he walked out with his selection of wine, spirits and beer, so maybe his public demeanor is in contrast to the private man.

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 03:31 PM

I was saying that I didn't find that last video you posted to be terribly apt or worthwhile, Suibhne.

Thing is, as this thread is a discussion on The Fall - who are something of a British institution really; Mark E Smith is held in considerable affection across the generations - then not only was it terribly apt, but it was certainly worthwhile. Maybe from an American perspective it might seem a little strange, but having Mark E Smith appear as a vision of Christ to a deranged Christian Fundamentalist (is there any other sort?) in the attic of the flat of a Salford drug dealer makes perfect sense, and is, in any case, richly spiritual on various fronts. And funny too. Sorry you missed it.

On Jim Eldon I agree however, a man in touching distance of genius.

In my heart, Jim surpasses them all!

Subject: RE: 5 Favourite Songs by The Fall
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 06:14 AM

-Joe Offer, disgusted-

I started the Fall & Ivor Cutler threads because I don't really like Cohen, Dylan, Beatles or the Stones - I'm not disgusted with them though. Music is like Spirituality - it's common to us all, yet in the specifics it's all a matter of taste that engenders at a least a measure of evangelism, if only to seek out people we can share it with. I think our favourite music is important & needs celebrating, & whatever people want to talk about is cool, surely???