The Fall
Seminal Live (Beggars Banquet)
by Nik Rainey
It’s twenty years after the would-be insurrection of punk rock, and it shows – most of the wild-eyed soldiers that made up its ranks are stooped shadows of their former selves, every last one of them a bunch of grumbling old men. Only one footman remains on the front lines – Mark E. Smith, the indefatigable, inscrutable frontman and ill conscience of The Fall, probably because he was a grumbling old man from the day he left the Manchester docks and, inspired by his Link Wray, Can, and Big Youth records, decided to give this rock ‘n’ roll thing a bash. And so it has been, through a collector-smothering outlay of releases and more lineup changes than a South End station house on St. Patrick’s Day, and so, it seems, it ever shall be. Without a single hiatus in two decades, Smith and whatever group of sidepeople he can tolerate that week have held fast to the dictum presented on their first, statement-of-purpose single in December ’77: “Repetition in the music and we’re never gonna lose it.” A Fall record is a formulaic thing, which is not as damning as it sounds – they simply have the right formula: a simple, inspired guitar riff repeated indefinitely over a raw, circular rhythm, varying degrees of weird sounds over the top, and somewhere in between, the tone-deaf locution of Mark Smith ranting on about something. What it is, you can’t quite be sure (even if you have the lyrics written out in front of you), but somehow, it’s dead-on right. The very definition of a cult band – apart from sporadic charges up the British pop charts and the very occasional US radio semi-hemi-demi-hit, The Fall remain a taste palatable to a vociferous few – but their influence looms large over modern music, and their resilience and creative consistency are truly astounding given the constant upheavals running throughout their long and bumpy existence.
This period is covered in Beggars Banquet’s current six-disc reissue campaign, which brings us to Seminal Live (1989), concluding the Fall’s affiliation with both Brix and Beggars Banquet with a release that some consider the least essential of all officially-released Fall records. All things considered, you could hardly blame them for bowing out with a tossed-off contract breaker, but the record (actually half-studio, half-live) is not quite the half-baked kiss-off that legend might dictate. The studio stuff includes one last great Brix-age single (“Dead Beat Descendant”), the obscure country lament “Pinball Machine” (with banjo, violin, and an ill-advised attempt on Mark’s part to actually sing), and three tracks that bring The Fall full-circle to the casual experimentalisms of Perverted by Language. (“Mollusc in Tyrol” is indescribably bizarre.) The live half, while not a patch on stage documents like Totale’s Turns or Fall in a Hole, provides a nice summation of the Beggars/Brix years, with a bona-fide oldie (“Pay Your Rates”) thrown in as a ringer and a weird touch or two for spice (that guy drunkenly haranguing the crowd before “Cruisers Creek” wouldn’t be Bill Grundy [infamous for getting the Pistols to say “fuck” on afternoon TV], would it?). Get this one last, but get it anyway.
These six discs represent a mere slice of The Fall’s assault on rock convention, now loping into its third decade. Their integrity and refusal to bow to fad or fashion except as it suits them remains a model of the punk ethos and an iconoclastic beacon for unorthodox music-makers the world over. If you’ve yet to acquire this singular taste, these records are a fine place to begin, but be warned: if, once hooked, you find yourself liquidating all your assets to buy up the back catalogue and wind up-ah talking-ah like this-ah all the time-ah, I’m not to be held responsible-ah.
