The Fall

By WH

It’s 10.20pm at the Point and for 15 minutes a video screen mounted behind the stage has been showing repeated slow motion videos of James Brown, moulded into Pavarotti, blended into Sadaam Hussain – or that’s what it looks like to me.

Over the top plays obnoxiously edited audio of shouting, screaming and a general cacophony of noises that wouldn’t be out of place in Abu Ghraib. Next to me stands a middle-aged truck driver nursing a half pint of bitter, he leans over and says, “I’m never quite sure whether or not to let him get away with it”, and every Fall fan knows exactly what he means. Putting up with dock hand come intellectual come seminal rock front man Mark E Smiths own brand of anti-aesthetic bullshit is a constant challenge, but we wouldn’t want it any other way.

After the crowd have been subjected to fifteen minutes of this audiovisual wank the band emerge sans Smith, the most eye catching of which is a huge bearded bassist (one of two) who begins to bang out a floor rumbling bass line with sporadic shouting from him and his co-background artist. There is no room for personalities other that E.Smith in the Fall, over 50 members have had the pleasure to be Mark E’s next ex wife and there will be more; the current line-up having been picked up stateside are a jamming, improvisational team and bring a degree of spontaneity to the proceedings.

Then finally, from the back of the dark stage stumbles the aged wizened figure of Mark E. Smith, fifty this month but looking perhaps twenty years older than that…a life of cigarettes, alcohol, and being a bitter bastard has taken it’s toll. He approaches the front of the stage and begins snarling away into the microphone, almost biting at it as he hunches over and delivers his northern vitriol.

The venue is perfect for such a gig, far more intimate than last years appearance at the Coal Exchange, and you can’t help feeling that the Fall are more of a religious cult than a band, with a leader who commands, nay demands nothing but utter respect. Those who are outside the cult simply fail to understand…like an obsessive fanatic I can’t help that feel anyone who doesn’t like the Fall is wrong, they simply don’t get it; come the apocalypse they will see the error of their ways. It is hot however, very hot, and even our leader is forced to remove his suit jacket, stripping down to a grimy old t-shirt; not a sight you see every day but one I will keep in the bank. Ahem.

As with the vast majority of Fall gigs the set list is almost entirely comprised of the most recent offerings from the band, there’s no looking back…what’s the point? The definitive version of a Fall track is the last version played. However we are treated to the bands ‘hit’, the title music from Football focus, Sparta FC; it fails to satisfy entirely because such is Smiths domination of the band (fiddling around with their amplifiers, taking away their microphones, un plugging their instruments) that when it comes to the backing vocals there are no mics for the bassist duo to shout into. Well I suppose it’s all part and parcel of the wonderful and frightening world of the fall.

As the set hurtles towards it’s finale and the band come back out for an unexpected encore, with first track The Right Stuff fronted by Smiths staggeringly attractive bride, we’re all drunk on bombast and in the palm of this Manchurian deity. He leaves the stage before the rest of the band…when he’s done what he has to do, finished what he is paid to finish, handing the microphone to the charged crowd. There’s only one sentence on everyone lips, “he…is…not…APPRECIATED”.