Urban Hat€monger ?

Here is a link to a blog with 13 Fall albums available to upload...

PunchDrunk

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Urban Hat€monger ?

Original Album Tracklisting : Intro / Fiery Jack / Rowche Rumble / Muzorewi's Daughter / In My Area / Choc-Stock / Spectre vs. Rector / Cary Grant's Wedding / That Man (Studio Outtake) / New Puritan (Home Demo) / No Xmas For John Quays

Re-issue Extras :Container Drivers / Jawbone And The Air Rifle / New Puritan / New Face In Hell (John Peel Session 24th September 1980)

Band Line Up: Mark E. Smith - vocals / Marc Riley - guitar / Craig Scanlon - Guitar / Steve Hanley - bass / Paul Hanley - drums

Critique: Totale's Turns is a live album , and the bands first for Rough Trade. It was put out mainly for two reasons. The first being that the band desperatly needed funds , secondly because Mark E Smith was becoming extremly happy with the bands dynamic & wanted to capture it in a release and a live album was a cheap & easy way the achieve this. Also as not to rip off fans Smith instructed Rough Trade to retail the album at half the price ,which they did.
The live material on the album was recorded in working mens clubs in the north of England mostly to an indifferent crowd to whom Smith isn't shy about letting his feelings towards know. In fact during the intro Smith addresses the crowd with 'The difference between you and us is we have brains'.
The sound quality isn't great but it's listenable and once you get over that there are some energetic run throughs of some of their best material off the Dragnet album. The album also includes Cary Grants Wedding a pretty decent song that never made it any further than being played live .That Man is an interesting song that sounds like The Fall doing rockabilly , I don't think they've done anything like this before & I really like it. There is also a home demo version of New Puritan which Smith recorded as a drunk tried to break into his house.The final song on the album is an 8 minute rendition of No Xmas For John Quays the only song from the Witch Trials era. This really is a great addition to the album because Smith is in a foul mood and starts launching into his own band with statements like 'C'mon get a bit of f*cking guts in it' and 'Will you f*cking get it together and stop showing off'.
The sole extras on this album come from the bands third John Peel session from later on that year.I'll cover the Peel Sessions later in detail but this particular session in my opinion is the best one they ever recorded out of the 24 they did and it's inclusion on here is a masterstroke.

Songs You Need

Cary Grants Wedding : Because you can't find it anywhere else & it stands up to the rest of their material from this era.

That Man:What The Fall would have sounded like if Mark E Smith had put them together in 1958

No Xmas For John Quays: Because it's faster , heavier & longer then the album version and hearing Smith shouting at his own band is funny.

Verdict: I was scared of this album for a long long time. Not being much of a fan of the Dragnet album and hearing of it's reputation for being really lo-fi I wasn't really in a rush to hear it. So when I did finally hear it I was pleasently surprised to find myself listening to the whole album and enjoying it. Most of this is down to Mark E Smiths onstage banter and the urgency & togetherness of the band , being a stark contrast to the looseness of the band that recorded the Dragnet album. You can really see why Smith wanted to document this era of the band. Obviously this is not the best album to start with if you want to get into The Fall but those who are familiar with this era of the band will have a soft spot for it.
4/10

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Urban Hat€monger ?

Original Album Tracklisting : Pay Your Rates / English Scheme / New Face In Hell / C n C -s Mitherings / The Container Drivers / Impression of J Temperance / In The Park / WMC Blob 59/ Gramme Friday / The NWRA

Re-issue Extras :How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' / City Hobgoblins (7" Single July 1980)
Totally Wired / Putta Block (7" Single September 1980)
Mark E Smith Self Interveiw

Band Line Up: Mark E. Smith - vocals, tapes , guitar , kazoo / Marc Riley - guitar,keyboards / Craig Scanlon - Guitar / Steve Hanley - bass / Paul Hanley - drums / Kay Carroll - Additional Vocals

Critique: Grotesque (After The Gramme) sees The Fall enter their best period. Between 1980 & 1982 The Fall would consistantly record their best material. They would go on to make great albums after that but it remains the era that is my personal favourite. Helped by a stable line up (OK stable for The Fall anyway), growing confidence musically & Smith writing some of his best lyrics.
This album is a product of it's enviroment. In fact during this period Smith was writing material that would show up as late as 3 or 4 years down the line on albums such as Hex Enduction Hour & Wild & Wonderful World Of The Fall.
With Dragnet Smith wrote horror stories about the occult and the supernatural , with this album the horror stories are about living in early 80s Thacherite Britain. The theme of being working class dominates this album cropping up in songs such as Pay Your Rates , Container Drivers , The NWRA and especially on English Scheme were Smith berates those people pretending to be middle class (especially bands) with lyrics such as The commune crap, camp bop, middle-class, flip-flop
Guess that's why they end up in bands and Peter Cook's jokes, bad dope, check shirts, lousy groups Point their fingers at America Down pokey quaint streets in Cambridge.
'C n C - S Mithering' Sees Smith having another rant at the music industry and then halfway though he just goes off on a general rant about anything ,
The things that drain you off and drive you off the hinge.
Boils, dirty socks, the ceilings collapse.
The sunday morning loud lawn mower,
The upstairs jewish girl damn hoovering every thirty minutes,
Sometimes these rants are made in the third person with Smith inventing characters such as J Temperence and J Totale and his son R Totale speaking in the third person.
Smiths lyrics also cover govenment paranoia (New Face In Hell), Sex (In The Park), Drugs (Gramme Friday). The final song on the album is the 9 minute epic The NWRA , being short for The North Will Rise Again and describes a coup in the north of England and how they`ll take control ....and then f*ck the whole thing up because the place is full of drunks & criminals.
Also on the album is WMC Blob 59 , which can either be an abbrieviation of Working Mens Club or Womens Menstrual Cycle depending on which you prefer. It's basically just a couple of minutes of studio noise with Smith ranting in the background.On press releases with the album Smith days 'It's a really funny track , it's a pity you can't hear whats going on.
There are extras on the album in the form of not one but the two best singles ever recorded by The Fall. How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' is Smiths experience of being a media darling (Although not Gary Bushell , but Smith has a pop at him on C n C -s Mitherings) and also Totally Wired ,Smiths ode to his drug of choice ... Speed. The extras are completed by a self interview recorded by an out of it Smith . His first target being The Vapors (The band who recorded Turning Japanese) when he found out that one of the band members used to be a lawyer.

Songs You Need

All of them except WMC Blob 59

Verdict: This album has been called the gateway to the best of The Fall.Which is a good thing really because this was the first Fall album I ever bought so I guess there is some truth in that. I love everything about this album. I love the raw garage rock of Pay Your Rates I love the jaunty bounciness of English Scheme , New Face In Hell is my favourite Fall track """"""OF ALL TIME EVER""""""" and not just because of the quality kazoo playing in it. I love the acoustic blueiness of C n C -s Mitherings , I love Mark E Smith's love of trucker music (Bet you didn't know that) shining through in Container Drivers. And then just when you think things could not possibly get any better you get their 2 best singles ever to top it off as well. Ending this is really hard because I could talk about just how good this album is all day. BUT it still only gets 9.5 out of 10.
The reason? well because they recorded something even better so I have to give Hex Enduction Hour a higher score.
Actually forget that , this album is sheer genius and deserves every mark , even for WMC Blob59.
10/10

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MURDER JUNKIE

at Punk Torrents (Powered by Invision Power Board) you can get the full 33 album discography, I highly reccommend this site. You have to sign up but they have great stuff

Moon Pix

No other score would suffice.

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There’s a dream that I see, I pray it can be
Look 'cross the land, shake this land - "Maybe Not", C. Marshall

Moon Pix

What happened to this thread Urban?

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There’s a dream that I see, I pray it can be
Look 'cross the land, shake this land - "Maybe Not", C. Marshall

Urban Hat€monger ?

I've got so many new Fall albums I've not had chance to go back & listen to the old ones yet.


I now own 47 Fall albums

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Bane of your existence

U gotz a zine??

Urban Hat€monger ?

I think i'll resurrect this in the next couple of days seeing as everybody's making list threads.

My review of the Slates E.P. coming soon

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Urban Hat€monger ?

Sod it i'll do it now .....


Original Album Tracklisting Middle Mass / An Older Lover etc / Prole Art Threat / Fit and Working Again / Slates, Slags, etc / Leave the Capitol

Re-issue Extras* Middle Mass / Lie Dream Of a Casino Soul / Hip Priest / C'n'C - Hassle Schmuck (John Peel Session - 31st March 1981)
Lie Dream Of a Casino Soul / Fantastic Life (7" Single December 1981)
Medical Acceptance Gate (Demo 1981)

*Slates has been re-issued twice.Once in 1998 co-released with A Part Of America Therein, a live mini album released only in the U.S. And again in 2004 with the bands 4th Peel session and the extras listed above. I own the 1998 version so i'm going by that one.

Band Line Up: Mark E. Smith - Vocals , Piano , Harmonica / Marc Riley - Guitar , Electric Piano / Craig Scanlon - Guitar , Piano / Steve Hanley Bass, Acoustic guitar / Paul Hanley - Drums, Percussion / Kay Carroll - Kazoo / Dave Tucker - Clarinet

Critique Originally released as a 10 inch single , this E.P. never made the charts due to having too many songs to be classed as a single ( 6 instead of the maximum allowed 4 ) & too cheap to be classed as an album (The E.P. retailed at £2 , according to BPI rules at the time an album could cost no less than £2.49). Nonetheless this is 24 minutes of The Fall in top form.
The opening track Middle Mass is a rant about the growing power of the middle classes , or a personal rant by M.E.S. about Marc Riley. When Riley approached Smith about this Smith started fumbling uncomfortably and then simply replied that the song was 'about another guy called Marc'. But the writing between this partnership was on the wall.
The only downside of the E.P. comes with the next song 'An Older Lover etc' , although it's not a bad song it never really goes anywhere & the lyrics about tiring older lovers are not up to Smith's usual standards.
Prole Art Threat is 2 minutes of jaunty garage rock which started off life as a story about working class culture and it's threat to the liberal media, commuter trains & MI5 , Not being able to get it right Smith condensed the song to it's bare bones and this stripped down rough version is the result.
Fit And Working Again is another bouncy Fall pop song thats one of my favourites , hell you can almost sing a long to this one. But the real highlight of the E.P. is the next song Slags , Slates etc. This is another song where Smith just rants at anything that just happening to be bothering him at the time , such as Ripoff bands with creaky pants and scrubbed hands and Academic male slags , Ream off names of books and bands.
It was this song that led Rough Trade record boss Geoff Travis to complain to Smith about the use of the word 'Slags'. Smith told him to 'Just sell the record you fucking hippy' and after this album was released The Fall were looking for another record label. Explaining the hostility from his own record label to the press Smith said 'The tea boy hates the fact that you slagged of Wah! , and the lady who does the cooking takes offense to the word slags'
The E.P. closes with 'Leave The Capital' a song about vampires in Victorian London, but in reality a thinly veiled attack on Smith's hatred for the city.
The extras on this E.P. include the bands 4th session for John Peel as well as the single Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul which was the song that introduced the twin drummers line up with both Paul Hanley & the returning Karl Burns on drums. The song itself was mistaken by some as an attack on the Northern Soul scene , which it wasn't. Smith explained that the song was about the closure of the Wigan Casino and his admiration for the all nighters. He also explained that a large number of Northern Soul fans made up The Fall's audience at the time because they were 'offbeat' , he also explained that Dexy's Midnight Runners were 'busting a gut to get that kind of audience , and failing'
I would tell you about the other 2 songs , but I don't have that copy of the E.P.


Songs You Need

It's only an E.P , just get the lot of them

Verdict: As all my time as a fan of The Fall , I have never EVER seen a Fall fan say a single bad word about this E.P, and I hate to sound like a broken record but the E.P. is an absolute belter recorded when the band were on top form. I mean it comes slap bang in the middle between Grotesque & Hex Enduction Hour , easily the bands 2 best albums. The only duffer on this E.P. is 'Older Lover' but even then it's more because the record is of such high quality rather than the song itself being awful , it's just an average song surrounded by greatness.
I'm not even going to hesitate giving this.....
10/10

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