The Fall – 1982

Cherry Red

Choose your own opening pun adventure: BEATification; aPOPtheosis. Mark E Smith as can/n/on. In fact naïf-historiographical Fall are legions worse than Nicene method – the archive is interminably tumescent, engorged for torrid bores. Better still see what Falls off the table, innit.

Method — you see, this boxset is all 1982. An auspicious year. The year I was born. Now, I’m not arrogantly claiming my presence in the world inspired The Fall to make some good records. But I think it would be remiss of us to write out the possibility entirely.

Anyway. Here’s the squizz — a couple of rarities, bunch of sessions, copious liner notes. All that sort of stuff. Should you buy it? Sure, why not. Knock yourself out.

1982 was the year of the nippy melodyless dirge and semi-opaque vocals. In which The Fall excel. But mercifully had other ideas because noise-rock really isn’t a fertile and comely niche. I’ve made the case before (or at least thought about it) that the best krautrock bands are The Fall and Status Quo. So that’s here as well. And all of that rinky-dinky sub-Bo Diddly stuff that mercifully doesn’t persist much longer.

One of the weirder things about the Fall is that people foolishly repeat that they have a “peak” album in Hex Enduction Hour, when in fact The Fall are basically a Reimann surface used as an ashtray. But Hex is here. It is a banger. Entirely slap. Possibly the point at which Smith stopped showing musicians courtesy, meaning that there’s no more piss-takey sub-pub C’n’C — Black Night. Or solos. Or (shudder) drum fills.

The liner notes are good. If you’re a credulous bellend there’s that Marc Riley story recounted. But some actually useful context as well. Such as Smith wearing his contrarian-in-chief hat, booking a tour in the antipodes.

Constructing the beatified Smith (we had a run at it while he was still about): first as unctuous tragedy, next as topiary grief. There’s more than a lick of CAMRA farts about this kind of collection. The case is made that they were a live band who, astonishingly, were also an album band. Small blessings that Smith was neither precious nor specious.

I’m looking forward to the academic conferences, to be honest. Nothing says fatuous like balding bepaunched white men, except fatuously balding white bepaunched men in earnest. It’ll be hilares. But seriously, there’s a real danger with these re-issues that The Fall invert from insurgent urgencies into limp talking points. Dick’s picksed as invidious grey. I mean, I don’t want the Fall to be just another boxset revival industry. Obviously this is a madness. Probably still in shock.

Between now and the hellish collapse of civilisation into a gigantic steaming crater of broiled hatestew, there’ll probably be a re-issue every other month. I should probably review one of them based entirely on the lyrics. 1982 was good for lyrics. But most years were. This is where we first learn of the lights system, viz, “The mad kid had four lights, the average is 2.5 lights / The mediocre has two lights, the sign of genius is three lights”, which honestly just makes me giddy every time like I’m twelve but not twelve, because twelve is a stupid age.

So something I think about w/regards to lyrics and that is that opacity is easily done but an incisive opacity — as in to cut from above — less so. Smith’s veiled delivery and ornate archive of bedraggled references lends that opacity malice. Whereas Stephen Malkmus just sounds like a cunt. (I will say though, there’s a few Fall-ite bands that aren’t also Fall-lite: Prolapse, Country Teasers, probably, etc). It’s quite the feat, innit. 1982 was a year when, well, Smith hadn’t quite relaxed into humour, self-deprecation. Still had the bit between his teeth, I’d say. I’d argue he’s at his best when he’s at his most perverse, but also there’s a reason Hex is the one that everyone pishes on about. And fair play to them. Fair be it from me to be anything besides a guileless shit.

A while ago I did a review of a John Coltrane boxset. It was a good record. But it also featured five fairly similar versions of “My Favourite Things”. Dear reader, this drove me to distraction. Anyway, I only mention it because this is a boxset of the Fall at their most pointy and rackety and mostly in live quality recordings. Not bad. But certainly more trying than, say, the Peel Sessions boxset. It’s a lot of guitar, this being before keyboards got more prominent, before pop songs and sartorial wisdom, before may I say the skewed music-al ambition.

Many paths lead to madness. You know this, you’re not an idiot. I’ve always avoided dub due to not wanting to get obsessed with something so voluptuous. I drew a similar line with Fall live albums. So a good three and a half of the CDs here are live or live-ish. Just to warn you. They’re not bad recordings. But they are live. Christ, can you imagine being a Fall completist? Terrible business. Anyway, in conclusion, this is a good boxset and I like it because it is good. You may also like it too because it is good and I like it it is very nice the songs are good and I like it.

Perhaps the real Fall is the bollocks I spouted along the way. KTHXBAI

-Kev Nickells-