The Fall - on the face of it, inept, tuneless post-punk...so why does it sound so brilliant? i'm a big Fall fan. One of these acts I can listen to all day, never get bored of them

paging damosuzuki...white courtesy telephone...

Anxiety said:

Anx i got all dressed up for this thread and no-one turns up...I laid snacks on and everything...(sadly eyes table laden with nibbles)...

erm..wanna make bowie small talk till damosuzuki arrives...?

I'm intrigued by this band, thanks to a compilation sent to me by our resident Fall expert, damosuzuki.

I like the post-punk vibe that is sustained throughout and really dig the following:

"Repetition"
"Rebellious Jukebox"
"Vixen"
"Sparta FC"

The Fall are my ideal musical match: weird, ugly, repetitive and aggressive. They are exactly what I want music to sound like.

There are only a handful of artists who impacted me so much on the first listen that I can vividly recall where and when I first heard them. Dylan obviously (14 and spending a long weekend at my sister’s apartment, played ‘greatest hits’ on a lark – Like a Rolling Stone hit me as hard as a piece of music possibly can, right from the first note) and the Velvet Underground as well(a friend loaned me his cassette copy of the rather crap Rock n’ Roll Diary compilation – the compilers had the good sense to lead off with white light/white heat), but I’ve never immediately bonded, fell in love with a band the way I did with the fall.

It was ’88, my 2nd year of university when I picked up a copy of the Frenz Experiment on a whim, knowing very little about the band other than they were British post-punks with a tone-deaf singer who’d had a minor hit with a Kinks cover. The first track (Frenz) was the proverbial tonne of bricks – it was ugly for sure, but almost pretty as well, with bizarre, apparently meaningless words delivered by a man who certainly wasn’t a singer in any conventional sense of the word, ranting about how his ‘frenz don’t amount to one hand.’ It wasn’t just the most complete, compelling song I’d ever heard: I may sound like something of a twat when I say this, but it was maybe the most complete experience of my life. No bullshit.

No looking back after that, obviously. I have loved them for nearly twenty years at this point, and though I’d be the first to admit they’ve had the odd mediocrity pop up in their catalogue, times when it seemed like Smith couldn’t be bothered to try, I think an entirely rational case can be made that the Fall are the most consistently great rock band of all time.


And somebody named Jeffrey Lewis was nice enough to summarize the entire career of the Fall in a handy two minute clip – almost everything you need to know is here.
[Edited 5/22/07 18:37pm]