Yeah i think thats why i was put off by it initally, "Reformation" is really a poor mans "Blindness". But theres songs like Scenario which are fantastic. Couldve done with some trimming i think

Yes, he's a bit of drunken old fool and Fall gigs in recent years have been more miss than hit but I think the new line up has given him a lease of life. I saw the Fall in March and it was up there with some of the best I've seen over the 20 odd years I've been a fan of the mighty Fall.

MES is a fucking genius (and an ace wind up merchant!) and that's all there is to say.

so the Fall have more GREAT (your word) albums than Sonic Youth?

BAD MOON RISING
CONFUSION
EVOL
SISTER
DAYDREAM NATION

those are my choices for GREAT sonic youth albums, and I love them all.

what are the GREAT Fall albums? and by GREAT I mean influential, no filler, pinnacle of the band's output kind of thing.

There's no winning this argument -- if you haven't even heard The Fall!

"Influence" and how "great" an album is are two different things -- not to mention that, while I really enjoy the albums you listed, calling those albums (except Confusion and Sister) "fillerless" is a bit much.

I'm not going to debate this, I just wonder how you can come to the conclusion that my statement is ridiculous when you haven't even heard The Fall. I'm not trying to be a dick, but you really have no idea what you're talking about: I've heard 100% of what Sonic Youth has done and probably 85% of what The Fall has done. So, I know what I'm talking about... I think, all in all, the Fall is a better band. Not by much. But yeah.

For the record, here are my 10 favorite Fall records:

1. Nation's Saving Grace
2. The Peel Sessions
3. Hex Enduction Hour
4. Grotesque
5. Dragnet
6. Perverted By Language
7. Real New Fall
8. The Light User Syndrome
9. Room to Live
10. Live at the Witch Trials

Whoo, that took some thinking...

NOTE: EDITED TO REFLECT MY NEWFOUND LOVE OF DRAGNET!

Come on guys, is it really that important to determine whether Sonic Youth or The Fall is the most important? I mean, those are obviously two great bands that have made a lot of masterpieces, why try to compare themselves (Sonic Youth obviously wins =D)? Enjoy the music...

i tried to watch the video but i can't understand what he's saying. i've always read that mark e smith is a real jackass, so i never even bothered to listen to the fall. although i think it's funny that 2 days ago SY changed their myspace quote thingy to "we love the fall", lol. i wonder if they meant the band to piss him off, or the season, since it's fall/autumn now. or maybe it's a double entrendre? either way, it's funny.

ps-there's no way the fall is better than sonic youth... becuz their the greatest band to ever grace this earthly plane w/ their presence! i'm sure we all know that.

yes, pr-tlc is a very long record, i like the more kraut moments of it, i guess, and, to me at least, the so so to bad songs go by quite quickly and unnoticeable.

i myself think that the fact that the person behind the music is a jerk doesn't affect the his/her talents and skills, so i tend to separate the person from the music (and seriously, who can say they listen to music done 100% exclusively by nice people?). mark e smith is an asshole, and an entertaining one at that.

and for the record, not only are sonic youth fans of the fall, the are also greatly influenced by them, if not overtly, they are in many details.

i still say bollocks to the fall... i've never listened to em before and i won't be starting anytime soon.

good for you.

why do people flaunt their refusal to listen to a band so much? it's actually your loss because you might be missing out on your new favorite band.

(and just in case, i could give a fuck if anyone listens to the fall, i love them and probably know like 3 other people who know them in real life, doesn't change my appreciation for the music).

Anyway, funny thing is that you (avantgarde and Rob) try to compare two bands, when you've never heard anything by one. avantgarde: forget Mark E Smith and listen to The Fall. Really that's not that hard, and I'm sure you'll like it (Perverted By Language is their best in my opinion). Personnally, I find Mark E Smith really funny now...

for whats its worth here is my top 10 fall releases.....
1. the complete peel sessions box set- essential for a fan or a newcomer
2. perverted by language- it has garden and eat yerself fitter
3. hex enduction hour- hey there fuckface....
4. fall heads roll- 29th album and totally rockin, blindness greatest ever fall song
5. dragnet- ive been in the pub too long....
6. nations savings grace- a hit fest classic
7. live at the witch trials- we are the fall
8. the light user syndrome- underrated and forgotten
9. country on the click- english chelsea fans, this is your last game, we are not galatasary we are sparta f.c.......genius! elenas first album too.
10.grotesque- noisy and abrasive.... like mark himself....

if all else fails, get the compilation 50000 fall fans cant be wrong, its damn good!

saw them last summer and they were fantastic. noisy and so dead pan. marks fooling around with the drum kit when the drummer fluffed a roll was hilarious. totally totally life affirming show. i went to see them 3 tears ago in dublin and the fucker never showed up for the gig.....

"we love the fall". it says so on the sy myspace. :)

moshe youre getting slow like my grandpa.
i posted this aaaaaaaaaages ago ;)

actually from what i've read mark e smith IS the fall... everyone who's ever been in his band has either quit or gotten fired, and he's the only consistent person in the band. and i'm not comparing 2 bands... i'm simply saying one of them is very good and i've never heard the other. and i've never listened to them becuz the guys a dick, and i don't listen to bands that have dickheads as the iron fisted ruler.

oops. :)

no offence here at all sir but hats a lame excuse not to have listened to a bad. you must only listen to about 5 acts then? as for arguing the toss about the fall if you havent ever heard them?? thats like arguing politics when you dont go and vote... listen to them, you may be suprised...........


im sure you are not a closed minded person so what harm will it do, i cant understan your antiness for a band youve never heard. they arent coldplay or james fuckin blunt!

Oh shit, I've never heard Falls Head Rolls.

man, amazing album....... has blindness and what about us. 2 of the finest fall songs since garden and eat yerself fitter.....

yeah, slates and dragnet should be there too, then you'll have all the records from their best years, 78 to 82.

coutry on the click is rubbish
fall heads roll....rubbish
postbblabla tlc...more rubbish

i don't understand at all how peoplewho've heard albums like dragnet or hex enduction hour can enjoy their later output, the music on the last few fall albums is unimaginative and workmanlike. the early fall stuff is easily on the same level of goodness as SY or whoever you care to mention though.


and yes, it is ian svenonius conducting the interview

so do you know all the members of the bands that you listen to on a personal basis?

Well that certainly rules out listening to the Velvet Underground, Sex Pistols or P.I.L., Pussy Galore and John Spencer Blues Explosion, The Melvins, Echo & the Bunnymen, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Miles Davis, and quite a few other groups I can think of who I love despite the fact I probably wouldn't invite the front person into my home.

Meanwhile Eddie Vedder seems like a perfectly nice guy from everything I've heard including from friends who played music with him, but that can't possibly make me put up with his horrendous yarling.

why the fall are one of my all time favorite bands:

Three days
Three months
Three days
Three months
A treatise
A treatise
To explain these
First was cash 'n' carry house dance
In Lancashire they're A
In King Nat Ltd. empire
Kwik Save is there
The scene started here
Then was America



Then was America
We went there
Big A&M Herb was there**
His offices had fresh air
But his rota was mediocre
US purge, rock 'n' pop filth
Their material's filched
And the secret of their lives
Is...



All the English groups
Act like peasants with free milk
On a route
On a route to the loot
To candy mountain
Five wacky English proletariat idiots
Californians always think of sex
Or think of death
Five hundred girl deaths
A Mexico revenge, it's stolen land
They really get it off on
"Don't hurt me please"
Rapist fill the TVs
And the secret of their lives
Is S.E.X..



I have dreams, I can see
Carloads of negro Nazis
Like Faust with beards
Hydrochloric shaved weirds



[Applause from audience at Cyprus Tavern ]



This was going to be called crap rap fourteen,
but it's now Stop Mithering.
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,
from valium cig withdrawal.
She wants communal, fluent flat household.
I want privacy.
The bastard dentist doctors surgery,
Clip, clop, ring, knock, ring
Stop mithering***



The estates stick up like stacks
The estates stick up like stacks
The residents keep wild dogs
And on that father's bedroom closet top,
electric blanket boxes
Surplus jonnies, demob pictures
To their children they sing
Stop mithering



You think you've got it bad with thin ties,
miserable songs synthesized, or circles with A in the middle.
Make joke records, hang out with Gary Bushell,
Join round table. "I like your single yer great!"
A circle of low IQ's.
There are three rules of audience.
My journalist acquaintances, go soft, go places,
on record company expenses.
I lose humor, manners become bog writers, don't know it.
The smart hedonists, same as last verse, allusions with
H in electronics, on stage false histrionics,
Corpse mauling dicks, pose through a good film, him, him
Stop mithering



I'm not joining conventional rock band.
The conventional is experimental, the conventional is now
experimental,
And is no way noble, and I'm no chock stock thing.
So stop mithering.
Engineers save up for cars.
I try to let down their tyres with matches to make them molten.
Ouch! Ouch!
They say I rip off Johnny Rotten
They always strike for more pay.
They say "See yer mate..Yeh...see yer mate"
To their mothers they sing
Stop mithering



He even did fail the penile tissue test.
He hangs out for sex.
He enters magazine contest.
White tan horror in the mirror.
Spotty exterior hides a spotty interior.
He's not your enemy.
He's not your enemy, his name is not Harry.
The secret of Cash and Carry.

so wuold anyone be so kind and tell me what he said exaclty? i couldnt be bothered to watch that vid, and now its not up anymore

Yeah can someone just type what he said? I spent half an hour on that site before I realised that it had been taken down.

As for The Fall, I'm a fan (obviously, hence the name) and I don't think you can go wrong if you buy all of their (his) albums from Grotesque to The Nation's Saving Grace. Don't be intimidated by how large their discography is! And get the re-releases too, as they include some brilliant singles which were left off the original albums.

what an old coot!

I just watched the whole thing like 3 times and he does NOT slag off sonic youth, he just says, in reference to the large festivals, that "even sonic youth look good now!"

what's the big deal?

how fuckin pissed is he?
someone pls translate what he said about sy.. im not sure i got it correctly

fuck that... this is a classic mark moment. its long but worth it!
WATCH IT AND LEARN HOW TO COMMUNICATE TO THE MASSES....

dont care. i like the fall and brix was a hot bitch in her day but mark e smith is a crotchety bastard
hey look kevin shields

look at the man. christ, he must be 70 or 80 by now!
he is one damn ugly man



stay hot brix

I thought about putting Iggy on my list too, but actually, every interview I've ever read or seen with him, he seems incredibly nice. Sure he was violent, but mostly just to himself. Even on the Tomorrow show he comes off seeming intelligent and polite right after rocking "Dog Food" on network t.v. (sure it was the middle of the night, but it was also the '70s!) He was a junkie for some time, so he must have fucked somebody over, but I can't actually think of a single story I've read of it. This despite hanging out with Reed and Bowie both, who are two of the evilest sons of bitches ever to walk the earth if a tenth of their biographies can be believed.

Yeah, I guess he was known for not treating the Ashetons that well, but then they sure forgave him. Williamson is rather notorious for being a huge prick on his own, and getting what he deserved.

I'm probably just biased by Iggy's charm. In Coffee and Cigarettes it's totally hilarious watching him suck up to Tom Waits and Waits treating him like a dick!

On a lighter note, I didn't know until recently that The Fall named 'High-Tension Line' on Shift Work after La Monte Young's 'The Second Dream Of The High-Tension Line - Stepdown Transformer'. The chorus of the song in question goes 'High-Tension Line - Stepdown'. How cool is that?

for the record.. mark e smith is 51 years old!

born 3rd of march in 1957!

yeah, and thurston claims he was comparing his first encounter with the swell maps to the fall's music, this on the liner notes to that swell maps compilation mute put out in the early 90s. that'd mean the fall were a benchmark for thurston in the late 1970s!

the fall were a great band and their best records stand up to anything and everything happening today. in my opinion, you're nowhere without owning "this nation's saving grace"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBUiPs1PxKo

this really is the best thing in the history of everything ever