The Fall

The Fall played London’s 100 Club at about the 40th anniversary of what we call “punk.”...
The Fall : Live

The Fall : Live

The Fall played London’s 100 Club on Thursday, July 27th, at about the 40th anniversary of what we call “punk.”

So it’s the 40th anniversary of a musical movement/genre whose moniker had been created ten years previously by journalist Dave Marsh, whilst describing a style of guitar music being produced at the time by bands such as The Seeds and The Sonics. The version that occurred in the 1970s is the one under discussion, but trying to fix in time when the spark occurred is akin to fixing the time of a cosmological burst whereupon as soon as the event has occurred it is already a part of the history it catalysed.

The movement was described as a being a “year zero” cleansing of the pomposity that was prevalent in rock music at the time, thus creating a new dynasty, but in effect it achieved little or nothing in this objective, as most of the targets they blasphemously attacked are still around in some guise even today. Take for example the Clash’s first single, whose b-side “1977” denounced Elvis, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, a dismissal that actually meant that The Clash would be absorbed into the lineage rather than rebelling against it. Their appearance with The Who at Shea Stadium in New York, the Elvis pastiche that was the London Calling album cover and the total plagiarism of The Who’s “Can’t Explain” in their “Clash City Rockers “ single all point to a worship of the past, rather than its rejection. The line “Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust” in their most famous single, “London Calling”, came after they themselves had appeared at Shea Stadium, the venue of The Beatles most famous concert, which showed them to be sloganeerists with little cognition or intellect.

The spark itself that set punk alight was a huge catalyst, but as soon as the initial demarcation had occurred then it became irrelevant and irreverent to the true mavericks such as the then lead singer of the Buzzcocks Howard Devoto, and John Lydon (Rotten). Devoto sang on the Buzzcocks first record, the Spiral Scratch EP (QRO deluxe edition review), but soon realised the constraints of the genre were the antithesis of its original manifesto and so moved on to form Magazine. John Lydon’s battle cry of “No future” soon echoed back as “No boundaries,” and his revolt against his artistic straightjacket in the Sex Pistols was immortally disseminated at the Winterlands in San Francisco on January 14th, 1978, when the cry of, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” was more introspection than audience baiting. These two dissenters soon cast of their allegiance to the punk mantra, and formed bands that were far more interesting and abstract than their punk roots would allow, Devoto formed the early Roxy Music influenced Magazine, whilst Lydon, along with Jah Wobble and Keith Levine, fused dub and krautrock to great effect in Public Image Ltd with their second album Metal Box still sounding visionary today.

“I still believe in the rock and roll dream,” sang Mark Edward Smith of The Fall on the title track to the first album, Live at the Witch Trials, and he is still using the same grist to run the Northern Mill in which The Fall have existed alone in their own vacuous environment 40 years later. Whereas his contemporaries from that era fell in to the trap of imitating their predecessors, with The Jam aspiring to be the Kinks or The Small Faces, whilst The Sex Pistols where little more than a pale imitation of The Stooges, Smith had his own heroes, notably Link Wray & early Elvis Presley, and later Iggy Pop & Lou Reed, two artists whose early work he admired but he felt they lost any of their originality and credibility when out of desperation they fell under the tutelage of David Bowie, a fact he repeated throughout The Fall’s career with repeated jibes at Mr Jones. Smith’s rants full of rancour and bile have filled over 30 studio album and their first appearance at the iconic venue that is London’s 100 Club was in part to promote the soon to be released New Facts Emerge album.

The Fall’s manifesto of not pandering to any audience expectation and not existing as “look back bores” meant the set was almost entirely taken from the forthcoming record, with the usual closing cover version of “Mr Pharmacist” from The Other Half, first released in 1966. Smith was his usual uncompromising self, and after the first two songs he decided the rest of the set would be sung from the dressing room using his radio microphone to transmit his growls and yelps whilst the band carried on as if nothing out of the ordinary was occurring. Many of the crowd commented on Smith looking even more dishevelled and unhealthier than he usually does, but as long as he still has his belief in his four decade old dream then you certainly wouldn’t bet on there not being another decade of The Fall’s unique brand of rock and roll.

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