Vanity and Presumption

23 March: 14th John Peel Session - The War Against Intelligence, Idiot Joy Showland, A Lot of Wind, The Mixer 15 April: Album - Shift-Work After the departures of Marcia Schofield and Martin Bramah last summer on the Australian tour the group were back to a five-piece for this year's John Peel session. The four tracks all appeared on the following month's Shift-Work album so after a winter of writing writing and recording were fairly well formed for the Peel Show appearance. The extended A Lot of Wind showcases Steve Hanley's bass more than the album version but otherwise there's not too much difference. Shift-Work seems to get short shrift from the Fall fans community. The title track, Edinburgh Man,  and Rose are all at the tender end of the MES scale and those kind of songs seem to fare poorly when a 'Fall Cup' rolls round on the forum. I was keen to listen to the album again thinking it had been a bit hard done by but there's not a lot of stand-o...

1 January: 13th John Peel session - Hilary, Black Monk Theme, Chicago Now, Whizz Bang 15 January: Single - Telephone Thing 19 February: Album - Extricate 12 March: Single - Popcorn Double Feature 13 August: Single - White Lightning/The Dredger EP December: Single - High Tension Line "Do you work hard?" A new decade brought a new John Peel session on day one. There was an old name with the group though. Martin Brahma, founder of The Fall, was back for another stint on guitar. The session is a notable one as not all the tracks were broadcast at the time. Whizz Bang (later known as Butterflies 4 Brains) was left out for reasons not entirely clear. (A YouTube comment has MES asking for its omission as he wasn't happy with it. Not a lot to go on I grant you.) A couple of weeks later the first Fall single of the decade, Telephone Thing, was with us. Looking at the output over the previous couple of years it's hard to say that there's a typical Fall record...