Vanity and Presumption

15 February: 15th John Peel Session - Free Range, Return, Kimble, Immortality 2 March: Single - Free Range 9 March: Album - Code:Selfish 22 June: Single - Ed's Babe "I've been pursuing the fuel too long" For the third straight year the first we heard of new recorded Fall sound came in a Peel session. Dave Bush was now a full-time member after providing some of the 'machines' on Shift-Work and the Peel session showed off that keyboard sound on Immortality, Return and Free Range. But the stand-out is possibly the reggae cover version Kimble which is either awful or genius depending on where you stand. I'm with genius! (Around this time Wimbledon FC had a player called Alan Kimble . When they featured on Sky Sports I would take great pleasure in shouting 'Kimble' in my best MES voice whenever he touched the ball.) Free Range was the first single of the year. It integrates machines into the Fall's work rather more successfully than T...

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...

5 June: Single - Cab It Up 19 June: Album - Seminal Live "Today they picked the wrong man" A quieter year but one that caused me issues selection-wise. A year where Brix and MES split and the relationship with Beggar's Banquet came to an end.  That may have something to do with the reduced output and, dare I say, the reduced quality When I've sat down to write these, sometimes I've known exactly which song I'm going to choose as I know the output inside out. Other times I've looked forward to re-discovering some of the group's work that I've neglected for one reason or another. And then there are years where I can't imagine I would have listened to a particular record again. I'm looking at you Seminal Live! Let's start with the single though. I've got the 12 inch which foreshadows the album in that one side has studio recordings, the other live. I'm a big fan of Cab It Up but prefer the full version on last year...

11 January: Single - Victoria 29 February: Album - The Frenz Experiment 24 October: Album - I am Kurious Oranj 31 October: 12th John Peel Session - Kurious Oranj, Dead Beat Descendant, Cab It Up, Squid Lord 7 November: Single -  Jerusalem/Big New Prinz "I had been one day possessed" 1988 started with another cover version single. After the (relative) success of There's a Ghost in My House last year the group played it straight again with another sixties tune, Victoria by The Kinks . According to MES, where the Kinks original was "nostalgic" the Fall's was "reflective of Britain now". It reached number 35 in the charts. The end of February saw the tenth studio album land. The Frenz Experiment was the first Fall album to make the top 20 in that chart. It's another one I hadn't heard for years before I got a new record player. For an album that in some places is described as their most commercial effort and in others as 'o...

27 April: Single - There's a Ghost in My House 11 May: 11th John Peel Session - Australians in Europe, Twister, Guest Informant, Athlete Cured 19 October: Single - Hit The North "I can't get over ye" The first year without an album release since 1978. It's ok, there are two next year! You'd think not having many tracks to choose from would make my life easier but not so. I can't imagine there was any pressure on the group to have a hit but there was another cover version chosen as the first single of the year. There's a Ghost in My House by R.Dean Taylor hadn't troubled the charts when released in 1967 but became a Northern soul favourite and reached number three in 1974. The Fall's take on it (which doesn't mess around with it too much - Smith wanted "to retain the spirit of it") was their biggest hit, peaking at number 30. The group recorded another of Taylor's songs, Gotta See Jane , for 2001's Are you Ar...

7 July: Single - Living Too Late 9 July: 10th John Peel Session - Hot Aftershave Bop, R.O.D., Gross Chapel/British Grenadiers, US 80's/90s 1 September: Single - Mr. Pharmacist 29 September: Album - Bend Sinister 8 December: Single - Hey! Luciani "I'll put you down" An American tour plus writing and recording new material meant there was no new Fall output until the second half of the year. It started with the brilliant, thoughtful single Living Too Late. A reflection on people entering middle-age, the Reformation page on the song has a great analysis. The John Peel session first aired in the same week gave us a different take on Hot Aftershave Bop, b-side of the Living Too Late single, plus three tracks that would show up on autumn's album Bend Sinister. (Another thing for me to remember is that I was at The Festival of the Tenth Summer at G-Mex in Manchester to see the Fall alongside the likes of New Order, OMD, The Smiths and John Cooper-Clar...