Vanity and Presumption

28 June: Single - Theme from Sparta FC #2 ?? July: Single - 2 Librans 4 August: 24th (and final) John Peel Session - Clasp Hands, Blindness, What About Us?, Right Place, Wrong Time/I Can Hear The Grass Grow (plus Job Search which was recorded but not played on the show until a couple of weeks later - after it had been pressed on a one-off single for Peel's 65th birthday.) ?? September: Single - Blind Man 1 November: Live and rehearsals album - Interim "Have mercy on me" Some revolving door group action this year as Dave Milner left to be replaced behind the drum-kit by Spencer Birtwistle (who'd left at the end of 2001),  and Jim Watts, who'd left/been fired in the spring of 2003 was back on bass later in the year. If you think you know Sparta FC inside out by now, think again. The single is a super-aggressive version with plenty of Elena backing vocals. Marvellous. It's backed with a very acceptable live version of My Ex-Classmates Kids . As for...

13 March: 23rd John Peel Session - Sparta FC, Contraflow, Groovin' with Mr Bloe/Green-Eyed Locoman, Mere Pseud Mag Ed 27 October: Album - The Real New Fall LP Formerly 'Country On The Click' 8 December: Single/EP - (We Wish You) A Protein Christmas "Dear dope, if you wanna catch us - you need a rod and a line" I don't know why the group went more than four years without a Peel session so let's just be glad that they picked up the thread they left in 1998. And what a return! Best session since the late eighties/early nineties? There's a bit more urgency about this version of  Theme from Sparta FC  which really suits it. "Fantastic", said Peel. He's not wrong. Contraflow is up next. Ben Pritchard's 'choppy' guitar is a massive hit with me, but the backing vocals don't quite work as well as the album version. Green-Eyed Loco Man  is more guitar than synth-driven (nothing wrong with that) and is preceded by about ...

10 June - Live album: 2G+2 2 December - Single: The Fall vs 2003 What if all the world carroted and mashed into your eyelids? While I tended to avoid live albums 2G+2 makes the cut in that it does contain some 'studio' tracks and I did buy it. Not at the time though, I was obviously labouring under the misapprehension that this was 'just' a live work and picked it up a couple of years late. The live tracks came from the November 2001 tour of America.  I do find it interesting that the group are in a rare phase where there's no unrecorded material being performed. It's no surprise that most of the tracks are from the last couple of years (My Ex Classmates Kids, Kick the Can, F-Oldin' Money, Ibis Afro-man) while we also get The Joke, (Mr) Pharmacist and I am Damo Suzuki . The three studio recordings were last year's I Wake Up in the City plus New Formation Sermon and Distilled Mug Art. There's also some MES spoken word in the shape of E...

? August - Single: Rude (All The Time) 5 November - Album: Are You Are Missing Winner It is cruel and blind and does not compensate After last year's (I realise now) excellent The Unutterable was there an inevitability about a big Fall personnel change? Adam Helal, Neville Wilding, Tom Head and Julia Nagle all departed to be replaced by Ben Pritchard, Jim Watts and Spencer Birtwistle. A significant addition was Ed Blaney who, as well as co-writer, would be Fall broker, manager, and producer as well as friend and collaborator with MES. Rude (All The Time) was a limited edition issue single so wasn't one that I was familiar with. (I'd stopped buying singles back in the mid-90s but even if I hadn't I'm not sure I'd have been switched on enough to get hold of this mail order special.) Smith, Blaney and an acoustic guitar turn out an interesting little tune that would have benefited from a full group and studio treatment I'm sure. B-side I Wake Up in...

6 Nov 2000 - Album: The Unutterable "I loved you now and now you're gone" A confession - I really didn't like The Unutterable when it came out. I still didn't like it when I gave it a listen before one of The Fall Cups over on The Fall Forum some years ago. Hearing odd tracks after Mark E Smith's death made me think I might have got this album slightly wrong but I haven't heard it in its entirety in about eight years. Here goes... ... What was I thinking? This is tremendous! (I might write about why my taste may have changed in a future post but for now let's crack on with this so I can listen to it on repeat.) MES sounds in great form from the off and the production ( Grant Showbiz back in the chair for a studio album for the first time since Shift-Work ) is much cleaner than recent efforts. In fact, is The Unutterable the most different and most the same album in the Fall catalogue? As well as travelling some well worn Fall paths is ...

22 March: Single - Touch Sensitive 19 April: Album - The Marshall Suite 16 August: Single - F-'Oldin' Money "Where chewing gun is chewed, the chewer is pursued" I find myself at odds with The Fall cognoscenti at times about the group's more lightweight 'poppier' songs. I tend to like them because well, rather The Fall do this stuff properly than anyone else right? So I love Touch Sensitive. OK - it's a long way from a great Smith lyric or delivery but it just works. Having said that, I don't think we needed the  seven minute dance version . If you're here you probably know that it was used in a Vauxhall Corsa ad and sparked a court case so I'll leave that there and give you a link to the court judgement if you want a dull read for half an hour. The Marshall Suite continued the run of nineties 'good in parts' albums. It started with the two singles (Touch Sensitive and F-'Oldin' Money) released in 1999 and the ...

9 February: EP - Masquerade 3 March: 21st John Peel Session - Calendar, Touch Sensitive, Masquerade, Jungle Rock 18 October: 22nd John Peel Session - Bound Soul One, Antidotes, Perfect Day, Shake Off "It was a very good month last week" More than four months after it appeared on Levitate, Masquerade was released as a single. Depending on whether you picked up CD1, CD2 or the 10 inch single (or all three) you had three versions of the lead track plus various extra songs. I've been warming to Masquerade since listening to Levitate and it's head and shoulders over most of the tracks that accompanied it. Calendar, co-written with Badly Drawn Boy , has its merits but Ivanhoe's Two Pence and Scareball don't do it for me while the live versions of Ol' Gang (MES sounds like he's in a different room to the group) and Spencer Must Die are for the completists. The first John Peel session of the year was recorded in February and saw the light of day i...