| |
1979-80 Live (ITS NOW OR NEVER) Totale's Turns (It's Now or Never)
(1980) ***
"The difference between you and us is that we have
brains," Mark E. infamously baits the audience during the brief
band-intro before they rip into "Fiery Jack." The difference I notice
is that live the Fall are even more sloppily raw and cacophonous than
in the studio, which is to be expected but still saying something: even
by Fall standards, stretches of this sound like little more than the
musicians banging and crashing into each other while Mark E. rants on
top of the free-form noise. It's a mighty wind, to be sure, but
certainly shouldn't be a neophyte's intro the Fall: the album sounds as
cheap and shitty as it looks. Now this being the Fall those are not
necessarily slurs but recommendations. I said not necessarily; the
bloody rawness carries excitement but, yeah, as you might expect some
of this can be pretty rough going. I have no intention of reviewing
all of the 50,000 crappy and not-so-crappy live releases of the Fall,
legit and semi-legit and completely illegit, but I'll make an exception
for this because:
a) It's their first live album
b) For
years it was one of the few easily obtainable (that is, obtainable,
period) Fall records available in the U.S.
c) It's a pretty
good set, even though at that point they only had two albums out, and
the band rock out if not live at Leeds at least live at some northern
England industrial go-nowhere shithole
d) There are three new
studio tracks
The studio tracks come near the end. "Cary Grant's
Wedding," sounds like it could be live, though, it's so under-rehearsed
and noisily raw, and this time those aren't compliments. Much better is
'That Man," the first catchily melodic Fall pop song. It's an outtake
from Dragnet and I can see why it wasn't included, as its sprightly
jingle wouldn't have fit onto that dark LP's mood at all; anyway, it's
nice to shake hands with it here, and I don't think you can find it
anywhere else. You can even have fun changing the chorus to "Batman, he
loves you!" There's a extremely, extremely, extremely lo-fi home
recording of "New Puritan," that literally sounds like Mark E. was
recording it while cowering under a toilet. It's probably not a version
I'd like to listen to more than twice, as the more widely available
Peel session version is much, much superior, but Fall completists, go
for it. As for the remaining half hour of live rant, I think I already
described it, didn't I? What do you want, a tracklisting? Aside from
the hilarious intro quoted in the first sentence, Top 3 ad lib moments
from Mark E.:
1) "Are you doing what you did two years ago? Yeah?!
Well... don't make a career out of it."
2) "Will you fucking
get it together instead of showing off?" Mark yells mid-song during "No
Xmas for John Quays," at either the bass player or drummer (maybe
both)
3) Mid-way through "Rowche Rumble," he alters the chorus
to, "The promoter is a jerk! The promoter is a jerk!" | |
![[STOOPID RECORDS logo or cameo]](http://graphics.gemm.com/graphics_db/ST/stoopidrec.logo.gif){kind=logo}
