I like The Fall. They're a good to great band and I like hearing their stuff once in a while, though I'm by no means as sold on them as many people I know, and those out there generally.
I think I have three Fall albums; Live At The Witch Trials, Dragnet and Palace of Swords Reversed a compilation of admirable early singles. It's probably my favourite of the three. I say, 'I think' because I can't seem to find Dragnet now. It's certainly nowhere in the F's and I couldn't track it down in any of the other rows of albums in my living room.
I'm sure I bought it a few years ago. I've only just noticed its absence and it's not feeling like a huge loss right now. I'd like to know where it is but really I'd rather find my vinyl copy of Revolver, which I put in another sleeve a while back and the absence of which has genuinely bothered me ever since.
1979's Dragnet anyhow, is as good a place to start with as far as The Fall are concerned as anywhere. It's generally considered one of their finest and landmark albums and this is a band where you've got plenty of choice as far as that's concerned. 31 albums by general consensus, over more than 35 years, before the death of Mark E. Smith their singer and leader in 2018 brought them to a definitive close.
Smith is the reason I'm not entirely crazy about The Fall. He was their only constant member and pretty much entirely defines them, I imagine in most people's minds,apart from fanatical devotees who could probably list their drummers in chronological order should you ask them. But Smith was quite clealy pretty much in complete control of the band's destinty as early as 1982 after the defection and departure of other key early members, Martin Bramah, Marc Riley, Una Baines and Tony Friel, When Mark married Brix in the mid-Eighties there was another brief power struggle and an unlikely Pop phase which actually took them momentarily into the singles chart, but generally things were pretty much set in Mark E. Smith stone once this lot had left or been eased out.
From that point on The Fall effectively became Smith's own autocratic state. He became their poster boy, the big brother who must always be obeyed. Their Enver Hoxha, their Josip Broz Tito, their Joseph Stalin or Erich Honeker. How you felt about The Fall became utterly dependent on how you felt about Mark E. Smith.
It's an apt comparison. In many ways if The Fall had been an autocratic state they would definitely have been an Iron Curtain, Eastern European state. There's something about the persona that they project that is a compellingly monochromatic, Iron Bloc one. Dull, drained and prone to the bleakest, darkest black humour in order to just get keep getting up in the morning and get by. I should know. I lived in several Eastern European countries over many years from 1990 to 2008 and The Fall might as well hve provided the official soundtrack.
Dragnet is a really, really fine album. All of the tropes that Smith would mine ceaselessly over the next three decades were all already in place. But the definite contribution that Bramah and Riley in particular made to the band's early records give it a more interesting set of twists and turns than their later albums for me.
There's more tension here for my ears then the records after 1982, after the important early purges had taken place and King Mark ascended to the throne he occupied for the test of The Fall's career. More of a struggle going on in the body politic, rather than reading from a script that has already been written before the recording button was pressed.
That's just my own personal take on things. Plenty would disagree. Anyway, this particular record is all a great deal of fun. Smith is a lot more likeable than he became later on when alcohol grabbed control of him. There's plenty of wonky Glam, out of focus Existentialism, out of tune Rockabilly, and daft call and response that you can try to interpret if you really wish to, there are plenty of books and internet sites at hand for you if that's your thing. Or you could just enjoy its bonkers charm.That's what I've just done for the last hour while playing this. Will give it another listen later on in the day.
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