I sent e-mails to Conway and Stefan but they haven't posted anything on the main site yet, so I thought I would write some stuff for the message board. Setlist -
Behind The Counter (band plays for a short period before Mark strolls out with "Good evening we are the Fall", very nice rendition)
Telephone Thing (very tight, nice groove, one of my favorites off of 'Extricate' and they did it well)
Contraflow (Flawless)
Protein Protection (Big reaction from the crowd for this one)
F-Oldin' Money (no Kick The Can) (suffered from being too tight, the album version sort of shambles along nice and loose, not so here and it wasn't for the better) Straight into-
Bourgeois Town
Mountain Energei (cool, kind of laid-back I guess one could say, least favorite of the new songs they did, still great)
Green-Eyed Locoman
Mr. Pharmacist (Y'know I don't love it on record but live it blew me away)
Theme From Sparta F.C. (Again, all the new songs were great, this one very much a new classic I think, the band really got into it)
I Am Damo Suzuki
Encore -
Mere Psued Mag. Ed.
Big New Prinz (as song ends, Mark throws his microphone into the bass drum and walks offstage).
Dr. Buck's Letter (Mark comes back out speaking into a disconnected telephone, pretty amusing. Steals the guitarists mic. Very rockin' version, pretty different from the version on 'The Unutterable')
I might have mixed up the order of the main set a little, I'm solid on the opening and closing numbers and the encores, though. All the new songs were fantastic (to be said in John Peel voice), and aside from a couple numbers an awesome gig all around. It was a little short, but that's not much of a complaint. I can't wait until they come back.

Great stuff Jouster.

Here's the sole Fallnet review to date:

Fun. Went with my lovely wife Karin. We caught up with EliotVB, his gf
Consuela, and their actress/model friend Yooshclanbabbla-susie. MES in great
spirits, even put his arm around Ben and rubbed his back a little at one point,
like a good friend (har har har).

Very enthusiastic vocals, lots of words. Band was the most clear and crisp,
even clean, sounding Fall I've ever heard. Not at all the noise of previous
lineups/decades - this may have to do with the fairly simple backline setup. I
like the look and feel of this group and hope he sticks with them for awhile.
Overall I'd say it exceeded my expectations.

Set from what I can remember:

BTC - a little slow-paced. Band should check out the live versions c. `95,
`96
Telephone Thing - cool. Came together well, with the band making it their
own while still keeping its feel.
Contraflow
Green Eyed - this one will be forgotten in a year
Foldin Money
Booszchwa town - excellent
new - Mountain Energei?
new
Pharmacist
Sparta FC - a keeper
Damo - always good, particularly so tonight

encore:
Mere pseud - amazingly good rendition. Better than when they brought it back
in the mid 90's (see In the City)
Big New Prinz
Dr. Bucks - excellent

Nice to see MES make a very big effort. Glad to not hear And Therein.

Mark H.

Hurry up Adam, Quinny, Skip - can't wait to read what you made of it all (some of us are following this tour most vicariously...)

O! and is Smithy doing the shows straight, fuelled only by mineral water? Who's this Dingo fella?

this gig sounds like it would make a very very good bootleg tape :)

hopefully in circulation b4 cotc

After keeping us waiting a bit, the show kicked off w/ a tape of Pander, Panda, Panzer. The lights dimmed & happy Fall guitarist Ben skipped out looking dapper per usual; the drummer swiftly disappeared into his drumset never to reemerge; the bassist took up his ugly bass & positioned himself in a gawky 3rd basemans stretch, seeming oblivious to everything; Poulou stood mannequin-like behind her mini-casio ridiculously placed atop a barstool & looked stunning, somewhat mod, & very uncomfortable. As for MES, I wouldn’t fault his performance one bit. Excellent! Demeanor-wise, he seemed really stoned at times – at one point tripping pretty hard over his ring. He stalked around half-lidded, disdainful, seeming vigorous in general. The bassist was his principal target throughout the evening. Along w/ the customary twiddling w/ the amp, MES turned it off altogether once & tried to turn it off several times but was unable to figure out how. Other antics included grabbing at his bass strings, putting his mic into the bass strings, & the most difficult maneuver: walking backwards, w/ hand behind back, into the bassplayers strings. He gets extra points for that one.

Vocally, MES was fully animated & articulate the great majority of the show, while the band kept a swift galloping pace behind him. I was really impressed w/ the consistency of the rhythm section. Ben reigned himself in nicely & had a good concentrated sound. Poulou was rarely heard.

you know the setlist. I’d say that everything was top form w/ the exception of F-oldin’ Money. I think the problem w/ that number was that MES had just walked up to the poor bass players amp & fucktup all the settings, so there was a weird clipping that was throwing people off… If I had to have a criticism, its that the band could become too paint-by-numbers at times. But that’s probably better than the alternative.

It gets my 4 outta 5.

4 outta 5 will do for me......i never noticed b4....but u do tend to notice the negative....probably black comedy terrorist in real life.....thx donovan for bumping anecdotes anyway....cos this is a different angle otherwise unreported.....n almost puts us there.....almost :( ....hey come back to mcr ....u r supposed to be a mcr group.........i am starting to see the stuff like u dont miss a good thing til its gone

QUOTE (fallfandave @ Jun 23 2003, 01:01 PM)

u do tend to notice the negative

guilty as charged, FFD. Problem w/ me is I’m way too critical & negative… o the ironies are piling up now…

really, I was giggling like a schoolgirl the entire show. It was great. I say 4 outta 5 meaning that I could conceive of it being better, theoretically speaking. But if you compared the show to other shows by other bands, it’s definitely 5 outta 5. Just to clarify.

5 outta 5 was how jousta was sayin it.....this is a good gig...i'm goin with this vibe.....somebody plzzzz do a good recordin

From : Eliot Van Buskirk on Fallnet


Gig review with surreal violence duly noted. I wrote this for a local music list, so some parts might be below this crowd in terms of familiarity with the fall. Great show, overall.

---

Saturday night's Fall show was a night i won't soon forget, for a number of reasons. first, mark was on form, even when crouching down in the back corner reading from lyrics sheets. he started a number of songs early, letting the band join in--which they did with marksmen-like precision (so to speak). later, two random incidents of surreal violence would wrench the night in weirder directions. here's how it went down from here i was standing:

Zmrzlina (opening band)
My first time, and i thought they were fine - reminded me of Can here and there. I think my favorite was the one with the electronic beats, that built for a while. I was slightly distracted by the all-important process of assuring a sufficient degree of intoxication before the Fall got started, because i knew i wouldn't be making it back to the bar again.

-Waiting Period-
They made us wait for quite awhile between bands, enabling me
to get a leg up on the competition with a couple well-timed jack
and cokes to the jaw.

Intro
before the band took the stage, they played a recording of mark and
presumably the missus, who rocked a tiny casio later on in the
show. it's nice to have a woman back in the Fall again, they
always seem cooler that way. mark made quite a show of the big
black ring on his finger, fidgeting with and generally calling
attention to it. sorta stunning, so i understand his glee.

Behind the Counter
a bit lackluster actually, due to the tempo being just a bit slow
for my taste. but i was so excited to see the band that maybe it
just seemed slow relative to my state.

Telephone Thing
Excellent - a real crowd-pleaser, and funky as it's possible for
the Fall to be (see Dr. Buck's Letter as well). excellent work on
guitar - tight as all get-out.

Contraflow
one of the new ones i heard on the band's recent three hundred and
forty second peel session. it sounded just like the peel session,
which is a good thing.

Green Eyed Loco Man
is it about weed? nobody knows, or remembers anyway. the rising
guitar chord progression during the chorus really does it for me -
even better live.

Foldin Money
A suddenly relaxed mood - even the people in the crowd who were
more acquainted with other eras of the band's back catalog could
get into it, because it sounds instantly familiar. reminded me of
seeing rockabilly as done by aliens.

Bourgoise Town
this was awesome, and mark seemed to snarl a little bit more,
despite the lack of marina-dwellers in the crowd. still, a point
well taken from a Salfordian.

Two new songs
I'd never heard either of these before - a fellow Fall fan identified one as, perhaps, Mountain Energei. Mark was reading the lyrics, but the
experiment paid off.

Mr. Pharmacist
This one had the crowd in a frenzy, and almost immediately, this
guy came charging up moshing everyone around. My girlfriend's head hit the head of the girl in front of her, who turned around and realized that it was the guy behind her who'd caused the problem. she has a few hard words with him, and starts pushing him away as he grabs her the throat and face. this all happened very quickly, and it was hard to see. the next thing i noticed was that she appeared to be kicking the shit out of him. she walked away with her boyfriend, and security showed up. my girlfriend identified the now-sheepish offender, and they escorted him outside, hopefully to administer a thorough stomping.

insider, the moshing continued, and i was forced to deliver a sharp
elbow to this other guy's stomach to calm him down a little - luckily, no further hostility. It was strange, but still only a precursor of the violence to come.

Sparta FC
F*ckin ROCK. the shouty backup vocals added nice energy to this
one. this sounds like a band, i thought, as opposed to a frontman
and his hired guns. the Fall.

I am Damo Suzuki
this was good, but should have been so much better! What was the sound guy thinking, not miking the Tom louder - the snare/tom beat is the entire basis of the song! anyway... stopped it from being the corker it was trying to be.

-encores-

Mere Pseud Mag Ed.
An old, dissonant number that blew everyone away. Some people left at this point, having been overcome by The Fear. Fast, loud, and ugly to the point of pure beauty.

Big New Prinz
Perfect. But i couldn't resist the urge to shout out "APPRECIATED" after the "he, is, NOT..."

Dr. Bucks
Deeply funky, with a Tricky-like, claustrophobic sampler riff. Didn't see who triggered it. I'd been yelling out for this before the encores, since it's what they finished their ATP set with. EXCELLENT, as before.

Aftershow Scooter Accident
After the show, I went across the street to call a friend, but before I got to say Hello, I saw two people on a scooter get creamed sideways by a gypsy cab, on the corner of 11th and Folsom. They'd been going straight through a green light--he tried to take a left East onto Folsom, and must not have seen them coming, because he hit them dead-on with no attempt to avoid them. the guy in front flew somewhere ahead, maybe even onto the sidewalk, and the girl did a sorta ninja-like backflip/roll, and landed standing up after a few revolutions on the ground.

It took the cops about 10 minutes to show, and the ambulance about 20. the people who'd been hit seemed fine, although the guy was limping a bit. the idiot cab driver never got out of the cab to say anything to anyone. their lambretta remained crushed underneath the front of the cab - done for sure, but at least their legs weren't pinned under it.

B)

:o