How many times have you seen The Fall in concert?
Which was best – why?
Which was worst – why?

Have they played as many as 500 gigs? Suppose they must have. I was going to do a survey of all the places and countries they've played, but someone must be madder than me to attempt this task...

A night in Bristol bus station avoiding the pissheads and shivering from cold...the aftermath of Fall gigs...pissing meyself at the Damned 10th do in finsbury Park...great stuff

So your best/worst?

all the same really,,,,,the bad is good n the good is bad

I've seen the Fall maybe 15-20 times.
Places I've travelled to see them:

Edinburgh (3 times)
Glasgow (1)
Holland (2)
London (5 or 6 times)

I live in Dublin and have seen them 4 times here (I think) as well as MES spoken word & Michael Clarke ballet

I used to see them every time they played in London 1990-1995/96 when I lived there.

worst gig was in Dublin redbox. MES had just sacked
band a day or two before (Nev, Adam etc.) and there were v. under rehearsed -
terrible!) :angry: I suppose The Forum in '99, the sound was bad & mes was being pelted by plastic glasses. :( Best gig. In general I love all Fall gigs. I am blinded by my passion for The Fall. The only thing I will say is that nowdays there are just too damn short! :(

Ditto this for me, ableit at Cheltenham Bus Station circa 1986. Missed the last bus home and had to sleep on a bench and hope I wasn't murdered. Which I WAS :D

Most of the times I went I went alone cos no other sad bastard would come with me, or rather, I didn't bother asking, cos I knew the answer... How do other people deal with the experience of lone gig-going? I'm not a super confident type of bloke who can just talk to anyone, so I used to lurk at the bar (outside or inside the arena) getting slowly pissed, reading a book and feeling just a little bored...

Who ticked 500+?
Can we have some more info please?

:P only kiddin!...i not seen em much...probably more than john peel though :)

Yep. I was appalled at Ben's playing - couldn't understand it because I though he was the guitarist on the album, Neville or whoever, yet I knew The Unutterable better than him... much later I learned he had only been in the band 2 days or something :ohdear: What a trouper! :applaud:

3 Dublin gigs for me. Would've seen them more in Dublin and Cork but for years I keep hearing that they had played the previous week...
Best gig was the one just before the New York Debacle... MES kept walking off, and did so at the start of M5... the band ent through the song and MES returns just as it was about to end, "And! You'll never see me trying to raise Cain..." magic!

Five gigs in all:

March 1986--Jockey Club, Newport, Kentucky
August 1993--Agora, Cleveland, Ohio
September 1994--Bogart's, Cincinnati, Ohio
July 2003--Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, Ohio
April 2004--The Southgate House, Newport, Kentucky

The Jockey Club gig is still the best--the TNSG band, pounding out the superlative
racket, making it look easy.

Worst--but still a good gig--Beachland Ballroom--a few too many lapses into the mundane.

I guess I've been lucky--I haven't seen a show with multiple walk offs, onstage fighting, etc. The Bogart's show was maddeningly short--less than an hour, even with encore--but a blazing gig nonetheless.

For someone who has been a fan of the fall since 1979, and who lives in the same country in which they are based, I’ve actually seen the group live very few times…probably about 12 or 13 gigs (I’ve clicked 10 in the voting panel, I’ve identified at least 10 gigs from the gigography at which I was present, but I know there have been at least a couple of others).

I think the best Fall gig I’ve ever attended was this one (details copied & pasted from Stefan’s gigography):

Thursday, November 20 1980 Cedar Ballroom, Birmingham

Slates, Slags, etc. / Container Drivers / Totally Wired / New Face in Hell / Printhead / An Older Lover / City Hobgoblins / Leave the Capitol / Pay Your Rates / The NWRA / English Scheme / Underground Medecin

‘Grotesque’ had only been released a week or so earlier but, in typical Fall style, the group were already basing much of the set on as yet unreleased ‘Slates’ material – I particularly remember the performance of ‘Leave the Capitol’ as being utterly breathtaking, absolutely furious in its delivery…

If a tape of this show really does exist I’d love to hear it…anyone out there got one?

The club, incidentally, was a dingy cellar, whoever decided to call it a ‘Ballroom’ was clearly someone with a rather overactive imagination!

Some months later I saw the Blue Orchids at the same venue…the audience were more or less outnumbered by the group and the feeble smattering of applause that greeted the end of each song by the tiny number of paying punters was positively embarrassing…I loved the Orchids and remember desperately wanting to shout, cheer and clap wildly at hearing my fave tunes but felt acutely self conscious at being what seemed like the only person standing on the deserted dance floor who was paying any attention at all to the group…

Other great Fall gigs I’ve seen include:

Tuesday, March 18 1980 Birmingham University

C'n'C-s Mithering / Fiery Jack / City Hobgoblins / Muzorewi's Daughter / Flat of Angles / Second Dark Age / Impression of J Temperance / English Scheme / Rowche Rumble / Frightened / Dice Man / Your Heart Out / How I Wrote Elastic Man / Chock Stock / No Xmas for John Quays

Supporting the Cramps

Remember being surprised (and delighted) that they played ‘Frightened’, although they played only a very short version of it, just the first verse I think.

I don’t remember anything at all about the Cramps I’m afraid, not sure I even stayed for the whole of their set…


Sunday, October 20 1985 Powerhouse, Birmingham

Copped It / Bombast / Couldn't Get Ahead / What You Need / Cruisers Creek / Man Whose Head Expanded / Petty Thief Lout / Dktr Faustus / I Am Damo Suzuki / Gut of the Quantifier / Kicker Conspiracy / Spoilt Victorian Child / 2 x 4

This was LOUD, I was deaf for days afterwards, Brix looked gorgeous…

May 17 1993 Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton

No set list for this on Stafan’s gigography but the following night’s gig at Portsmouth consisted:

Behind the Counter (instr.) / War / Why Are People Grudgeful / Ladybird Green Grass / Free Range / Idiot Joy Showland / Service / Glam-Racket / A Past Gone Mad / Lost in Music / Everything Hurtz / Strychnine / The League of Bald-headed Men / High Tension Line / Dead Beat Descendant

So I would imagine the Wolverhampton set-list was pretty similar, this was the Fall at their most hi-tech, they actually had a computer on stage with them! (And for followers of Gorillabat’s ‘Fall Guitar Gear’ thread, Craig Scanlon sported a very attractive all white Stratocaster…)

That, believe it or not, was the last time I actually saw the Fall live (I sort of stopped going out anywhere except the local pub for a period of some years..) until:

Dec. 9 2003 The Robin 2, Bilston

Set list & reviews on fairly recent news page, completely new band, MES looking about thirty years older than the last time I’d seen him in the flesh…but still great…a mighty version of ‘Big New Prinz’ to end the set

59 and counting......

I very very very much enjoyed : Warwick 86, Worcester 94, at least one Roadhouse.

You can keep : several London gigs.

All of them were german gigs.
The best one was actually Braunschweig 88. The room was packed and the band was very straight. Nice Brix on the guitar showing her pleasure in arriving to play the riffs. MES came onto the stage with a plastic bag fetching out a can of beer and his megaphone. Many british mates, maybe from the army, who melted up the crowd. All was well conducted.
Among my some six gigs the worst one seems to be Hannover, SOXS, september 10th, 1985. That night the group tried to play too much sophisticated and a bit uninspired. The location was an ultracool discotheque with a metallic ground and a bad, tiny sound. Was the band too cool, too? Probably they drunk too much of local Herrenhaeuser Pils.

A mighty, unsurpassable (err..) ONE GIG. Very proud at that stat indeed! I did have a reason for attending though, my pals were in the support band, "The mighty Being 747."

Somehow I seem to have got the drift of this thread all wrong.

Where/when?

Only one person in the whole world has been present at every Fall gig. He hasn't always been completely lucid at every one, though, nor has he seen every moment of every show.

Shame he didn't tape 'em all...

Thanks for this extremely comprehensive reply.
Very envious of you seeing those 1980 gigs...

:lol:

Think about 16 altogether, spookily seems to fit into each era of the Fall, first time Deeply Vale festival in 79' and after that Nelson working men's club in 80, the rest are scattered over the next 20 odd years :wacko:

Not seen 'em cotc yet though :cry:

You’re very welcome…

And unbelievable as sounds, there actually is a recording of the Cedar Ballroom gig from November 1980…a member of this board has emailed me and is sending a CD (I won’t say who, lest they be deluged with hundreds of emails demanding the same – but, to that person, many thanks again for your generosity)

It is hard to say how many times I have seen them, although I would guess that I have seen them at least 3 times a year for the past 16 years. The best dig was probably my first Fall gig at Bristol University in 1989 when I was still at school but my sister was a student so I went up to see her and the Fall, with Nirvana supporting.

However, as has been said before, even when they are bad, they are good, A choatic Fall gig at Dingwalls with tape machines, a drummer, MES, and a member of the audience on stage was better than any U2 gig could ever be.

Twice, on successive nights at the Old Greek in Melbourne, 1990. They were a bit upstaged both nights by Sydney band Tactics, who did the supports with real gusto. The Fall looked a bit clinical and detached by comparison. The mid-late 90s 'bad' shows would have been more involving, I think.

Twice,

1990 in Bochum, germany: To be honest: Nothing to write home about!

2002, march 8, in Düsseldorf, germany: Marvellous!! Great! As you already will know, during the gig the bass amp dropped out, but they continued. And I guess it wasn´t just me, who was left exalted and confused. What a great gig!

And cause my wife and all my mates..should I say...hate the fall I had to do it the "mpv-way" and had an experience of lone gig-going.

16 total:

March 25, 1979 - London Lyceum - "Gig of the Century" with SLF, G04, Mekons, Human League, ATV
May 26, 1979 - Cambridge Corn Exchange - with the Users, Dolly Mixture and a couple of Parkside school bands

I went to both of the above to see other bands on the bill, hence the huge gap until...

May 13, 1988 - Northeastern University, Boston
August 21, 1993 - Axis, Boston
September 8, 1994 - Axis, Boston
March 30 & 31, 1998 - Coney Island High, New York
April 3, 1998 - Middle East, Cambridge, MA
November 23 & 24, 2001 - Knitting Factory, New York
July 5, 2003 - Middle East, Cambridge
July 6 & 7, 2003 - Knitting Factory, New York
April 8 & 9, 2004 - Knitting Factory, NY
April 10, 2004 - Maxwells, Hoboken, NJ

favorite gig - gig of the century; best Fall gig - July 7, 2003; worst gig, Axis '94.

Stefan

Is there a recording of the haus der jugend gig I mentioned above?
Does anybody know?

Saw them at the Black Cat in DC in 1998, 2003, 2004.

Best of those was 2003. Tight as a drum, cracking the music out, MES in a good mood and clearly taking pleasure in his acheivements. "Mere Pseud Mag Ed" and "Kick the Can" seemed especially godlike.

Worst was 1998. Julia wandered off, band clearly tense and I knew the stories I'd heard about them physically attacking each other on stage during the Philly gig must be true. And many of the songs blew chunks - horrible "Lie Dream", sad "Hip Priest". Still, I enjoyed it and enjoyed being within about 10 feet of the great man (who appeared fairly sober that night).

Date? Venue?

All 3 times I saw them were at the Black Cat in Washington DC. Don't remember the exact dates.

From the gigography -

Apr 5 1998 Black Cat, Washington, DC

Spencer Must Die / Masquerade / Levitate / Hip Priest / 10 Houses of Eve / Oleano / Lie Dream of a Casino Soul / Pearl City / The Chiselers / I'm a Mummy / Calendar / Jungle Rock

(Julia walks off after Levitate)

I believe this might be inaccurate in that I don't think Julia was on stage even that long. Maybe not even a whole song is how I remember it. And Mark kept walking off and going into the dressing room, presumably looking for her. And playing a reasonable amount of keyboards himself. The one tune that was really superb IMO was Oleno (complete with insertion of lines from Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica").

Best : Sheffield Leadmill 89
Last year in Oldham was very enjoyable.

Worst : A gig at Sheffield Uni in about 2000 was a bit underwhelming.

4 gigs for me over a 14 year period which is a bit pathetic....

1991 - City Hall, Glasgow...good stuff except Suede were supporting

1996 - Motherwell...well this one's in the book

1997- The Garage Glasgow - A bit shabby - songs plodding on - Julia quite obviously pissed off with rest of band

1999(?) - Edinburgh - The Fall back on form

Got to try to go to next Scottish gig -

Prompting the question, what is the smallest number of people on stage at any one time at a Fall gig?

The answer must lie somewhere in the States in 1998.

Julia was on stage for the first 3 songs - you can see her in the video footage. She spends a lot of time mucking around trying to fix the settings because it was borrowed gear - her keyboard and the guitar that Martin Hannett gave her had been stolen from the tour van the night before. She was pretty gutted about that (esp. losing the guitar).

Are you actually in touch with Julia?

3: MES, Julia & Kate Methen. For 3 gigs late April/early May 1998 after the New York bust-up. You should be familiar with those ones Stephen...

Yeah, I just emailed her today & got a reply about S Hitchcock/Marshall Suite (see elsewhere),

She's told me about the guitar in the past. Her ex-husband (Chris Nagle) worked with Martin Hannett & Julia did herself too, I think.