So there it was on Friday in HMV... had all the songs already except Susan vs. Youthclub... still I couldn't resist. Listened to the whole shebang later with a few drinks while pretending that I was new to the Fall. :mellow: Came to the realisation that this cd by default is one of the best I own - a real contender for the hypothetical desert island. Inevitable quibbles about the tracklisting are very much overshadowed by the rounded picture the comp provides, and there's no inclusions / exclusions that I can't see the reasoning behind. Was struck by what a wealth of great lyrics are presented here, even apart from the music. Some absolutely stunning runs of tracks... I can see some curious buyers hyperventalating with excitement. :o Always the same and always different :rolleyes: Decent sleevenotes too, they actually render the discography somewhat comprehensible... apart from the way the discography on the inlay doesn't specify which albums are comps, live etc - makes it look as if the Fall hit a peak of insane productivity in the last few years!
:applaud: to all involved.
Anyone else buy it who didn't need to? Any thoughts?

Havent bought it yet...but think i will :D Just to go off the subject....where did you get the name "worthless recluse"?? .....just curious!

Happily it wasn't what me ma called me or anything... it's from this.

Am still angry cos of non-inclusion of New Puritan. May buy it for the sleeve notes and because I'm mad, having already got most tracks at least 10 times or so...

Couldnt you Shoplift the sleeve? The magnetic strip is not attached to that part and noone on earth would expect anyone to shoplift just an inlay from a CD case. You'd be home and dry as long as you didnt draw to much attention to yourself, look over your shoulder! ;)

Mmm, this is incitement to robbery, isn't it? Punishable by a heavy slap by the fuzz round the goolies, if I remember...

I am ignorant of the law of this land...

Besides which the emoticon surely indicates in my defence that I was joking...

Please dont call the pigs on me

I mean Nice Police Blokes... Not pigs... Er...

I'll get me coat...

Well, it was being blasted onto Sauchiehall Street by Music Zone this morning, much to my pleasure - one doesn't expect to hear "Industrial Estate" in public on a dull Bank Holiday morning. A very reasonable £10.97 too.

i got it from action this morning for 9.99. i've already got everything on it but sod it it's got a nice cover. i also bought the creep album which is basically the wonderful and frightning album with a few extra tracks tacked on (again i'd already got them all but what the hell, it's in a different cover) i'm going to have to keep away from action, surely there's only so many times i can keep buying the same songs.
anyone else keep buying the same songs over and over again just because they're in a different cover or have a different running order. at least they're cheap from action.

AHHHHH!!!!! another jandek fan. I have a few cds of the texan myself! Hes totally unlike anything ive heard before! The thing that intrigues me about jandek is that hes never played gigs never likes being interviewed and doesnt want any contact with anyone about his music.......very strange! :huh: Anyhow..i had a hunch that maybe thats where your name came from!........guess i was right....for once! :blink:

sorry about posting my messages about jandek twice.............i just wanted to know if you were a fan thats all! :)

I just got a kick out of the idea of having 2 simultaneous converations with one person about the same thing :blink:

Is it? Or is everybody else strange...? :huh: He just wants to make records but maintain his privacy... also he knows the value of mystique, :zip: especially when connected with very strange, intimate & mysterious music.
More Jandek discussion on the Slates poll! ;)

AH, Jandek, from my hometown (Houston, Tx). I was just listening to his "Follow Your Footsteps" this morning.

The issues raised by this post-- privacy, mystique, etc-- were addressed pretty intelligently in the recent film on the man, "Jandek on Corwood"-- have you seen this yet?

Andy

Yep... I did the Cork bit :zip:
Did you see it in Houston? Any audience members with dark glasses and unconvincing beards?
Did you know about the "Jandek day" thing in Houston? Is this totally genuine?

so whats the flavour of this-notthat i care to buy it/and no barcelona reviews?

Stefan's opened a separate page for the reviews...as far as I can see, they are all immensely favourable. As for Barcelona, probably no reviews as no-one here went...I'm probably the nearest geographically, and it was impossible for me..I'll keep a lookout in the crap Spanish music press and let you know if a review appears.

50,000 fall fans ..got 4 stars in Q
and 4 stars from the reliable Stewart Lee in The Sunday Times. So overall it's getting well received.

5 out of 5 from Simon Price in The Independent on Sunday...only album to get that award that particular week. 8 out of 10 in the NME.

Wasn't planning on getting it but saw it today for $11.99. Couldn't pass it by. Great cover, decent liner notes and good selection. It was in the new release section at Newbury Comics in Boston and they had about 20 copies. I'm sure back home in Ireland it's a good 25 Euro.

I assume its aimed at onetime Fall fans who may have lost interest and as such its indispensible. A big thumbs up here. Maybe even a bobby dazzler.....

you may as well if you have got little else, I still say that the compilation by S. Lee is best anyway.

trouble is with the Fall is that to get to the tasty peanuts you have to pick through tonnes of monkey shit.

I picked up a copy Tuesday. How weird to actually go into a store in Vermont and find a new Fall item on its release day, and even on sale ($12.99)! With extra copies behind the counter! (Although I guess you Brits got it a week earlier just the same.)

I think it was worth getting for two reasons (apart from the cover art):

1. Some songs are offered in single versions uncompiled elsewhere (Free Range — kind of a cross between the album version and the Ed's Babe EP remix — better than the former, not as good as the latter; Masquerade — more electronica than tha album version, and not as good, but quite different).

2. There are considerable improvements in sound quality, notably on the Beggars stuff. I did some comparisons between the old BB CDs and the comp, and a lot of details that had been somewhat buried (if not completely inaudible) were brought into new clarity, e.g. the echoes of the title on Spoilt Victorian Child or a lot of those lazer sounds on U.S. 80's-90's. If nothing else, this compilation serves as a great argument for remastering the BB Fall catalogue, although there are improvements on other tracks as well, notably Crop-Dust, which roars considerably louder and seems a bit less murky. (Is it just me, or is Touch Sensitive EVEN LOUDER than it was on previous CD incarnations, producing extra clipping toward the end?)

There's enough great Fall music here that I'd give it a qualified recommendation for neophytes. It includes the only two Fall a-sides that aren't on CD reissues (so far anyway), so that newcomers wouldn't find it necessary to acquire Fall vs. 2003 or 458489 A-Sides. In some ways I think someone might do just as well to start with a comp covering a certain period — A-Sides or Palace of Swords — but there is a real advantage in having a release that's this comprehensive. From 1993 onward, the selections become somewhat questionable, even from the "commercial" point of view, but this is an admittedly difficult period to sum up.

For some reason I hadn't heard either No Bulbs or Cruiser's Creek in a long time, and hearing them again here reminded me of what truly great, exciting songs they are (even abbreviated). It's a big party!

I continue to be a bit put off by some of Daryl Easlea's liner notes. It is arguable that the MES quote that opens the booklet (about how he hates "little men collecting things," i.e. parasites such as myself who will buy this compilation even though they already have everything on it) alienates the very audience it is trying to create. (Of course, this is the band that did "Hey Student!") The collection aestheticizes the record-collecting process by including the covers of every album and single from which tracks are excerpted and has a full (if not totally explanatory) discography sitting in the inlay tray, but Easlea still has the gall to say

He goes on to quantify the number of albums, singles, members, chart hits, etc. Is he being deliberately ironic or just :wacko: ? To be fair, he makes some fairly smart observations as well, and at least he seems to know his stuff (though Mayo Thopson is of Red Krayola, not the Swell Maps).

From Tower Records:

Who's Ed Blaney?

The Fall: Ed Blaney (vocals, guitar); Mark E. Smith (vocals); Julia Nagle (guitar, keyboards); Craig Scanlon (guitar); Dave Bush, Simon Rogers (keyboards); Steve Hanley (bass guitar); Karl Burns, Paul Hanley, Simon Wolstencroft (drums).
Tower

I was to the Barcelona gig! First time I've seen The Fall live and it was interesting and quite good...have to admit being a bit too drunk to make a fair rewiew though...I have to blame that on the absurdly inefficient system they had to get people into the festival area...3 queues: one to get your pre-ordered ticket, one to exchange the ticket for a card with fingerprint, and then another f-king queue to get in...2 ½ hour of queueing and beer-drinking ( the alternative to die of boredome)...
Well, I remember most of the gig anyhow....crowd quite small...stood maybe 10 meters from the stage...Mark looked very pale and tired initially...you could barely hear anything at all of the singing the first songs...the band sounded great though...mostly songs from TRNFLP...first song was Green-eyed loco man...
then after a few songs Mark seemed to wake up and raised his voice a bit..he did some cool moves as well....singing in 2 mikrofons, walking around the stage, doing some gesturing...the crowd was quite enthusiastic at that stage I think...they did Sparta FC, Mr Pharmasist and a new song where Mark had a sheet with the lyrics...then just when it was starting to get really good after like 9 songs they walked off...and there was no encore...a bit disappointing...but on the all this short gig with The Fall was a lot more interesting than Pixies who played a megacrowd on the megastage with video-screens...reminded me of a U2-gig I was to in the eighties...just felt alienation..

good considered and thoughtful review eatandolph :applaud:

fingerprints at the barcelona-counterterrorismmeasures?

I especiallly liked hearing "High Tension Wire" and "Masquerade".
Also "Crop Dust" stands out . Haven't listed to first CD yet.

I visited every record store in town yesterday, from Best Buy to the remaining indie store. I usually mail order music, but I was interested to see if anyone had it. Now I know why I use mail order -- Foe

In Dc Area Best Buy has it for $12.99 and tower has tons of copies for about $17.
Got mine at tower because the punk girl there is very nice and likes the Fall. Unfortunately she is about 19 and I'm a geezer.
Best Buy are morons. I had to spell the "Fall" 4 times on the phone with them. It's like if the band is not common knowledge people can't cope with it.

`*
it's the double el. Confuses people, cus they think there's more to. But that's it :The ef - ey - el -el

tee-aych-ee...ef-ay-el-el, ^_^

try spelling 50,000.

However, ef-ah. ee-ah, el-ah, el-ah spells "Frarlrlr", which may confuse an idiot.

ee = e not a





go france!!!!!!!!!!!


i hope u beat england 3 - 0

:applaud:

alright, alright

A smartarse gets his come-uppance. -_-

Here's the link:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-revie...-be-wrong.shtml

Seems like a fair review (you could nitpick, of course).

Does anyone get the sense that his comp will significantly raise their profile?

I think it might raise the Fall profile, at least in the US. I see it every record store I go in (including Best Buy!!!). I can imagine a curious fan paying $14.50 (what I usually see it for) for a double-cd best of to try them out. TRNFUSLPFTRNFLPFCOTC also seems to have rather good distribution compared to other Fall cds.

Actually, I can imagine a lot of us buying 50,000 for Xmas for our friends (except for Mr. Quays, that is)

from pitchforkmedia.com:

The Fall
50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong
[Beggars Banquet; 2004]
Rating: 9.3

The Fall have seen so many compilations and reissues of their work during the course of their 30+ year career that they named their latest full-length The Real Fall LP for clarification. Given the reputation of these numerous shoddy anthologies, however, and the fact that, with the exception of the excellent 2002 Rough Trade release, Totally Wired, there has never been any truly "definitive" Fall retrospective, the best a potential convert could hope for was to pick whichever disc bore the prettiest packaging.

While other Fall comps pride themselves on monochromatic slabs of cover design more appropriate for Rothko retrospectives than tumultuous punk albums, 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong instantly has one thing going for it: Its artwork is absolutely hilarious, keenly referencing Elvis Presley's billion-selling 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong. With its image of countless self-replicating Elvises hailing down in dashing suits, that original cover was a perfect embodiment of pop music's narcissism and weirdness-- incidentally also the two subjects of nearly every song Mark E. Smith ever laid to tape.

As the first legitimate career-spanning compilation, 50,000 Fall Fans begins at the band's inception in 1977. Smith was a mere 20 years old, weaned on garage rock, kraut-rock, and a one-year stint as a dock worker. Like all young adults, he named his band after a Camus novel, quickly releasing a series of singles before 1979's full-length debut, Live at the Witch Trials. Represented by "Repetition", the pre-Witch Trials band consists of simple angular guitars, teen-pop rhythms, and drunken charm without any of the complexity or chaos that would later become integral to their work.

Around 1980's Grotesque, The Fall began to seriously investigate other genres, channeling spiraling rodeos ("How I Wrote Elastic Man"), steely noise-pop ("Totally Wired"), and rhythmic shrapnel ("New Face in Hell"). 50,000 Fall Fans spends its leisurely time in this nascent stage, but the brunt of the album is understandably spent exploring The Fall's near-perfect run of albums in the mid-80s, from 1982's Hex Enduction Hour to 1986's Bend Sinister. A staggering 13 tracks from this era find their place on this two-disc set, forging a truly brilliant sequence. Ranging from the blustering, seismic noise of "The Classical" to the schizophrenic death-rattle of "The Man Whose Head Expanded", the album provides a convincing case that The Fall were the most uncompromisingly progressive and reliable band of the 1980s, whether they assumed the guise of punk heavyweights or sweet electro-divas (with the assistance of Smith's wife, Brix).

With this sort of lead-in, even the most questionable song of the band's notorious early-90s phase seems challenging and substantive. Considering that this anthology's second disc includes the band's stab at Europop/ska-rap ("Why Are People Grudgeful?"), this is truly a feat. As a general rule, this disc pulls one song from every album released from 1990 to the present, distilling each allegedly mediocre release to one stunning single. If anything, however, these selections compel listeners to return to the band's 90s output with their tranquilized synths ("Masquerade") and brash genre-blenders (the Cocteau Twins-vs.-AC/DC dynamics of "The Chiselers").

Of course, with a career that's spanned four decades, 50,000 Fall Fans inevitably winds up omitting some of the most crucial songs in their canon, including "Oh! Brother!", "Slang King", "Bombast", and "Oleano". Still, the songs represented are consistently fascinating and invigorating, many standing as among the finest of the last quarter-century, chaotically navigating punk through ever more adventurous territory, from Countrypolitan to house music.

As a result of this willed diversity and comprehensiveness, 50,000 Fall Fans has finally stepped up to assume its rightful position as the most successful and essential Fall compilation in existence-- a convenient summary for fearful neophytes reluctant to dip their toe into the black hole of the band's discography, as well as die-hard fans seeking a distillation of choice cuts from the group's more wayward 90s efforts. Smith is never less than inspiring on any of these 39 tracks, flaunting his confrontational sneer and leering sarcasm over some of the most erratic, riled riffs in punk. In his oft-ignored later period, Smith sounds even more unhinged, furious and battered, cloaking criticisms of governmental policies in lunatic poetics that the most pretentious high-school fanzine dadaists would cower before. Smith quite literally sounds as if his mouth has been pierced full of gaping holes leaking bile and cancer.

Incidentally, this is also the fundamental difference between Smith and Elvis. Elvis was pure sexual dynamite, basking in his own libidinal juices; in sharp contrast, Smith is the ugliest, grimiest beast of Lucifer to ever drag his expanding head from a pub's water closet. Elvis may have drooled sex, but it was artificial, manipulative, cheap. The Fall, like all truly great sex, climaxes in rage, regret and release-- the three criteria for all utterly essential rock music. 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong chronicles more than two decades of those climaxes, perhaps to one day be held in similar regard to the album its artwork parodies.

-Alex Linhardt, July 9th, 2004

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

i totally agree: by far, the best FALLalbum cover!

cheers
marco

:wacko:

:huh:

Actually this is something it didn't do as often as not, though the flow isn't bad.

You thought it'd be great!

maybe fallchase is right the about the fall & shagging!

Couldn't do it myself though.