Instrumental
Strangetown
Wolf
Chino
Slippy
Duped
Cowboy
Scenario
50 y.o. man
Blindness

May have missed one?

Encore 1

Psykick

Encore 2

Mr P
I'm not from Bury

Ears bent. Great gig. Box seat at front with Snowdaughter.
Nice to meet Steve Hamilton, BillyBigbananas, My Balloon, IanS, and very briefly, Andy.

Snowdaughter will be home at the weekend, will post a few of her pics then.

Thanks for the report, Snowy! :applaud: I am so jealous... in a supportive-of-fellow-FoFers way, of course... :lol: I hope Snowdaughter had as much fun as I know you did, gotta pass the torch to a new generation and all that.

The thing is, right, I dunno whether this has been done earlier on another thread, cos I, like can't be arsed to search for it.

If not, though, I am laying claim to the biggest gap between Fall gigs.

First Fall gig - Newcastle Uni, 1987.

Second Fall gig - Bristol Metropolis, a few minutes ago.

And Mr Pharmacist was played at the more recent one.

Onstage at 10:30
Encore 1 complete by 11:35
5 minutes of fans asking for more
Encore 2 complete by 11:50 ish

Tommy Shooter singer from last tour did last verse of Bury.

Much knob twiddling ensued. Was stood in front of Pete Greenway, and he has the patience of a saint. MES grinning like a cheshire cat whilst twiddling. He attempted to snog Dave at one point, to make up for his interference.

Watched him lay on the floor behind the set singing from a lyrics sheet during cowboy.

I think he fell into the electrical recess in the floor at the back of the stage at one point too.

Girl Peculiar was quite good, though can't say Ed Blaney added much to her brief set.

Why I oughta !!! Just about to start my first ever fall review thread and snowy beats me to it !! Great to see all .. Thanks for the lift Steve still sat in bar as I write this ..well my review follows Ahem... Diagnosis=great particularly fond of the prog rock c George wigout.. Not seen them in a while and loved it .. There you go detailed analysis

Soz

:P

Aagh, too late again.

(Exits with hands behind back, whistling...)

(Enters with hands behind back, whistling...)

Well that's three storming gigs in 5 days for me, setlist looks spot on to me, Scenario a particular highlight but it was all great, anyone with the means to get to Leamington Spa on thursday will not be dissapointed, do it now! Crowd were really up for it again this evening and the group responded with a sizzling performance.

Great to see a good turn out of FOF'ers in the pub beforehand, lots of happy faces exiting the venue afterwards!

50 Year Old Man is the new US 80's-90's. ;)

Not the best Fall gig ever but a really good one. You could hear people talking about it on the way out. Did anyone tape it? You could tell it was going to be good as soon as the intro tape came on, not sure what it was, a new one I think. People say The Fall is all about tension and arguments but this seemed like a group that was really at ease with itself. Not in a complacent way, but that they know they are good – a million miles away from the last Bristol appearance at Ashton Court festival, which was OK but a bit of rehearsal. Kind of wished I’d gone to see Mad Professor on the other stage. But that was then.

Similar set list to the rest of the tour but a few changes to keep it interesting. For instance compared to The Ferry the Wolf Kidult riff was back but it disappeared from 50 Year-Old Man until the final section. I thought it was a new one to begin with.

And well done Ed for getting them back to do a second encore, at that point it seemed like it could have gone either way. They were back on pretty quick for the first encore though, I doubt they even had time to smoke a fag.

It seems a bit unfair to single anyone out but the drumming was brilliant. A classic Blindness too – Nicky came on at the end, good stuff but he’s still got the lyric sheet he had a year ago!

Girl Peculiar was good as well. Not what you would call a typical Fall support act but definitely worth seeing if there’s any more gigs lined up on this tour. Before them was an old punk band called The Stingrays. Missed most of their set but they finished with one I recognised – Keys To Your Heart, the old 101ers song.

Good to meet some other Fall fans in the pub before the show, as always. A good crowd too – lots of old punks, quite a few women as well. All ages from 16 to 60.

I set off a speed camera on the way home though – it wasn’t even my car, so I’ll have to pay if they get a ticket through the post, fingers crossed.

For me the gig was good but not brilliant. Cant quite put my finger on why.

The band are shit hot! I agree about the drummer. Great. But all of them put in a shift.

The sound (like someone said in another thread about another gig)...rubbish at the start...improved with amp fiddling...then died after 'over' amp fiddling. (maybe this was where i was standing ...at the mix desk).

On the Frank Skinner show at the weekend someone described watching MES as being like watching a '1980s french detective staggering around shouting things you dont understand into any available microphone'. Not far off it really. Hes happy and its a mostly new set. Ill take it.

I look forward to the next time i can see them at a weekend and i dont have to miss encores to get my fekin bus.

Ed Blaney should let his daughter sing more.

You can never be late with a Gary Rowell avatar!!

:applaud: :applaud:

Very good gig, enjoyed it. Lovely to meet everyone of course, Steve, Phil, Ian, Snowy and daughter and Hotel Amnesia, and anyone else I said hello to. Thanks for the lift home Steve :applaud:

I thought the sound was good. I was at teh front for the first half an hour then popped to the bar and discovered the sound was actually terriffic at the bar so stayed there (it was only a small place to be honest, the bar was only about 20 feet from the stage).

It was packed, a sell out I believe, and all seemed to have fun.

I really liked it, though the crowd were a bit frosty, if I'm being honest. Only a small handful of us down the front giving it beans! Any of them here? I was the young'un in the grey check shirt getting a bit over-excited...

Enjoyed this show, a long and brutal set made all the better by being in such a small venue.

Bury is the new Reformation!!

Anyone know a good pub near the venue in Leamington?

From my blog

http://drskagra.wordpress.com/

This must be my 20th Fall gig since I first saw them 23 years ago (Cheltenham Town Hall, May, 1986). Or 21st. I really must make a list one day. The last time was July 2007 when they headlined the fateful final Ashton Court Festival. That was a lacklustre performance; though the crowd, and I, enjoyed it, The Fall weren’t on form, the new band members (Pete Greenway on guitar, Keiron Melling on drums and Dave “The Eagle” Spurr on bass) seemed unsure of themselves, and the glory of Imperial Wax Solvent was almost a year away.

Now, though, almost two and a half years later, that Fall are well on form; a tight, coherent, credible force of crunching, manic, energetic sonic attack.

At least on the evidence the current tour, of which the Bristol gig formed part of the Southernmost leg (after Exeter). The venue was the Bristol Metropolis, originally a cinema, then a pub, and now a comedy club which hosts the occasional music act. Outside, the venue’s roots are still well in evidence, but inside, it basically a big, basic, square box, with the bar and bogs to the left, mixing desk at the rear and stage at the front. Only the balcony belies its cinematic origins. A relatively small venue, it had completely sold out, and by the time I arrived (after a few ales at the Pipe and Slippers opposite – recommended), the place was packed with the usual crowd of thirty – or forty – or fifty-something Fall fans, a smattering of younger people, a broad church, the curious and the committed rubbing shoulders all eager to pay homage to the Hip Priest.

Sorry got carried away a bit there…. I caught the very end of the second support act, Girl Peculiar, which consisted of the peculiar girl herself, plus former Fall member and M.E.S. collaborator Ed Blaney but didn’t see enough really to comment. Ed however ended their set by performing a busker’s version of Joy Division’s Atmosphere. Should have done the Russ Abbot one mate, it would at least have been funny.

The Fall were on stage at 10.30, after the usual build-up. Band members first, of course, appearing one by one and building up a menacing riff of chunderous intensity. It was a while – seemed like ages – before Mark E. Smith appeared, immaculate in slacks, shirt and leather jacket. The first song grew out of the instrumental opening to become Our Future – Your Clutter, going by the lyrics. Brand new to me, can’t recall it now, seemed OK but hearing new songs live is odd, you can’t mosh along cos you don’t know it, you just stand there, assimilating it and wondering what it’ll sound like on the new album.

Next up – Strangetown, the Groundhogs cover from IWS. Enjoyable enough but I’d have placed it later in the set, get the crowd whipped up with something like Wolf Kidult Man. Which coincidentally was next – a rifftastic beast of a song which really got the gig underway. By now it was clear that this version of the Fall fucking ROCKS. No two ways about it. Melling is a brutal flailing beast of a drummer, Spurr a competent bassist (though you’ll NEVER replace Stephen Hanley in my books) and guitarist Pete Greenway looked scared to death all the time but delivered, especially on the relentless riffery that is Slippy Floor, which followed after Chino Splashback – two new songs (well new to me) in a row which seemed to augur well for the new album (Our Future – Your Clutter, out in January next year, I believe).

Eleni looked as beautiful as ever and her synth sound is now fully part of the band, it is hard to imagine The Fall without her, she has been a stable presence for almost ten years! Blimey. She took lead vocal duties on the next song, the cute punk pop of I’ve Been Duped. I must apologise at this point as I had to visit the bogs and get a round in, so I missed most of that song. I was back in time for another new song, Cowboy George, which featured a seriously evil, shrill riff from Mr Greenway.

As for the main main, Mark E. seemed to be in good mood all evening, not pissed (well not visibly), belting out the vocals, and, yes, doing the usual amp-twiddling and gurning like a goblin whilst he did so. For some reason he lay down at the back of the stage during one song, and at another point tried to snog the bassist (or that’s what it looked like), and used multiple mikes – sometimes two at once – but this was no way the drunken incoherent performance commonly reported in the lazy bastard press.

Next up was the low point of the evening for me, a shocking version of Scenario, one of the best songs from their 2007 album Reformation Post TLC. A lithe, supple lament on disc, tonight it was butchered into lumpen pieces, and seemed to go on forever. Thank God then that 50 Year Old Man followed in all its glory to wipe out the memory. Then came Blindness, one of the best Fall songs EVER, and this was an excellent version, except, from where I was standing, the bass was almost inaudible – which removes the whole point of the song. Perhaps it was due to Mark’s twiddling or a mistake at the mixing desk, but it marred what was a spirited performance from the band. A slightly disappointing end to the evening – had it ended there, but it didn’t, there were two encores.

The first was, to my utter joy, Psyckick Dancehall, which they did admirable justice to and I danced like a loon. Another interval and they were back on for a brilliant, storming run through Mr Pharmacist (the song they’ve played the most live), by this time Mark had removed his jacket and with his mid-length hair he looked and sounded as though he’d stepped through a wormhole straight from 1986.

But The Fall aren’t about nostalgia despite these nods to the past (and with a back catalogue as vast and impressive as theirs, they could perhaps be blamed for over-indulging in raiding it, however they show great restraint in playing mostly new or recent material) and so the last song was I’m Not From Bury – again, new to me, but it sounded fantastic. By the final verse Mark had left the stage at it was Ed Blaney who delivered the final verses, oddly bookending the evening for me.

After the gig I bought the new single Slippy Floor (a piece of insane rockabilly that sounds like a lost version of Rowche Rumble, fuller review soon), and staggered out into the night, ears ringing with the glory of The Fall. Overall it was a solid, entertaining set though as many of the songs were new to me I can’t tell if they were good, or shite, versions. They certainly seem full of energy and attack, though maybe somewhat lacking in innovation. However I am stoked for the new album – January can’t come too soon – something to look forward to in that grimmest of months!

All hail the Mighty Fall.

Great post Dktr.

It was a brilliant night. I've seen 3 Fall gigs this tour and they've all been great. The Band indeed does ROCK.

:applaud:

The chappie who finished off Bury wasn't Ed Blaney though. I was advised by IanS that he is the current tour manager, and regularly sang Tommy Shooter in the last tour.

I wish MES would stop this practice. It is the only real gripe I had about the last tour, and I really don't want to see it on the next tour either. I want MES to sing the songs thx, or Eleni occasionally.

I will always welcome experimenting with off the wall ideas, but please please recognise that that idea was ++bad, and terminate with immediate effect.

Ta.

:)

Thanks and thanks for the info, I must have been rather refreshed to think it was Blaney :beer:

Lucky you. I had to drive!

I'm anticipating a Dime torrent soon. :rolleyes:

For those without access there's already a mp3 recording online:
http://partlyporpoise.blogspot.com/2009/11...u-gonna-do.html

Vielen Dank! :applaud: :)

Many Thanks!! :applaud:

Blindness without bass!

I did rather like the sound of Pete's squidgy treated guitar though it seemed quite sparse at the time. And the bass! Well it was issuing with abundance from behind Mr Spurr.

:confused:

Fab recording. Consortium competition.......? :D

Version Bury most fucking rollicking excellente!

i think her first LIVE appearance was
here: Sunday, 22 September 2002 King George's Hall, Blackburn
:nahnah:

...which means it's almost fair to say that The Fall's live show has improved almost constantly since she joined.

http://z1.invisionfree.com/forums/thefall/...0#entry11614516
;)

Could only be downloaded 10 times. Over! Over! :cry2:

you can listen/d’load the thing track by track...

Though a minor mix up.
First and last track are the same... (Bury twice).
No Instrumental at start.

the rar files are pretty fine. cheers.

I've just downloaded the whole thing as two RAR files off that link with no difficulty. Sounds terrific too!

Yay! Now that's it's two parts it worked!

Really? Mine went haywire- thought for a moment I had a virus. Mac!

RAR capable too. What happened?

Photos from Snow daughter's camera

:rolleyes:
And Harry says MES can't be bothered any more. Tsk.

Snowy, these photos are fantastic!

:applaud:

Snowy: top geezer!
Snowy Daughter: top gal!
Snowy Daughter's cam: what is it-uh?

[ON EDIT] I'm aware that the authorities 'round here don't condone quoting other's posts"pictures included"...but in this instance...I think I will be forgiven...they can't take up too much "web space" now can they...

I've finally registered on this forum (although lurked for a while) mainly with the purpose of letting people know about the recording I made in Bristol - but I see you're already there!

Apologies about the .RAR version going dead so soon, I think you've all picked up on the fact that I've re-upped it as two smaller files.

Someone pointed out that I've made a mistake on the labelling of some of the tracks, I'll have a look at that and try to sort it.

Glad it's gone down well!

Sweeny

http://partlyporpoise.blogspot.com/

I liked the recording. Thx. My download doesn't have any labelling glitches.

Unseen: I will pass on your compliments to my daughter. I bought her the camera for Xmas a while back - its a normal "fit in yer handbag girly camera" :)

We both loved the MES Cowboy George lyrical delivery whilst reclining on the set floor!

:lol:

Fantastic!

I'm Not From Bury is BRILLIANT. Instant Fall classic.

:applaud: :thumbsup: :beer:

Dktr S