just back, opinions may be divided on this one...from memory, towards the end we got reformation, mr p, psyckick dancehall and muzorewi's daughter but what preceded the end was a mike-lead entanglement nightmare of sorts.
i think this might have been played by a different outfit from the slick types who turned up in sydney the other night. people were bemused, amazed and astounded. spent the whole gig down the front eyeing the setlist (which was deviated from hugely anyway) only to have the bouncer scoop it up and give it away somewhere on the other side of the venue. irretrievable.
but good to meet andrew rheingold and mod mock goth and a distant relation.
righto, sleep beckons. got a couple of dodgy shots, will post later.
:)

We got three encores that must be a first

I'm trying to remember what else was played
I remember I've Been Duped and Sparta MES had a argument with the sound guy a lot of mic dropping if they didn't end up in the kick drum and the guitar was turned down and the bass up I'm a bit drunk and Ill MES seemed to be enjoying himself he was smiling a lot or is it smirking I'll get back to this in the morn

Great gig in my opinion but I've only seen them twice

Classic Fall.

Absolutely fucken brilliant - Smith's range of powers was more extensive when last here in '90 but last night was the live Fall experience I've waited 28 years for. YFOC is a great album to tour and the attack of the record was positively lethal live - all out assault on the drums and the playing generally was merciless. A comparison is Kuepper/Bailey Saints maybe meets Black Sabbath but sprinkled with the MES magic Fall ingedient that stops the whole thing boiling down to a headbangin' mess. MES looked delighted to be in town - and so, very noticeably, did Eleni. This is the first Australasian visit not hampered by Smith actively hating his bandmates. Three encores! I was knackered by the end and headed for the back after the second but was still absolutely thrilled. Bravo!

A great night it was all round - you hate him when his stuff is on but Safi does a very clever job of priming the audience for the Fall, very calculated. Either that or completely, guilelessly annoying. Dave Graney and the Lurid Yellow Mist had time for only four songs but with the full band line-up Dave's tunes are unbeatable. And he and Clare are fans, and both stood by the mixing desk for the whole Fall performance. Cudos! And lovely it was to meet Mr and Mrs Melbourne Fall Fan and Other Richard the Geordie who's now from Adelaide, and good also to be part of a diverse crowd with enough youngsters to confirm the Fall's ongoing relevance to yet another generation.....

Great review...succint and to the point.

Sounds like all three oz shows have been top drawer. :thumbsup:

Can they continue this across the ditch and impress the Kiwis likewise?

-- on stage 10.07 --

Change
O.F.Y.C. Showcase
Theme from Sparta F.C.
Cowboy George
Bury
Chino
Strychnine
Greenway
I've Been Duped
Hot Cake

-- off stage 10.58 --

Muzorewi's Daughter
What About Us?

-- off stage 11.10 --

Mr. Pharmacist
Reformation!

-- off stage 11.20 --

Psykick Dancehall

-- off stage 11:29 --

on stage off stage on stage off stage


the johnny/nightsnow

All we got at Holmfirth was Offstage!!

Someone thinks he's as cool as Malcolm Mooney obviously.

Would the reaction if they'd done 'Victoria' have been crowd-goes-mental or a collective groan?

I love it when you talk dirty :wub:

no nyc gig announced yet
glad y'all are lovin it

hi guys,

back home in NZ priming for the Auckland show. Loved the Melbourne gig it was great to meet Ian and his sister before for a quiet beer - thanks guys!

Thought the whole band looked to be having a fantastic time, crowd was really really in to it too.

Venue for Monday is bigger, and it's sold out. Will be more than happy with a repeat set list, but secretly hoping for Blindness. And hopfully Mark will turn up Greenway's guitar a lot more!!

That was the first time I'd seen them since emigrating to Australia 5 years ago. The last time was that infamous affair at The Forum in London. The contrast between the moods of the two nights couldn't have been greater.

Back in 2005 the drummer ended up on his own on stage playing a solo before throwing his sticks at the audience in something like despair. It was no surprise that that group broke up not too long after.

In Melbourne the whole evening felt mischievous. It was almost as if the group were pretending to be serious in a play, and every now and again, someone, often Mark himself, started cracking up. It was the most 'fun' I've seem them when playing, and I first saw them in 1982

The new material is superb live. Sparta didn't sound right, but few songs do that are reliant on guitar, and yet have the guitar turned almost completely off. The trip back to 1979 to a more innocent time at the end was celebratory.

I took along a 23 year old from work, who enjoyed it a very great deal. He tells me they're a hard band for an Australian to understand, in every sense. It's not what he's used to, having grown up on a diet of Guns n Roses and Metallica. But he's starting to get it. The crowd was a sell out of a medium sized venue, and everyone was in great spirits, not even giving the Sniper a hard time. Australians I spoke to rather liked his thing as did I.

loving these reviews. thanks. the fall are so remarkable sometimes i forget - when they're in a class of one so constantly it almost gets easy to be complacent with them.

had a couple of days now to let this one sink in, it was a remarkable evening. the contrast between sydney and melbourne was sharp, and really down to mark - it seemed that on tuesday he was constructively disruptive onstage while on friday he was destructively disruptive, i just remember seeing the mid-stage unbelievable tangle of mike stands and leads and wondering what the hell might happen next; it felt utterly chaotic and unpredictable, but utterly energetic and uncompromising.
the most vivid symbol of the night came right at the end of psykick dancehall, when the splintered end of one of kieron's drumsticks flew into the air as he smashed out the finals beats. mark looked, nodded as if to say ''right, that'll do then'' and they left the stage.
meredith festival goers should be in for a major treat tonight, likewise our kiwi friends on monday. looking forward to reading their reports.
:)

hey guys - did anyone hear if Mark made a guest appearance/informant at the Gorillaz show on Saturday night?

Will do my best to post a coherent review of tonight's show too. Seeing The Fall twice in three days is very surreal.

Here's hoping MES doesn't leave it another twenty years before he's back down under...

The Oz shows sound great. Wish we'd have got this at Holmfirth! Has he had a haircut?

classic fall gig.. loved every minute of it..

best moment... the crwod wolf whistling to MES , cant rmember why, may have taken his coat off.. he turned to face the crowd .. mouthed f** off with a dirty big smirk on his face..

magical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsgOAj-Zqwk

great vid...very energetic and engaged performance.

Thanks I should have another up by the end of the day

not bad, not bad. love the teasing snatch of guitar at 2:45 :girly:

theme from sparta fc

review here.
no mention of mes being there but the logistics in getting from meredith would have been nigh impossible.
have a top one tonight andrew - now you know how i felt on friday!

I did read they had a lot of trouble getting people in and out of Meredith due to weather - but I doubt NOVA know who Mark E Smith is anyway :applaud:

the setlist?

^^^yep, that's it - she got it personally delivered to her by the stageside bouncers while i was grabbing at it and going "hey mate, can i take a photo of that?"
glad it turned up somewhere.
:)

Three days later and I’m still wigged out. I don’t get out much so maybe that’s why the Fall on Friday night was the biggest thrill I’ve had since Adrian McAdam kicked 9 as North destroyed Collingwood at Vic Park in ‘93. Like that game I approached the Billboard gig with no expectations, no idea what would unfold and when you get blindsided by something so great.... well, life isn’t always so pleasantly surprising. The power of MES lies in his ability to create a world where nothing but the Fall exists – I hope the NZ audience can deal with a reggae/dub free zone, just like all the Melbourne mafioso had to enter a world with no all-too familiar country/folk/dance/you-name-it references. It was pure Fall distilled to a garage essence, more Lime Spiders than Can but none the worse for that. The effect was so physical – the Fall in ’82 were a mindfuck and I can’t imagine the 2010 lot having a successful dip at Arms Control Poseur like the ’90 tourists , but what they’ve got now is da power! It was more than worth a 600k round trip and the crossing of several flooded roads to be there. The onstage mixing worked a treat and Mr P sans guitar was much improved. The hopeless tangle (of leads) did bring one to mind of ‘a fucking teachers’ union meeting’, as MES decried. Basically whatever that guy says or does fucken goes, right? Mind you, Lord I hope he and they turn it on for Auckland and Conway in particular.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDR0pOBBdoU

Thirteen emigrational years after last seeing The Fall, I've been fortunate to see them twice in four days and I've got to say these shows would be right up with any I've seen since 79-80. Sydney and Melbourne may not have had the tension of those post-punk times or the imminent sensation that MES would leap into the crowd to deck a mouthy skinhead with fistic fury or gobby mouth. But neither concert realised a particular fear, that The Fall and, notably, MES would be going through the motions like so many lazy reformations of contemporary bands.
Instead, both dates echoed with a vibrant modernity that demonstrated MES' hunger to remain at the cutting edge and showed off a unit of such tightness and raw power that they achieved the impossible and put the Hanleys-Scanlon era in the shade.
YFOC is an album that has grown and grown with each listen, becoming my best loved since Bend Sinister in '84, but to think that in his 50s MES could deliver some of his best ever material staggers me.
So shows dominated by that album, and decorated by familiar favourites such as Strychnine, Muzorewi's Daughter, Mr Pharmacist and Psykick Dancehall, will inevitably live as long in my memory as my memory lives on.
MES was clearly revelling in the shows and the reception accorded him, and, despite his Billboard spat with the poor sound techo, even found time to laugh at his customary microphone absurdities, the kind that had him returning for an encore to see three naked microphone stands. Bloody hilarious.
Almost as funny as finding out that my girlfriend, a much more recent convert, had hit the loo as The Fall hit the stage, then left a snail-like trail of vomit to our room at Rydges, continuing her technicolour trawl in the lift, the corridor and finally the bathroom, as an oyster supper made a hideous return. My enthusiasm for the Billboard show did not improve her mood.
Before emigrating from London I feared my lasting memories of The Fall would be bitter on-stage recriminations and gigs where I looked back trying to find highlights in setlists, settling for such as Free Range because it was one of the few recognisable and audible offerings.
I cannot bear the thought of no more Fall, but if they were to draw stumps now it would be at a creative high.

Hi Richard, it's the other one! Lost track of you after we turned around from getting drinks at the bar just before the start. Glad to hear you enjoyed the gig, as I did. I thought for a moment we'd get a fourth encore!

Howdy Richard! I headed back to our spot from the bar but somehow got talking to Dave Graney then drifted down near the stage to the left of Eleni where I got a tad over-excited and created a three foot exclusion zone around me despite the size of the crowd. Caught a glimpse of you at the Exford afterwards but I was well-stuffed and had yelled myself hoarse 'singing' along - it was a great night. Hope Pardew does well for you!

Just to endorse what Richard and Dominic have said, for those of us who have emigrated, our last glimpse of The Fall may well have been some half-arsed drunken performance in front of an indifferent to hostile crowd. Mine was. A bit like the last memory of your parents being a sour argument.

To meet up again after many years and to not just bury the hatchet but go out, get drunk, have a fantastic laugh in the company of other friends and family (so to speak), and end up embracing was totally cathartic.

At the risk of overdoing this I realised that the main things holding me back from emigrating were my football team, John Peel and the Fall. Within 6 months they tore my team's stadium down and John Peel died. At least I still have The Fall, and they've finally made it back to Australia.

any online reviews around ?

Grassydale - I totaly am in the same boat as you, except that I wasn't drunk :( and the last time I saw the Fall they were coherent - but everything else is true for me.

The flipside is what would you go back to UK for? It would take an awful lot for me to even visit, but seeing the Fall again is on the list and has a heavy weighting factor :)

The Fall in Sydney and Melbourne were just fucking bang on. Amazing to have them over here at last.
A couple of friends have complained they were too polished, too good at being a band. Grow up and move on, I say. Maybe they wanted Slates played from the bottom of a swimming pool.
Can't tell you the set list for Sydney, but my friend (and new hero) Jade nicked the set list from the Melbourne show. As written: Change / Y.F.O.C / Sparta / Cowboy / Bury / Chino / Strychnine / Greenway / Muzorewis / Hot Cake / Duped / What About Us / Psykick
Unfortunately the people at the front - including Jade - won't shut up about Mark sporting a huge booger in/out of the right nostril for the entire show.

CHIPPER

great idea for the new album

:applaud: I forgot about that one
the girl I was standing next to pointed that out

Got talking to someone. who was also at this Melbourne gig, on a plane on the way back from Munich to London, following a Kraftwerk gig we'd both been to.

What are the odds of that?