MES's stagecraft has been honed over 25+ years. What is his greatest achievement?

when i saw the fall perform, mes messed around with the mics alot, it was quite funny.

he's a better rock showman than Roger Daltrey

It's the amp fiddling for me. Brings a tear to my eye every time.

*sniff* Damn, I'm getting all misty just thinking about it...

:P

Give me a sheaf of dog-eared paper any day and the great man rifling through them, preferably spilling out of a Kwik Save carrier bag onto the stage in a disorganised manner.

Said bits of paper should then be arranged so that MES has to "hunker down" and read them out as the music goes along.

Chewing - I think it means that he thinks that he has something better to do than perform for us lot.

One not mentioned that I think is also legendary:

There's a point when he's singing that a abstracted, deer-in-the headlights look crosses his face but then abruptly resolves into a penetratingly hateful scowl. Thing is, the words he's singing don't have an apparent connection with the look, nor is anything amiss happening in the audience. It's like a dark, angry memory has floated past his eyes. Disturbing to behold. I am fairly creeped out by it.


As for his paper shuffling, at a local concert some months ago one of the scrawled sheets was obtained by a guy standing next to me. It was on the back of a pizza franchise flyer! What a catch!

His between-song banter used to be excellent. At exactly what point in time did this stop? Maybe someone who owns hundreds of tapes, like Stefan, can pinpoint the change from loquaciousness to sulkiness.

his reading the lyrics is rather funny.

Start of singing without any microphone - then just recognizing that he needs a microphone and searching for this. Singing the second phrase into the microphone.

This remembers me to an impression of speaker’s corner and the free speech cultivated there.

Great moment for me when MES performs like that on stage.

Always enjoy the keyboard playing.

Any of the microphone related ones; he's developed these into a unique artform that's become really close to my heart!


Thankyou MES

Crouching down on floor with back to audience.

Now how about he try some stage diving?

Walking on stage and immediately taking off his jacket. What's the point...is he afraid that someone's going to nick it if he leaves it in the dressing-room?

I'd really like to see a Fall gig in which he had the focus and concentration evident in any gig up to 1982 or whenever. All the pissing about pisses me off.

When I saw them in Sheffield last year his random fannying about with the drum-set was particularly amusing ...in "Big New Prinz" he started crashing about briefly on the cymbals in a manner that bore no conceivable relationship to the (rather basic) rhythmic architecture of the song, in a way that was perversely virtuosic. Drummer seemed quite into it too...

sometime during 1981 from what I remember - couldn't pinpoint the exact gig though. (I'm sure Stefan could)

"Adjusting amps"

Cracks me up every time.

I liked the end of the recent Magnet interview:

MM: You seem to thrive on tension. Nothing seems to be allowed to stabilize with the Fall. You even mess with the band’s amps onstage. Is this all to keep complacency away?

MES: People actually expect me to do that these days.

MM: So you do it to appease fans?

MES: No. Sometimes the sound gets on my fucking nerves.

one time mes when mes was on stage, he turned his back to the crowd lit up a cigarette, and started singing at the same time, it was rather hilarious.

and he also kept getting out the mic from the drum... and using it for a bit & then leaving it soemwhere then this big sound bloke would run on & put it back in... repeatedly ..... like a dog playing with a ball... that guy never tired of it :lol:

other onstage things - MES with the strange hand in pocket fiddling/trouser hoist (not to be thought about too closely)

and the playing with teeth/gurning routine...

and this is one of my favs!

could the singing without mic be a live-dub or cut-out thing? Like he sings a lyric sans mic then sings into mic at a certain point, like its a deliberate calculated thing-at least from what i gather on the TS DVD

Also amuses me when he starts slagging off the sound-crew but in a way that (he imagines) is somehow compatible with the song he's singing ...seem to remember some weird line in the opening number of last year's Sheffgig that went something like "TELephone thing ...MONitors -MAHNitors" -before the inevitable walk-off.

Having said this, I now hear from the Knitting factory gigs this year signs of a return, albeit tentative, to between-songs banter. Maybe he does this more in the USA?

I love the keyboard fiddling, especially when he's not even looking at them. It always sounds good as well.

Examining finger nails as if he's bored is common but is not on the list.

I like it when he walks onto stage and gets to the mic stand at exactly the right moment.

Sadly, I have yet to witness his guitar attempts though I have seen him clarting about with the drums at the start of Big New Prinz quite often.

I also like his attitude when the bouncers are removing someone from the stage. He always tells the bouncers to calm down. You see, he does care about the fans.

my heart always gives a little leap of excitement at the Hello We Are The Fall Moment

(timing here is everything & you never know where it's gonna come. will he get it over with right at the start? halfway through the first song? during a chorus? between numbers? no one knows for sure. but when it does come...)

Me too.. I also liked it when he was sticking on spoken word tapes between each song and wandering off. The whole "is this gig still happening or not?" vibe is unique to them in my experience

yeah, wish they'd go back to using more samples n "sh*t" live myself...

What about him barking, '1, 2, 3, 4' when the band are clearly not ready, followed by a long, almost embarrassing pause before the music strikes up.

oh yes.... :D

I was always impressed by the way he would examine his finger nails by alternating between the feminine method of simply looking at the back of the outstretched hand and the slightly unclenched fist method that is unquestionably more masculine. Watching these antics amused me, for he was obviously toying with amateur psychologists' attempts to analyse his sexuality.

his stage-dive at STAR CLUB DRESDEN october 8th this year! :rollover:

some nice footage of this on the all tomorrow's parties dvd - shouldering-in on jim to get at the keyboard; stalking off, but can't resist turning back to hit the keys once more; turning away in boredom, but continuing to seek out random notes behind his back; ends up just too clumsy/ or doesn't know his own strength as the keyboard comes out worse for wear..
For personal favourite I'll settle for singing out loud without mic ..as pointed out by ?? this was done to great effect at islington as he got well into New Big Prinz :)

MES' stage antics are undoubtedly part of the fun - 'what's he gonna do next?!', etc. I remeber seeing them in Liverpool in 2002 and Mark shoving the mike in the bassist's face during Telephone Thing, then chucking it into the audience before walking off while the band kept playing. I've often tried to imagine how he must have felt when people started doing impressions of him into the mike, instead of singing along. Ah well.

its a 100% drama. i can do without the amp fiddling, mike messing etc-its old hat now. i do like it when he lets the intro's go on for ages and then you think he's gonna start but he doesn't(cue mike fiddling). i like the back of hand scrutiny and the facial grimaces. very charismatic really. mostly i like the way he seems to involve the roady types, ie, them having to hold the mike lead in the air so he can sing from the dressing room. he gets away with a lot. i also like how fucked(unwell) he looks most of the time x

Did anyone see MES kick a roadie at Phoenix, circa '96?

'Twas something to do with mic fiddling, he had to swap mid-tune. Not sure if that number made it to the Phoenix Live album...

Brilliant. Poor roadie...

Interesting poll to bump. :)

From the list I'm reminded of the classic mic wire balls up he made during the last Hammersmith Palais show. Can't remember if he ever got it sorted, or just gave up and found another mic, but it took him what seemed like five minutes or so to work it out. :D I'll have to see the DVD again.