Knitting Factory, New York City, 10th February 2005

Borrowed from the news page

Knitting Factory, New York, Feb. 10, 2005:

Joe:

Had the day off from work today so went to the Knitting Factory show....one of the best shows i've seen in a long time...and one of the best fall shows..... band seemed tight,
hardly any knob fiddling by MES...who seemed in good spirits.

can't remember all the songs or the order but i believe they opened with bo doodak
two good evening we're all the falls if i heard right/boxtosis/wrong place right time into grass grow/sparta fc/clasp hands/what about us/ blindness (pisses all over the interim version) / sparta fc/ pharmacist/ didn't recognize a couple of songs that might have been
new or covers and encores were white lightening and big new prinz....

I wanted to check out what other people had to say about last night's show, and there's not much here, so I've registered for the first time to put up my own review:

Band got on stage at 1 AM, and ended almost exactly at 2.

Opened with Bo Doodak;
Boxoctosis;
Third song was new to me, Mark was saying something that sounded sorta like "Mad Mock Goth," but it wasn't;
Other songs (probably not in order):
Wrong Place/I Can Hear the Grass Grow (Ben hit 2 real clunkers in Wrong Place, and there was some real confusion at the beginning of Grass Grow;
Mountain Energei;
Sparta FC;
Clasp Hands;
A song unknown to me, reggae feel, but sounded like a polka at the beginning;
What About Us;
Mr. Pharmacist;
Ended main set with the always great Blindness (Mark left the stage at the beginning of the song, and came back with a music stand, and left it in front of Ben, grinning at him like this was a great joke).
First encore was White Lightning, and they came back again for:
Big New Prinz (Mark singing without microphone, then with a mic, then he set up a mic for Ben, indicating that he should sing, again grinning, then gave a mic to the audience).

I disagree that there was not much fiddlling with equipment. He screwed with Ben's amp, the keyboard amp (killed the keys completely at one point), took the mic out of the kick drum, put the mic back into the kick drum, then stuffed another mic in there....

All in all, I'd say not as good as the Virgin/North Six/Asterisk shows in October, but a fun show, with Mark behaving more impishly than I've seen before.

Hardly any amp fiddling? First thing Mark did was fuck with Ben's amp. At 2/3 Goldem Moment, he turned the Bass Amp Way Up. That put the show into overdrive. Excellent synth duo with the Mrs. at one point, with he on the low and her on the high. The audience participation on Big Prinz has gotten to the point where the GIG is tight. Amazing. (Finally noticed the "HOP HOP HOP" chorus on the new rabbit song.)

So, a whole new set then

There were so many different mics on stage, Mark had a ball. Three mics in hand at one point.

I first heard about The Fall’s surprise show at The Knitting Factory from The Fall message board. I immediately went onto my email to tell my friend Hilda, but before I could send her an email there was one from her waiting for me. She had found out about the show from Fallnet. (Fallnet is something I long ago unsubscribed to because I ‘d grown weary of being inundated by emails from people I didn’t know about nothing in particular. But Hilda dutifully remains a Fallnetter, and as such, she often gets the latest Fall News before I do. I get my Fall news from the “Fall News” section of the Fall website, which of course you have to log onto to see. Fallnetters however get constant streams of information flooding into their email.) Hilda new about the Fall show before me. In fact, there were a few emails from her in my mailbox already, each one consecutively more frantic than the next.

“Urgent! LOOKIT!!!! we're going, yes? i'll be calling knf in a minute....xoxo”

“NOW CALLING KNITTING FACTORY!!! Hi! should i get tickets for you and ron? I'll call in minutes. hope you can go! Xo”

Just then Ron called me to say that Hilda has left messages on our answering machine to tell us she has called The Knitting Factory but could not order tickets for some reason even though it was after 5pm. Another email message from Hilda pops up on my computer confirming Ron’s story.

“Can you please buy me a ticket? can only order via phone till 4 pm and the ticketweb says they don't go on sale till 5, but it doesnt seem to know it's fucking 5:01 for fucksake. (sorry). can you buy me one?
let me know - and thanks! Xo”


Well luckily for us, I work in the area where the Knitting Factory is. At 5:03pm I rush out the door and run to The Knitting Factory. The friendly boy at the Knitting Factory box office gladly sells me three tickets. When he hands them to me I realize that I have just purchased tickets # 1, 2, and 3. I decide then to give ticket #1 to Hilda for her diligence as the #1 Fall fan and a memento for posterity. How dare ticketweb refuse to sell tickets at 5:01pm when they were supposed to go on sale at 5:00pm! We sure showed THEM who’s boss.

On the night of the show, it turned out Ron cannot go because our friends needed him to watch their dogs while they drove 500 miles out of town to adopt a baby. No matter, my friend (and bandmate) Bunny wants to go, so I transfer Ron’s ticket to her.

On the night of the show, everyone’s excited. I encounter other Fall fans there like Dennis & Lois, Mykel Board, and Misos. Shockingly, I find out later my friend Frank was there, (he is someone I recommended the Fall to.) I never saw Frank there at all. But then again, I also searched in vain for Snarfguy, trying to locate his self-identifying baseball cap. No such luck. The place was plenty crowded. How could this be so for a show with so little advance advertising? Yet here it is…inexplicably full!


For what seems like forever we wait outside the main space. Finally a little after midnight they allow us to enter. Then for another hour we wait for The Fall to hit the stage. A gentlemen sort of pushed his way to the front, shouting loudly that he NEEDED to be in front because the Fall were recording at HIS recording studio. He is an interesting looking African-American, with a funny fedora hat. I have always been pleased to see black people at Fall shows because inexplicably, so few blacks seem to be into the band, even though I always thought the Fall had the sort of groove that people aware of black-musical history could get into. A girl quickly claims to him that she knows his recording studio. He challenged her. “Oh yeah, where is it?” She seemed dumfounded by this question. She replies “It’s around.” He answers back, “Yeah, its’ right around the corner.” I do not know what to make of this exchange. Is someone lying here? Are both of them lying?

The mighty Fall begin their set…

Bo Doodak
Boxtosis

? Then they perform a new song I do not recognize. It has a mid-tempo rhythm that goes like this. 1-2-3-4-5 (pause) 1-2-3-4-5 (pause) 1-2-3-4-5 (pause) 1-2-3-4-5 (pause)

Clasp hands
Wrong Place, Right Time,
I Can Hear The Grass Grow
Mountain Energi
What About Us? (When this song ends, Mark waves his hand and the drummer in a rolling motion. Apparently he wanted to do an extended version. The song starts again and continues on for a few more minutes)
Sparta F.C.

? Another unknown new song. At first I think it sounds like reggae. Then I think it resembles something like carousel/carnival music blended with reggae. Then I think it’s more like German/Continental ‘Oom-Pa-Pa’ music. Finally I decide it’s a combination of all these. Leave to The Fall to confound me yet again. There’s some quick, nifty, chord changes for the guitar on this one. I watch Ben grin ever-so-slightly with satisfaction whenever the tricky part comes up, because he NAILS it every time. God, How I love him.)

Mr. Pharm.
Blindness

Everyone walks offstage. People call for an encore, and it doesn’t take much for them to come out again. They resume.

White Lightning.
Everybody leaves again. Misos turned to me and said. “They left the stage only to come back for an encore that lasted 4 minutes.” This time the audience has to work HARDER for the band to come out again. After a prolonged bout of stomping and clapping, the mighty FALL emerge once more.

Big New Prinz. – This one really gets everybody going. Mark has done his usual microphone switcheroo game, and at first when he emerged he couldn’t find one to sing into for they all had been strewn to various obscure locations around the stage. He finally digs one out of the Bass drum where he himself had haphazardly tossed it during one of the previous numbers. He continues his microphone hunt and finds one to give to Ben, indicating to him that he wants him to sing lead. Ben is hesitant at first but soon gets into it. Mark then clumsily chucks his microphone into the audience. Many of the people in the front seem perplexed and amused by this action, as if they do not know what this mike-drop is supposed to indicate. But soon, a die-hard Fall boy knows what to do. He looked really young, but he was in on it. He shouts the all of lyrics, paying special attention to the “AH” in “appreciated.” The boy’s pronunciation and timing are uniquely his own, but completely in sync with the band. The Fall look at him as if pleased with his performance. He could be an impressive lead singer for a band himself if he so chose. Maybe he already is for all I know. Mark E. Smith, knowing the song was in good hands, departed from the stage. The song ended a short while afterwards.

After the show I wanted to introduce Mykel Board to Ben, in case he wished to speak with Mark E. Smith. Mark was a fan of the records Mykel put out on his Seidboard International Record Label. Mark was also a fan of Mykel’s band, ART-The Only Band In The World. Another member of ART is with Mykel, and she mentioned to me that she would like to meet Mark too. I don’t know Mark E. Smith, but have been friendly with Ben ever since 2001, when I first shook his hand. When I found Ben I asked; “Do you remember me?” He replied, “Of course I do, yes!” Ben asked me where Ron was. I said, “Our friends are adopting a baby, and he had to watch their dogs.” Ben replied: “I’ve heard a lot of excuses for missing a show, but that’s actually a good one!” When I ask if is possible for the ex-members of ART to meet Mark E. Smith, Ben looked a little skeptical, and said he wasn’t sure because Mark was in the back room. I got the impression perhaps Mark doesn’t enjoy presenting himself to the throngs of audience after a gig. Mykel said, “That’s okay, we don’t need to play the role of fans tonight.”
I wanted to say… “But Mykel, Mark E. Smith is YOUR fan, you should meet him because he is a fan of SO FEW.” But I hold my tongue. As much as I’d like to witness two of my secret heroes meet each other, some things cannot be forced.

As I got ready to leave, I hugged Ben and thanked him for another great show. He said to me “See you next time. It should be soon!”

On the subway train ride home I asked Bunny how she liked the show, this being her first. I was pleased to know she really enjoyed it a lot. She felt Mark’s mike level could have been louder. She was especially impressed by the drumming which she said was “excellent.” Since she is a bass player, I asked what she thought of Steve. She answered that he was good, but sometimes she couldn’t hear him well. I agreed that his bass was a little less distinct than it could have been , and tell her that when I saw them at North Six in Brooklyn, that was the show I really saw Steve SHINE. I believe he is a terrific bass player, and his playing on songs like What About Us and Blindness are stunning. If I had one complaint, it might be that the sound wasn’t as clear as it sometimes has been at the Knitting Factory. The keyboards seemed unusually loud too. I noticed for the first time that whatever sort of keyboard Eleni has, it cannot play chords. It seems to be an old-time synth that can only play one note at a time. That is of course, fine my me, because I love those old-time synths, but I do feel that when Mark does his “random mash” on the keyboard, it is more effective if the instrument can play more than one note at a time. Mark’s “random mash” (when he randomly mashes his hands on a keyboard) brings an atonal noise quality to the sound. A keyboard that only plays one note at a time, just doesn’t bring to it the same level of dissonance.

I went home and could not sleep, I was too excited. I had to watch the BBC Documentary that Hilda gave to me. When I finally FALL asleep at 4 am I dream of the FALL.

Hi, I'm a new member here. My name is Matt and I live in New York.

Thanks for the review, anonyarena. Of course, it really makes me wish that I would've gone, but I just couldn't do a midnight show on a weeknight since I have to work today. :-(

I did see the in-store at Virgin back in October, though I couldn't make the North Six show because of a prior commitment and I didn't know about the show in Bushwick the next night until after it happened. :-(

Nevertheless, I'm hoping that they come back here when the new album comes out in the summer.

Anyway, I found your post interesting because I haven't seen Mykel Board since the early '90s at ABC-NO-RIO and I didn't know that he was a Fall fan. I used to read his columns in Maximum Rock and Roll all the time. What's he up to these days? Oh and I always thought his old band was named Artless. I have one of their songs on a tape somewhere. It's called "Crassdriver". Pretty funny stuff.

Matt

np: This Nation's Saving Grace

Cheers provanbill and anonyarena - great reviews

Yup - cheers for the fine reviews .
So, what was it? 2˝ new songs?

Hi Matt,

Mykel still writes for MRR and yes he also had a band called Artless, which was really his longest running and most well known band. [B]Artless [/B]was an offshoot of his first-ever band Art.

He's doing well. He's the same old Mykel.

Even though I didn't go to sleep till 4am I still made it to work on time! I'll now pat myself on the back here.

To: Dr. Sprtsch....Not sure where you get the half from. But yes two songs

Anonyarena pretty much has it covered.

I'll just add that I was very disappointed with seeing pretty much the same set list again. Sure, Smith's behavior onstage is interesting to a point, but for fuck's sake they've been touring the same material for two years now. I don't want to sound like a curmudgeon, but it used to be you'd get an entirely new set every tour.

And they've just recorded a new album? And all we get is a sound-alike and a throw-away reggae number? I'm sorry, that's just ridiculous.

Oh well...

EDIT: I used to know Mykal Board as well, but I can't remember how or why at the moment. This would have been around twenty years ago.

yeah, went a bit too fast there and thought the second new one was some kind of blend of two songs....

He did this in Sheffield, in december ..Spencer was drenched in sweat at the end of green-eyed loco man, and reaching for a towel, when mes turned and did that rolling thing, wanting to keep it going <--spencer got back in and they bash out another couple of choruses
That was really good; and that possessed version of 'open the box' with mr James
Anyone got a recording of it?

Just wanted to add something about this bit..

Quote: It appears that the band played only two new songs, which is a little surprising since they'd just wrapped recording for the next album (due out June 28 on Narnack).


Yes... but besides the two as of yet unknown songs, they played 5 others... Bo Doodak, Clasp Hands, What About Us, Grass Grow, and Blindness...all of which I certainly suspect will be on the new album. So really that's like seven new songs they played, (and six older.)

While it's true, 5 out of the 7 are songs have been played live, been in Peel session, or appeared in a demo or live form on Interum,....it's also true to say they're still what we'd have to classify as 'new songs' especially because they've never-ever appeared in their final studio recorded versions. ANd they WON'T until the new album is released in June.

There are lots of people who only buy the official studio albums, who also weren't at the October gigs. They wouldn't know any of those 7 new songs. Ya know what I mean?

SPECIAL APOLOGY TO EVERYBODY: I'm sorry I couldn't get a set list to tell you the titles of the two unknown songs.

I watched helplessly as Eleni snatched it up and gave it to her friend before I could seize it. I should've asked Ben what the titles of the new ones were, but I forgot to.

Sorry everybody.

Thanks for a fab review!

You have a point, Tony -- but I had hoped for more than two *brand* new songs. The set hasn't changed substantially from the last year's UK and German gigs.

I've asked Ben what the two new songs are; should hear back from him in the next few days.

Stefan

Don't sweat it anonyarena. I expect we'll find out in short order. We just won't have the glory of announcing it.

Ello ello... new member posting. I attended last night's Fall gig, and for my first show of theirs, I was damn impressed. I had heard plenty of rumors as to what to expect- fiddling with knobs, double microphones, and other assorted quirkiness, and I was pleased to see that they were all true.

My one complaint ((aside from the poor venue organization)) was the asshat who decided to push his way up front and then started jumping around furiously, annoying everyone in the vacinity. Let's just say I punched him square in the chest and he stopped.

I've got some pictures from the show that friend took, if anyone would care to see:

clicky click

in the last one, that's me in the eyeliner screaming towards the mic... I helped that fine young gentleman sing Big New Prinz from time to time... Fun fun fun!

As far as talking to the band goes, I got to talk shop with Ben for a little while, but didn't get to meet anyone else. He's a really nice guy, easy to talk to.

Anyway, enjoy the photos...

good reviews, interesting, informative
thanks a lot to the providers

Were the new songs any good?

Is that Sean from Fallnet singing Big New Prinz?

Thanx for the fotos, ethereal dawn. We must have been standing right next to each other.

great photies ethereal dawn!

love the one where mark & eleni are both clapping.... and the usual chin-thrust-forward-MES-gurn always raises a smile!

btw - welcome to the board

as I posted in that picture's comment, it's a rather 'cute' photo for them... if one didn't know their music, one might assume they're singing kids songs!

Yes, it was quite a quick 1st encore, quick show altogether:

00.54am band came onstage
01.44am end of set, band walk off stage
01.45am 1st encore (White Lightning)
01.48am end of encore, band walk off stage
01.49am 2nd encore (Big New Prinz)
01.57am final walk off

Tidbits:

• MES began singing Big New Prinz without a mic
• During Big New Prinz MES pushed the mic stand towards Ben, who was hesitant about singing. Then MES came back and kind of motioned for Ben to sing but then he (MES, that is) went to the mic so they kinda ended up doing 2-3 seconds worth of singing together on one mic. Then MES walked back but you could see that Ben had blushed, not being sure whether MES wanted him to sing or not...
• I can't remember at which song: MES leaves the stage, and comes back bringing a music sheet stand (most likely the venue's) which on the back says "Chamber Music Haverford College"

M.