Rotterdam gdmw, 30th September 2005

just back from rotterdam /

strange festival, gdmw (geen daden maar woorden/no deeds but words), kind of festival focusing on literature and poetry, so most of performances were writers and poets (mostly dutch and flemish) reading from their work. Some concerts inbetween.

sole : with band jaime (guitar) and jose (drums) - both from barcelona, (where sole stayed last 2 years) joining tim on stage, mostly difficult stuff from his latest live from rome album, at the end plutonium and selling live water from the selling live water cd. stage very big (too big), not at all an hiphop atmosphere, crowd not into it, i liked it but not more than that, previous four times i saw sole, 10x better

fall setlist :

pacifying joint/what about us/spartak/mountain/wrong place..grass grow/ride away/box(stopped)/assume/box/midnight aspen/clasp hands/blindness/touch/bo demmick//pharmacist/white lightnink(short without mark).

good show, not superb, sound not ok, stage too big, no tight band, mark fiddling knobs, no good evening, superb 5 microphones labyrint tie up, not perfect setting (kind of 'we are into literature crowd'), about 600 people, mostly into it, but sound in front of stage no good (only guitar, hardly drums).
before you ask : no t shirts/cds/merchandise, nevertheless saw someone with 'us cargo' FHR t-shirt.
highlights were grass grow, ride away (very good) and touch (normally don't like this one).
pharmacist was kind of remodeled, but it didn't work.
mes didn't look too good, band looked concentrated but not too sharp, kind of playing with breaks on.
go and see them, ride away is fantastic.

Midnight Aspen seems to be the only song given a new outing.

Mark didn't look too well: doesn't augur too well...put it down to Dutch excesses or something...

I'm worried already

He seemed alright to me - in high spirits even when they left - we bumped into them all as they were packing the van, some trouble getting Ben in
and he was giving very specific instructions!
The gig was very strange, yes; Ben & Steve have swopped places.

Just when you thought they'd dropped Mr Pharmacist..

Actually sounds like a good setlist, apart from the encore.

Sounds fine to me - plenty of new material to the fore... The band'll tighten up as they play more gigs - it takes most bands a few gigs to get going, I reckon...

It actually says "Bo Derek" (not demmick) on the setlist. (At least on the copy I stole.)

I don't remember them playing mr. pharmacist. Must have been an extremely short version...

I'm just glad F-Oldin' Money finally got retired a while back. That long outstayed its welcome.

I've been through an odyssey with Pharmacist - I first heard them do it at a gig in 2001, and it hadn't been in setlists for years at that point. I was amazed when they did Damo Suzuki at the same gig - that was still back in the days when we only got 1 "oldie" per gig. But since then Pharmacist has become such a boring fixture... oh, wait a minute, it is a stomping good song to crank an audience up with. If they ever stopped doing it it would only get replaced with Mod Mock Goth. Bah. Dunno.

Set lists looking good, lookin forward to BO D and pacifying joint! Hope they drag Blindness out for ten minutes. Mr Trafford could start it off while the que forms outside, with it finally kicking in after an hour. Didnt stone roses used to do this with wanna be adored?

Jim

Pharmacist and White Lightning, with a new album about to hit the streets. Jesus H ###### christ. MES used to live on the joy of new material. How long will he play this ####. These are below average cover versions, for gods sake, and survive on lazy live setlists for decades. Hows about The Classical or summat, if he wants to be 'retro'.

Answers opn a bleedin postcard.....

Ini made some pics at the Rotterdam NDMW festival that can be seen on www.kream.tk
Yes she bought herself a new digi camera and Kream took his sony digital handycam!!

It has to be a part of a grander scheme
It's obvious that no one wants to hear either of those two songs played live.
So there's some reason for it. Like a test of the audiences patience or willingness to submit to a certain amount of torment.

It has to be a part of a grander scheme
It's obvious that no one wants to hear either of those two songs played live.
So there's some reason for it. Like a test of the audiences patience or willingness to submit to a certain amount of torment.

Ja Krischicago - that's so true...

If The Fall kept doing (i.e., ruining) "classics" like Classical or even Totally Wired or [fillintheblank] we'd all hate them for it.

Instaed, how about minimize the harm done to relatively mindless stompers like Pharmacist, etc. if the band is going to

....please the casual Fall fan who might only know Phrmacist anyway
...."coast" once in awhile - which I'd imagine a band touring on mostly all new original material for 25 yrs is going to have to do at SOME TIME or another.
....piss off the old guard while secretly doing them a favor.

It's a brilliant strategy, always was.

I have no problem with either. I've liked Lightning since it came out, and I really like the way the band race through it at present with Elena's 'White Lightning' shouts and groovey keyboards. The reaction to the song at Mcr was very positive - everyone around me was yelling White Lightning at the appropriate places.

Pharmacist admittedly will never sound that good with just one guitarist, but its clearly a Smith fave, and who are we to be so resentful of him playing a song he clearly enjoys ?

I don't remember them playing mr. pharmacist. Must have been an extremely short version...

me neither - the was song was higgle-dy-piggle-dy - as I now realise, though at the time I couldn't recognise it. Was trying to remember how 'scareball' goes, thinking it was that.

Mark merged the songs together - I remember - starting to sing the lyrics of white lightnin' over the stomp of the monks, so a very slow, alternate version, you can imagine.
Possibly to be remembered as Brown Lightnin'
.a throwaway line about "way back in amsterdam ..they call it 'brown lightnin'!!"

From the red Unutterable shirt and his gyrating French lass

I tried to put a setlist together in me head but I didn't know any of the new songs so it got a bit shaky... I have to say I didn't spot Mr Pharmacist either, and White Lightning was delivered over something I didn't recognise at all near the end.

Taken in the round, weird show, though. We tried to get into the film biopic of Frans Vogel and then the spoken-word peformance by Tom Lanoye but neither of us speaks Dutch and I was struggling with the idea that these were 'support acts' building up to The Fall, coming as they do from another domain altogether. I'd expected a dance/ electronica thing (like, read the info before going, no?) I was never sure we were REALLY in the right place till I saw yr man Pritchard on stage. Strange. All very interesting though, particularly as I had inevitably popped into a coffeeshop for a pacifying joint or two beforehand.

The well-behaved and handsome, literary crowd were spooking me a little though, where were the groups of fans with beers? Where was the merch stand? What was going on? A bunch of drunken English guys were expressing the same sentiments during the Lanoye bit more loudly too, one of whom did a little turn on stage later on, clasping Smith to him like Alexei Sayle does Neil in the 'Cash' episode of the Young Ones.

Anyway, 01.15, everyone was sitting cross-legged listening to Lanoye reminding this author of Jonathan King doing Denis Norden in Matthew Kelly's voice, when a guy appeared onstage to the left and announced it was time to rock - Lanoye made a graceful exit (I think!), the lights went down and the roadies did their bit. The crowd turned right-angles left, cigarettes and the odd doob sparked up and the arts festival felt Fiery Jack's breath as he alighted on the GDMW rooftops.

MarkES looked well ropey I thought, but his voice was in top form. An arresting contrast, at least from what I could see coz the Dutch are a tall lot, I'd quite forgotten.

I gathered the first two must be called Pacifying Joint well I never - and What About Us from the huge choruses, they sounded cool enough.
I don't think Sparta worked well live at all, there seems to be a depth to the song on record (voices, samples?) that can't be reproduced on stage, but Mountain Energei was right enough, though a bit mixed around with (no surprise there then ).
After that I was chuffed at Wrong Place Right Time and wondered if we were gonna get some Dutch tributes off Kurious, but they lost me again with what turned out to be a storming cover (I can hear the grass grow). A highlight , especially as the rest of the set drew on unknown- to- me material.
I've since realised that the song that got me into almost stoner-rock convulsions was the monstrous Blindness: in fact, that was my lasting impression of the gig, the sheer heaviness of the band tonight. Very different from 3 years ago...

I became, unforgivably, bored and distracted during Ride Away and Midnight in Aspen (cheers for the setlists below guys), not songs I liked at all. They were weak and seemed to slow the show right down and I could sense people drifting away as the night pressed on. Touch Sensitive came through well though and Clasp Hands perked things up where required.
The encore was a let-down, with the band jamming away heavily without, then with, then without the man... I still dream of Hanley, Wolstencroft and Scanlon playing Hip Priest tho', innit...

All in all, I really appreciated the hospitality and behaviour of the Dutch festival and public, and the diversity and atmosphere of the event were like nothing I could imagine happening in the UK (or France, where we live). I was nonetheless underwhelmed by just a fraction - I didn't recognize two-thirds of the set (or the band, ahem... need to check FallNet more often), Smith had some tired looking chops on him and was the car safe where we'd left it...? and would any more tracksuited youngsters offer us drugs to transit back through Europe? Yes and yes, though the answer was firmly no (took ages to convince 'em... )

Drove back through the torrential Belgian rain, (driving performed by non-smoking girlfriend, for safety fans) bed at 7. But we saw the Faaalll

Great review, porterhouse- thanks for sharing

You can come again

mmm - nice read, porterhouse
..sounds like we were in the same boat, with little or no dutch to speak of. I was embarrassed to take advantage of the excellent english spoken there, but.. never mind that now
Not just the dutch for that matter, but also the Belgians, Germans ..hello steven, tobias, petra
Got plenty of bemused looks when people realised that I couldn't understand the simplest things, but I loved almost every minute of that festival. Like you say, something like it you can't imagine happening here. It was great walking round the town with The Fall [uk] plastered on every other corner, shop window.

I learnt later that this is taken from Feyenoord's motto which goes the other way round ..no words but deeds. That was me then - with only gestures, expressions and the tone of their voices to appreciate from the performers those nights, but that was just fine by me
In fact, I didn't even realise there was the main hall on the top floor, because I couldn't read the signs! I spent almost the whole first night in the back room downstairs, which would've probably been a better stage for The Fall themselves - still big enough for about 600, close up to the screens to really appreciate the visuals, and a really warm sound in there.
Subconscious must've drawn me upstairs though, just in time for whole reason I was there. It was a real shock to end up in that hall, thinking the gig would be less conventional ..I honestly thought The Fall were going to play in that main foyer, with all the red cushions spread in front of the stage
I wouldn't say the crowd was that cold - lively enough around me - though couldn't help feeling that it was more a night for 'midnight in aspen' and 'mountain enegei' than 'touch sensitive'.
There was that lad who couldn't resist stepping up to hug mes [the stage was literally a foot off the ground] which was funny enough the first time, but sad the next ..he went to sit on the back level, next to spencer's drumkit and mark's jacket that he'd just thrown off. You could tell by the thumb-gestures that mes was irked by then, and he had to physically shunt the guy off the stage, hips out, shoulders back ..all front.
Actually it was quite funny.

Wonderful photos!

Especially this one....

Late message – but some memories,

We arrived from Cologne just in time for the gig and some beers before, at about midnight. My impression of the festival was very rudimentary. We just went in the "zaal", were listening to a dutch speaking literate, got a first impression of the venue and left again to wait another half an hour for the band.
Then, when we finally entered for The Fall, we nearly came too late (met outside a friend from Cambridge), the tape intro played already. It wasn't packed that much, so we where just in time in row five or so when Pacific Joint started. The whole night was something like a cold start. The dutch audience wasn't grooving that much, and for me without any prelude it was hard to get in touch with the show. The first time I heard Pacific Joint, a very good song. But I had the same problem with other new songs and thought it was kind of a turn off. Totally different to the shows in 2004, when it was all in all groovy and rocking. Wouldn't say that the songs are bad – Ride away reminds me of Elbows in triangle, which I like very much, But it didn't work that well in between. It was a strange show, with many contrasts. And maybe it was some kind of a cold start for the band, too. Got the impression that they have to find each other on stage, which will happen during the tour, but not at the first gig.
MES looked in very well form, refreshed somehow. Ben was always in "discussion" with Spen and tried to guide his timing and speed. MES told Ben to turn to the audience. Ben started a song, Sparta or Box, can't remember properly which one, and Spen followed with drums for an other. Steven looked tired, but played very well. And Elenie, standing far away on the other side of the huge stage, played her role with elegance, though I missed her bright smile watching a few guys in the audience shouting her "white lightning" back, what we couldn't perform. So some highs and lows and definitely a show I have never seen before, full of contrasts in speed and somehow not finished. Maybe they need to speed up some songs for a smoother show. As they did with Dr. Bucks 2004 in combination with the songs on "Country". At least you could feel the huge potential of the whole track list. It would be great to see them in a few weeks again. Maybe I make it to England.
After the show we went with two friendly visitors, Mark and Steven, for a beer, met accidentally The Fall and said "Hello", waving to them sitting in the van and shaking hands with Ben, who remebered me visiting a show in Manchester Bierkeller and said that next night at Manchester Academy will be a "very big show" … I could imagine.
We went to bed at seven, and didn't make it for breakfast. Our car was broken the same night. A memorable trip.

Lanoye actually started out as something of a punk poet with noisy performances in the early eighties. At GDMW he ended his performance with a poem from those days: Neon - een elegisch rockgedicht ("Neon - an elegic rock poem"). If John Cooper Clarke can open for the Fall in England, why shouldn't Tom Lanoye do the same in Holland? I thought it was quite appropriate. (Although I can imagine that Lanoye's postpunk credentials weren't obvious for those who aren't familiar with Dutch language or literature. Lanoye can easily be mistaken for a respectable writer nowadays.)

Bartt

Thank you for the info! I didn't mean to be disparaging about Lanoye at all. I suppose too that in some ways it was the ideal opening act for the venue. We should have asked someone what it was about, I suppose! My girlf did ask the lady next to us about Frans Vogel and we had an excellent reply. A man all Rotterdammers know etc. And then he came on stage, too! I could appreciate that. I've seen Frans Vogel even though I don't know who he is!! There's a book in there somewhere, besides...

By the way, I don't think we found the 'kleine zaal' at all! Was it not the foyer area with cushions?

I second what kiespijn was saying about feeling stupid too - I tried to make myself say "spreekt u Engels?" every time but soon I realised that the answer was always in effect, 'Yes, very well.' Mind you, we got lost on the way between coffeeshop and venue and had to ask a guy for directions to Schouwenburg... try saying that when stoned and English. Or not stoned and English... sHrrouvenburhh it sounded like (I have a Dutch language course at home, hmmm...)

Thanks for the welcome in Netherlands and now here too anyway, copy of Fall Heads Roll should be in my local record store tomorrow!

retford's farthest and finest

no, it was at the back, under the stairs ..pretty well hidden.
I'd agree about comparisons to john cooper clarke, in fact a shame he couldn't have made it. I think he lives fairly close too, just the other side of the channel?
There was another record shop that had a couple of his records on vinyl, one of which I would've bought if I hadn't been travelling so light.
Hey Baart - nice to meet you. That was us chatting at the end of the gig
Definitely a memorable trip, though it's given me toothache

Isn't that an old picture of Rex??!!

no, it was at the back, under the stairs ..pretty well hidden.

The best thing about the kleine zaal was that drinking and smoking were alowed. It even had its own bar! Too bad the Fall were playing in that huge no drinking no smoking concrete auditorium type hellhole.

twas nice to meet you.