The boy is like a tape loop

Slates (1981)

This was my entry point to the wonderful and frightening world of the Fall. I picked it up for, I think, two dollars out of the cut-out bin at the Musicsmith at the Hanover Mall as a young man in probably 1982. I had no idea who the Fall were and if I'd like them, but it was a couple of bucks and I was feeling reckless so I bought it and took it home.

I hated it.

The songs didn't really have a straight verse/chorus structure. The music was repetitious and the singer kind of half mumbled and half sang out of tune. It was fucking terrible shit. I couldn't make out half of what the "singer" was on about. I put it aside and never listened to it.

Fast forward a year or so and I'm at college for the first time and living in a dorm room with a terrible child man who fancies himself a film maker (terrible) and writer (ditto) and who does magic. He once kept me awake for several hours doing magic tricks at me while I tried to go to sleep because I kept figuring them out. He was balding at 19 and grew a beard so he'd have a chin. He wore floodwater dungarees that his Mom had bought him at Sears in grade school. He washed his towel twice in the semester I roomed with him, both times when I'd spent a few days wondering what had died in the room and discovered it was his bath towel. 

After a while I took what pleasure I could in torturing him.

He also loved musicals. It was all he listened to. He was more asexual than anything, but he loved him some musical theater. He'd go to the library to hunt down cast recordings for obscure theatricals that even the cast themselves had chosen to forget.

I didn't like musical theater. I was a pretentious punk/new wave kid. It was not a good fit.

So I'd make a point of playing music on my stereo that he would absolutely hate whenever he was in the room in an attempt to drive him out so I could have some peace. He hated this record. I wasn't super fond of it myself, but it was sure to drive him nuts. And it did. Quite frequently.

Then something happened. 

In the midst of repeated playings all the molecules in my brain started rearranging and one day the whole fucking record made perfect sense. I'm pretty sure it was "Prole Art Threat" that finally hooked me. Though "Leave the Capitol" was probably a close second. It's still to this day one of my all time favorite Fall records. 

And here we are thirty odd years later and I'm still a fan.

All thanks to a terrible dorm mate.