The crux pretty grasped, yet mostly misunderstood

There's a Ghost in my House (1987)

Another day, another kind of improbable cover by the Fall. In this case it's a Holland/Dozier/Holland tune originally recorded by R Dean Taylor on Motown. (Yeah, the Fall do Motown.) But it makes sense in that the song was apparently quite popular in the Northern Soul scene. It is a pretty damn good song and this also somehow improbably broke the Top 50 in the UK for the Fall.

The 7" version, well some of them anyway, featured a nice and nightmarish holographic picture on the front that was sure to confuse the unwary consumer as much as the more typical Fall material that graced the rest of the vinyl for this release.

I mean, the B-side for the single is "Haf Found Bormann" about finding Hitler's personal secretary in South  America which was unlikely to endear them to the unwashed masses who probably never found much reason to flip this record after a single spin. I'm sure there were plenty of "What the fuck is this shit" said in 1987 for the uninitiated.

 "Sleep Debt Snatches" a little number that starts with a jaunty little riff and Mark E. Smith rap about the sleep deprivation before going into a five minute long Fall avant-dub thing. Yeah, purchasers of the 12" version were also not spared.

The 12" also has "Mark'll Sink Us" which is a personal favorite. This one seems to be more or less MES making note of his own propensity for sabotaging the band. Especially noteworthy as this record was the their first taste of the next level of what passes for success.

However. I like all this stuff. But I'm one of those people.