Katy

Many many years ago in the depth of the Reagan years I worked briefly with a punk rock chick named Katy. We worked at a sandwich shop and would play homemade mix tapes for our own amusement and the consternation of the customers. On one of her tapes she put a song called "Johnny's Got a Problem" that I took a fancy to. So I bought the album.

 

Horse Bites Dog Cries (1985)

 

I remember Katy as a very sweet girl. One time former television movie critic and gossip columnist Rex Reed came into the restaurant and yelled at her and made her cry.
Rex Reed is a dick.

Eventually, Katy went to too many free vegetarian meals as a poor punk rocker and ended up quitting and becoming a Hari Krshna. After that I never ran into her again.
I don't listen to this record very often, but when I do I wonder whatever happened to her. 

I hope it all worked out for the better.

 

 

 

*Also of note is that the end of Side One has a backwards bit. I tacked the track going forwards at the end of the file here for your enjoyment and erudition. Unfortunately it's not a satanic call for the blood of the newly born, but just some silliness from the band. Apply with caution anyway.

The X in Xmas is a substitute cross for Christ...

So apparently it's Christmas. I'll be working. It's Ok, I get paid double for it.

But what did I get you for this holiday?

A post that isn't even remotely related to the Fall, that's what.
You're welcome.

Kevin Dunn & the Regiment of Women (1981)

So during that whole period of time I was spamming my own crap b(l)og with posts by Mark E and the not even slightly Funky Bunch, I sought to utilize that time to try and catch up the digitizing of 12" vinyl to where I'd left off with the 7". So you have a number of Lp rarities to look forward to in the coming months. Lucky you.

This is one of them and perhaps the best thing I didn't realize I had. I'd picked it up a while ago and stuck it in the pile and kind of forgot about it. It sat there languishing for a few months until I got the hankering to hit the Lp stack and get caught up and realized that I'd been unwittingly depriving myself of this gem this whole time. How could I have been so foolish.

The gist of  it is that this is a solo Lp by one of the members of the Fans, a then popular Athens, Georgia band that was part of the scene that gave the rest of us the B-52's and REM. It's fabulous New Wave synth pop. But not the hot pink pants and wraparound sunglasses kind that wants to dance. It's a thinking man's synth pop. You can dance to it, but there's something more that meets the ear going on. It's the good good stuff that I'm baffled I hadn't been exposed to earlier in my life.

So here you go. I especially like this one. Learn from my mistakes and listen to this before it's too late. Life is too short not to.

Entrances uncovered

Here is a street sign you never saw for the final nail in the coffin of Autumn courtesy Winter.

So I was digging around looking for a different thing and came across this little Fall promotional gem again to put the proverbial cap on this extended exercise in self indulgence and the excess of being a fanboy. It's pretty rare, I suppose, all things considered. But still only likely to set you back ten bucks on Discogs.

 Selections from 'The Infotainment Scan' plus Crash Course '84-'92 (1992)

It's a promo disc of various tracks by the Fall from releases going back some seven or so years and chosen in a seemingly dart board fashion. These were somebody's favorites and certainly not the obvious choices that anybody actually avidly familiar with the  Fall's output might choose, but there you  have it. Decisions were made. And somebody thought them appropriate to attempt to generate some measure of excitement for "Infotainment Scan" which was in itself and to my mind not a particularly exciting Fall long player to begin with.

What makes it worth the digging that I did to score this gem is that there's an otherwise unavailable live recording of ""Rowche Rumble" as performed by the 1984 version of the band.

Perhaps you were there.

I'm pretty sure that this is the only place that's ever been heard. This show didn't show up in the dodgy series of live Fall releases. God knows how deep that well goes. (I suspect that the true number of existent live Fall recordings could rival the Grateful Dead without being a quarter so tedious.)


Life changing? Probably not. But not everybody's heard it or ever will. So it's got that going for  it

It's the penultimate post of Autumn.

Backdrop (1994)

Originating as a bootleg in 1994 this was a fucking wet dream for me as it was a compilation of a lot of those previously uncollected and unknown to me appearances by the Fall on odd records scattered across many years. Some of these things I still have yet to find or purchase, but thanks to Discogs are only a few mouseclicks from my possession should the mood strike me rather than having to spend years combing record bins in a search for an ever elusive copy.

I like living in the 21st Century.

Some stuff on here I've already posted because I had it. Other stuff not so. It's worth your time and an excellent capper on this silly bullshit that I've been foisting upon the world for the last three months.

Prepare yourself for actual Winter as set forth in the calendar

And take your fleecy jumper you won't need it anymore

So here too is where a couple of missing items that haven't exactly been burning a hole in my brain to fill, but are added to  my Discogs wantlist now, should go but aren't.

Someday, maybe....

Theme from Sparta F.C. (2004)

 A Football anthem for the ages. Somebody needs to start an actual Sparta F.C. just to use this song.

From the best Fall album of the 21st Century, so far. (the US version of "The Real New Fall Album (Formally 'Country on the Click', which is a superior remix of the UK version which in itself was a rerecording of the original lp "Country on the Click" which was scrapped for sucking.)

This also had a video file on it. You can watch it on Youtube. I don't feel like doing anymore uploading shit tonight.

How many of you are stable?

Rude All the Time (2001)

Originally released as a very limited 7" in 2001. Around the time of "Are You Missing Winner?" which was a pretty passable Fall release. (though not nearly as good as 2003's "The Real New Fall LP Formerly 'Country On The Click'" which is a stone cold Fall classic

This is the also limited Cd rerelease with a couple of extra tracks.

According to Discogs they are thus:

1	Distilled Mug Art (Mix 15)
2	"I Wake Up In The City" (Mix 5)
3	Where's The Fuckin Taxi? Cunt (Mix 17)
4	My Ex Classmates Kids (Mix 4)

If you smile you are a creep

Yeah, I know. It's not a compilation. 0 fucks to be had.

Touch Sensitive (1999)

The throbbing single from "Marshall  Suite" that failed to crack the Top 100 on the UK Charts (104) (though the lp itself made it to 59) I don't know, it's a pretty cracking song. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

If you’re dead so am I

It's 1999 and the final Fall lp of the 20th Century, "Marshall Suite"

F'Oldin' Money - blue (1999)

F'Oldin' Money - red (1999)

With the 20th Century drawing to a weary close and the Fall limping along with a completely different band for pretty much every release since 1995, MES prepared for the release of "Marshall Suite" with a pair of Cdeps based around (wait for it...) a cover of a song originally recorded by Tommy Blake for Sun Records in 1959. 

The red one would also include a bonus cover of "This Perfect Day" originally by Australian band, the Saints.

Also included were different mixes of "Marshall Suite" tracks including a "New Mix" of "Tom Ragazzi", a track that otherwise was only included in the original double lp vinyl version of the album (which is why I got it.) and which for some reason I can't quite fathom sellers on Discogs seem to feel is worth $200 or so. This one even got the triple disc reissue treatment in 2011.

I'm going to have to go back and listen to this one again a few times now... 

Ok, whatever.

Levitate bonus disc (1997)

Here it is anyway. I feel beneficent today.

The fifty percent interest Ran out today In Bolton

So there's a big jump in years here.
But there really wasn't much in terms of singles or Eps that were worth the time.
There was a 10" of three songs that were all on "Middle Class Revolt"
(a case could be made for 1996 single "The Chiselers" which was mixed into the much longer "Interlude/Chilinism" on Light User Syndrome, but I'm going to hold that in reserve should I need an extra post.)

Oh and in 1995 Mark E. shitcanned long time guitar player Craig Scanlon and while onstage in NYC in 1998 got into an onstage fist fight with equally long suffering drummer Karl Burns causing him, long standing bassist Steve Hanley  and guitarist Tommy Crooks to simultaneously quit and go home to London leaving MES to spend the night in jail after he got into an altercation with keyboard player Julia Nagle post-show.

Thanks to the wonders of the interwebs you can witness the event in question for yourself Live at Brownies, NYC, April 7, 1998 on the Youtubes. (Good times start around the 24 minute mark if you want to get to the incident in question.) In what speaks to the professionalism of the band, the still manage to come back on stage and seethe their way through the rest of the set before running out of fucks and leaving. Good on them.

So that leads us all the way up a few years to the very ass end of the 20th Century and 1998 with the forthcoming "Levitate"lp.

Masquerade cd one (1998)

Masquerade cd two (1998)

Here's the extra songs that will eventually make their way onto the Deluxe double disc reissue of "Levitate" should there ever be one.

 There may be, for some reason somebody thought enough of "Marshall Suite" to do one. (which boggles my mind a bit as I find it a rather weak Fall record).

 "Levitate" is certainly one of the better late 90's- early 00's Fall records so there is that.

Initial copies of "Levitate" also came with a bonus disc with some really odd things like an older live recording of a previously unreleased song called "Pilsner Trails" (ca. 1982) and yet another fucking Christmas fucking song.

If somebody asks nice, maybe I'll post that too.

(But nobody does, so I won't lose any sleep over it).

Stop eating all that chocolate Eat salad instead

Why are People Grudgeful? (1993)

Very strange sentiment from Mark E. who is not exactly widely known to be the forgive and forget type when it comes to people who he has feuded with. 

For a while the Fall were known to perform a song "Hey Marc Riley" after the former guitar player with whom he had a long standing mutual dislike. Each wrote nasty songs about the other with subsequent bands.

In 2007 the Fall released an album titled "Reformation Post TLC" in which the TLC stood for "traitors, liars and cunts..." in reference to the previous year's Fall band which had had enough of Mark E Smith's antics and quit mid-tour.

Maybe he was feeling a twinge or two at the time he wrote that (or at least trying hard to get the Fall a gig or two at some Rave Festival with Happy Mondays.)

Anyway. This little Ep (containing 0 covers!?) was released around the time of "Infotainment Scan" which I can honestly say is one of my least favorite Fall albums.

But I'm city born and bred. Too many car-fumes in my head

 Behind the Counter vol 1 (1993)

Behind the Counter vol 2 (1993)

A pair of Eps in anticipation of the upcoming "Middle Class Revolt" with a very stripped down Fall.

Volume One initially came in a double cd jewel case already set up so you would be able to easily slide in the second Volume when it came out a few weeks later. 

It may surprise you but there was a cover on it.

 "War" originally recorded by the avant-rock political group Henry Cow 

Plus you get another pleasant Fall Holiday Classic in "Happy Holiday" in what was becoming an incongruous and strange habit for someone so decidedly curmudgeonly as MES, but perhaps he was hoping to simply cash in on the season and make a bit of F'Oldin' Money or maybe he just loved Christmas and wanted to show it.

I feel it shouting at him from the flotarium and the cauldron or lectern of its love, baby

Volume 4 (1992)

Volume was a brief foray into an attempt to meld a Cd and and a Magazine. It would last 12 issues in this mixed format before becoming more or less an outlet for techno. This is the only issue I ever purchased. I wonder if you can figure out why.
Go ahead. I'll wait.

You guessed it, there's an exclusive Fall track on it called "Arid Al's Dream"
(The otherwise unavailable Pavement tune was just fucking gravy at the time.)

Otherwise it's a neat 1992 time capsule of the sounds bubbling under the surface of the mainstream which had finally discovered punk rock.

I'm a dippy dippy dippy dippy dooby man

Free Range (1992)

Here's that "Free Range" song again. Well, at least it's not another cover.

In "Everything Hurtz" he says:

"I got the disease tinnitus 
I'm speakin' like I've got Tourrette's
And everything hurts "

I didn't understand it at the time being still a relatively young buck, but damn I fully relate to it now another almost quarter century later.

 Everything does hurt.