I bought my first Fall records in 1980: the Fiery Jack and Elastic Man singles, which I loved and the Totale’s Turn album, which had the effect of putting me off them a bit for a couple of years. It was too raw and odd but thanks to continuing to hear them on Peel, I eventually dipped back in and became a proper fan/lover/connoisseur around the time Brix joined, 83 or so. I stayed with them through the 80s, buying most of the albums and various singles, but wasn’t a completist, up to Extricate. Some tracks brilliant, some just the Fall, MES bending the troops to his will.
Songs I loved from this period include, Fortress-Deer Park, Eat Y’Self Fitter Lay of the Land, Carry Bag Man, Couldn’t Get Ahead, LA , Bremen Nacht, My New House, Cruisers Creek, Shoulder Pads, Big New Prinz, Hit the North, Telephone Thing. But there are loads more from this period of what are, in Fall world, classics. I considered going for Lay of the Land for this, writing a mini essay on rockabilly vs the English Eerie etc. You can find enough Fall nerds and cultural theorists banging on about that if you have a search.
Anyhow, by the 90s it wasn’t so much that my tastes changed but rather that from what I heard of the Fall, they seemed to be in a rut. Their stuff, with a few exceptions didn’t grab in the way it had before. Then, fabulously, after 2000 or so, they came up with a series of absolute fucking belters. Something must have been added to Smith’s speed and extra strength lager: Theme from Sparta FC, Doctor Buck’s Letter, What About Us and this monster.
Apparently the lineage of the bassline on it is that Roots Manuva took it from the Doctor Who theme to use for Witness, the Fall’s rhythm section heard the latter while on the tour bus and tried to recreate it in the studio without telling Mark where it came from, and he added the vocals. There’s an album version on Fall Heads Roll which is very good, a bit cleaner in sound and actually closer to the Witness bass but this Peel session version is the one that virtually all Fall fans know as the definitive one.
Blind Man!