Mick Middles book, 'The Fall'

With a flurry of book about The Fall and vocalist Smith due for release in the near future, we have three exerpts from the newly added epilogue to Mick Middles book here which looks like a promising read. It is typical of Micks usual attention to detail.

A video of Powderkeg from 1996 with The Fall

A segment from a Von Sudenfod interview, posted on the taz.de site in June 2007, relating to album 'Levitate', released in Feb 1998

.... Were this a Fall record, it should have been released in 1997, just after the record 'Levitate', which was mainly influenced by keyboard player Julia Nagle. 'Levitate' was more electronic, it deeply irritated the more 'rockish' - the majority - of fans of The Fall.
The Fall, who Godlike John Peel in his unlimited admiration for Mark E Smith always called 'the Mighty Fall', always recorded tracks more than songs. Even on their first record 'Live at the Witch Trials' (1979) it was obvious that this band was influenced as much by krautrock and experimental American rock as by punk. But it stayed rock. Now 'Levitate' was one of the most exciting records in The Fall's history just because Smith gave his keyboarder free reign.
Some of those songs even name her as composer, though all others also name him. Had the band returned to rock after this album, and had they not released -- after several lineup changes -- the fairly miserable "Are You Are Missing Winner" in 2001, where the band nearly got lost to pigrock, "Tromatic Reflexxions" could possibly have been a Fall album. But now - again with several changes of the line-up - The Fall recreated themselves as an almost stoic super rock group and 'Von Sudenfed' seems to be the electronic job of Mark E. Smith. ...

..and part of an interview, with Smith from The Wire magazine in 1998,
also relating to the album 'Levitate'

.... TH: Even though Levitate featured the old version of The Fall, it didn't sound like a record by that group. It feels like The Light User Syndrome was actually the last record by the old Fall.

MS: I looked on Levitate as a new start; that was part of the disagreement.
I think the group understood what was going on. They were even talking about going on strike if we used a DAT player. [Exasperated] You're The Fall, for Christ's sake. It's amazing how many times I've had to put up with that kind of crap. You think you're past all that, fellas with beer bellies turning everything you do into a bloody Sex Pistols track... (snip)

TH: I thought that stopped happening ages back. Levitate had some strange mixes on it.

MS: A lot of that was Julia [Nagle]; she's got a very strange attitude towards music. She used to be in What Noise and all those weird groups. I didn't think much of them at the time, but they've got a different attitude altogether, in a way the opposite of The Fall.

TH: There weren't many words on Levitate. The texts felt very pared down. Was that deliberate?

MS: Yeah, very, and that was what started the rows with the group as well. I was doing that on stage, walking off. I was doing it deliberately. .....

3-5-08

There is a new blog doing some well presented 'bootlegs' of material by The Fall. We have given permission for a cassette tape used during the composition of 'The Unutterable' album, to be made available for download.
Here is a link to the blog: Drambuie Gas Boiler,
which is related to The Fall Live project.