Fall!

Glyph

Glyph is worse than some and better than others. He believes that life is just one damned thing after another, that only pop music can save us now, and that mercy is the mark of a great man (but he's just all right). Nothing he writes here should be taken as an indication that he knows anything about anything.

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19 Responses

  1. Saul Degraw says:

    Elves is pretty much a dead ringer for I Wanna Be Your DogReport

    • Glyph in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I’m honestly shocked they even claimed otherwise; not just because the resemblance is unmistakable, but because for punks of that age and scene to be unfamiliar with one of Iggy’s best-known songs seems….improbable in the extreme.

      Either they were messing around with the interviewer, or else the proper way to look at the Fall is weirdly akin to hip-hop – they “sample” what they want, as a bed for Smith to rant over.Report

  2. aaron david says:

    I always confuse the Fall with the Alarm. Not sure why…

    As always, good post @glyphReport

  3. dhex says:

    i’ve never been able to get past his voice. he sounds like the dude from the b52s.

    this may well be a personal failing on my part.Report

    • Glyph in reply to dhex says:

      Hmmm…Black Francis…Fred Schneider…Mark E Smith….There’s a common thread here, I think you just have an aversion to possibly-insane hectoring ranters.

      As a native New Yorker, this may be inevitable.Report

      • dhex in reply to Glyph says:

        think of it as musical colorblindness. there’s stuff going on here with all of these people – presumably – but i simply cannot hear it.Report

  4. greginak says:

    Victoria was always my favorite Fall song.

    FWIW when they hired a guy from The North to play Dr Who people it was a real thing to people. It was different. And as Capaldi said in the last Dr W season, every planet has a North.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to greginak says:

      I can’t see that their cover adds anything to the original.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        @greginak – well, for obvious reasons, it’s one of their least Fall-like songs.

        @mike-schilling – see above, and I DID say ‘surprisingly-faithful’. I would have expected the Fall to take a sledgehammer to it, not play it straight.Report

    • Glyph in reply to greginak says:

      @greginak RE: “The North” obviously GRRM plays with this concept/stereotype in GoT as well.

      There’s probably a parallel you could make between Detroit and Manchester – cold industrial centers that have seen grim periods of economic devastation, and (not coincidentally) punch way above their weight classes when it comes to musical output.Report

  5. Chris says:

    Always loved them.

    Smith will take a phrase that makes no sense on its face, and through repetition and/or rearrangement of its phonemes, syllables, or concepts, destabilize the listener’s consciousness, in hopes of achieving something like insight or epiphany (or, perhaps just as frequently, make them feel like they are going crazy).

    Awesome.Report

    • Chris in reply to Chris says:

      Also, that first video is… I want to watch the original now.Report

    • Glyph in reply to Chris says:

      For me they were an acquired taste, and it took me a long time to “get” them to even the degree I do. And I certainly don’t want to listen to them all the time.

      But, there are times when simply nothing else will do, and I will listen to nothing but Fall song after Fall song for an entire day, and that…DOES something to your thought processes.Report

      • Chris in reply to Glyph says:

        It was exactly the sort of music I dug in the mid-90s (which was probably when I first listened to them), probably because it was an acquired taste. I mean, it was the 90s, and I was listening to a lot of stuff that was heavily influenced by them as well, probably because that stuff was an acquired taste as well.Report

  6. Jaybird says:

    Apropos of nothing more than this being a music thread, I just finished listening to some Iron Maiden (hellz yeah) and the suggested music for after that included Europe and Guns and Roses (and not something like Coma or Locomotive or something awesome but November Rain).

    Has it come to that?Report

    • Glyph in reply to Jaybird says:

      Artists played in Five Guys tonight:

      Hooters – “And We Danced”
      Hole – “Malibu”
      Donovan – “Season of the Witch”
      Gerry Rafferty – “Baker Street”
      Big Star – “September Gurls”
      Men At Work – “Be Good Johnny”

      It was electic.

      Also, is anyone else just drowning in new music? I have more things bookmarked to check out, or queued up, or ripped but barely played, than I know what to do with. 2015 is shaping up to be solid.Report