10/03/2008

The Fall - Live recording, photos, PAH!

THE FALL! THE FALL! THE FALL-AH! BOOTLEG! BOOTLEG! BOOTLEG-AH! DOWNLOAD! DOWNLOAD! DOWNLOAD-AH! I got into The Fall completely by accident, I had a couple of albums on my iPod and during a bus trip of madness set the thing to random and Powder Keg came on, a few weeks later they played Newcastle and I went to see them, that night Mark E. Smith slipped on the ice and broke his hip (or leg or something), not one to be easily beaten he played the rest of the tour in a wheelchair. That was a few years ago, since then they have become possibly my favourite "band" (see...). After a rumoured gig in Swansea that never materialised and a cancelled gig in Cardiff I finally got to see them again a few days ago. Ive pretty much listened to them for about 42hrs a day every day for a couple of months waiting for the potentially diabolical live performance (also I e-mailed their manager and he said I could probably shoot some promo photos of them, but that didn't happen so we won't mention it again, WILL WE?!).

The gig was pretty cool, I think I was waaaaaay to excited for it to live up to my expectations. There isn't really much I can say, its The Fall innit, MES was his usual self, twiddling knobs, dismantling drum kits, pressing keys, getting tangled up in mic cables, rummaging through papers, completely ignoring the audience, facing the back wall, everything that we love about the guy. I was front row, slap bang middle of the stage and for much of the gig was close enough to actually bite Mark right on the winky, but that would've been really flipping mental. The highlight was when he pulled his mic cable which made a mic stand fall over and hit me right in the throat, the low point was when the bloody Sunday curfew prevented them from playing Blindness, a song I've REALLY wanted to hear live for a couple of years! They did play Wings which made up for it I suppose...

Here are some of the photos I shot:


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To see the full set go hither: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tfrancis/sets/72157604082232016/

And now, for the good old fashioned bootleg...
Setlist:
Is This New
Wings
Wolf Kidult Man
Fall Sound
50 Year Old Man
Over! Over!
Reformation
Mountain Energei
I've Been Duped
What About Us
Tommy Shooter

Get the thing from any of these links:
http://sharebee.com/d75ef2f9
http://www.badongo.com/file/8237552
http://www.zshare.net/download/8789449c1e4c6c/
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HK806UOJ

I went backstage and met MES after the gig and asked him to sign my Fall lyric book, I asked him to put "I'm better than them and I think I'm the best", he didn't seem to know it was one of his lyrics and instead put "from Alan's friends", he was pretty mean, his wife seemed very nice though.

Sounds like hick wap huh? Sounds like a load of mick wap ha?
Over. Over. Over. Over.

Buy The Fall albums on Amazon, the Boxing Duck! gets a percentage of whatever you spend so get your hands in your pockets!

4 comments:

Roo said...

Brill. I'm missing out on seeing them on this tour, so this download is some small consolation. Cheers!

Great photos too.

Unknown said...

What kind of a camera are you using? Those are incredibly in-focus, especially considering how dark it is in the venue.

tfrancis said...

its a canon 5d with 24-70L, the noise on the 5d is pretty low so i can shoot at 1600 at about 1/60th :-D

Anonymous said...

Fucking amazing photography, kudos. Likewise with the incredible Xiu Xiu post. Props to you.

I am Curious Oranj,

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