Thursday, January 6, 2011

Song of the day 1/6/11

The Fall – Blindness






The Fall almost always make me feel uncool, they’re name checked by artists I love and by people whose opinions about music I respect. They’ve done twenty-four Peel sessions and have some of the best named albums you’ve ever heard. They’re post-punk, avant-garde, indie-rock legends.

And yet I find it really hard to like much of their stuff.

However, this is one of their songs that I got immediately and for the last few months I’ve had that uncompromising, immutable bass riff stuck in my head.

This is an excellent performance from the TV show Later With Jools Holland, and a few things stand out:

  • The band are totally unfazed when Mark E. Smith starts making unmusic on the keyboard, I understand this is standard operating procedure at Fall gigs, nice to see it on TV too.
  • It’s much shorter than the studio version (which is over 8 minutes and still has the same bass line all the way through) and hardly any of the lyrics actually make it.
  • Despite this, and the song being a repetitive, signpost-free wilderness the band are super tight and make the changes seemingly without looking at each other.

Also: Mark E. Smith is wearing only one glove, which raises the question: Who is the real king of pop?

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