The Fall – 50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong – Part 3 (the last - I promise!)

Disk 2 kicks off with two tracks from 1986’s “Bend Sinister”. Some people think that this was The Fall’s best album. I don’t (I think its predecessor, “This Nation’s Saving Grace”, was better), but “US 80s 90s” and the single “Mr Pharmacist” are classics.

After that, it goes off the boil. “Living Too Late” is dull dull dull, and I don’t think “Hey! Luciani” was that good either. I didn’t notice at the time because I was just glad that they were getting more attention (though that was double-edged: I remember the Luciani play/opera/thing being trashed by the critics). Even I couldn’t be fooled by the dreadful cover of “There’s A Ghost In My House” (1987), which by some quirk of fate became The Fall’s one and only top 30 hit (so far, anyway).

Oddly, things look up after “Ghost” with the follow up singles, the epic, clubby “Hit The North” and the razor-sharp cover of the Kinks’ “Victoria”, although neither of them had the same chart success.

We then leap two years into the post-Brix era, with “Telephone Thing” (the only song by The Fall I’ve ever heard on a pub jukebox), which is OK, but gets a bit monotonous. “High Tension Line” (1991) is a great song, however, and so is the apocalyptic “Free Range” (from “Code: Selfish”, 1992 – does it remind anyone of the theme from “Miami Vice”?).

Even better is the astonishing cover of Joe Gibbs’ reggae classic “Why Are People Grudgeful?” (1993) – see Gibbs’ obituary http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3598060.ece for the story behind this song.

On to “Middle Class Revolt” (1994), which I’ve never really liked, compared to the records before and after. Two tracks from this: the single “Behind The Counter”, which is far better than I remember it, and the best track “M5#1”. Perhaps this album is worth a revisit. Ditto “Cerebral Caustic” represented here by “Feeling Numb”: pretty good but not the best track.

Next up is “The Chisellers”, a bit strange even for The Fall, but good. “Powder Keg” is much more direct, one of the best tracks on this disk. Another album I want to have another listen to is “Levitate”, which I don’t remember as very good, but I liked “Masquerade”, included here.

I’d like to write a lot more about “Touch Sensitive”, now my favourite Fall song but (as usual) there isn’t time. Smith’s lyrics home in on the really important issues – “And you’re dying for a pee / So you go behind a tree”.

After the clarity and sharpness of “Touch Sensitive” the last three tracks are more fuzzy and distorted. I hated “Crop-Dust” when I heard it for the first time, but I now recognise its brutal genius. “Susan Vs Youth Club” is bouncy. “Green Eyed Loco Man” is OK but a bit weary sounding.

And that’s the end. Or not the end because MES is still going (fairly) strong.

A few words (or rather a lot of them actually) about the selection of tracks for the collection. There aren’t any session tracks, so we don’t get the Peel session versions of “New Puritan” or “Eat Y’self Fitter”, which is a shame because they would belong in any Best Of collection, but understandable. (We do get the effete version of the latter from “Perverted By Language”, which is probably worse than nothing.) The backbone of the collection is single A-sides, and in order to keep to 2 disks, they aren’t all included. Both of which, again, are understandable, and some of the omissions are understandable (who misses or even remembers “Look Know”?) but others are more unfortunate, eg “It’s The New Thing” (disliked by some, but only their second single), “Rollin’ Danny” and “Cab It Up”.

The absence of B-sides rules out classics like “Wings” and “City Hobgoblins”. And there are some essential album tracks which it would have been nice to have, like “The NWRA”, “Lay Of The Land” and “Bill Is Dead” (the latter The Fall’s only Festive Fifty Number One) and the chaotic live version of "No Xmas For John Quays".

But I’m not going to carp. This is brilliant.