:girly:

I LOVE the crap keyboards.
Frightened is pretty amazing
industrial estate is always good for a listen
Futures and Pasts has great lyrics

I don't listen to this one all that much. I dunno, it's just really different to everything The Fall did afterwards, and as such doesn't have the right 'feel'. Not bad, though.

I sometimes wonder which albums other fall fans would group together....cos in my mind LATWT is one i groupwith dragnet and the early fall 77-79 album [which i consider as good as an official album] and totales turns is so good an album i treat it as a studio one....and lump with these lot....i think they sound very jokey in these early days...and mark's voice is very upfront in the mix...i suppose it can sound silly to some listeners

to me they didnt change properly until grotesque...the music improved a lot...slates hex rtl and even pbl i would group here it was like a more powerful fall....more serious...and dangerous sounding...

the 3rd phase for me is a much sweeter sounding fall and i think it began with with frightenin world of....TNSG , bend sinister [yes even this has a polished tone i think for all its darkness] , frenz, kurious oranj

the 4th phase probably was in sounding a bit more hi tech than b4....keyboards dominating extricate probably started this off .... i'd put code selfish here too and infotainment scan and the unnutterable feels similar to these even though much later

the 5th distinct phase for me is probably the marshall suite and levitate....when they seemed to go very experimental.


but it is hard to group albums after bb cos they seemed to keep chopping and changing directions.. :wacko: ....shiftwork ?!? dont fit with anything really

i think they r more changeable than they used to be.....but i dont mind.....i dont think it is planned...it is just the way it goes....


oh ....what was i gonna say ....me fave LATWT track is mother-sister :)

n i dont care that it is about...er nothing

I think of this album as prototype Fall. I don't ever listen to it anymore but I liked it at the time I first discovered the Fall (in 88). It is an album very much of it's time though. Dragnet seems so to have survived the test of time so much better than this one - especially Flat Of Angles.

While I appreciate it is different from what The Fall went on to do, and that MES does not rate it, personally I think Witch Trials is a classic, and the early singles that went with it. I am trying to convert a punk fan to The Fall at present, and I've dropped hints about this album and the 'Early Years' compilation.

That said, I love Dragnet just as much, which seems more in line with Mark's vision of the band from that point on...

"Live at the Witch Trials" is probably one of my favourite albums, and certainly one of my favourite Fall albums. I love the keyboards and crazy drumming on it, and I love all the songs. It's funny and distressing. I'm thankful that it sounds so different from what they would be doing for the next few years (though I really like those records also). It just sounds like something that's just barely happened at all, and could never happen again. I really value recordings for that much more than for sounding entirely confident and solid.

It's pretty bloody good, considering it was recorded in one day.

Sorry but I love this album, it was my introduction to the Fall proper apart from the singles..............

One of the good things about the Fall is the variety, up and down like a f***** yo-yo!

Maybe I'm being unduly sentimental but, back in early '79, this was nearly all The Fall we had. Who knew that 24 years later people would be voting for their fave Fall album in a message forum someplace? For all we knew, like so many other bands of the time, LATWT might've been it; the last, crowning testament of a great band... the ONLY Fall LP.

Later; scratched-to-buggery vinyl, a chewed for the first few minutes tape (isn't it a bind that tapes ALWAYS chew at the beginning, the remainder often surviving?), then a major piss-off when the first CD of the album featured extremely irritating skips. So, it wasn't until the recent release of LATWT+ that I'd heard a CLEAR version of Frightened for about 18 years! Frightened is an excellent song... as good as any.

No X-Mas was discordant enough to make friends (who would call themselves "punks") find excuses to leave. Wunderbar!

So, maybe it was a "band" rather than The Fall as dictated by Smith, explaining why Karl Burns seems pretty much left to his own devices (and rather loud in the mix). Good thing, too. I could listen to those drums all day... I don't think he plays the same four bars twice throughout Music Scene.

Perhaps ya had to be there at the time...... but I still maintain this album has some highlights that are as good as anything that came along later.

I only got this album pretty recently, having been put off by its reputation as a straightforward punk album. What a fool I was - it's fucking great! How the Fall group-uh ever passed for punk, what with the guitarist's kraut/prog rock widdly-weeing and MES's superbly literate lyrics I'll never know. And those cheapo electric piano noises are fantastic! I also second Repetition's point about the drumming - absolutely spot on, super, lovely smashing. Karl Burns's pot pounding is comparable to Jaki Leibzeit or Texas Rey Washam, it's that good. Seemingly indisciplined playing that's actually incredibly rigorous and complex, in a joyous and non-muso way.

It's interesting how many of the Fall albums that are deemed a bit marginal turn out to be so good - Room To Live, Kurious Oranj, Seminal Live and Perverted By Language all spring to mind here.

This was my first fall album and I absolutely loved it. I wanted to start chrono so I got it rirst(didn't know about early fall). it was like demented circus music and MES really captured what it was like to be a intellegent working class teenager(whit crap that talks back, I said that just about every day when I was 19). Some idiot told me fiend w/ a violin was the second fall album so I got that an dif not for the live version of LA, "Head exp. remix and Code:selfish stuff I prolly woulda lost interest all together. Then I was at a party and saw Wonderful and... and made the guy play it much to his resistance and Just knew I had to get everything by the band. It took me about 5 years but I have everystudio album and a bunch of other junk(blow me reciever). Anyway, i don't really listen to Withctrials much anymore cuz I'm not a jusvenile andymore(I have a few ex-girlfriends who would find that debateable)ann I got so much into the other fall albums but occasionally on a week night at home I throw it in and just rember the awesome power that album has. Like many fall records it changed my lfe for the better. :D

witch trials is gr8 despite mark's ultra self criticism....everything on studio is gr8...it all makes a gr8 statement....whether it is a fave or not :)

I bought this album the day it came out and I don't think a month has passed since when I haven't played it (the same vinyl copy, still in good condition - they knew how to press them in those days). Not my very favourite Fall album, but one of the handful that is perfectly flawless and beyond criticism - there was nothing else like it at the time and that keyboard sound! - keyboards meant Rick Wakeman in those days and Yvonne Paulette was most definitely NOT Rick Wakeman!!

yeah, strange. I bought my copy in 1987 secondhand and I've given it a hammering and the sound is still close to cd - a lot better than the dodgy cd reissue

i got this today from my local hmv. im not sure when it came out apart from this year. the remastered album sounds really really good and there is a bonus disc including an entire live concert from liverpool in 1978. ill write more when ive listened to it a few more times but initial impressions are good..

Gosh, you don't say. Tell us more.... :whistle:

Apart from the 1 mistake I've spotted (LATWT inlay shows 2 pictures of the vinyl LP's "Side B" label, rather than 1 of "Side A" and 1 of "Side B"), I cannot complain. Great stuff. :)

Damn you! I knew some bastard would spot that. :P

fkn lovely, ta
keepem coming!

Is the LATWT live disc the same as the "Liverpool 78" CD that was available from Cog Sinister?

Yes.

Granny

1) Thanks :)

2) Sorry :whistle:

scutter
I bought LIverpool '78 just before Christ-MAss

liked the Liverpool gig tracks, not bad for a marketstall tape eh? nice touch switching the quality street tin for some chad valley drums about halfway through.

I've cooled on this and will stick with orig. vinyl. All our money goes on groceries (and Guinness!) these days.

got mine today ....but they r a secret :zip: present for valentine's day :wub: ...so i can't hear em yet :o

Managed to get mine today having already got Dragnet last week, not bad £12.99 for 41 tracks. Can't wait to listen to it but looks like I'll have to. :huh:

:mellow: Record player broken?

you'll have also to let us know how many tracks last long as the DRAGNET #18 #20 and #21.
they should be five or, more likely, six in proportion.

ciao!
marco

No but was at work when I posted followed by getting home going out training leaving little time to listen. Did have a quick listen to Dresden Dolls and some snatches of the live in Liverpool bit (very strange sound quality that !!)
Will have a proper listen tomorrow though. :applaud:

"just waiting"...


ciao!
marco

Got my Sanctuary reissues of LATWT and Dragnet in the mail Monday and am for the most part very pleased. The packaging is quite attractive and the sound is excellent (apart from the Dresden Dolls and Liverpool '78 tracks). The liner notes are interesting if not revelatory, and it's nice that the cover art for the original singles is there as well. I miss the Dragnet press release from the '99 Cog CD, but at least some of what it says is in the liner notes.

The singles sound great, incidentally; I'd been exposed to them mainly through the 2000 Early Fall 77-79 CD and they come through much stronger than before. "Various Times" also seems to be about a minute longer for some reason — wonder why it was edited in the first place (it does meander a bit, but that seems appropriate to conveying the unending, one-damn-thing-after-another despair of the lyrics).

Witch Trials has never been among my favorite Fall LPs, which is strange because I love the singles that accompany it. It's more stark and bleak than most Fall records, despite the high energy level; and it's more overtly political and less concerned with the fantastic. As someone apparently has said, it's their most punk album, despite the keyboards. While I like some punk, I think what has made the Fall special is how they transcended the genre (and the scene!), something that became more evident with Dragnet ("the sound's changed, right, so the people are obviously going to change," Smith is quoted in the liner notes). However, I'm finding it works better for me on shuffle play with the singles mixed in.

It doesn't seem like a coincidence that Dragnet has a more reverby, dingy, less immediate sound and also has more songs inspired by horror stories and whatnot, epitomized by "Spectre Vs Rector." Dragnet sounds like it comes from another planet, even if some of it is fairly straightforward punk rock. I was pleased that the remastering managed to bring the sound more into the foreground without forsaking its lack of polish (which probably couldn't have been done anyway, come to think of it).

I love Dragnet, even if some of the songs are longer than they need to be. It reminds me of the time I was really getting into the Fall. It sounded like music for "skinny rats," which I was at the time (height about 1.8 meters or 5'11"; weight 54.4 kg or 120 lbs.). I was a bit unbalanced and never got any calcium into my system, drinking way too much soda (bit more mundane than speed, but still...) and having almost perpetual heartburn (without the sense to do anything about it). It was always raining and "Your Heart Out" spoke to my condition (:wacko: :cry:) a lot. The lead guitar lines are more eloquent than the lyrics: they're so thin, but they keep going and come full circle toward the end. Pfah to Mr. Easlea for calling this song "slight," even if it is! :rant:

Nitpicks could be made concerning typos (several song titles misspellt on the back of the LATWT jewel case, clumsy punctuation in the liner notes) and the fact that we'll be getting a lot of Peel sessions twice if we buy these reissues AND the Peel box. But on the whole these are excellent packages, and I hope Sanctuary keeps up the same standard in future releases. Maybe when they're finished they can offer devoted customers a fancy box to put them all in. Like the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, it would include a magnifying glass, so you could read all those press clippings reproduced in miniature.

Anyway, cheers Conway for your input. Hope your life isn't so full you won't come back and visit with us soon. :applaud:

One other thing: Mr. Easlea says in his liner notes to LATWT:

Except that "Frightened" wasn't on the single. Did they in fact record the song at that time; and if so, does the '77 take exist?

My thoughts exactly. I got the impression it was recorded, so where did it go? Sound apart, the live versions suggest to me that it must have been well worth hearing - make a nice "legendary lost" issue with the unreleased '77 Electric Circus thingies if they ever turn up - and the Live'77 stuff again to bulk it out.

I never found LWT punk though you can see why it happened then and might have carried more punks with it ... I'm sure it must have been those gloriously plinky tinny keyboards in large part, but to me there's a whole arrangement that comes across to me as damned near orchestral (or Beefheartesque?), tutning a lot of minimalisms into something far greater - something so lacking in the worst rentapunk as well as in most later genres - it sounded quite counter to anything else then and for me it still does.

I was impressed by the 2004 singles quality too - were they remastered like the LP tracks, or just taped off a good proper old gramphone, as Dresden dolls seems to have been? I didn't notice a difference on "Various times", though.

It'll be three copies of sessions 1&2 for those of us who got Words of Expectation.... oh well...

You're probably right. What seems punk about it to me is probably more the attitude and the production, plus the fact that MES sounds really young. It's funny that the liner notes interpret Trouser Press's remark about Smith "charging headlong into poetic pretension" as praise. This is part of why Witch Trials doesn't quite work for me: MES doesn't quite seem as, er, mature as he would come to be, though that might not be a legitimate complaint, especially here. :nahnah: As far as the music goes, Dragnet actually may actually be more punk, and lyrically even less mature but also less poetic, so that it isn't as jarring.

Come to think of it, my perception of the punk/post-punk divide probably has more to do with the historical context than the music itself. So I'm happy enough to stand corrected.

No correction intended, just chucking perceptions into the pot! I find that "poetic" bit funny too, but I find it less poetic and more direct than later stuff. I agree that Dragnet's punkier in some respects, with lots of other stuff thrown in too that I can't think of names for. LWT though I find it difficult to come up with the concepts for, let alone names. :)

is there any word on the LATWT and Dragnet remasters in the states -- will they have all the extra tracks or is it best to go to action's site and order the uk releases?

Action's as good as anywhere, I'd guess - cheap (use the 10% Fall discount as advertised on the front page of the website) &, if I remember correctly, quite quick in sending stuff over The Pond.

got mine from Action in less than a week: here in DC. I think it was 4 days. I saw them both at tower records today, some outrageous price: twice as expensive.

What gets me is these big chains were supposed to be cheaper through "economies of scale"! Yet two bloke in a garden shed can undercut them by 40%! But at least we can rest assured that Tower isn't really bust, it's just a cosmetic bankruptcy for accounting purposes. :lol: