Of the many faces of Mark E Smith, two of my favourites have to be 1993’s The Infotainment Scan, and 2007’s Tromatic Reflexxions by Von Südenfed. With so many facets being attributed to the artist, for me this wasn’t always the case, but as I found, if you get past the Marmite taste the ‘uneducated me’ first found, you will find a friend for life and as the band have suggested, “50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong”. We’re going right back to the beginning here and The Fall’s first album Live at the Witch Trials. The difference between this and those later albums is like chalk and cheese, but their familiar musical veins embrace the listener like a friend. From 1979, it is a welcome blast from the past and here is a 45th-anniversary black vinyl edition to add to your collection, or put another way, 12 inches of joy with which to discover this new friend.
A band founded by their only constant member, the inimitable Mark E. Smith, Live At The Witch Trials was originally released in the UK on the Step-Forward label. In society, as sounds began to move from punk and disco into those of ska and the synthesiser, the feel of this album showed a different colour to those that had gone before and even after. Described by DJ John Peel as “…always different, …always the same”, here we open with ‘Frightened’, a track that with its slow pace and solid rhythm strikes me as a release that is creating its own path. As Mark narrates a tale of dark loneliness and anxiety, the band tiles the walls with their augmented chords, illustrating the tale perfectly. If anything, the track that follows appears to walk the line, but in ‘Crap Rap 2 / Like To Blow’ Mark announces from the outset “We are The Fall, Northern white crap that talks back…” and this sets them apart from what is being heard in the rest of society. Solid beats, strong bass, and cutting guitar play alongside Mark’s narration that continues, “We are not black, tall. No boxes for us. Do not fuck us”, telling us what they are about, and if you are still unclear, the chorus sets it out in black and white, “Sucker, Sucker, Sucker, Sucker, Sucker, Sucker, Sucker, Sucker, Sucker”, I think we have all found ourselves in this position, but here it’s laid bare.
The following track really tickles my fancy. The very thought of what Mark is portraying as ‘Rebellious Jukebox’ takes the wheel. A riotous journey with The Fall, it hears the band playing more augmented chords and occasional bum notes. Although I’m sure they were written for this purpose.
The tracks that follow are the outrageous: ‘No Xmas For John Quays’, which I remember first hearing as “No Xmas For Donkeys”, a thought that remains with me today. Even though I now understand that it’s a song dealing with the subject of addiction, for me it will always be “No Xmas For Donkeys”, plain and simple. The album continues through ‘Mother-Sister!’, ‘Industrial Estate’, a number which pays tribute to the surroundings of our Seventies environment, played in a true lo-fi nature before lo-fi had even been dubbed as such. To tracks ‘Underground Medecin’ and ‘Two Steps Back’, which feature the most glorious bass guitar, providing me with the opportunity to recount a tale that I belly laughed when reading. This is that former roadie and bassist on this album, Marc Riley, was dismissed from the band in 1983, the alleged reason, that Smith observed Riley dancing to Deep Purple. How true this is, we might never know, but if you are ever feeling ‘hard done by’ just remember this account.
We proceed through the album’s title track ‘Live At The Witch Trials’, a number which is more a Segway than anything else, being just 52 seconds. As we head out of the album, ‘Futures And Pasts’ slips by as 2’39” barely touches the sides, and then ‘Music Scene’ plays the album out. In a shade over 8 minutes, this is a glorious account of a pretentious lad working in the music industry. I wonder who this is, I guess, lost in this song of nearly 44 years past. If I have any regrets, it would be that I didn’t discover this album sooner, having some daft hang-up of who and what The Fall were about, robbing me of 14 years of this fantastic band, before I finally succumbed to their Infotainment Scan. This is an album which defies words, a glorious example of what music is all about and the poetry of this northern wordsmith. As an album, it is up there with the best and as an anniversary edition, all I can say is “finally”.
