they sound like the fall...

Doesn't M.E.S. claim that EVERYBODY sounds like The Fall at some point or other?

_Slanted & Enchanted_ is a great Fall album, though. Or a great album made by fans of the Fall that almost comes off as an insincere homage. (Despite was Sex God Malkmus might be saying nowadays.) Hell, I'll just call it a great album & be done with it.

There's this small Boston-based band (The In Out) that does a fair job on approximating the Fall's brute simplicity. Even there, though, it's watered down. The Scissor Girls - a "no-wave" band from Chicago circa the mid-90s - are the best I've heard in terms of building on the gauntlet the Fall threw down back in the day. It's a glorious mess.

the only Pavement song that *sounds* like the Fall is Two States which sounds exactly like them.

However, if we are talking lyrics then Malkmus and Smith are similarly oblique.

I think when Smith slagged off Pavement he was referring to sound, lyrics and style. The style of their cd inlay cards is strikingly similar in many cases, a kind of blurry, drunken DIY ethic. Including original lyric sheets complete w/ doodles, or fake representations of same, etc.

"Roxy Girls" by Yummy Fur, who David mentioned SIX YEARS AGO, sounds a lot like the Fall

The Nightingales for definite.

Bogshed, a bit.

Female Falls = Life without Buildings and The Mai 68s, a little bit less.

"Peaches" by the Stranglers

Does it count if Mark E likes them?

(i.e. Nightingales, I Ludicrous)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm3mMs33Npg

^ HAF FOUND BORMAN rip-off (and even sampled)

Prinzhorn Dance School!

i always thought yummy fur were meant to be a fire engines rip off? a friend of mine calls this sound and dragnet era fall 'beano beat'

Has anyone mentioned LCD Soundsystem yet? Some obvious influence there.

2000's version of The Nightingales doesn't sound like The Fall - more like Beefheart's Magic Band.

I think when we say 'sounds like The Fall' we mean sounds like The Fall circa 77-81.

Does it count if Mark E likes them?

(i.e. Nightingales, I Ludicrous)

Not sure that he likes I, Lud anymore - he kicked them off the UK tour after 4 gigs last month!

First time I heard "Real Life" Audio Bullies, I thought it was him!

Not sure that he likes I, Lud anymore - he kicked them off the UK tour after 4 gigs last month!

-- Dr.C, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 15:53 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

.. apparently because they mentioned him on their 'tour diary' for the Guardian.

Notebooks out, plagiarists!

http://www.stewartlee.co.uk/press/writtenformoney/1997-feb02-pavement-sundaytimes.htm

Wasn't Slanted and Enchanted's Our Singer just an exact rewrite of the Fall's Hip Priest? "Yeah it was," Stephen Malkmus, Pavement's wiry, bookish singer and guitarist admits, "but there were other songs too. Conduit for Sale was New Face in Hell. Jackals, False Grails; The Lonesome Era was The Classical. It didn't worry me at the time. I don't know what I was thinking," he muses idly, as if he'd never considered the subject before. "We don't sound like them any more."

Dream Syndicate's The Days of Wine & Roses, all the way back in '82. (Steve Wynn claims that they took as much from The Fall as from the Velvets.)

I was gonna say about the Dream Syndicate. You can hear it more on the early eps.

The Country Teasers!

^ came here to post this
they really do! early fall, mostly
also they put on a good live show and are good ppl

i laughed louder and rocked harder than at any show in recent memory at the last local Teasers gig. yeah it's pretty Fall-ish, too.

I don't really even know them all that well. I have the Destroy All Human Life album, and have heard the odd track here and there. The first time I heard them got an honest "what the fuck IS this?" out of me, and I'm still *slowly* working my way toward an answer.

I read something by Ben Wallers that simply referred to Mark E. Smith as "Him". I liked that.

Not sure that he likes I, Lud anymore - he kicked them off the UK tour after 4 gigs last month!

-- Dr.C, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 15:53 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

.. apparently because they mentioned him on their 'tour diary' for the Guardian

That wasn't the full story really. We played with ILud on the Friday after they'd got kicked off the tour, and they reckoned the money had run out. The Fall weren't exactly packing the halls up north!

Well, that was the 'official' line, as per the Guardian page..

Didn't they tell some story about buying MES a bottle of whisky and it wasn't good enough quality?

Yes, they said he told the support bands, the crew and the Fall members that it was his b'day, and ordered them to buy him booze. Band and crew supplied single malt, and IL produced supermarket-bought blended muck. Apparently he wasn't happy, but I think the money had run out by then anyway.

I reckon MES will be touring like Bo Diddley or Chuck Berry in a couple of years - i.e. to keep costs down the promoter on the night will provide musicians for the evening to become 'The Fall'.