F.a.l.l.o.u.t.p.o.d.c.a.s.t.

🎃 F.A.L.L.O.U.T. PODCAST — EPISODE 186: HALLOWEEN SPECIAL! 🎃

THE OTHERWISE — PERFORMED IN FULL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!!

This Halloween, F.A.L.L.O.U.T. proudly presents the first-ever complete dramatic performance of The Otherwise, the extraordinary, bizarre and frequently disturbing horror screenplay co-written in 2015 by Mark E. Smith and Graham Duff.

Subtitled The Screenplay for a Horror Film That Never Was, this long-lost project follows members of The Fall as they head to a recording studio near Pendle Hill to make an EP, only to find themselves entangled with satanic biker gangs, time-travelling Jacobites and all manner of supernatural unpleasantness.

Drawing on the weird fiction of Arthur Machen, M. R. James, Philip K. Dick and H. P. Lovecraft, alongside northern folklore, working-class occultism and Smith's own peculiar worldview, it's a gloriously unhinged collision of folk horror, science fiction and Fall mythology.

Originally rejected by film production companies, the screenplay eventually found its way into print courtesy of Strange Attractor Press. But now, for the first time ever, the entire thing is brought to life, from beginning to end, by the F.A.L.L.O.U.T. players!

Joining the usual gang of B, DB and Al are our extraordinary guest performers Emma, MES (not that one!), Harry, Steve Titley and Froze! An ensemble of questionable theatrical pedigree, united in the noble pursuit of bringing this magnificent oddity to life.

Expect satanic bikers, strange encounters, sinister goings-on, grotesque humour and the unmistakable imagination of MES and Graham Duff.

⚠️ CONTENT WARNING: This production contains elements of sexual threat and violence. Listener discretion is advised.

📖 READ ALONG! Get your own copy of the original screenplay here: https://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/publications/the-otherwise

Happy Halloween, you horrible lot!

Big love to all them what fall.

#TheFall #MarkESmith #GrahamDuff #TheOtherwise #FALLOUTPODCAST #HalloweenSpecial

Ian and Brendan are back, and this time it's Parklife — Blur's great leap from the melancholy of Modern Life Is Rubbish into music hall, seaside postcards, suburban absurdity and the increasingly peculiar corners of British life.

But what was happening on the other sides of those singles? We're rummaging through a wonderfully eccentric collection of theatrical waltzes, acid jazz, country pastiche, literary borrowings, Scott Walker worship and the occasional bit of complete dogs******t. We also get into the making of Parklife, the band's growing confidence, Phil Daniels and whether some of these discarded curiosities deserved a place on the album.

All 11 tracks under the microscope:

Magpie, Anniversary Waltz, People in Europe, Peter Panic, Got Yer!, Threadneedle Street, Beard, Supa Shoppa, Theme from an Imaginary Film, Rednecks and Alex's Song.

Eleven tracks. Plenty of peculiarities. One increasingly difficult ranking. Which are the hidden gems, and which should have stayed hidden?

#Blur #BsideTheBsides #Parklife #Britpop #BlurBsides #DamonAlbarn #GrahamCoxon

“I curse your preoccupation / With your record collection!”

(With apologies to Savage Pencil)

It's a post-postscript world. All bets and gloves are off! Big love to all them what fall.

Four (Three?) extraordinary Fall songs, two heavyweight contests and a shared obsession with false authenticity, social pretension and manufactured authority.

M5 tackles rural nostalgia, commuter misery and crusty brown bread, while Brillo De Facto takes a peculiar swipe at rock mythology and self-important little men via the Feelgoods

New Puritan declares war on decadence, record collectors and cultural gatekeepers, while Hard Life in the Country delivers a folk-horror nightmare of Bowie impersonators, ice-cream vans and villagers surrounding the bloody house.

Snare joins the battle, and special guest Iain Key drops in to discuss his forthcoming book, A People's History of The Fall.

https://www.spenwoodbooks.com/forthcoming-releases/a-peoples-history-of-the-fall

If you have any stories or gems of wisdom you would like to contribute to the book, mail him here. ...but don't dilly dally!!!   

[email protected] 

Cash for questions! Here!!

#TheFall #MarkESmith #FALLOUTPODCAST #IainKey #FallShowdown

The Horror in Clay vs Slow Down Ronnie // Serious Brainskin vs Heads of Dead Surfers // I Want You vs Cancelled // Glitter Freeze vs Enigmatic Dream // Not Clean vs Inch

It's a futile Fall showdown! We're back in the strange, squelchy world of Mark E. Smith's extracurricular activities for Semi-Final 2 of our MES Solo & Collaborations bracket. Five more head-to-head battles featuring literary horror, electroclash, indie-disco anthems, Icelandic cod, rejected art proposals and industrial clanking.

Feat; The Inspiral Carpets, Mouse on Mars, Einar's Ghostdigital, Long Fin Killie and the Inch boys!

The usual suspects ask the important questions. Is MES better as a duet partner or an unsolicited interruption? Can a snooker commentary beat Lovecraft? Is a Fall remix really a solo project? And just how dirty can a cod get?

From the magnificent pop absurdity of I Want You to the avant-garde shithousing of The Horror in Clay, we're sorting the collaborations from the curiosities and the genuine masterpieces from the things that probably didn't need recording.

Five contests. Four opinions. One increasingly unreasonable competition.

The dirtiest cod is the cod we want!

Big love to all those who fall.

Cash for questions!

#TheFall #MarkESmith #FALLOUTPODCAST #MES #LongFinKillie #MESShowdown

Goodbye Leisure, hello British eccentricity, character studies, suburban misery, future anxiety and the beginnings of something rather magnificent. We're digging into the singles, the forgotten flipsides, the Food Records drama and the songs that didn't quite make the album. Then we're ranking the bloody lot.

For the ranking, there's a much bigger pile this time including : Mace, Badgeman Brown, I'm Fine, Garden Central, Into Another, Peach, Bone Bag, Hanging Over, When the Cows Come Home, Beachcoma, Es Schmecht, Young and Lovely, Maggie May, My Ark, Daisy Bell and Let's All Go Down the Strand... and Popscene?!

Arguably the period when Blur's discarded material is better than most of what was coming out in '93.

Cash for questions over at Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/c/FALLOUTPODCAST238

#blur #indie #britpop #90s

N.O.T.F.A.L.L. — AN ARID AL SPECIAL

We're back in the garage! Al and B rummage through a filthy heap of garage rock, primitive racket, forgotten nuggets and assorted musical misdemeanours, lovingly curated by Al and interrupted by some deep, dark cuts from the Martin Rev, Alan Vega and Suicide catalogue from B.

From fuzzed-up delinquency to malfunctioning electronics, cheap thrills, expensive mistakes and the occasional genuine masterpiece. No grand theme, no particular purpose, no educational value. Just a couple of blokes playing records for fun, shits and giggles.

Garage rock! Suicide! Vega! Rev! A thoroughly unnecessary excursion into the good stuff.

Cash for questions!

#NOTFALL #FALLOUTPODCAST #GarageRock #Suicide #AlanVega #MartinRev #PunkRock #ObscureMusic

The lads, joined by Dannyno jump back into Dave Simpson’s The Fallen — and there’s plenty to celebrate: cheeky barking anecodes, bizarre showbiz  characters, and all the tiny bits of Fall archaeology that make this book such a rabbit hole. However as we hit the second half of the book, we unreasonalby quetstion Simpson’s methods, his judgements and his take on The Fall, offering our own perky,and pungent criticism from our podcast ivory tower...where our book eh!! It's not as easy as it looks..or is it?

And all the while we ask the bigger questions: Should journalists write books? Do journalists have to write books? And should we have a lie down? 

There are gems everywhere, but we’re not letting Simpson...or Smith off the hook. Deep dive. Brutal critique. Perky, pungent, poltergeist.

Cash for questions!

#TheFall #FALLOUTPODCAST #TheFallen #DaveSimpson #MarkESmith #FallPodcast #CashForQuestions

Welcome to Bside the Bsides, where Ian and Brendan go rummaging around the edges of the Blur, digging into  b-sides to unpick the sound, the machinery around the band, the impact of Leisure, and what these supposedly peripheral tracks tell us about Blur.

Before Modern Life Is Rubbish. Before Parklife. Before Britpop. Before the number ones! and the falling-out.....we’re going right back to the debut, the baggy Blur, the shoegaze nods, to find a band trying on several different hats while the whole indie landscape was changing underneath them.

Leisure hit the top ten as did the single “There’s No Other Way”, but internally, the label dramas with Food Records, and David Balfe,  Albarn and Co flailing around trying to work out exactly what sort of band they were supposed to be.

And so while Leisure gets remembered as the beginning of the Blur story, there’s a whole other Blur hiding on the other side of those singles songs like; I Know, Inertia, Mr Briggs, Won't Do It, Luminous, Berzerk, Explain, Uncle Love, Down, and more lay scattered across the early singles and elsewhere...and we're gonna rank em!

CASH FOR VOTES!! https://www.patreon.com/c/FALLOUTPODCAST238?vanity=user

SHOULDER PADS VS TOUCH SENSITIVE

Impression of J Temperance Vs How I Wrote Elastic Man

Another FALL SHOWDOWN, with big and tough songs going head-to-head.

First up...Shoulder Pads is a relentless, pop bubble colliding with MES's sardonic, razor-sharp gallery of suburban grotesques YULE! up against Touch Sensitive's rockin' groove fit for commercials of cars and homes!!

And then...Impression of J Temperance's Lovecraftian atmospheric tension building through skeletal instrumentation and sketches only Smith could muster. HIDEOUS! Going H2H with the bouncing, infectious bassline of Elastic Man, a manic, self-referential narrative about obsession, media manipulation, and bizarre artistic survival.

Two Showdowns, four songs, and a further attempt to locate the exact point where genius and the real world mesh.

Last 60something songs going H2H. Breathing hard and stuttering, and since 2021.

A work in progress // Now due about 2027!!

Cash for votes!

Big love to all those who fall.

The Beefheart Odd ’n’ Sods episode.

A rummage through the stranger corners of the Captain’s world — obscure originals, R&B workouts, Zappa collisions, alternate versions, abandoned ideas, instrumental oddities and various things that probably should have been left in the vault.

We’ve got Triple Combination, Willie the Pimp, Diddy Wah Diddy, Debra Kadabra, Light Reflected, Korn Ring Finger, Funeral Hill, Run Paint Run Run and plenty more — with some proper Beefheart material sitting alongside the more curious stuff.

Some of it sounds like lost Beef. Some of it sounds like solid R&B. Some of it sounds like Zappa’s band attempting to will Don from memory. Some of it is simply DVV wandering into the undergrowth and seeing what happens.

Odd ’n’ sods. Deep cuts. Half-formed things. Strange detours. Good stuff, bad stuff and stuff that leaves you wondering quite what the plan was.

And, naturally: “You gold-plated monkey.”

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