All you daughters and sons

Who are sick of fancy music

We dig repetition

Repetition in the drums

And we’re never going to lose it

This is the three Rs

The three Rs:

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

Repetition – The Fall (Baines, Friel, Bramah, Smith, Burns)

The Buzzcocks were due to be top of the bill but they didn’t turn up, so a band called The Fall played two sets. The rumour going round the camp was that the Sex Pistols would play, but that was never really on. They were banned from most venues at that point. Instead we had Repetition. Twice.

Martin Bramah, Una Baines, Karl Burns, Mark E Smith and Tony Friel, 1977

Quite how I ended up on the Right to Work March from Liverpool to Blackpool in September 1977 I’m not sure. I wasn’t actually unemployed; I was between jobs, having just finished a temporary post as a landscape gardener and waiting to start another short contract as a survey assistant for the local council. That’s how it was for new graduates in 1977; ‘career’ jobs were hard to come by.

Career opportunities, the ones that never knock

Career Opportunities – The Clash (Strummer, Jones)

Neither was I a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, of whom the Right to Work Campaign was a front organisation. But several of my Chester friends were involved in organising the event and the prospect of walking to Blackpool to lobby the TUC for more action on unemployment sounded more interesting than another weekend in sleepy Chester, so I agreed to go along.

Right to Work March, September 1977

As it turned out I didn’t do an awful lot of walking that weekend. My friends Bobby K and Harry could both drive so the three of us were put in charge of driving one of several vans from one overnight stopover to the next: night one in Kirkby, night two in Wigan and the third night in Preston. We carried one of several large marquee tents in the van, as well as the odd injured or footsore marcher, driving from one campsite to the next. Once at that night’s campsite we rounded up anyone available to help erect the tent.

That first night we camped on a sports ground in the middle of a council estate in Kirkby, a Liverpool new town: overspilled and underfunded. The night’s entertainment had been arranged at the nearby Kirkby Suite, a Top Rank-style nightclub. I’d been into punk rock since the previous year and went with a group of friends hoping to see The Buzzcocks. Or maybe it would be the Pistols. Either way I’d never heard of The Fall.

Play scheme at Kirkby, 1977

The opening act was Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds – I knew the name but had never heard any of their music. Frankly, they weren’t very good, although I thought the guitarist was OK. Many years later I found out that he was Vini Reilly, who left the Nosebleeds and formed the much better-known Durutti Column in 1978. He (and Ed Banger, who also quit) were replaced by a pre-Smiths Morrissey and Billy Duffy, of The Cult fame.

The Fall performing in 1977

The Fall didn’t look like a punk band, in fact they didn’t look like any kind of a band. Their image was completely anti-fashion and their general vibe was definitely not rock and roll. The musicians ambled onto the stage, played their set with no attempt to engage with the audience and then slunk off again. Then they did the same thing again for the second set.

The exception was the singer, whom I later found out was called Mark E Smith. He had a definite stage presence and seemed to create a sense of danger just by his body language. Smith wore a brown satin shirt and dark trousers over his slim, tall frame. It was obviously his gig shirt in those days, as I’ve seen it in pictures of other performances from 1977 and 1978. His mood seemed to be poised between amusement and aggression. The sound was poor and I couldn’t discern most of the lyrics. But that didn’t matter, what struck me that night and the thing that has stayed with me for over 40 years as a Fall fan, was that Smith sang the words of his songs like he really meant them. And the man’s lyrics, his poetics, are still something completely unique in rock music:

None
No recipes
It was like a see-saw
No
It was like an up and down
Bye bye
Mother, Sister
Mother, Sister
Why did you put your head in?

Mother-Sister! – The Fall (Smith, Baines)

‘Why does the singer add that sound at the end of every line?’ Mike commented between the two sets. ‘You know what I mean? It’s like: “I was walking down the street-ah”. It’s like a working men’s club singer thing.’

I didn’t know the answer then and I still don’t know it now. But I do know that many of The Fall’s early gigs were in working men’s clubs and that Smith’s lyrics and his vocal delivery were the one consistent factor in a Fall canon of 31 studio albums and a revolving door of more than 50 Fall musicians.

I don’t have a set list for that night in Kirkby, though most of the material would have been early versions of the songs later released on The Fall’s first album, Live at the Witch Trials. From reviews of other gigs during this period, as recorded on the excellent thefall.org website, it is likely that the set that would have comprised something like:

Psycho Mafia / Last Orders / Repetition / Dresden Dolls / Hey Fascist / Frightened / Industrial Estate / Stepping Out / Bingo Master’s Breakout / Oh! Brother / Cop It / Futures and Pasts / Louie Louie

The only song I really remember from my first Fall gig is Repetition, probably because they played it twice. Naturally.

The audience at Kirkby were mainly teenage punks who had been looking forward to seeing the Buzzcocks, or maybe even the Sex Pistols if they believed the wilder rumours. Instead they got a double helping of The Fall. Although The Fall operated within a punk ethic, they were never a punk band in terms of the music, so the audience were left both bemused and confused. Mike certainly didn’t like them-ah. But another friend, Richie, declared himself a fan that evening, as did I. Richie was one of the SWP Jesuits, but was a lovely guy. I lost touch with him soon after but I like to think he had a long and fruitful relationship with the band and their music.

The Fall at Buckley Tivoli, November 2015

I’ve been a Fall fan since that night and saw them many times, the last being in Buckley in November 2015. Mark E Smith died in January 2018 and with him the life of the band ended too. But we are left with all that music, and all those lyrics.

We dig it, we dig it,
We dig it, we dig it
Repetition, repetition, repetition
There is no hesitation.

Credits

The Fall publicity shot, 1977 – Kevin McMahon

Right to Work March, 1977 – Joe Neary

Kirkby, 1977 – Neil Macdonald

The Fall performing, 1977 – Kevin Cummins

The Fall at Buckley Tivoli, 2015 – Brent Jones Photography