The Fall
Rowche rumble/In my area

Expressive urgency, noise, extravagance... And poetry...

Expressive urgency... and a sort of magical amateurism creating new forms, throwing the manuals to the wind... which at the time (after all the fluff of certain progressive music) was almost preferable to not knowing how to play.

Noise... and, following the Velvet/Stooges path, chaos... chaos which, in a strange kind of magic, swallows the entire suffering for a moment.

A trifling matter, this matter of entire suffering, which my elementary school classmate, now a famous and judicious anthropologist, calls (appellates, denominates) urban shamanism.

The extravagance then, with those toy instruments lifting in mid-air a strange happiness/madness/despair. Sonic kraut-funk trifles, playful avant-garde doodles...

And finally poetry, but a poetry that tells of post-industrial squalor, of bingo halls where people degrade themselves, of benzodiazepines for housewives, of indomitable pub heroes. And where there are verses like "the shit of the air will fuck your face."

So let's recap: expressive urgency, noise, extravagance, poetry. Hard to find all this stuff together... Hard, very hard...

Oh, tell me the time and place if there ever was one!!!

Then I forgot about the raggedness... because raggedness is my bread and my home. I don't know why, never knew, but that's how it is. On the other side, there's lyricism, the flow (do we want to say Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Rock Bottom?)... the other home...

Besides, the poet also says: "two houses has the shadow"... But here we're talking about the crazy house, the rock'n'roll house... Deviated maybe, but rock'n'roll...

I have in store for old age a jukebox full of punk and post-punk delights, where every morning, to counteract senility, I will insert my small coin. Surely you don't expect me to start listening to Beethoven!!! No, no, I'll insert the coin and quite often I'll select this "Rowche Rumble" by the great, grand Fall.

"Rowche Rumble" is a song impossible to define... let's say that all the things I mentioned at the beginning are in it... And when I say all, I really mean all...

The first time I heard it I thought: well, these are the Velvet plus the Faust plus something else...

Then browsing the net (and this was a few days ago), to get some insight, I came across the comment of a guy who, quite proud, said something like: "my dear suckers I don't understand why no one has noticed that the main riff is taken straight from such and such song by the Stooges."

Well, the Stooges song in question would be "Shake something" from Raw Power... I search, find (I would also have the vinyl, but my turntable is broken)... Well, there's some truth in it... Only that "Rowche Rumble" is haunted, circus-like (but of a very strange circus) and absurd...

It starts with Velvet-like drums, then a voice arrives that seems like a call to arms and the drums become those of a parade... and here comes the famous riff (a concentric and grotesque maelstrom of punk/funk from a saraband) here and there decorated by a very Sister Ray keyboard and percussive explosions...

And when I say percussive explosions, I mean exactly percussive explosions... Damn, listen to it at maximum volume and you'll go absolutely crazy, guaranteed...

The fabulous text, spoken/shouted, is a ferocious satire on the massive use of Valium (and various benzodiazepines) that was done in England at the time... a truck arrives and little Swiss gnomes (employees of Roche, here distorted to Rowche) distribute the pills...

"They ban amphetamines and grass and a lot of people across the country are prescribed the dance of death, creating dependency and a new asshole... what is fear, and whose body do you think it's yours?... (obviously, mine is a bit of a translation as it is, but the sense is more or less this)..."

God, what a song... and don't even think for a second that the b-side is any less...

Not as devastating as "Rowche Rumble," "In My Area" is an almost pop accompanied by a psychotic toy keyboard. When an eloquence suitable to the need supports me, a more accurate definition and description will follow...

It's that the Fall most of the time leave me speechless...

The Fall, the fall, from Camus' novel... story of an ultra self-confident guy who one day hears a laugh behind his back... That's the Fall is that laugh...

Sure, a few words should be said about Mark E. Smith, the singer and lider maximo... Temperamental, irreverent, sharp-tongued, very little fashionable, heavily drugged. An Andy Capp perpetually in a sweater and, above all, a fucking poet...

Yes, above all, a fucking poet...

Long live the Fall... And, watch out, this forty-five is a masterpiece...