Fall Monday Playlist #25 - "Borrows" part 3

-

 


Welcome to the third and final instalment of The Fall's "borrows" - those tracks that, accidentally or otherwise, had at least a hint of another track about them. In the last couple of weeks, I've had a couple of new ones drawn to my attention, so you get a bumper twelve-track playlist this week.

Spotify Playlist

YouTube Playlist

Elves

We'll start with one of the more famous ones. Brix claimed that it was a deliberate homage, a ‘witty commentary, a send-up of punk’. Steve Hanley suggests that his brother pointed out the similarity and Brix’s response was that she’d never heard the song. Either way, it's clearly indebted to The Stooges' 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'.


Blindness

According to Jim Watts: 'We took a break from Tuff Gong to go for a drink in The Original Wire pub. Pretty much the worst pub in Warrington. I remember a cloud of flies buzzing around in there. And in the car on the way back we heard Witness by Roots Manuva and Spencer got very excited. We were inspired by the groove and I think Spencer started the beat, then Steve came up with the bass and me and Ben came in with our guitar parts.'

For a bit of variety, this is alternative take from Interim - but you can also listen to all five released studio versions in one go here.



Quartet of Doc Shanley

Inspired - according to ‘Shanley’ himself - by The Osmonds’ acid-glam boogie ‘Crazy Horses’.


Hot Runes

The riff is not a million miles away (albeit at a much faster tempo) from Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Spoonful’, most famously covered by Cream. 


I Am Damo Suzuki

Can were one of MES's most enduring influences: not only does this song namecheck their diminutive vocalist, it borrows from 'Oh Yeah', a track from 1971's Tago Mago.


Laptop Dog

A slightly tenuous one, but the riff here bears a passing resemblance to Thin Lizzy's 'Jailbreak'.


The League of Bald-Headed Men

To stick with the 70s rock theme, the driving riff behind 'Bald' is distinctly similar to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Misty Mountain Hop’. The version here is from The Twenty-Seven Points.


The Wright Stuff

Keyboards this time: this one owes a debt to Don Fardon’s 1970 tribute to George Best, 'Belfast Boy'. 


Sing! Harpy

The Stooges' were perhaps the band that The Fall borrowed from most frequently. Here, it's from 'Little Doll'.


Touch Sensitive

Solo Iggy this time. There was, of course, a dispute regarding the songwriting behind 'Touch Sensitive', but it’s also hard to ignore that the basic riff owes more than a little to 'Girls' from 1979’s New Values.


Edinburgh Man

The final two selections are ones that have only just come to my attention. DJAsh from the Fall Online Forum pointed out to me that 'Edinburgh Man' seems to borrow from 'Silver Dream Machine' by David Essex...


Proteinprotection

...and another forumite, gappy tooth, spotted the similarity between 'Proteinprotection's guitar riff and that of The Afghan Whigs' 1993 track, 'Fountain and Fairfax'.



As I mentioned last week, I've pretty much exhausted the 'themed playlist' approach, so look out for something a bit different on future Mondays!


Fi5 Main Page




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Complete List of Fall Albums

-
Image
  In 2020, I had a go at the daunting task of pinning down the exact number of Fall albums. At the time, I came up with the magic number of 158 .  I need to revise that now, partly because a couple more live LPs have subsequently been released; plus there's one compilation I didn't include first time round. The two live albums are  Out Ferroviarios (recorded at the OUT.FEST Festival in Portugal, 12 October 2013) and  Rock Against Racism Xmas Party (recorded at Stretford in December 1977).  [I'm doing a new post rather than amending the old one because WordPress - where I did the original - is now horrifically un-user-friendly.] Out Ferroviarios is a straight repress of a  bootleg ; you can hear the (middling quality) recording here . The front cover of the new release features the same cover as the bootleg; I don't know if it still has the same chronologically inappropriate photo from 1978 on the back.  Rock Against Racism Xmas Party is simpl...
Read more

The Fall's Top 20 Album Covers (Part 1)

-
Image
  'It's a pain in the arse getting covers sorted out nowadays. In the past I'd just hand them the artwork and say, "Use that!" and they'd go off and knock it out in a day or two. All they've got to do is follow instructions. But it's not as easy as it sounds...' MES, Renegade This is a topic that several people have suggested to me over the last couple of years. I've tinkered with it from time to time, but have somehow never got around to finishing it. Having just run out of Monday Playlist themes (and having finished my Wedding Present blog ) I thought it was about time I sorted it out. Not for the first time, I am grateful to dannyno for rooting out my factual errors. Obviously, like all my evaluations, this list is entirely subjective. Also, I am no expert in art or graphic design, so this is simply a ranking based on what looks good to me and how well I feel it matches the contents. Feel free to disagree - as I'm sure you will! One fina...
Read more

Is This Fall Live Album Worth Buying?

-
Image
A question that pops up frequently on social media (especially the two main Facebook groups, The Mighty Fall and  It's Not Repetition, It's Discipline ) is 'I've seen a copy of The Fall Live At xxxx on sale for £x - is it worth getting?' Sometimes this is a very easy question to answer; on other occasions it's a bit tricky. This is because their quality - in terms of performance, sound quality and packaging - varies hugely. Another factor to consider is how you define 'worth getting'. John Peel was quite clear on the matter: Given John's 'Live in Nova Scotia' comment, you could argue that by the Peel Principle the answer is always 'yes'. However, whilst I am certainly an advocate of this approach when applied to the studio albums (I did, after call, my blog You Must Get Them All , which will also be the title of my forthcoming book) it's difficult to apply it to all of the 70+ Fall live albums. There are some, for example  Mark...
Read more