The Fall's first LP Live at the witch trials was very much in the tradition of what was expected in English punk. Overall it was fast, snotty and chord driven, with Mark E already showing his willingness to direct his no nonsense wisdom at whatever and whoever he wanted. A great aspect of the LP is the fast precision drumming and striking fills that complement the songs in the right places. For Dragnet Drummer Karl Burns was unavailable, while guitarist Martin Bramah and keyboardist Una Baines had left the band. Mike Leigh came in on drums, Craig Scanlon on guitar, Steve Hanley on bass and Mark Riley switched from bass to guitar. These line-up changes meant Dragnet was bound to sound different from its predecessor but fans of the first LP probably couldn't have guessed how different it would sound.

The technical ability of the Fall's musicians couldn't have been much more basic on Dragnet. This is especially true of drummer Mike Leigh, whose attempts at fills are pretty funny at times. A friend who saw the Fall in 1978 said Mr Leigh was at least fifteen years older than the rest of the band , had a Teddy boys haircut and played like a bad cabaret drummer. To me it sounds like The Fall invited in a non-player and he learned to drum in a couple of weeks. But it makes sense because all the musicianship is refreshingly loose, and this approach suited Mark E Smith whose extraordinary vocals and storytelling are allowed the space required. On the first track 'Psykick Dancehall' he sings about Rockin on the psykick dancehall and about his vibrations living on when he is dead and gone, the surreal nature of his musings coming to the fore. The music is so simple with an almost sloppy execution but the young Fall lads had such an acute sense of how great music moves. I find this so exciting, that innocence of the playing combined with a perception of how to put musical pieces together to dramatic effect. It shows how such perception can lift your spirit and jolt you even without some sort of precise power playing.

Its clear from Dragnet that part of The Fall's musical perception is their belief in listening to and complimenting each other. Original musical combinations abound but there is no isolated meanderings, just a sense of communal spirit. The tracks 'A figure walks behind you' and 'When the moon falls' portray this spirit. Both are slow and dark two chord numbers which allow Smith's paranoid stories of being stalked and creating new regimes to take shape. The simple instrumentation of bass and two guitars loop around each other to lift and fall in turns to create strange tensions. These musicians had no fear of their instruments, instead they put their fears and tensions through the instruments. And their humour is always there, whether its responding to blatant jokes or the dark irony of Smith. 'Dice man' and 'Printhead' are particularly funny. Mark E saying music should not be like reading a story of love, he wants to read a horror story, and then talking about a live review of the fall and the journalist saying how The Fall went to pieces, in a stupid babyish voice.

This variety of everyday emotions, frustrations, humour and petty and justified anger that flow through Dragnet make the accusations levelled at The Fall of everything sounding the same appear stupid. Every song is it's own thing, no one a pale extension of another. For me it is one of the reasons why The Fall stand out so much from so many other bands, they managed to condense all the interesting aspects of everyday reality into their records. The exorcism tale of 'Spectre vs Rector' is simply a very weird but still normal everyday occurrence in the hands of The Fall. And Dragnet much more than Witch Trials set out the ethos of making an LP full of unique songs. Although it was probably not a planned ethos, just simply who they were. Maybe that is why I see it as very special. They quickly moved away from the punk sound of Witch Trials and from the ideas that punk was meant to have particular stances and sounds. Their stance was to do their own thing, to be defiantly independent within an environment of bands desperate to portray a limited image of themselves.

 

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