something's got a hold of me...

I cannot escape this band, try as I like.

It's the little things that keep coming back. "Bombast," from my all-time favorite Fall album, This Nation's Saving Grace, for instance. Minor song, irrelevant, I probably skipped it a lot waiting to get to "L.A." or "My New House." Probably a thousand times, it flew right past my grasp.

The other day, I'm listening to a 1985 gig from the Schlacthof in Bremen. Leadoff cut, you guessed it: "Bombast." It's really pulling me in. Pulsating, suffocating, shivering, yelping: the lyrics are inconsequential sonic yelps, Smith ranting the everlasting Smith rant about something, bastards and idiots who ignore his bombast. Some kind of warning. The band is playing for their rent money, tightly unhinged on the edge of a vast unseen precipice. As always in those touch-and-go days, you sense that the entire group, Smith included, were racing against the clock, some kind of intensely hard-wired fight-or-die mechanism that informed everything from Live at the Witch Trials until roughly 1/3rd of the way through Bend Sinister, when they finally discovered they could place an item on the singles chart in Britain and have it stick longer than a fortnight.

All those whose mind entitles themselves,
and whose main entitle is themselves,
shall feel the wrath of my bombast!

The lineup is the fairly classic Smith-Smith-Scanlon-Hanley-Burns, with Simon Rogers along for the ride on keyboards and third guitar; you can barely make him out. This song is all about thrust and pump, Hanley pulsing out spiky morse code with his bass, and then drum and guitars come in roughly three seconds later: Burns lays down an invulnerable shuffle beat while Scanlon stabs through the studio walls with the menacing guitar signatures that usually defined his role; an absurdly undervalued guitarist on every level, Scanlon was to The Fall of the 80's what John Entwhistle was to The Who. The guardian, protector of the beat. If the rest of the band fell off that cliff, Scanlon would still be standing at the top, calmly pulling the rest up with a rope while quietly maintaining maximum and efficient sustain through his tube screamer.

And then there's Smith.

Clanging in my heart.
Bastard! Idiot!

He punctuates each downbeat with shrieks and jerks. He's the naughty boy, hiding in the bushes, pointing fingers and making threats. Spasmodic and unrepentant.

Feel the wrath of my bombast!

The band goes into double-time, Scanlon and Brix raising their guitars up to meet in a duel to the death over Smith's extortions/exhortations. The rhythm section finally responds to the call, grudgingly ramping up to 1.5X speed, the whole mess is flailing and churning and you wonder at the wreck of it all, but it somehow stays upright, like an impossible house of cards. Everything is one hair's width from complete insanity. Exactly and no more.

Feel the wrath.
Those who dare mix real life with politics
And go on regardless of the..of the discoveries
Will feel the wrath of bombast
clanging in my heart

All those whose mind entitles themselves
and whose main entitle is themselves
shall feel the wrath of my bombast!