14. The FallThe Infotainment Scan
Obviously, we listened to an awful lot of The Fall in the house, and I guess for most people who listen to Fall records, you get two albums a year for every year you’ve been alive. Whatever year you’re born, there’ll be two Fall albums. So, I guess that everyone’s favourite album will be the album that came out when they were roughly the right age to get into The Fall. There’s a Fall record for everybody, and mine was The Infotainment Scan.
I can’t remember what year it came out, 1993? I would’ve been 13, so I think that was the right year to get into The Fall, I specifically remember being given it. We’d rarely get given records. We had to go and ask for things and nick stuff, but there were occasions when we’d all get given copies of the same thing and we all got this on CD. It’s probably one of the more accessible Fall albums. It’s quite poppy and it’s a record which you can dance to. I don’t really like indie music, but in terms of lively bands that you can jump around to, this album’s probably the closest I’m going to get to that. Maybe they were too much of a band for me in their early forms. I listen to those things now, but at the time I guess I was just looking for that pop hit and those electronic noises, and this was a good combination of those two things. There are so many genuine pop hits on there. If they’d been made by someone slightly less weird and abrasive, they’d have been chart toppers. The Fall could’ve been people who write songs then allocate them to different bands. Lots of those tracks in different hands could’ve been huge, number one pop hits that would have made it onto the Now CDs at the time.
