Another recent rediscovery across the ocean has been the rich history of the
Deeply Vale festival, a mid-late 1970s institution that might never have
eclipsed the likes of Reading in the public eye, but which nevertheless brought
some astounding talents to an unsung corner of the country – in this case, a
field on the outskirts of the northern town of Rochdale. Now this remarkable
archive is coming to the fore, courtesy of the Ozit label – a few months back,
we saw a 2CD Steve Hillage live set; this month, Fast Cars and the Fall emerge
from the vault.
The Fast Cars’ 'Who Loves Jimmy Anderton?' is a reminder of a band that, for
many years, was considered a mere footnote in the annals of punk, just another
group of never-weres that formed in the fiery excitement of the late Seventies
UK. They gamely trotted around their hometown, released a few singles, and then
disappeared back into obscurity, from whence they were duly installed as the
object of a later generation of Japanese collectors’ desires, for the very
scarcity of their records.
Those spiraling prices would eventually prompt Fast Cars to reform and take to
the road once more. This album, however, captures them in their 1979 heyday,
playing before an enthusiastic crowd at Deeply Vale and, though the sound is
acceptable and the mix is middling, the Fasties themselves are in fine form,
storming through an incendiary 11 song set, and though it does all sound a bit
crash, bang, wallop, the band’s hooks still manage to shine through.
The Fall’s 'Live At Deeply Vale', too, suffers somewhat from the sound quality,
but that does not detract from the sheer historical importance of the set, one
of the few live recordings to survive from this early period in the band’s
history. The band’s antecedents are as clear as they would ever be - the rage of
The Stooges, the repetitive drone of The Velvet Underground, the dark cacophony
of Siouxsie & the Banshees, and occasionally twisting through the buzzsaw pop of
the Buzzcocks, all delivered up in a blaze of beats, a thrump of bass, a
blizzard of guitar, and an angry swirl of keyboards.
Punk fire, Gothic gloom, and with a wondrously ramshackle approach to song
structure, The Fall weren’t entirely alone in their musical vision, but still
conjured up a sound so unique it enthralled millions for decades to come. Thus,
even with all its flaws, this album is a worthy monument to their fiery
beginnings.
