Mike Leigh drumming again

28 years after he left the Fall, Dragnet era sticksman and top roofing sales professional (!) Mike Leigh returned to the live scene last week with two gigs by his Pearl Divers band.

Here they are at Manchester Night & Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqk2KERCX6A

Mark E. Smith discusses The Fallen

Every time Mark tells this story, it gets a new twist and a few embellishments. And it gets better every time. Booker Prize for fiction, surely!

http://www.visi.com/fall/news/2009-06-14_hudlitfest-transcript.pdf

There's only one Mike Leigh (well, there's actually two, but you know what I mean)

Fabulous Fall(en) event at Litfest in Lancaster last night. Bookmunch/Perverted By Language(fiction inspired by The Fall)  editor Peter Wild did the introductions, then author Michel Faber read his entertaining and darkly comic Deer Park tale, which contained various Fall tunes, a "loathsome" woman and a lot of dead deer. I read two excerpts from The Fallen - Nick Dewey and Ruth Daniel's respective "day in the Fall" stories amid more mirth, especially and curiously from the two elderly ladies at the back. Then came the main event for a lot of us - the legendary Dragnet drummer Mike Leigh making his first Fall-related public appearance since leaving the band almost 30 years ago. Mike - who'd driven up specially from Hadfield - was in fine form, regaling the audience with tales of life in the Fall, the origins of his notorious drapes and beetlecrushers and his pre-Fall life in Rockin' Ricky and the Velvet Collars. Mike, of course, was integral to the development of the Fall's fabled "northern rockabilly" sound, and gave an enlightening spot on how songs would come about in those far-off days. Mike has always regretted leaving the Fall, although has recently started drumming again and has a new band, the Pearl Divers, who play Manchester Night & Day on November 6. This will be the first time the "teddy boy" drummer has played in public since his last gigs with the Fall. 

Maxine Peake plugs The Fallen

Criminal Justice actor Maxine Peake is a fan of The Fallen. 

Thank you, Maxine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/05/maxine-peake-my-media

Litfest, Lancaster October 17th

Myself and Perverted By Language editor Peter Wild will be appearing at Litfest in Lancaster on October 17th. The idea is that we will be playing Fall tracks, reading from our books and interviewing each other. Then there will be a discussion. 

I might try and coax a Fallen or two who lives in the area to come on down. 

Other Fallen news: the paperback is being extremely well received. Scotland's big selling Sunday Herald called it "an amusing study of what is without exaggeration Britain's most uncompromising band.... Tours were conducted like malign psychological experiments."

 

Twitter interview!!

Myself, Steve Hanley, Paul Hanley and Mike Leigh will be doing a live interview/Q & A (fielding your questions) next Weds on Twitter.

Follow us at #TheFallen

or @davesimps0n

(figure 0)

or @thefallenbook

The Fallen in Observer rock reads of the year

Something of a triumvarite: following similar accolades in the Times and Sunday Times, The Fallen is now also an Observer book of the year courtesy of Caspar Llewellyn-Smith. This Mr Smith prefers The Fallen to the other Mr. Smith's Renegade, although naturally I couldn't possibly comment in case I found myself being blindfolded and turfed out of a Transit van. In Peru..