Slavo...

Sorry, don't know what happened there.

The Complete Peel Sessions box set is now the universally accepted necessity, both for old fans and new. You'll get 24 sessions (nearly 100 songs!) from 1978 all the way to 2004. It is, simply, the beast career overview of any band, ever. And it's good value too - in England it's about £25 (@ $35?). The versions here are also diffferent from the LP versions (and often superior in my opinion - Athlete Cured being a great example).

It's difficult to recommend LP's, but the box set will make you happy and give you a feel for the band's different eras - with 25 years, and lots of members, there's variety in there.

all of them,

youd be stupid not to get bend sinister or this nations saving grace though

oh and hex enduction hour,
theres plenty of fall best of type compiliations, you could get one of them to see which era of the fall your going to like more and go from there,

sound advice,

i got it off amazon only cost £20

Yeah, the price of the box set is the clinching factor, isn't it?

If I were to recommend LP's, then I'd have to say Hex Enduction Hour, if only because it is so popular amongst fans. Not one of my favourites though.

My preferences:

Bend Sinister, The Infotainment Scan, Cerebral Caustic, The Unutterable, Real New Fall LP, Fall HEads Roll.

Good live LP's include Seminal Live and Live at Phoenix.

There's so much that they've done - it's worth going to the excellent Unnoficial Fall Website and browsing there.

There's studio LP's, live LP's, compilations, compilations of alternative versions, about 90 LP-style releases in all! Browse the LP part of the dicsography.

And get the Peel Box Set!

Most music conversations end with: it's all subjective though, isn't it. There is one that doesn't: THE FALL BOX SET SHOULD BE OWNED BY EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING WITH EARS, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY WORK OR NOT.

I reckon the best way to start is to get some earlier things (like the ones you have) and some recent ones - for a 'newbie', as it were, I would recommend 'The real new Fall LP AKA country on the click' and 'Fall heads roll'.

whatever you do, just don't go see them live. not without a time machine anyway. i'm sure they were once a good live band... once

saw them last spetember and it really turned me off. it took a while before i was able to listen to their music again after that.

Like I said, I lost touch with The Fall some years ago, but my favourites before I did were "Wonderful and Frightening World" and "This Nations Saving Grace". They're a pretty good singles band too, making the Beggars Banquet singles compilation 45 84 89 worth getting if you find it.

The "50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats" compilation seems to have a good track listing, but I'll leave it to the experts to say whether or not it's worth buying.

nothing with the Fall made any sense whatsoever to me until i bought Hex Enduction hour, its near enough a perfect album. I made a mistake of buying a shitty compilation with loads of disparate rubbish on it. So yeah go for that, or The Real new Fall LP which is also class.

get any fall album, theyre all good... they are all different but the same... the new one fall heads roll is immense, probably their best since perverted!

nice! thanks fellas for detailed info.

will have to check it all out. When I first listened to 'perverted by language' I got this strange feeling that I just made my first encounter with a fucking genuine band.

The same feeling as when I first heard 'Becuz' on 'Washing Machine', which was actually the first time I heard anything by SY. And see, what a big love of mine this has become.

I'm looking forward to seeking out anything good by the fall.

yo!

This post formerly contained nothing more than a rumour that turned out to be erroneous and has now been edited out.

Grrrrr!

Forget it. It was a vicious rumour. I had intended editing it out. Which I will do now, sorry.