Alas! After an awful support slot from Resist, and Nought failing to appear on stage, I was understandably relieved when The Fall band members came on stage, with legendary Mark E. Smith, lapping up the inevitability of the audience's awe of him, swaggering on stage a few minutes after the rest of the band. Having not yet purchased the band's latest album "Fall Heads Roll", perhaps I appreciated the set less than those who have heard the album.

However, of the classic songs I did know, many seemed to have been transformed in to krautrock-style, showy-guitar riff songs with the occasional addition of Smith's glamorous wife singing along at seemingly random times while playing pleasant tinkling tunes on her keyboard.

I can not deny that the set was hypnotising, if only staring at the eternal (though with the face of a 75 year old with sunken features after years of drug abuse and what could well be a set of false teeth) Mark. E. Smith, clad in a leather jacket, moving microphones around various parts of the stage. Perhaps this is what one must always expect from a man who knows he can do anything he wants and will still have an avid following of fans and a willing hoard of potential band members; but as so much of The Fall's brilliance is laid in the lyrics, Smith's incomprehensible moaning let the set down somewhat. If this is how Smith is going to read out those football scores, he won't be holding a job there. I'd certainly much rather listen to the band. At home on a recording, please.

Cecilia White