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All Music Guide Review:
Review by John Bush
Just one of the innumerable Fall live shows released during the late '90s, 15 Ways to Leave Your Man dates from a 1996 date in London. As such, there's a lot of material from the Middle Class Revolt and Cerebral Caustic LPs, including "Don't Call Me Darling," "Feeling Numb," "The Reckoning," and "Hey Student." The sound quality is solid, though the performances aren't quite up to the Fall's often high standards.
Mark Prindle Review:
15 Ways To Leave Your Man (Live) - Receiver 1997.
8 out of 10
Whoo Pee. The Fall are back with another live album, their second I think. I bet it's from the Tighty-Whitey User's Syndrome tour, based on the fact that there are no songs newer than that album on here. The liner notes claim that it's from London '96, but it's definitely from at least two and at most 500 different shows. The soul within my bones is fatigued. My left heel hurts when I wear my work shoes, so I don't. After I walk up a staircase, my legs ache. My tummy keeps getting bigger. I run out of breath 1 second into Tae Kwon Do. Is this age? Is this what happens when you get old and eat nothing but Ketel One? I can't write today -- I can't even keep my eyes open without physically arching my eyebrows way up on the top of my forehead (which I'm doing right now). You people up in your ivory horsetower can talk about your starving Africans in China and your Enron scandal with Martha Stewart, but I'll tell you the real deal - the lowdown as I see it here on the mean urban streets: All politicians are honest and all celebrities are fascinating.
Brix sings on some of these, some have two guitarists (others one), some have keyboards you can hear (others don't), some have this moron gruff-voiced idiot (Mike Bennett) shouting excitedly like a four-year-old with fetal alcohol syndrome, but they all have one singular thing in common: it's neat how some of their songs sound so different live though. They play THOUR songs from Middle Class Revolt, FREE each from The Light User Syndrome and Cerebral Caustic, TOO from Code: Selfish and WON apiece from Shiftwork, I Am Kurious Oranj, Bend Sinister and This Nation's Saving Grace. I know we speak for all of us when I say it's a real drag that they didn't play anything from The Infotainment Scan, The Frenz Experiment, Extricate, The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall, Perverted By Language, Slates, Room To Live, Hex Enduction Hour, Grotesque (After The Gramme), Dragnet, Live At The Witch Trials or The Beatles' White Album.
Nobody but an obsessed collector idiot (me) would spend money on this, the seventy-five billionth live CD in the band's catalog. But that doesn't mean it's not good. It's really good! Good songs, interesting new arrangements - it's always a candy treat to hear a live CD that offers new and unfamiliar reworkings of songs you thought you knew by heart. The Fall have managed this quite a bit throughout the past decade because (a) Mark replaces all the members once a month and (b) They don't appear to practice at all. So here are some examples of this phenomenon, presented in bold living text to get you all excited about yet another live Fall CD that nobody's gonna buy.
Do you hear how "Chilinist" cruises along on full strummed guitars, and doesn't even include the three fast chords that mark the studio version? Perhaps Craig Scanlon had already left by the time they did this version. That growly-voiced Mike Bennett idiot won't shut up though and it drags on for 7 1/2 minutes. Also, the lyrical jokes fall flat as a horse when they're loud enough to hear ("Pink Floyd are short. The ninth richest country in the world -- bar none!").
And how about those two guitars playing different note sequences in "Don't Call Me Darling"? Yeah I know Brix sounds like a gruff obnoxious lesbo but so do the Kurds and now they have their own country.
"D.I.Y. Meat" features a guitar that's just making a really high ringing noise, as well as what Michael Nesmith might call a "Different Drum" pattern than the one on the studio release.
"Pearl City" - If you don't know a guitar line, don't try to play it!!! And here comes Mike Dumbass screaming the lyrics to "Secession Man" at the end. Why did Mark E. Smith put up with this crap? The guy sounds like a 55-year-old office worker overly giddy about his first chance to perform in front of a live audience. I picture him looking like that hilarious boss on The Office (British).
"L.A." - The final appearance of Mike Bennett. On a related note, when I was in 5th grade, I had a crush on this blonde girl named Gina Bennett. She rode bus number 223. I was a complete loser who never combed my hair, and that's about as far as that went. There are three vocalists on this song and not one of them doesn't sound ridiculous going "L! L! L! L! L! L! A! A! A! A!" fifty times louder than the music for ten minutes.
"Everything Hurtz" has an organ playing 4 descending notes. Was that in the original? If so, remove it from this list.
"The Mixer" sounds TERRIBLE! Untuned guitar, rolling drums, bass trying to play the right lines, synth buried - horrible! I mean, the song sucked to begin with but wait til you hear it performed incompetently!
Unlike "The Mixer," which is different in a disappointing way, "M5" too is different in a disappointing way. Because there are two guitarists, Brix has chosen to double the bass line, with the result that you can't hear the swishy guitar line that made the original so great. I don't even think there's a keyboard in there!
"Hey Student" must be a demo because Mark's voice is double-tracked and it fades out. The guitar plays the same thing the bass does, but kinda wrong. It's still a fun song though!
I have a bone to pick with people who work here. When I'm sitting on the crapper, why do so many people come into the crapper next door and literally SLAM the toilet seat down? I mean, they SLAM it! LOUD! It's so fucking rude and hateful, it makes me want to punch a hole through the partition between us and give 'em a tooth sandwich. Is it just that they're tapping it lightly and letting it fall? I know a lot of wussy office pricks are afraid of catching germs from toilet seats, so that might be it. Just letting the seat fall CLANGINGLY to the porcelain so they don't have to risk touching someone else's urine. As a co-founder and charter member of one of San Francisco's most successful piss club chains, I'll never understand the logic in this. Don't they realize that urine is cleansing? The ancient Monks of Baath believed that if you bathed in urine and rubbed it on your face before bed, you'd smell like a dick! They may have been right but that doesn't excuse little office wussies from their culpability. My headache = their culpability. Fuckers. Can't they just leave the seat up and squat over the hole? If they're so scared of what might be on the seat, why do they sit on it? Can't they just take a shit in their office drawer and leave my ears out of it? God it's pissing me off right now, just KNOWING they're out there wandering the corridors of my office. Maybe next time it happens, I'll kick down their stall door, shove their head in the pissbowl and slam the seat down on their HEAD over and over and over!!!
I have very few actual stressors in my life, you may be able to tell. Hey, do you ever do this? (*does thing*) For some reason, that gives me access to all the knowledge of the cosmos.
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