DANSE SOCIETY

FELT

FELT ARE hinged around guitarist and singer (in that order) Lawrence, a lovably naive, hick-ish figure from a village just outside Birmingham. They are in love with an image of themselves as a cultish glamour band following in the tradition of the Velvet Underground, their true value and worth destined not to be recognised until years after their demise.

Lawrence seriously considers Felt to be better then any other group around. This is not the common London kind of raving ego but an actual belief in their complete superiority which is bolstered by a degree of latent insanity.

Felt gigs are as rare as poets in the stock exchange: Lawrence prefers chip shops to rock venues. On stage, he has a charisma roughly equal to that of a dead jellyfish and moves with the grace and precision of an injured antelope.

His singing is plain embarrassing. Felt would be more fun if they stuck to their idea of performing entirely instrumental sets. It is the wondrous guitar tones that Lawrence somehow always manages to produce which makes the rest of what they do bearable.

Danse Society went a long way towards being the most pompous, over-rated heap of garbage it has over been my misfortune to encounter. Watching their set made me realise just how human Felt are.

Danse Society wear a small selection of grandiose musical masks to cover their very limited abilities. All their songs seem to be extended intros. They begin with dramatic crashings and vigorous rhythms but then simply stay the same and never evolve into anything of substance.

Flashing lights and dry ice are irksome enough but the grotesque postures adopted by various band members in an attempt to assert their importance would be laughable if they weren't so nauseatingly the stuff of 'traditional rock bands'.

Their set passed with agonising slowness. It pained me and surely serves to epitomise the boneheadedness of certain sections of the music industry to consider a band proffering such creative non-events, a band as imaginatively inert as Dense Society, worthy of any attention whatsoever. Still, if Flock Of Seagulls can do it...

The Fall begin with 'Room To Live', the title track of that whining apology of a most recent LP and such a ludicrous sequel to the almighty 'Hex Induction Hour'.

In fact, the songs from the former seem more fully formed in the live setting and 'RTL' itself is propelled by a severely insistent bass run executed with a measure of force sufficient to penetrate into your body and lock your biorhythms into its tempo. This effect, however, soon wears thin.

Wears thin. Hmmm. Now there's a fitting phrase. Going to see the Fall used to be exciting, stimulating and the best night out that dole money could buy. I was fan enough to purchase all their early records on the day they were released. Their music was a savage brand of post-punk action topped with acid lyrics that ran their scorch marks across the memory and continually-recurred as one wrestled with the mundane details of everyday life.

But like I said, all this wears thin. Going to see the Fall nowadays is more of a duty that I seem somehow obliged to perform. Some of their songs appear now to be nonsense with just a vague coating of Fall-style to please their adoring cult following. I mean, a song like 'Marquis Cha Cha' is merely good for practicing your tango dance steps.

The problem is that the Fall have become dependable and, consequently, predictable. You go along assured that the dual guitars and twin drums will rattle out impressive sheets of sound, that Mark E. Smith will provide caustic comments and that the Fall will continue to be a thorn in the side of... (fill in your pet hate).