Fifty Years of The Fall – Huge Three Day Festival

Legendary Prestwich band, The Fall, is to be celebrated with a three day festival at Band On The Wall over the weekend 5^th-7^th June this year. The Fall: Futures and Pasts 1976-2026 features everything from art exhibitions to films, live music, plays and quizzes in honour of the most influential combo to come out of Manchester/Salford/Bury New Road or anywhere else for that matter.

As the blurb for the Festival reminds everyone, “In the summer of 1976, a group of friends who were interested in poetry and music decided they were going to form a band. The resulting sound, attitude, look and ambition was like nothing else around them, either locally across Manchester or elsewhere around the world. Driven by a proletarian work ethic, Mark E Smith carried this on relentlessly for over forty years.

“Now, for the first time, a festival is set to honour the seismic legacy and continuing influence of The Fall” it adds “Five decades on from their formation, it would be hard to image our cultural landscape without them. Their vibrations do live on.”

Former band members are taking part in the Festival, including Una Baines’ Poppycock playing live, a film premier of never seen before US concert footage and back stage shenanigans from 1993/4 by Dave Bush, a book launch of Paul Hanley’s monograph of The Fall at Band On The Wall, DJ sets from Craig Scanlon and Marc Riley, and brothers Paul and Steve Hanley will be presenting Oh Brother ‘a podcast about The Fall’.

Meanwhile, The Look Back Bores (not a ‘tribute band’) will be playing The Fall songs for The Fall fans, as will The Fallen Women, and there’ll be another live podcast – We Are The Fall – from Gavin and Steve with special guest, Grant Showbiz. The band’s prolific output is appreciated in an award-winning musical, spoken word show, The Church of The Fall, and there’s a quiz – Middle Mass-termind, pitting two teams of The Fall fans against each other.

Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, will be in ‘conversation and more’ with the Hanley Brothers, there’s walking tours of music Manchester with Funky Si’s, and a Fall-related art exhibition throughout the weekend.

Also on offer during the fest is a new staging of Mark E’s play, Hey! Luciani, and a Q and A about the original show from 1986 with some members of the original cast. And there’s still more events to be announced.