I've been pretty much out of touch with what Mark E. Smith and the Fall have been doing since about 1989 so I went to their gig in the Roisin largely out of a sense of historical curiosity. But, bloody hell if it wasn't one of the very best concerts I've ever been at. Maybe they only played for little over an hour but the band had the crowd in such a frenzy from the word go that by the time they had sauntered off the stage the audience seemed too knackered to even attempt anything more than the most whimpering calls for an encore. But an encore did come, and while I was distracted by a face-off between a nutcase and a bowsie that was threatening to erupt into fullscale flailing, I could only wonder if The Fall were always this good and why had I written Mark E Smith and his merry crew off for a full decade and a half just because his songs used to give me a pain in the head. How can somebody that looks like a resident of a Salford doss house manage to summon a force that is more funk, more indie, more downright uncompromising rock n'roll than just about anything else being produced today? And while my tinnitus and I recover, here's the Fall Video Repository to amuse yourselves with (check out the videos from The Knitting Factory NY from April this year for a flavour of what was on show in Galway).

PS: Fans review the gig.