Next week Castle Face is releasing The Fall's Live at St. Helens Technical College, ’81, which finds one of the best-ever lineups of the iconic Manchester band -- Marc Riley and Craig Scanlon on guitar, Stephen Hanley on bass and his brother, Paul, on drums -- playing at the top of their game. We've got the premiere of "Rowche Rumble," The Fall's great 1979 single where bandleader Mark E Smith rants about valium and those who take it. In his best Nervous Norvus he snorts, "I'll never never never never do it again!"
Marc Riley, who is a BBC 6 DJ these days, told us a little about the origins of the song. "This was the first time Craig and I saw down to purposefully write a song for The Fall," Marc says. "He (and Steve) had just joined the band and I remember we were sat in the front room of my house going over riffs and stuff. I came up with a sequence that (in my mind) was akin to The Stooges ’Tight Pants/ Shake Appeal’. Of course it ended up nothing like it...but once we all got together in the rehearsal room it came together as a pretty ferocious beast. Particularly once MES started weaving his bitter magic and the pounding drums kicked in.”