Totale's Turns (It's Now or Never) (1980)

Here we have The Fall's first live album, but in true Fall fashion is still contains two new non-live tracks, "New Puritan" and "That Man". Totale's Turns finds a good line-up of The Fall playing average venues, such as a leisure center, where average people were in the crowd, and (not to sound like a pretentious ass) average people don't generally tend to view The Fall as a great band. Despite what I assume were less than receptive crowds, the band perform well, playing tracks from primarily their first two albums. Since I have already talked, or will talk, about the songs on this record, it comes down more to how they sound here. Mark E. Smith is at his Mark E. Smithiest, dripping with irony and almost yelling his lyrics into the microphone at times over the abrasive sound band. I would have liked the mix to sound a little nicer, but that may be a lot to ask for. At times the guitar is more muffled than I'd like below the drums, and the bass can be heard about half the time, at least by my ears.

Totale's Turns (It's Now or Never) - C +

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