After the Fall

The Fall are, of course, the best of bands and the worst of bands. I saw them a few years ago in Oxford. Mark E Smith had just had one of his periodical bouts of firing the whole band. I think that he had replaced them with the members of the support band.
So, after we had politely listened to that night's support band (who may have had hopes of being promoted to being The Fall themselves), the four musicians who came on to the stage got a huge cheer despite being completely unknown. But it turned out that they were just another support band.
After the second support, we were treated to a twenty minute film of disjointed images accompanied by a wall of unlistenable noise (and, don't forget, we had come to see The Fall, so we had a higher than usual tolerance for noise).
Eventually, four more unknown musicians wandered on stage to be greeted by the slightly cautious welcome of a crowd who weren't gonna get fooled again. But, sure enough, Mrs Smith followed them and, after a five minute intro, so did Mark E Smith.
And it was great.

The Fall