Pretentious, preposterous and some say perfect, the Fall have defined willful obscurity from the outset. Initially dismissed as "students" by their juvenile peers, the Fall were a band concerned more with art than attrition-- the chaos and controversy employed by McLaren's Sex Pistols played as forgone conclusions to the truly literate. Yet even amid erudite peers such as Wire and marquee-mates Joy Division, the Fall were singularly aloof.

If punk were ever about self-determinate idealism, Mark E. Smith reigns unchallenged as its king. Tone deaf and ghoulish, Smith was, in a sense, the first genuine successor to punk forefather Iggy Pop. Few performers before or since have so thoroughly confounded and antagonized an audience. And, arrested in 1997 for assaulting his ex-wife during an onstage meltdown in New York City, Smith remains as caustic as he was 20 years ago.

The Fall's performances were often as unstable as their lineup (more than thirty people have claimed membership over the years), and the group remained a necessarily independent act for seven years before signing with Beggars Banquet in 1984. Their first studio recordings were among the strongest they'd release in the late 70's: "Psycho Mafia," "Various Times" and the definitive "Second Dark Age" are nothing short of accomplished when compared with the disjointed albums that followed (Live at the Witch Trials, Dragnet and Totale's Turns). These nascent singles, as well as two songs included on the very first Mancunian punk record (Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus) were compiled for the cursed 1981 LP, Early Fall 77-79.

Like most UK punk acts, the Fall never paid attention to the legalities of record production. This disrespect for procedural interference was fine for bands that typically lasted less than three years or signed to major labels during their first gig's after-party; for the Fall-- still recording for smallish independents when they hit their creative stride in 1980-- it spelled latter-day legal strife. Some of their initial reverie was released by the largest of the UK independents, Rough Trade, but the band were instantly at odds with the label's chic political correctness and recorded for other imprints at will. Consequently, the rights to some of their best records were thinly defined when the group set about reissuing them on their COG Sinister imprint in 1997.

By late 1998, the legal niceties had been resolved, for the most part, and the process was in full swing. Record collectors and rock critics the world over swooned as Palace of Swords Reversed (single sides from 1981-1983) and the definitive concert album, Fall in a Hole, became available after languishing out of print for almost 15 years. Even if Palace was greedily abbreviated-- "Leave the Capitol" and "City Hobgoblins" were left off for fear of hurting Slates/A Part of America Therein-- the 1980-1983 recordings are among rock's most alluring curiosities and reissues were long overdue.

But what of the early singles? It's been almost 20 years since anyone could find a copy of Early Fall outside record expos, and who wants to flip through crate after crate of Nirvana bootlegs while a tenth-generation mono dub of Van Halen: Final show w/ David Lee Roth plays on a dusty 13" combo unit? No record's worth all that. Okay, maybe the original '87 Palace of Swords Reversed, but I already found that on CD for $6.99 at a supermarket in upstate New York. (Talk about the man whose head expanded...)

As comparatively unnecessary Fall records came back in print in 1998 and 1999-- including a slew of impenetrable live albums (the erroneously titled Legendary Chaos Tape foremost among them)-- the group either secured the rights to Early Fall or found a long lost master tape (or both). Who knows what's kept them off this thing for so long, but whatever the reason, this best-of/first-of was finally re-released as the last Fall record of the 20th century, proving that they still dig repetition 20 years later.

-Chris Ott