"Let there be drums..."- House of All, Bongo Club, Edinburgh 22.3.25

Not really a live review...

House of All - Bongo Club, Edinburgh – 22.3.25

The first record that comes on immediately after House of All end their encore-free 70-odd minute set is ‘Mouldy Old Dough’, the 1972 novelty hit by Lieutenant Pigeon. Whether this is part of the regular routine of the clattering amalgam of former members of The Fall or is just something an in-house soundperson put on for a gag isn’t clear. * Whatever, after the relentless maelstrom that’s gone immediately before, Lieutenant Pigeon’s instrumental mash-up of parade ground flute and drums married to plinky-plonky Mrs Mills style pub piano is perfect.

While this is possibly because ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ was one of my favourite songs as a boy, there is something appealingly trashy about its display of off-kilter glamtastic bubblegum that seems to fit with the meaty, beaty, big and bouncy display that preceded it.

“Let there be drums,” House of All frontman and original Fall guitarist Martin Bramah (1976-79; 1989-90) commands at the start of the set. Given that as he speaks there are two drum kits on stage behind him occupied by Paul Hanley (1980-85) and Simon Wolstencroft, aka Funky Si (1986-97), this isn’t a problem. Especially as House of All’s newest member and up until recently the Fall’s most elusive ex, Karl Burns (1977-79; 1981-86; 1993-96; 1997-98), will join in mid-set as the band’s third drummer.

Other than a guy named Steve Ormrod who lasted one gig, that man Karl Burns is The Fall’s original drummer several times over. He was in the thick of it as well in 1998 when things fell apart in New York. The last time I saw Burns on a stage before tonight was playing with Ark, the short lived post split outfit formed with Steve Hanley (1979-1998) and Tommy Crooks, the East Lothian sired guitarist co-opted by Mark E Smith after providing an album cover.

Since then, Burns has seemingly been off grid. He was the missing link in Dave Simpson’s book, The Fallen (2008), which attempted to track down every former member of the band. Now Burns has surfaced, I imagine Simpson will either be fuming or else is planning an updated new edition of his book any second.

I first saw a Burns/Hanley two-drummer line-up of The Fall at Liverpool Warehouse in 1981 and 1982 in two blistering shows, then again at the Royal Court in 1983. By this time Brix Smith had joined on guitar. I was reminded of the Warehouse shows tonight. The room at the Bongo is about roughly the same size as I remember it, or at least the stage is, anyway, and the interplay between Paul Hanley, Wolstencroft and Burns with Bramah, Steve Hanley and exquisite lead guitarist Phil Lewis, stepping up for studio guitarist Pete Greenway, is just as close, just as loud and just as hypnotic.

On one level, House of All might be viewed as a sidestep from Bramah’s tenure leading Blue Orchids, the band he originally formed after he left The Fall first time round, and reincarnated much, much later. Blue Orchids opened for the Nightingales in Edinburgh at a couple of shows I helped put on. The first, at Leith Depot’s old upstairs space, saw Bramah and co give an astonishing performance in a gloriously over sold sweatbox that climaxed in an epic mash-up of first generation Blue Orchids song, ‘Work’, with ‘Before the Moon Falls’, which appeared on The Fall’s post Bramah second album, Dragnet (1979). Lyrics aside, they are pretty much the same song.

We made so much money that night that I ended up in the bar stuffing tenners into Bramah’s hand to top up the frankly paltry fee they’d asked for. The second time Blue Orchids opened for the Nightingales was at the Caves, when they closed with a pulverising version of Chicago’s ’25 Or 6 to 4’.

But House of All isn’t really