If you called Mark E. Smith a National Treasure he’d more than likely smack you in the face, and to be honest you’d deserve it: using such a glib turn of phrase is obviously going to agitate a dissident so long in the tooth. But there is something to be said for the motivation in issuing Smith such a prefix, as he’s been steadfast in his rejection of labels for thirty years. Forming The Fall in the mid Seventies, his atonal diatribes have underpinned one of the most diverse and consciously impenetrable bands the UK has ever produced, the list of albums almost as long as that of the personnel. He has stood at the peripherals of popular culture, piss eyed and peerless, for longer than anyone else would conceive possible and although his singularity can border on the belligerent, anyone with more than a passing interest in music will know exactly who he is, if a little unsure of why.

In a way he’s like those gothic Victorian follies that lay on the outskirts of most parochial towns, ominously protruding from the edge of the skyline: erected without agenda and widely ignored, the kind of monument that gradually becomes a meeting point for the misunderstood as they misspend their youth. A place to spit, a place to smoke, a place that becomes ever more interesting as the rest of the landscape gives way to a tide of concrete banality. Similarly, it’s the creeping lichen and years of disrepair that make Smith even more intriguing toady, continuing insouciantly as he does into the twenty first century.

However, it has to argued that for most people the idea of The Fall is much more attractive than the ear raping reality of seeing them play live. Mind you, you know what they say about ‘Most People’. A bitter swilling, bearded crowd shuffled into London’s spunk drenched Astoria on a wet Wednesday evening for an illegible sermon from on high, undaunted by the onslaught they were about to encounter. (At this juncture I’d like to take the opportunity to own up: the lad playing records beforehand, it was me that shouted ‘Wanker’ really loudly, because you are a wanker. If you must insist on playing Jerry Lee Lewis then have the good grace to play the record from the start, not from half way through… you wanker!)

True to form, Smth spent the proceedings stumbling about the stage like a Hip (replacement) Priest, fiddling with amps, hiding behind speakers and treating the audience to the aggresive indifference that’s become his trademark. Though most of the crowd lapped it up, there must have been other fans of a lesser standing (I raise my hand) who felt a little like a teenager dragged along to a pantomime. That’s not to label Smith a cross dressing thesp, it’s just difficult to enter into the ‘He’s behind you’ spirit of things when you know that Widow Twanky is really just a bloke in a dress who couldn’t get any better paid work.

The band performed stoically and without hiatus, playing everything hard and fast like an anvil on rollerskates. Smith’s said of this latest line up recently “They’re all much younger than me, and they’re not fans of The Fall at all, which is fucking brilliant” and you see his point; the vitality they’ve injected into recent album Reformation Post TLC is apparent in their renditions of older favourites like Pacifying Joint. It’s just a bit of a shame that instead of dancing, the crowd seem more interested in the pensioner with ADHD. I suppose it is his band.

Even though there are pionts when you feel like shouting “Matron, he’s got out of his bed again” you have to hand it to him, he’s taken antagonism in to unchartered territories. The 16 year old from Prestwich who was playing Post Punk when it was, well, Pre Punk is still kicking against the shit and playing by his own set of rules. Considering the incomparable Mark E Smith approaches existence with the wide reaching remit of John Peel and the life threatening appetite of Shane MacGowan, it’s hats off to him: not only is he still onstage, he’s throwing one up the keyboard player!