62 - The Fall with Funky Si

62 - The Fall with Funky Si

Author: Rock n Roll Book Club May 3, 2025 Duration: 50:49

In this episode of Music Maps, we welcome back Simon Wolstencroft, the former drummer of The Fall. His book You Can Drum But You Can't Hide is out now on Route Publishing.


Funky Si joined The Fall in 1986 after his previous band The Weeds had opened for them. Following a meeting at Mark E. Smith's house in Prestwich it became official.


'Hey Luciani' becomes the first Fall track he works on with producer Ian Broudie in Amazon Studios in Liverpool & his first gig follows at Folkestone Leas Cliff Hall in June 1986.


Sessions for the Bend Sinister album follow with John Leckie at Abbey Road, followed by Simon's first US tour. A one off gig with U2 at Elland Road in Leeds follows & non-album single There’s a Ghost In My House becomes the highest charting Fall single to date shortly after.


Hit The North follows close behind in October of 1987 & the next album is The Frenz Experiment in 1988, with I Am Kurious Oranj & Shift Work albums following.


With their commercial peak in the view mirror, Simon's final gigs with The Fall take place in 1997 & he leaves the band shortly after.



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The Music Maps Podcast from the Rock n Roll Book Club isn't your typical music show. It's an audio expedition where geography is the guide. Every episode starts with a specific location-a city, a venue, a forgotten roadside attraction-and uses that place as a launchpad to explore the sounds, stories, and scenes connected to it. You might find yourself deep in the blues clubs of Chicago one week and tracing the underground punk threads of a small European town the next. The conversations are wide-ranging, connecting the dots between iconic artists and obscure movements, all anchored to a point on the map. Listening to this podcast feels like adding a new, richly detailed pin to a global atlas of musical influence. It’s about the context behind the chords and the cultural soil from which genres grow. The result is a continuously evolving, deeply human portrait of how music and place are inextricably linked, one fascinating destination at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

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