The Fall @ Queen's Hall, 12 Oct

Punk poet John Cooper Clark has the sniffles or man flu or is waiting on someone to pick up that chest of drawers he advertised in the yellow paper last week, so tonight there's an hour long gap between the support act that no-one watched and the latest - perhaps heaviest - incarnation of The Fall to take the stage. Anticipation builds to fever pitch before Mark E. Smith reduces row after row of receding hairlines to a frenzy with his mere presence. The band are on terrifying form, particularly the rhythm section whose eyes are simultaneously locked on each other and their frontman, Smith, who cues changes with a drunken yelp or a song’s end with a cutting motion across his neck. He stumbles around the stage, lobs microphones into the bass drum, fiddles with knobs on amps and at one point shoves his wife out of the way so he can have an out of tune fumble on her keyboard during an extended version of Blindness. All the while he raves incoherently. 30 years on and not only are the Fall still relevant, but one of the most exciting live propositions around. [Stephen Toman]