The Fall: Hit The North (Double Six Mix)

double6

Beggars Banquet 1987.  BEG200C

Discogs

As a devotee of John Peel, it is inevitable that I’m into The Fall.  I won’t be posting much of it here because it’s generally available, but here’s a curio which has been unavailable for 25 years and I doubt will ever be re-issued.

The Fall are by no means immune to marketing nonsense with multiple versions of singles and re-issues of old albums with pointless live bonus tracks to ensnare the completists.  Hit The North, perhaps the best of their “commercial” sounding singles took this to extremes by appearing in no less than 6 versions.  To get them all you had to buy the 7″, the 12″, the remix 12″ and the cassette.  To say I was hacked off was putting it mildly, so I sourced all 4 in bargain bins after the single had charted.  To add insult to injury, the endless remixes are a bit pointless and samey.

What we have here is by far the rarest of them, the double six mix (aka part 6) which appeared only on the cassette single.  I doubt many of them were sold – cassettes are of course horrible, and back in the day were mostly bought by people not that bothered about music, i.e. not your typical Fall fan.   Since then I’m guessing most of them have been binned, chewed up by car cassette players or just forgotten about.  I’ve only ripped the double six mix, because the other tracks on the cassette are available elsewhere in much better quality.

I don’t have the right gear for ripping cassettes properly.  You’re supposed to use a Nakamichi deck which you adjust for the cassette you’re trying to rip.  I had to dig my old Denon deck out of a cupboard and hope for the best.  It’s actually a pretty decent deck and still works fine.  The result, while not perfect is very listenable, and as far as I can see isn’t available anywhere else on the net.  Maybe one day someone will do the Nakamichi thing, but until then, this rip is as good as you’ll find.

If you like this period of The Fall, get the Beggars Banquet B sides compilation 458489 B Sides.  It’s much better than the A sides equivalent, and has Hit The North (part 2) and a live version which I don’t think appears anywhere else.

4 comments
    1. Thank you for sharing the double 6 mix of Hit the North. The live version was on the 12″ B-side of Cab It Up. Please email the link. Cheers!

      1. Hi John,

        Ah, I don’t have that 12″, and the Fall’s catalogue is so vast I couldn’t face rooting through it all to check.

        If it’s the link to Hit The North you’re after, it’s in the comment before yours. You have to cut and paste the filehost into the link where the stars are. A pain I know but it stops bots triggering takedown notices.

        1. Thank you.

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