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Reader rating
Description: The prolific and legendary Mark E Smith and band back on the road to promote new album, Reformation Post TLC.
Phone: 0208600 2300
Website: www.hammersmithpalais.com
Trains: Tube: Hammersmith 
Never overly sentimental: Mark E Smith ignored the crowd during the last ever concert at Hammersmith Palais
And so Hammersmith Palais has hosted its final concert. Contrary, cussed, hostile, grumpy and more west Lancashire than west London, The Fall were a most peculiar choice for the wake.
Unsurprisingly, it ended in tears and acrimony, after Mark E Smith and his six (or was it seven? The views were always lousy at Hammersmith Palais) cohorts shuffled off stage after a set lasting 50 minutes during which Smith ignored the audience.
The crowd demanded an encore, with the exception of one urchin who bamboozled snoozing security and found himself on stage berating Smith for being so "high and mighty" as to not mention the Palais's demise. "This is wrong, this is wrong," he thundered.
The fluorescent-jacketed security then spent the encore wandering around stage, jiggling keys, presumably to lock stable doors after some horses had long bolted. Before he left for good, Smith addressed the crowd in broadest Mancunian: "Thank you for letting us into your security area. We're off to civilisation."
And that was that, pop's last words at the former Hammersmith Palais de Dance. Smith never was overly sentimental.
The goodbye emphasised both why the venue had to go and why it will be sorely missed.
An uncleared pool of vomit blocking the main thoroughfare spoke its own pungent tale of uncaring management, as did the strange little tykes in the restrooms trying to sell lollipops to confused men attempting to empty bladders bursting on overpriced lager and the fact that wherever you stood, it was impossible to see a band in a venue doubtless fabulous for jitterbugging in the Twenties, but in brutal truth hopelessly unsuited to hosting 21st-century bands.
For old times' sake, I swapped £4.60 for a "classic burger", the smell of which helped mask the vomit. It may have been a burger, but it was not "classic". That Michelin star must have been lost in the post.
And yet, while The Fall may have been the wrong band for the wrong occasion, they sounded fabulous on either elderly favourites such as White Lightning or the set's breathtaking new centrepiece, My Door Is Never.
Best of all, the low-slung roof gave the proceedings such intimacy that for a moment the ghosts of Lou Praeger, of Bill Haley, of U2 and of all those who graced this landmark, flickered once more.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
