Commentary

“Ponto” was performed live three times that we know of, all during The Fall’s residence at the Carling Academy, Islington, London, in July 2007:

• 17 July 2007: Carling Academy, Islington.
• 19 July 2007: Carling Academy, Islington.
• 20 July 2007: Carling Academy, Islington.

Audience recordings circulate of all these. It appears that the group was testing out an early version of the song, as the performances have largely indecipherable and minimal vocals (…and this is different how? I hear the critics complain).

MES partially resorts to “Like to Blow” lyrics and references to James Fennings on 19 July. There are additional vocals from Eleni on that occasion, which is the longest of the three performances.

A studio recording of the song appeared on the second additional disc (titled “Britannia Row Recordings 21/9/07” – in other works recorded just a couple of months after The Fall tried the song out live) when the 3 x CD expanded edition of The Fall’s 2007 album Imperial Wax Solvent was put out by Cherry Red in 2020. In the sleeve notes the song is credited to “The Fall”.

A bootleg version was in circulation prior to the official release.

Musically, “Ponto” is not a million miles away from “Tommy Shooter” (Imperial Wax Solvent, 2007).

Footnotes

1. “Ponto” has a number of possible meanings. In Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club… 1837), “Ponto” is a dog (see The Victorian Web: “The Sagacious Dog”). There’s a dog with the same name in the works of P.G. Wodehouse, possibly inspired by Dickens. See for example “The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh” (1923), collected in The Heart of a Goof, (1926). The most promising possibilities are probably the trading card warrior and Mozart’s King (a Black Sea Warrior rather than a Black Warrior). See footnote #2. ↩︎
2. As noted in footnote #1, “Ponto” has various meanings, and so there are a number of possibilities as to what the lyrical reference is. But there is the “African warrior” of the nineteenth century trading card pictured in the commentary. Something of the sort could have been a TV quiz question. I can find no reliable information about any “Ponto” people, so possibly it may more accurately be “Pondo” or “Mpondo” (see: Wikipedia: Mpondo people). There is also Mozart’s opera (written when he was 14), Mitridate, re di Ponto (“Mitridate, King of Ponto”): Mitridate is a warrior too, presumed dead in the opera’s prologue. “Ponto” refers to the Kingdom of Pontus, which bordered the Black Sea. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Ponto” [Archived]
• Discogs: Imperial Wax Solvent, 3 x CD expanded edition. Cherry Red: CDTRED810.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: “Ponto Warrior, Africa” (trading card)
• The Track Record: “Ponto”
• Wikipedia: “Kingdom of Pontus”
• Wikipedia: “Mitridate, re di Ponto” (Mozart opera)