The Screaming Blue Messiah’s weren’t also-rans, or nearly men in the conventional sense. They enjoyed a degree of success. They were hand-picked to support David Bowie. He was a huge fan. As was Andrew Eldritch. The band and also supported Echo and The Bunnymen and The Cramps. They got to play on The Old Grey Whistle Test (the footage is knocking around on YouTube and is belting, and a testament to Bill Carter’s savage approach to guitar playing). They had a live concert broadcast on Radio One, and later released on CD. These aren’t small things. The majority of bands who have ever existed could only dream of such exposure. They were signed to Warners and had their backing, their funding, for the majority of their career. That simply wouldn’t happen now: bands who don’t make it after their first release on a major are dropped like a hot turd. So why weren’t the Messiahs huge? How is it that they retain the status of one of the coolest cult bands no-one’s ever heard of, despite having broken the top 40, and despite some of their back catalogue commanding substantial bids on eBay (prior to the release of ‘Vision in Blues,’ a CD copy of ‘Bikini Red’ would skin you for at least thirty quid)?
The answer could lie in the fact that the Messiahs never really sat comfortably anywhere: a blues rock band, yes, but hard-edged, aggressive, and with strong punk overtones. They knew how to crank it up to the max. Their Americana leanings were skewed and coloured by splintering, stuttering guitars (the complexity of Bill Carter’s juddering, serrated guitar style is every bit as idiosyncratic and tight and distinctive as Gang of Four’s Andy Gill) and a venomous antagonism; coming on like Dr Feelgood on speed, Screaming Blue Messiahs never went for radio-friendly country tunes.
There is a clear development cross the albums, which perhaps becomes more apparent with the distance of time, and the benefit of a package which encourages the listening of them consecutively, in sequence, and in close proximity to one another.
‘Someone To Talk To’ is the standout on the debut EP, ‘Good and Gone’, and is a recurring live track across the releases. It carries all of the band’s hallmarks: splintering, stuttering, guitar, bursting over a thunderous drum track and groove-heavy bass and Bill Carter’s yelping vocals. ‘If I die on the Russian front / bury me with some Russian cunt’, Carter hollers on this definitive track, and his vocal is constantly less blues and more overtly punk in style, making no concession to pop melodies in its raw aggression. It’s quite possible that the vocal style is the primary reason The Screaming Blue Messiahs proved to be divisive in the own way, or perhaps it simply was that the world wasn’t ready for a band of such power to assail them in the years when the charts were dominated by slick mediocre shit, still lolling in the wake of Dire Straits and MTV’s rise to cultural dominance. That said, the EP as a whole has some serious kick: ‘Tracking the Dog’ comes on like Howlin’ Wolf in collision with ZZ Top, only with a hard, manic edge. This first disc sees the original six-track EP expanded to 12, and the four tracks credited as having been recorded live in July 1984 are in fact the band’s first Peel session.
The debut album, ‘Gunshy’ sees the promise of ‘Good and Gone’ refined, distilled and pulled into a seriously high-octane set. Single release ‘Twin Cadillac Valentine’ is a stone-cold classic. The drums! Man, those drums. How the hell any human could sustain that powerhouse rhythm for the track’s full duration is beyond me. It’s also got a killer hook, and essentially defines everything that made The Messiahs great. Along with a bunch of additional contemporaneous studio tracks, the album’s augmented with the five live cuts, recorded at the ULU which features as B-sides to the 12” release of the aforementioned doozer of a single. Of the many live recordings featured here – live recordings of a band who were eternally hailed as an act whose live shows far eclipsed their studio work – these really do stand out. I mean, the full force of the performance really shines through, and the recordings really do convey just how much attack this band had in their prime.
‘Bikini Red’ (1988) is certainly more evolved in terms of songwriting, and the production feels rather more polished. It also finds the band pushing in different stylistic directions, with the rockabilly ruckus of ’55 The Law’, and the self-explanatory ‘Waltz’ marking a departure from their blues roots. ‘I Wanna Be a Flintstone’ is very much an anomaly, as much now as it was then. A novelty single and vaguely silly, it combines punk guitars and vocals with samples from ‘The Flintstones’. It’s not awful, but it does seem unjust that their biggest hit best-known song should be so unrepresentative. ‘Jerry’s Electric Church,’ the flipside to the single is the bonus cut here, and if it seems like slim pickings in comparison to the other discs, it’s because the rest of the package spoils us all so. If ‘Bikini Red’ seems like a more commercial release than its predecessors, the immense power that defined the band is still, nevertheless, very much in evidence: the powerhouse drumming of ‘Jesus Chrysler Drives a Dodge’ is breathtaking; ‘Too Much Love’ is a raw, raging beast that melds frenzied guitar riffing with eye-popping energy from the rhythm section, and ‘Sweet Water Pools’ is one of the best songs they ever penned, combining energy, aggression and pure mania and distilling it all into three and a bit minutes of exploding tension.
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‘Totally Religious’ emerged in 1989. As seems to be a recurring tale with bands signed to Warners, after jetting the band out to record the album in the States, relationship between band and label soured and the album was deleted a month after release. With no singles from the album and minimal promotion apart from a handful of gigs after which the band split, it’s spent the intervening years languishing, largely forgotten.
‘Totally Religious’ showcases a denser sound, and one which is in some respects more of its time, the thumping drums and wall-of-sound guitars which dominate the album offering something that borders on a stadium scale at times. It’s perhaps their most consistent album, but by the same token their safest and most commercial-sounding, with fade-outs, greater emphasis on harmonies, and a slicker mix than its predecessors. Still, it’s hardly soft or easy-listening: it’s still packed with aggression and some devastating guitar work, all pinned together by an unstoppable bedrum and bass unit, and in places, the sound isn’t a million mile away from that of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry in their later years. If it lacks some of the ferocity and initial impact of the other albums, it nevertheless seethes plenty, and is impressive for its solidity. What’s more, there isn’t a duff track on it: from the fiery bombast of ‘Four Engines Burning (Over the USA) to the ball-busting dark blues swagger of ‘Here Comes Lucky’, it would be fair enough to describe it as a lost classic. There are no extra tracks on this disc, but it’s enough that it’s finally available once more.
The fifth and final CD had to be a live one, but it’s not the BBC Radio 1 show from February 1988 (released 1992); instead, it’s ‘Zurich 7th December 1989’, recorded for Swiss Radio DRS3 FM, and released as an ‘official bootleg’ by the band themselves in 2007. It’s noted on fan sites as being a bit of an oddity. Writing on his SBM Bootlegs site, Grant Louden describes it as ‘an unusual gig with a lot of experimentation and long jams. Sounds like the tape is running a little slow in general, but even so eight whole minutes of ‘Four Engines’, the slowest ever version of ‘You’re Gonna Change’ and a really great ‘Accident Prone’. In parts this sounds... strange, and in others absolutely blinding.’ It’s a fair summary, and this repaired and remastered version features a couple of extra songs not on the original. The intensity and volume of the show rips from the speakers amidst a brutal onslaught of guitar carnage. And seriously, the drumming is something else. Holy fuck. It’s also noteworthy for the inclusion of ‘Accident Prone’ which has not been officially released in live or studio form.
Wrapping up, and topping off, what is a brilliantly comprehensive and magnificently presented box-set is a three-track 7”, containing another three live recordings. Again from 1984, and recorded in London, it features further renditions of ‘Let’s Go Down to the Woods’ and ‘Good & Gone’, as well as the previously unreleased ‘Vision in Blues’. It’s an absolute smasher.
Ordinarily, I’d suggest that a box-set containing a band’s complete studio output, inclusive of B-sides and packed out with a stack of live cuts and radio sessions is strictly one for the fans. That isn’t the case here: for a start, this is a band who stand as the dictionary definition of ‘criminally underrated’, and while existing fans will naturally welcome its release, ‘Vision in Blues’ provides the perfect introduction to The Screaming Blue Messiahs. Similarly, I’d ordinarily say that so much live material is likely offputting to all but the most devoted fan. Again, not so on this occasion: the live recordings are choice in their selection and are of a quality that succeeds in conveying the band’s live power. In short, the guys at Easy Action have done a stellar job.
All too often, releases described as ‘essential’ are far from it, but ‘Vision in Blues’ is genuinely, absolutely, totally essential.
The Screaming Blue Messiahs On Soundcloud
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