Alabama 3

Fuck me, out all day, Wales making a professional job of a win over Azerbaijan, me making a professional twat of myself with the poor lass serving me drinks, couple of mates up for a few days disappear downtown for 6 hours to look at art galleries, half-cut by 6pm and still 8 hours of lagertime ahead…

…so I ironed a shirt. Now, this is an important and rare occasion for me, scruffy-brained and perennially confused blagger that I am. Nice shirt too, has Brazil written on it in big letters. I want somehow to look my best, because today marks the reappearance of the mighty Alabama 3, and for it I want to pull out all the stops in feelin an looking fine.

And Christ the boys testify tonite… the lights are a strobin’ eyepoppin’ delight. Larry Love’s waydown comedown of a voice offset beautifully by bastard-son-of-Sadowitz* D.Wayne (Reverend)* and his drunken machinegun wordmanouvering. (And they’ve also got some really nice hats.)

Thing is about Alabama 3, they remind me so much of the days when I used to come out of a club in the early 1990s and pile into some random hippy van, drive to a quarry in the middle of nowhere, excited and eyes plate-wide with surety and sustenance; turning the final corner the smile would start to come from my stomach at the first sight of 2000 people off their tits dancing to a dodgy PA. I know it’s a cliché but in them days everything really was possible; the drugs were fresh and the fragile vibe of togetherness was all around, artificial or not.

First started listening to A3* after hearing, at random, their single ‘Converted’_ – fucked up gospel acid house mayhem with added Elvis samples. Fuckit, I love Elvis. And I loved their Presleytarian Church Of Elvis The Divine (UK).And I fuckin adored the first album, *'Exile On Coldharbour Lane' - which featured 'Woke Up This Morning', the theme tune to The Sopranos. If Exile was the Saturday night party album, 2000's followup La Peste, was the Tuesday afternoon comedown; broody, introspective, full of Hank Williams references and early morning regrets. New LP, 'Power In The Blood' marks a return to their dancy roots, and though not as immediate as the first coupla classics, still scrapes at the sky. And tonite we get tracks from all three records – ’I Ain’t Going To Goa'; 'REHAB'; setcloser 'Mao Tse Tung Said'.