Twin Cadillac Valentine

When visitors come to the AP Skyscraper, I'm usually asked the same three questions: "Where's the rest room?" "How come your wife hasn't murdered you in your sleep and fed you to wild pigs?" "Why do your blogs have weird titles?" The answers to the first two questions are "The door to the right just before the kitchen, and please don't steal our Sevendust gold records" and "But Dennis, your new record is actually GOOD!"

The answer to the third question is that 98-percent of my blog headers are all song titles by my favorite rock 'n' roll band in life, the SCREAMING BLUE MESSIAHS. Formed in London in the mid-80s following the demise of the British pub-rock band Motor Boys Motor, singer-guitarist Bill Carter and bassist Chris Thompson teamed up with drummer Kenny Harris and proceeded to fuck shit up in their country's indie scene. Compared to all of the rampant bullshit happening in America at the time (you know, the audio ipecac that's routinely romanticized by VH1 Classic and the final episode of The Sopranos), the Messiahs' brand of nitrous-burning psychosis hit my twenty-sumpin' brain like a 700 mph bitchslap. Taking their cues from the works of old blues masters, the jagged angularity of Captain Beefheart and the stamina of first-wave punk, the trio made heads swivel with their stripped-down aesthetic and a sublime ability to dish out some straight-up power. Over the course of three and a half slabs of wax (their debut mini-LP Good And Gone, Gun Shy, Bikini Red and Totally Religious) and a bunch of 12-inch EPs, the Messiahs were always in high rotation in my white-trash hamlet of Western Pennsylvania.

Back in the days when gas was cheap and I'd routinely spend too much money on vinyl records, I was fortunate enough to see the Messiahs during their handful of American tours. I loved their records to death, so driving five hours to Washington, D.C., to see them was a no-brainer. Let me tell you something, peeps: Those guys BROUGHT it. You had Carter, the scary guitar player (who looked like a cross between actor Yul Brynner and pro-wrestling legend George "the Animal" Steele), sweat dripping down his bald head and into his eyelashes, completely savaging his gear (and his hands; guitar picks are for wusses) while rambling obtuse non sequiturs; Harris, a plasma-ball force of a drummer who drove the whole thing through sheer determination and centrifugal force; and Thompson, the stoic bassist holding everything together like it was business as usual. The first time I saw them (at the old 930 Club in D.C.), the vibe was positively menacing. A third of the way into the set, an audience member had an epileptic seizure. Ten minutes later, the head of Thompson's bass amp caught fire, but everyone kept playing, totally locked in with what they were doing. The tour manager had to run onstage and chase them off, and the band looked like they were going to kill him, until they were informed of what was going down. (I'm pretty sure Fugazi's Guy Picciotto was in attendance that evening. Guy, if you're out there, confirm or deny but TESTIFY in the comments!)

As much as I loved their records, the Messiahs were built for live action. After the US release of Gun Shy, they went on tour with the Cramps and schooled that band's hipster crowds accordingly (a fact not lost on the Cramps crew, who made life particularly difficult for the band on more than one occasion). The trio went out on tour with the Beat Farmers and Beat Rodeo for the first-ever Spin College Tour. A show from College Park, Maryland, was filmed and broadcast on MTV and I don't think I've ever used the phrase "positively godhead" to describe anything I've seen since. The Messiahs brought their Bo Diddley-at-the-rim-of-Hell A-game: They ended the set with the punishing "Twin Cadillac Valentine," six minutes of charging drumming and guitar noise which ended with Carter throwing his battered Telecaster onto the floor and violently scraping the strings with the discus base of his microphone stand. Several college coeds were upfront, covering their ears and grimacing at the screech. After seeing that, I was completely ready to get a tattoo of their name. On my face. (BTW, if anybody knows where I can get a VHS reel of that broadcast, I will put you in my will. I bet the master was thrown into a dumpster on Broadway decades ago to make room for the complete history of TRL.) At other shows, I saw Carter whack a stage invader with a swimming-pool-green Telecaster, and slice his thumb on an A-string, bleeding all over the front of his guitar while plowing ahead as if nothing in the world was wrong. Fuggin' awesome!

I was a total screaming blue geek about these guys. I'd cut out any mention of the band I saw in a magazine. I remember yelling "Yeah!" while reading an interview with Celt-punks the Pogues, when they claimed they psyched themselves up backstage before gigs listening to nothing but the Messiahs--and Puccini. I'd talk about them to other performers I'd write about for AP. I finally interviewed Bill Carter for the mag and he answered my questions bemusedly, although I think he might've considered getting a restraining order against me, just in case. David Bowie was stoked on them enough that he had the trio open his Wembley Stadium shows on his Glass Spider Tour. See, unlike most people who like to keep their bands to themselves and maybe five other strangers, I WANTED the entire planet to see these guys tear a hole in the time/space continuum.

Here's a clip of the band doing "Let's Go Down To The Woods And Pray" on a 1985 episode of the British television show Old Grey Whistle Test. At the 2:45 mark, they go into my fave track, "Good And Gone," and Carter beats his guitar like it was an AIG employee.




This clip from the British show Night Network has the band hammering through "Jesus Chrysler Drives A Dodge." I have played this clip over a hundred times, and I still get chills when Carter abuses his guitar (around the 1:30 mark) and Harris just drives everything. Everything about this clip is full-on. I want to marry the horribly permed girl banging her head like a maniac and I want to break a chair over the head of the asshat down in front who's just standing there...



Like every other band with a cult following and a major-label deal, the Screaming Blue Messiahs were being nudged into smoothing things out a bit and the last album, Totally Religious, wasn't as bone-snapping as it could've been. Internal tensions grew, managers went out the door like the whores on Rock Of Love, and the band adjourned in the summer of 1990. To this day, I've never seen a group lay out that kind of power and menace. The Screaming Blue Messiahs pushed it so hard, it made so much stuff that came after them--a lot of punk, rockabilly, that "insurgent country" nonsense--seem hopelessly redundant. All of their records are out of print: CD versions of Gun Shy have gone for $45 (if you're lucky) to $125 on eBay. An occasional reminder of the band pops up in unusual places, like over a closing scene in the Dennis Leary series Rescue Me or maybe a nod to their "novelty track" "I Want To Be A Flintstone" on some '80s tribute show. (Hey Rhino Records! How about a box set reissue? I'll do all the liner notes for free. Call me up.)

These days, Kenny Harris (who has done everything from auditioning for AC/DC to writing a novel) currently oversees the official SBM website, originally created by classy rock photographer Dave "Chalkie" Dawson (Hell to the effin' yeah!). Chris Thompson plays guitar and lays out some badassed pub-rock with his band, the Killer B's. Bill Carter has been pursuing a career in art (check out some of his work here) and has started playing in a new band. (No new tracks on his MySpace page, though. Whassupwiddat?) The British label Hux is issuing a collection of Messiahs live recordings in the very near future and it can't get on my stereo fast enough. For even more insight into the legend of the last Blue Messiahs, check out the fabulous Blue Heaven website run by the very talented and most righteous Grant Louden.

Okay, so my sonic gods aren't as sexy as some other people's. As you traipse through 2009, dear friends, remember: If you've never heard it, it's new to you. And a 200-decibel shout-out to my boy Dave Corsi, who let me borrow his copy of Good And Gone all those years ago, thereby changing my whole world. Hopefully I'll be seeing him soon for a road trip--but that's a whole other blog entry...