BORROWED NOSTALGIA FROM AN UNREMEMBERED ’80s

Jason Pettigrew is Editor In Chief at Alternative Press magazine, which will be celebrating its 20th birthday this summer. He firmly believes the Duke Ellington/Kurt Weill tenet that there are only two types of music (�good and bad�), and frequently daydreams that Rough Trade will open an �ber-store near his Cleveland home. His two Oriental Shorthair cats are down with his taste in music; his wife and his Shetland Sheepdog are not.

The Screaming Blue Messiahs� Good and Gone, [Good and Gone EP]

I have fond memories of seeing Screaming Blue Messiahs guitarist Bill Carter conduct himself like a hybrid mutant of classic British six-string abuser Wilko Johnson (who vertically karate-chopped his strings in lieu of actual strumming) and freakish wrestler George “The Animal” Steele (who liked to chew up turnbuckles in the ring). While shored up by bassist Chris Thompson and tireeless drummer Kenny Harris, Carter would beat the living shit out of his collection of Telecasters, as well as himself (I once saw him slice his thumb meat on an A-string at a gig), while spitting out crazy non sequiturs, seemingly one step ahead of state hospital orderlies. The Messiahs� stock-in-trade was delivering a brand of jagged, chewed-up roots rock, spat back in the face of Americans over the course of three albums on Elektra. Their unhinged ferocity is the biggest reason why I�ve never cared for much of anything in the vein of insurgent country/y�allternative, or whatever they�re calling it in NYC and Nashville these days. (I do know that NO DEPRESSION magazine majordomo Grant Alden is a huge SBM fan.) This track, from their UK-only 1984 debut mini-LP of the same name, is a blast of angular, pub-rockin� roots fury, approximating the Gun Club jamming with Captain Beefheart and Gang Of Four�s Andy Gill in one of those wide, gurney-accommodating hospital elevators. To slightly paraphrase Jim Thirlwell: if you�re gonna get down, get down and prey�

[visit The Screaming Blue Messiah�s website here, buy Screaming Blue Messiahs music here]

World Domination Enterprises� Look Out Jack, [Let�s Play Domination]

Much like the late Lester Bangs owned multiple copies of Raw Power, I pathologically hoard World Domination Enterprises� 1988 debut, Let�s Play Domination (14, since you asked). WDE were a British trio made up of Digger Metters� a furious yet exasperatingly precise drummer; Steve Jameson, a 20,000-leagues-under-the-sea bassist (the kind of tone that would make Jah Wobble put on a necktie and kick the chair); and singer/guitarist Keith Dobson, whose idiosyncratic playing was in �D�: as in detuned, deranged and ready for defenestration. Legend has it that Dobson used an old drawer handle wound with copper for a pickup on his battered guitar in order to get that one-of-a-kind, ear-stabbing tone. WDE�s blip on the radar came via their first single, “Asbestos Lead Asbestos”, which you can hear on the Rough Trade shop�s 2003 Post Punk box set. I�ve chosen “Look Out Jack” from their debut, because it epitomizes everything I love in music: velocity, acceleration and straight-up fucking noise. If anybody reading this knows the whereabouts of the members of WDE, please notify Captain Hutlock at Stylus, so he may hand the info off to me. And if you have a version of their live video, Love From Lead City, well, we really need to talk. I ask that everyone else listen to this and ponder why anybody would ever need a Shellac album.

[visit The Trouser Press entry for the band here, buy World Domination Enterprises music here]

The Three Johns� Never and Always

I know, I know, it�s close to eight minutes long, but why else would you get DSL? (Besides, the other two tracks were less than two minutes each.) The Three Johns were a fixture in Britain�s indie scene in the mid to late �80s, dealing in twisted guitar tones, acerbic wit, wry political observations and a drummer slightly better than the ones in the Sisters Of Mercy and Big Black. This Adrian Sherwood-produced 12-inch single (from 1987, I think) lies in the area of a Venn Diagram that incorporates hipster college rock, antisocial guitar attacks (cf. early discographies of Touch And Go, Amphetamine Reptile) and full-on death disco. The kick drum pounds you in the chest, the guitars bite like a school of snakeheads, and Jon Hyatt�s vocals sound like a drunken poli-sci student pissed out of his mind, yet somehow sounding remarkably strident. The jarring tape murder at the end clinches the whole deal for me. One of the Johns, Mekons CEO Jon Langford, has launched a new Internet-only label, Buried Treasure. Tell him he really needs to reissue this track, ASAP, because you deserve better than the Rapture.

[visit The Trouser Press entry for the band here, buy The Three Johns music here]