"Driving is the last form of freedom,"
said Bill Carter, frontman of the Screaming Blue Messiahs. "Physical freedom, anyway. They'll probably stop it soon. I think it's quite a special thing to have, ’cos 99 million people can't do it. In the Third World, they can only walk down the street. They couldn't move anywhere. It's a luxury.”
That quote’s from around 1987, which was the same time that Carter was talking about “always trying to find ways of getting more money” while fantasizing about becoming “the last wandering Conservative” and telling the press that he always wanted to be a policeman. It was the kind of stance you’d expect from an Englishman who’d once stayed in the pub-rock scene while
Joe Strummer ran off to get political.
Carter was in his mid-30s when The Screaming Blue Messiahs launched their career with some moderate hype. The 1986 debut of
Gun-Shy was promising but meandering, although the Hank Williams cover gave a hint of Carter’s ambitions. 1987’s
Bikini Red was the real artistic triumph, with The Screaming Blue Messiahs finally becoming the rockabilly punk-blues power trio of their dreams.
The album also focused on Carter’s obsession with America. Titles like “I Can Speak American,” “55—The Law,” and “
Jesus Chrysler Drives a Dodge” celebrated our country more than any budding John Cougar Mellenclone would dare. Sadly, the band only got attention for the near-novelty of “I Wanna Be a Flintstone.” The fatal third album—1989’s
Totally Religious—only lagged slightly while coming up with more vivid imagery in “Four Engines Burning (Over the USA)” and “All Gassed Up.”
The long out-of-print
Gun-Shy and
Bikini Red were just reissued.
Totally Religious was never that hard to find. Carter didn’t really enjoy his major-label career, and he’d probably recommend that you get the
Live at the BBC collection. It doesn’t have the band’s best songs, though. Maybe that’s explained by the band’s enthusiasm for America, which Carter frequently celebrated as “an adult playground.” (“I'll tell you what sums it up for me: In America, the old-age pensioners wear Bermuda shorts!”)
Carter wasn’t completely jingoistic, though. You might want to check the lyrics closely before using The Screaming Blues Messiah as music for your next Tea Party Rally. I’ve never heard anything in the lyrics to dull my enjoyment of the band, though. Speaking of that kind of thing, has anyone ever heard the rumor that Newt Gingrich once used Too Much Joy’s “
Theme Song” during a campaign or a rally? That just seems unlikely to me.
