Monday's Long Song

Monday's long song today comes courtesy of Primal Scream and the production skills of Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicholson. In 1991 the Scream decamped to Ardent Studios, Memphis to chase the muse and record a follow up to Screamadelica. The results were the 12" record released in January 1992, the Dixie-Narco ep, four tracks led by Moving On Up, the desolate blues of Stone My Soul, the achingly gorgeous cover of Dennis Wilson's Carry Me Home and the title track for the album that wasn't actually on the album, a song that was one of the best things they ever did and at 10 minutes 46 seconds, a long song. Screamadelica is glide through the night with Denise Johnson on vocals, 'spaced out, star child, Screamadelica'. Space disco, sampled voices, Leftfield's Paul Daley on percussion, a big bass drum, stretched out sounds, funky horns and guitar, a break down and gear change after four minutes and some robotic vox over a distorted bassline. A band taking flight in the studio. Can you feel your hands, can you feel your feet, can you feel the rhythm?

Screamadelica

Here it is played live on The Word, irritatingly only a tantalising 1 minute 12 seconds of it. For a while, despite all the desperate antics, The Word was the only place on TV that had the bands of the moment playing live. I always loved the dancers too, giving it maximum whoever was playing.



And here is some footage from a road movie/documentary that accompanied the Screamadelica VHS release of the videos from the album, with the band and Weatherall, all long hair and leather, wandering round the South.