Honky Tonks For The Memories

“Are you meeting up later with Alabama 3, Clark?”

“Indeed I am your editorial omnipotence Mr. Stokes, sir.”
“I suppose that means you’ll be up all night popping pills, indulging in dubious sexual practices and generally trying to kill off the few brain cells you have left.”
As if! It’s true that myself and the Bammies have a bit of previous – well, a lot of previous – but we were younger, wilder then.
“I can’t deny being older, but less wild? Nah, that’s bollocks,” says an offended looking Larry Love, aka Rob Spragg.
Now I come to think of it, this is the man who not so long ago broke his neck headbutting an errant punter.
“Occupational hazard,” he smiles. “The one mature, adult thing we’re doing is fitting more work in around the degeneracy. If there were a Mercury Prize for fucking up at key moments, it’d be ours in perpetuity. We’re going to tour the arse off this album and see if we can stop being perennial underachievers.”
The record whose backside will be getting a serious battering over the next few months is M.O.R. The title might conjure up images of Fleetwood Mac taking seven months to get the right drum sound – true trivia fans – but it’s actually as dirty a funk workout as you’ll hear all year.
“Yeah, there’s a definite frontline feel to it,” agrees Rob, whose neck is now sufficiently recovered to facilitate nodding. “There’s one track that we dragged two complete strangers off the street to sing on, and another that we recorded and mixed in four hours – no fuckin’ around.”
“The one thing that’s pristine about it is the choruses,” adds the Reverend D. Wayne Love, aka, Jake Black. “That’s one-half of the reason we called it M.O.R., the other being that all those Middle Of The Road cunts were off their fucking heads. The harmonies may have been saccharine, but the way yer’ Glen Campbells and yer’ Captain & Tennilles behaved was insane.”
“Those guys were far better at handling their drugs than Pete Doherty who’s your archetypal middle-class wimp,” Rob pooh-poohs.
“At least he’s being a bit contrary,” Jake proffers. “Our keyboard-player Orlando met one of Keane at T In The Park, and all he talked about was ‘demographics’ and ‘market shares’. I hate that fucking band and their official press releases about their singer going into rehab. Rehab’s 18 months of digging deeper than you’ve ever dug before, not 28 days of luxury detoxification in The Priory. It’s like taking up membership at Lillie’s Bordello.”
Of course no Alabama 3 album is complete without some arch social commentary. How is dear old London these days?
“Very cosmopolitan,” Rob enthuses. “I was out the other week in Lewisham, which has gone equal opportunities by having loads of Sikh crack dealers. There’s no drinking with ‘em, but plenty of the other! All the dreads from The Twelfth Tribe were down yesterday for Hailie Selassie’s birthday and there’s a really good vibe from all the Poles who’ve arrived.”
“On the downside,” Jake butts in, “we’ve a new prime minister who’s proving to be as big a dirty lyin’ cunt as Tony. The only thing Labour’s been successful at is making fanatics out of kids. I was playing Blonde On Blonde the other morning with the window open, and my neighbour’s boy shouts, ‘Turn that decadent rubbish off, it offends Allah. And another thing, you tell your wife to start dressing in a more modest manner. All crusaders offend Allah. You don’t love your god, but I’d go to war for mine.’ A year ago I was giving him acid house mixes, now he’s coming out with all of that because it’s cool to be a jihadi. And why’s it cool to be a jihadi? Because of fucking Iraq.”
Talking of revolutionary zeal, Alabama 3 got up close but not particularly personal with Gerry Adams at the 2004 West Belfast Féile.
“There were photos of him at the previous festival with his arms round Status Quo, but he wouldn’t have his picture taken with us,” Rob laughs. “People like us would normally get kneecapped in West Belfast, but Gerry aside they couldn’t have been friendlier.”

Alabama 3 give their M.O.R. album a live airing at The Savoy, Cork (October 10); Tripod, Dublin (11) as part of Heineken Green Synergy; The Forum, Waterford (12); Mandela Hall, Belfast (13); Dolan’s, Limerick (14); Sligo Festival (26)