Back from the Brink - Alien Resurection

The South East Asian financial markets are in turmoil. The massive Yamaichi Securities Company is about to go bust and shatter the myth of Japan's indestructible economy. Around Tokyo, there are extensive road blocks, while gun-toting security men patrol in honour of a his- toric visit by Chinese prime minister U Peng. Maddest of all, the Japanese Nazi party are playing Wagner through loud hallers at 6am and cursing the perfidious gaijin (foreigners) who are diluting the nation's cultural and moral purity with their immoral ways and debauched habits.

Maybe they've got a point, though. Over at Tokyo's Liquid Rooms niterie, Andrew Innes, guitarist and musical director with Primal Scream, waves around a replica Luger which he picked up earlier in a Tokyo toy shop. "This is for those c***s with their lasers," he says, levelling it at everyone in the graftiti-maimed dressing-room in turn, before putting some Bartok on the en suite pink spherical CD player. He and keyboardist Martin Duffy are responding to capitalism's inherent weakness and ugly manifestations of nationalism by capering about in plastic, bald-head Sumo wigs and honking on toy horns and whisfles.

Far from the rigours of British rock 'n' roll cool, the first thing that strikes you about the Scream's Japanese tour party is the off-duty vibe. Even so, you wouldn't expect the makers of malignant album masterpiece 'Vanishing Point' to be so beguiled by a novelty talking Xmas tree - but such is the conversation-piece that's currently exciting Duffy's attention. Bobby Gillespie enters, languid and lean in shades and military-style blouson.

"It's Irvine Welsh!" he says of the dome-headed Innes, and disbelievingly shakes hishead at the general wig mischief. "Leave 'em alone for two hours and look what happens.Fuckin' nutters."

LAST YEAR WAS A REGRETTABLE ONE FOR THE SCREAM, despite the return to experimental glory that was 'Vanishing Point'. Despite the whiff of apocalyptic dub-rock victory that accompanied the album, they flunked at two crucial moments: Glastonbury, and then the two-night anti-climax of the year at London's Victoria Park, where support bands Asian Dub Foundation and Reprazent blew an under- prepared, drummer-less and 'Screamadelica'- avoiding Scream offstage. "We were shit," Bob concedes frankly.

The truth makes you stronger, of course. With no UK shows in sight, they've embarked on a tour of Australia and Hong Kong, finishing off with five sold-out nights at the Liquid Rooms. Aptly for a country whose cooking programmes feature live prawns tossed into boil- ing fat and turtles having their throats cut, they sold more copies of 'Vanishing Point' here than in the UK. Show sponsor Levi's even rewarded them with a £2000 trolley dash. So everyone looks swish, including new drummer Darren Mooney, who's currenfly asleep on a settee.

An air of fainfly business-like optimism pervades, with long-term Scream horn section Jim Hunt and Duncan McIntyre providing added backbone. There's the round of press and photo-calls to honour, not to mention the ritual of meeting the loyal fans Japan is famous for. Unsurprisingly, the woman Mani has dubbed the Scream's "number one fan" seems to be with them at all times, but she maintalns the mute, distracted presence of one who's content just to be there. Seen the infamous Bobbysoxers yet, Bob?

'Aye. They're good people, man," he dead-pans of his Far Eastern appreciation society. "They come and give me some music and have a good time. An admirable thing, don't you think? We like it here."

Out in the club-sized venue, the Thursday-night full-house are shimmying to long-time Scream DT Paul Harte's 6pm funk set. The Japanese massive have the same T-shirts as a hip UK crowd, while affecting a surly smoking stance to match. Alerted by more Bartok, though, the normally restrained punters rush the stage with unfamiliar abandon as the Scream trawl on to fulsome applause - remem- ber, the Japanese rarely cheer. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen." drawls Bob in his intriguing East Kubride/Alabama accent. "We are the Primal Scream - know what I mean?"

Instantly, it's clear something is up. Hardly a block-rocking choice in any circumstances, the spidery opening version of 'Out Of The Void' oozes a locked-in groove and an unfamiliar tightness. As blue searchlights strafe the throng, Bob throws his normal angular shapes, but his vocals seem stronger. This band is not remotely befuddled. During 'Rocks', for three seconds only, Bob's clap/skip/eyes-closed dance makes its first appearance since 1994.

To translate 'Vanishing Point' into the live arena meant feeling their way around a complex sonic terrain no amount of rehearsal could really prepare them for. Instead, the Scream went to ground to confer with creative inspirations like legendary Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit and My Bloody Valentine's reclusive Kevin Shields. Jaki's here in spirit, contributing breakbeat-loops to the decade-old 'Imperial' and the Scream's cover of 'Five Years Ahead Of My Time' - originally by '60s US garage merchants The Third Bardot. Both tracks are re-energised, with Mooney playing hard over the top and Bob quoting Can's 'Mother Sky' at the end of the latter. Also showcased is the gloating, diseased 'Insect Royalty', theme to the forthcoming film of Irvine Welsh's The Acid House. "Insect royalty, live inside of me," wails Bob. It's 'Vanishing Point' made starker and more inscrutable, an eight-man assault with fat-ass brass.

Behind them, jump-cut images blitz away furiously. Cities being bombed, gorillas, Jerry Lee Lewis smoking a vast stogie, lots of police brutality and street warfare, and a US flag shot full of bullet holes. It all complements the Scream's modernist psychedelic dub rock. A full-frontal stripper shot even manages to break the law - you can't show pubes in Japan.

The show passes in an unbelieving reverie. The Scream back at the peak of their powers. What's happened?

"We're fucking enjoying it again, know what I mean?" rasps the ever-ebullient Mani while towelling down in the dressing room. Mani chucked a chair through his hotel room window last night, and then threatened to pass water on the irate hotel manager's slacks. "I've got two broken fingers as weil," he beams.

Bob nods poker-faced assent. "The only way to get good is to get out there and play. We've got to the stage now where we can stretch it, make it more free-form, like 'Higher Than The Sun' was." He fbtes a Bobby G thousand-yard stare. "Now it's become incredible."

The mood is, indeed, buoyant. In the minibus back to the Scream's hotel in the Rappongi district, Duffy sings a Queen medley out of the sunroof, adding references to Messerschmitts, Japanese schoolgirl's white socks and the Pope. Bob's just heard that, in an interview with US magazine Raygun, the legendary Scott Walker had kind words to say about 'Vanishing Point'. His normally sullen countenance splits into a foot-wide smile. "That's blown my fuckin' brain out, man!" he exults. "What a fuckin' career high."

Word gets round to the rest of the band of this accolade and, for a few minutes, that paranoid Scream eminence is completely forgotten. Innes, momentarily belying his kinship with Frazer from Dad's Army, gives a look of ecstatic disbelief: "We should do a track with him," he replies. "Imagine Scott singing 'Stuka'."

BACK IN THE DRESSING ROOM THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, Mani's liking for late evenings has left him looking a touch unhealthy. But there's no doubting his importance to the Scream's new chemistry~ where musical reinvention is under-scored by an unfamiliar levity of mood. Despite his fragile state, Mani beamingly recounts how he wanted to get old chum Reni in after former drummer Paul Mulreaney was booted out.

"We were gonna get the old firm back together," he quaffs, "but we'll have to save that for our pension plan when the Happy Clash Roses do their baggy supergroup tour. Another occurrence for Tokyo apparently - most gigs happen at tea-time), and Adrian Sherwood's dubbing it up into an echo-blasted landslide. Watched bemusedly by Scream producer Brendan Lynch, Innes and Duffy are playing (respectively) a Swanee whistle and a honking car horn down Sherwood's booming dub microphone. Japanese rastas pretending to be caned don't bat an eyelid.

Any fears that last night was a fluke are dispelled within the gig's opening 30 seconds, where the band play a jazzy treatment of Nirvana's 'Come As You Are'. The set's unchanged, apart from actually being better 'Stuka' is perfect dub claustrophobia, while Bob monkeys it up with maracas to 'If They Move, Kill 'Em'. Is Bob laughing? He is. The revelations continue. A soaring breakbeat version of 'Higher Than The Sun' is dedicated to Scott Walker, and an extended 'Kowalski' is a high-speed, sleep-deprived monorail to losing it completely.

The seething crowd are left clapping and stamping until the Scream return and kick a football out into the crowd. A rapid-fire version of 'Motorhead' follows in a fierce blizzard of strobe-light, with Throb posing next to a poster of a skull with an eyepatch on. A fist-fight version of '96 Tears' is accompanied by scat singing, a mighty brass crescendo and Che Guevara's face. "Sayonora," says Bob with maracas, pointing at Che as if to say, 'That's what we're all about.'

As they file off, Duffy honks his horn into a video camera the size of a box of Swan Vestas - the only man in the world with physical proof that Mani spewed onstage tonight.

BACKSTAGE, DUFFY ENTERS BEAT-POET MODE, RAP- ping about skunk in the wilderness. Mani is justly talking about handing three new Scream membership cards out for the majestic brass and drum divisions. Throb's lying down with a towel over his face. Manager Alex Nightingale says he hasn't seen the Scream in such good spirits for years, and lets it slip that they've been playing Sham 69's 'Borstal Breakout' in soundchecks.

Bob, his shirt remarkably sweat-free after tonight's absurdly focussed performance, sticks on a terrifying Kevin Shields remix of 'If They Move, Kiil 'Em'. "That's fuckin' interstellar free jazz," he insists as the Miles Davis-like drone builds. "What a true fuckin' artist." Talk, inexplicably, turns to civil disobedience. Mani's favourite riot is Liverpool 8, but Bob, as ever, keeps faith with the punk-dub interface. "Notting Hill '76," he immediately replies. "That was a good one. I remember seeing it on the telly, and I was most impressed by the amount of cops who got battered by the rastas. Actually, we all wanted to get Red Army uniforms in Hong Kong to wear in Japan."

The Scream have become the Jackboot Stamping On A Human Face Forever it's OK to like. "We've fucked up in England," Bob goes on equably, "but I think now we're becoming a good band. We're gonna come back and destroy the place."

The big question: will they play any more stuff off 'Screamadelica'?

"Maybe, when the time is right," he says, reaching across for his Lee Perry Arkology'

Originally Appeared in Select February, 1998.
Copyright © Select.

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