Screamadelica live

I would gladly give some­one my car if it meant see­ing Pri­mal Scream per­form “Screa­madel­ica” live, as they did at London’s Olympia last week­end. It’s one of those time­less albums and it’s gen­uinely hard — and wor­ry­ing — to believe it will be 20 years old next year. I remem­ber buy­ing the “Loaded” 12″ that pre­ceeded it, and then being over­joyed when my dad man­aged to pick up a tape of the album a week before it was released in Ire­land. Lit­tle did me dad know at the time that I would still be lis­ten­ing to it 20 years on.

Sadly, a trip across the water to see this incred­i­ble album per­formed in its entir­ity was not to be be, but our chums in the BBC were there for a BBC 6 orgy of Screamadelica-related music, tit­bits and idle ban­ter. As part of that, Steve Lamacq was broad­cast­ing Friday’s “Screa­madel­ica” gig in full, and until the end of the week, one can listen/stream it from the BBC 6 site. It’s bril­liant. You’d never think it was the first time the band per­formed the album live, and it’s great to hear Mani tackle some of the mate­r­ial. Bobby G is in fine voice, cer­tainly bet­ter than the last time I saw him war­bling in a tent at Oxegen.

Meanwhile, “Screamadelica” is being re-released in March in a vari­ety of wallet-bursting formats. There’s two seri­ously impres­sive tinned box sets, and I reckon the red one will be wing­ing its way here, despite the auto­graphs etc on the white tin. The white tin is plain, well, bor­ing. Have a peek at the offi­cial reis­sue site which I’m glad to see car­ries on Pri­mal Scream’s grand tra­di­tion of shit websites.

Art­work by testpressing.org

The best news of all sur­round­ing Pri­mal Scream per­form­ing and re-issuing their great­est work is that it brought the bril­liant Scot­tish blog­ger  Mog­gie Boy out of retirement !

Mog­gie is the brains behind Ripped in Glas­gow, a truly won­der­ful blog which helped intro­duce and re-introduce me to some amaz­ing music over the past few years. Sadly, Mog­gie took down the blog at the end of the sum­mer, but the Scream Team’s return was enough to coax him out of retire­ment. His first post back was Andrew Weatherall’s recent BBC 6 show cel­e­brat­ing the music that influ­enced “Screa­madel­ica”. Down­load that bril­liant mix here. Long may Mog­gie Boy con­tinue to post, it’s great to have him back.

And the worst news? Well, I heard over the week­end that the Scream are play­ing Oxe­gen this sum­mer along­side Pulp.