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Alabama 3

In the American deep south during the 1930s, two black men are hung for allegedly raping a white woman. Their case becomes a symbol for justice miscarrying and they go down in history as the Alabama 2. Over half a century later in South London, the son of a Welsh Mormon preacher meets the offspring of a Glaswegian trades unionist at an underground acid house party and they embark upon the mischievous miscegenation of Hank Williams, gospel and acid house. Expanding in the mid 90s into a Brixton based collective, they called themselves Alabama 3 and continue to be one of the most joyous, righteous, provocative and inspirationally delinquent bands Britain has ever spawned.

Whoever it was they met that sulphurous night at the cultural crossroads, they've been working hard on behalf of Alabama 3. The likelihood of a crew of miscreant, theo-pharmalogical, neo-situationist, holy music junkies floating high in the anemic river of mass entertainment, was never realistically that great. Yet, come the new millennium, the band are lodged firmly in both subculture and mainstream. There they are, as you might expect, quoted in songform at the start of Scottish council estate-verite author, Irvine Welsh's 'Filth'. There they were, as you'd never have thought, flickering in front of 25 million Americans, guiding a 26 piece gospel choir through 'Woke Up This Morning' on the Jay Leno Show.

The use of Alabama 3's 'Woke Up This Morning' as the theme to America's hippest TV show of 1999, neurotic mafiosa series The Sopranos - accessed blanket exposure for the band in the US. It also set them up in New York, New Jersey and Chicago with the sort of permanent dinner invites you can't refuse. Acknowledgement for the track from their 1997 debut album 'Exile On Coldharbour Lane' was, however, poetic justice for a band who are no strangers to the underworld and have frequently been upbraided for wanting to "reduce Americana to a sample".

For last year's 'La Peste', the creative core of Alabama 3 remained the same. Comrades in country and blues obsession, Rob Spragg aka Larry Love and Jake Black aka The Very Reverend Dr D Wayne Love, formed the vocal and preacherman MC front Line. They were joined by programmer Piers Marsh aka The Mountain of Love, percussionist Simon Edwards aka Sir Real Congaman Love, keyboardist Orlando Harrison aka The Spirit, guitarist Mark Sams aka Captain Empiricist and Jonny Delafons aka LB Dope on drums. The house band for the Alabama 3 convened First Presleytarian Church of Elvis The Divine, continued to feel the spirit. It started life in an isolated studio farmhouse near Lincoln where the new direction was pinned down, aided by illicit postal deliveries from the big smoke. 1997's 'Exile On Coldharbour Lane' had found committed cult approval thanks to the arch, but soulful clash of anti-redneck country, snakepit spirituality, dirty rave tones and ideological perversity exhibited in 'Ain't Goin to Goa' and 'U Don't Dance 2 Tekno'. 'La Peste' wittled the Alabama's needling pleasure implement down to an even sharper point.

And sharper still on this autumn's "Power In the Blood"; featuring fourteen Alabama 3 originals, plus an inspired version of Springsteen's "Badlands", the new album draws on a typically electic castlist of contributors including Keith Allen, BJ Cole, Rolo McGinty, Eileen Rose and Irvine Welsh. Bearing titles like "Woody Guthrie", "The Devil Went Down To Ibiza", "Strobe Life", "R.E.H.A.B" and "Lord Have Mercy", this is very much a band approaching the peaks of their powers. Still as lyrically wound up as ever, but this time borne on a raft of brilliant tunes, "Power In The Blood" finally does justice to the band whom one broadsheet editor recently described as "the oddest, sleaziest, unhealthiest and most talented blues band in the nation".

Alabama 3's politics are not grafted on. Resistance to social programming has been innate since Rob was fighting a Mormon upbringing by dosing himself with magic mushrooms and The Velvet Underground. D Wayne Love was schooled in Marxism from an early age. From their involvement in illegal raves (notably the infamous Castlemorton gathering which set the UK's anti-rave Criminal Justice Bill in motion) through the 'Straight Outta Rehab' banners which hung over their early Brixton gigs, the band have been rigorous in their counter-culturalism. Their blues-in up of sterile house and techno was in itself an act of defiance.

What Larry Love once described as 'a nostalgic notion of the empowering ability of underground culture' continues to drive them. In rcent years they have played shows in support of Mental Health Service Users (MAD Pride) and London's now defunct Anarchist Book Center and helped organise the anti-Brixton Bomber show, Resistance. They also set up the Memphis 9 web site, claiming that they were a renegade paramilitary outfit, who'd killed Alabama 3, and engaged in drunken one to one dialogue with the Police Commission about Larry Love's MI5 file.

"What's kept us buzzing - and I think the same thing was there in 'Ain't Goin To Goa' - is I think dance music, back in the day an' all that, it was cracking underground warehouses and getting in trouble with the law and people going to prison for fuckin' Es and there was a renegade attitude in that. All these fuckin glossy dance mags and star DJs and superclubs and girls in fluffy bras - I mean, fair enough, people wanna do that - but for us it's about something else".

All those waiting to enter the chat room of the corporate sponsored Alabama 3 web site: acid-country cowboy digi-drifter, icon-sampling, low-life, party-pinko, squat-rave, paramilitary-fetishist, Bible-belt-pushin', mind-blown, underclass ideologuery.com, will however, as Hank might have said, have to wait a long time for the light to shine

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