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Sounds
11th August 1984
By Andy Hurt

  

JESUS FREAKS

OKAY, so there are only six titles on 'Good And Gone' and it does play at 45 rpm, but this record thoroughly deserves its place among the album review pages, heralding as it does the arrival on disc of the Screaming Blue Messiahs, a new trio of been-around-a-bit geezers who brazenly fart in the face of fashion with their (be prepared to wince) rhythm and blues! – I know, I know.

There's no dodging initial comparisons with Dr Feelgood, a link that's underlined by Vic Maile as producer.

'Good And Gone' should really be regarded as a companion piece to the Messiahs' live blitzkrieg, but SBM still fare far better on record than did their Oil City predecessors, and in the substantial form of Bill Carter there's a mad axeman awesome enough to put the fear of God into anyone.

The 'album' splits 50-50 into the camps of rhythm and blues with the staggering masterpiece 'Someone To Talk To' opening affairs on side one.

This song is a total justification of the Messiahs' existence, and if they disappeared forever tomorrow they will not have laboured in vain. It's hard not to pick up the needle before track two and play this scorcher over and over again until that coronary finally cathes up with you. A song to die for.

   
 
 

Stylus Magazine
15th December 2004
By Jason Pettigrew

Some Of My Favourite Things
The Screaming Blue Messiahs – Good and Gone [Good and Gone EP]

I have fond memories of seeing Screaming Blue Messiahs guitarist Bill Carter conduct himself like a hybrid mutant of classic British six-string abuser Wilko Johnson (who vertically karate-chopped his strings in lieu of actual strumming) and freakish wrestler George “The Animal” Steele (who liked to chew up turnbuckles in the ring). While shored up by bassist Chris Thompson and tireless drummer Kenny Harris, Carter would beat the living shit out of his collection of Telecasters, as well as himself (I once saw him slice his thumb meat on an A-string at a gig), while spitting out crazy non sequiturs, seemingly one step ahead of state hospital orderlies. The Messiahs’ stock-in-trade was delivering a brand of jagged, chewed-up roots rock, spat back in the face of Americans over the course of three albums on Elektra. Their unhinged ferocity is the biggest reason why I’ve never cared for much of anything in the vein of insurgent country/y’allternative, or whatever they’re calling it in NYC and Nashville these days. (I do know that NO DEPRESSION magazine majordomo Grant Alden is a huge SBM fan.) This track, from their UK-only 1984 debut mini-LP of the same name, is a blast of angular, pub-rockin’ roots fury, approximating the Gun Club jamming with Captain Beefheart and Gang Of Four’s Andy Gill in one of those wide, gurney-accommodating hospital elevators. To slightly paraphrase Jim Thirlwell: if you’re gonna get down, get down and prey…