ANOTHER FINE MESS

"You will go to the ball!" insisted Hot Press' resident Fairy Godmother Mette Borgstrom. I was somewhat dubious. It all sounded like somebody's idea of a mad, bacchic joke. Liaise with Stuart Clark and Dan Oggly at the Alabama 3 gig in the Temple Bar Music Centre, proceed to the Super Furry Animals show in the Olympia, then set up camp on the Dust Junkys' tour bus inside Trinity College? Yeah, right. Does HP have medical insurance?

Still, the possibilities were tantalising. Picture this: a drunken summit including various members of the 'Bammies, the Junkys, The Furries, Grandaddy, The Divine Comedy and Spiritualized. Imagine the opportunities presented by such a surreal symposium of sonic shamen all on shore leave from Alpha Centauri. Envision the two-fisted drinking, the pistols at dawn, the projectile vomiting contests, the grisly exhibitions of how best to shotgun a can of lager, slam tequila and track down that ol' showbiz stalwart, Charlie.

And with the HP hospitality department coming through with flying colours (and flying colours would be the theme of the night, both in the optic and gastric departments), furnishing us with several crates of loony-stew, this could've been be a piece of piss. Couldn't it?

Well, man grafts and the devil laughs. It was a night where nothing went quite as planned, but what came to pass was pretty cool anyway. The stellar think-tank eventually amounted to a head-to-head between two of Britain's most interesting beats-driven bands, the 'Bammies and the Junkys, and the night became a blur of great music. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, board with me the green-gilled train into the rotten heart of the city, disembark at Pearse Street, put your head between your legs, and kiss your buttcheeks goodbye. Here's how it happened . . .

LET'S GO BACK TO CHURCH

The point of departure was the Temple Bar Music Centre, where the Alabama 3 were effortlessly cruising through one of the live highlights of the year. Though I'm a fan, this was my first live encounter with the fabled band of misfits, miscreants and malcontents. I wasn't disappointed. As anybody who has ever witnessed these Brixton myths in the flesh will testify, their live show is an unhinged revivalist carnival of acid-house and country music, all spiced up with inspired raps (the Bill Gates routine was particularly good) from high priests Larry Love and D. Wayne Love. The hits from hell just kept coming: an incendiary 'Mao Tse Tung Says', an ecstatic 'Converted', a heartfelt 'Speed Of the Sound Of Loneliness'. The 'Bammies look like Pogues on parole and sound like Hank Williams on E. The fact that Larry Love hadn't showed up until literally minutes before the gig (apparently the good doctor "made a new friend" after the previous night's GPO show in Galway, and was, like so many before him, detained in the Irish New Orleans for longer than planned) didn't phase them at all. And the dancefloor looked like nothing so much as a Sam Peckinpah shoot, such is the diversity of the reprobates that the group attract.

Down in the dressing room, the very righteous D. Wayne (Jake to his friends) was waxing rhapsodic in an impenetrable Scottish accent about the likes of Scott 4, and musing on his own band's inevitable metamorphosis from all-night-mofo-party-pranksters to a streamlined machine capable of surviving more orthodox rock venues. On tonight's evidence, they seemed to have lost nothing in the translation.

As BP Fallon hustled the various members into a photo-op, I took a swig of Evian from the rider, then got all paranoid that it might have been pharmaceutically enhanced. Given the surreality of the night that was in it, I don't think I'd have noticed the difference.

Meanwhile, over at the Olympia, the Super Furries were running late. However, when support act Grandaddy finally began their set, everything got blissful. The Californians quickly surmounted any nerves incurred by no-soundcheck trauma, and set about bewitching the stately theatre with stunning selections from their Under The Western Freeway album. The highlight was undoubtedly the Pavement-play-Pete Hammill of 'A.M. 180', a song on first name terms with genius. I was loathe to leave before the end, but The Ball was calling.

BALLED

The scene inside Trinity could only be described as Pure Muck. Ravaged belles and bolloxed beaus milled around like lemmings, desperately hell-bent on achieving oblivion as speedily, cheaply and spectacularly as possible. There were more bare backs, thousand-yard stares and acres of cleavage than you'd glimpse at the average County Council road-tarring convention. Disgrace was de rigeur. In the Portaloos, black was definitely the new brown, as the hordes emptied themselves of Guinness and then ambled out to get tanked up all over again. It was like watching a procession of debauched Romans streaming in and out of the vomitorium. Or Ralph Steadman interpreting Dante on an exclusive diet of Abba-karaoke and bad acid house.

My chaperone, Dan Oggly, was constantly on the mobile, valiantly trying to co-ordinate the various bands as we searched for the Dust Junkys' tour bus. We eventually found it, but stringent Trinity security prevented all but the 'Bammies and the Junkys from making it to the meet. This is what happens when authority is bestowed on people with no innate powers of discretion.

Anyway, the tour bus couldn't hold the lot of us, so we adjourned to a nearby dressing room. I was elected chairperson and instructed to begin my line of questioning. Line of questioning? Good Jesus! I'd assumed that if you put such exotic specimens in the same petri dish for longer than five minutes, the story would write itself. I rooted for the Dictaphone and frantically tried to conjure up a line of inquiry. The chaos eventually subsided enough for Peter Matthews to start snapping and the bands to start yapping. The panelists included D. Wayne and Larry Love, all of the Dust Junkys, plus a plethora of tour managers, roadies and hangers-on, not to mention several comely maidens skulking in the corner. Here's what ensued:

Would you pay #35 to come to the Trinity Ball?

Gan Iyu Pierre Gasper (Dust Junkys decks and vocals expert): "No I wouldn't. I'd rather fuckin' stand at the door and hustle my way in."

D. Wayne: "I wouldnae pay in to something like this. If it was a night out in Glasgae, ye'd just go doon and yap on the door and get in."

Do you get a better education out of university or in it?

D. Wayne: "Ah went tae university when I couldnae get a start. I was on the dole for seven year. They were harassin' me, they were goin' tae take my benefit away so I said, 'Right, I'll go tae college then.' I had to keep that up for three year so I could at least get the grant. It kept me goin', it meant I was payin' ma rent, I was bein' subsidised.

"See, this whole thing about people sayin' they don't want to have anything to do with the state, that's a lot of pish. You paid for the state in the first place, people work hard so that we can have a welfare state, so I don't feel like a cunt usin' it to my own ends. I've got an English and Film degree, I've got a diploma from the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts in stage management. Music's proliferatin' now to the extent that Alan McGee can get together with fuckin' Tony Blair and say, 'Oh aye, we'll set up a wee Sub-Culture Bureau where we can gi' grants to pop groups."

Gan Iyu: "Check it out man, that is sad. I didn't go to university. Everything I learnt was from my family, my parents, my friends, and from fuckin' basic street smarts."

Larry Love: "University is not a place where you go to learn about life, you go to learn about bein' a fuckin' bank manager, and you're sold a lie. Education's been taken away from working-class people. It's like, if you go in there, you're going to have to deliver in terms of being an estate agent. It's no longer about education."

Would the Dust Junkys and Alabama 3 have existed without the dole?

Gan Iyu: "Course we would, man, 'cos we were born! Some people are less fortunate right, but I've got a big family who will support me, there's always people out there who help you towards what it is you want to achieve in life. I'm not here because I got #35 a week for three years, you know what I'm saying? But you can't really disrespect the British government because there's a lot of countries in the world that don't support their own people."

Larry Love: "On the other hand though, I don't want to be part of no Cool Britannia bollocks, flying the fucking Union Jack, right? Underground culture has to do with young people being cosmopolitan and being aware of the fact that they live in a fuckin' multi-racial country, not a country with a fuckin' Union Jack on the front."

Is there a current rise in consciousness about music from outside the WASP tradition?

Gan Iyu: "Check this out: whether you like it or not, or whether you know it or not, you are being influenced by what's gone on in the past. You're hearing something in everybody's records. And if you ain't heard it before, you will do. It's people like us in British hip-hop that are helping people from back in the day, re-releasing the shit that they did then. We're educating people, we're teachers, if you will."

Larry Love: "We have a responsibility as musicians to represent our history to make the future. In the late '90s we're remixing the past. We do Robert Johnson, the blues, and if people go and buy the record, we've done our job."

D. Wayne: "What the Dust Junkys have done with 'Nothing Personal' is they've used the Peter Green riff from 'Oh Well' and it's a different interpretation, it's a breakbeat. They've used the bare bones, it's like what we did with 'Me And The Devil Blues'. We've just used the idiom. People have got more access to records now. We've got a bigger musical frame of reference now than Black Sabbath had in 1972."

So what's the difference between remix culture and Led Zeppelin ripping off Willie Dixon songs?

D.Wayne: "I think there's a distinct difference in that they did cover versions of Willie Dixon, but what people are doin' now wi' usin' riffs, is that these riffs are in the collective unconscious, they're part of folk heritage. When The Stones did 'Stop Breakin' Down' by Robert Johnson, his estate spent 15 years arguin' with their fuckin' management over the royalties. We're no' doin' things like that."

Larry Love: "DJ culture and sample culture is about very much being able to assimilate grooves a lot quicker than what Led Zeppelin were doing. Any young kid can loop a groove or sample a recording made in 1932 and make it relevant now to a House crowd. It's important to know your roots. I ain't gonna be no cunt thinking I'm totally original doing Acid House Country. We're representing our roots, I'm proud of being part of a history."

D. Wayne: "We'll listen to Fred McDowell and loop it and put it on breakbeats 'cos that's the music we love. Robert Johnson sounds like a whole band, and his first 20 recordings were done wi' him facing the wall in a hotel room because he was too embarrassed to look at Alan Lomax. He's fuckin' reinventin' music right there, and he's too embarrassed to turn to a white guy and go: 'Here, have this.' But the climate's totally changed now. It's a fuckin' free-for-all, we should use what we like."

Does the radio represent your groups?

D. Wayne: "At the end of the day, what you've got to deal with is one guy's egotistical whims. One guy who's head of programming says, 'I like this song, and if you put this out as a single, alright, I'll play you on my programmes.' That's tugging forelock."

Larry Love: "When the DTI clamped down in illegal radio stations, which were the lifeline for rave culture, pirate culture went down. You've got this conservative element - Jo Whiley, Steve Lamacq - and they find it very difficult to take on board the whole underground culture."

Gan Iyu: "I'm gonna represent this shit as a Dust Junky, right? Them people over there at Radio 1, they've got the power, right? But they ain't got the power without people like us. So we need each other, it's a two-way thing."

Larry Love: "Do you trust 'em to represent the Dust Junkys?"

Gan Iyu: "I'm not arsed, right? If they want to take one of our tracks and put it on an A-list, I don't give a fuck. Radio will contribute to makin' us, but it won't break us."

D. Wayne: "By hook or by crook, people will hear our music."

MEDICATION

After the stress of chairing the Alabama Junkys cultural exchange programme, I was in sore need of some aural medication. Luckily, there was an industrial-sized dose of Spiritualized being dispensed in the big marquee tent.

So, what were Jason Pierce and band like? Distilled heaven, that's what. Earlier in the night an excitable young mole had regaled me with third-hand gossip about an allegedly doped-up Pierce reeling around town like something out of a George Romero movie. However, the man Stuart Clark interviewed at 4.15 on the previous afternoon was perfectly lucid, if a little hungover. These are the kind of urban myths the band now have to contend with. And, corny as it may sound, with Spiritualized, the music is the real spectacle.

Like all great bands, they can be an erratic live force, but they seem to have hit a purple patch, often coming on like some unholy alliance of Coltrane, early Floyd, The Velvets, and Neil with Crazy Horse. The majority of bands show up on stage and run through a routine as well-drilled as an aerobics class, but equally predictable. Spiritualized just beam down and play, letting the noise flow out of them, natural as breathing.

And when the six-piece ensemble (still no Kate Radley) accelerate out of Laurie Anderson's 'Born Never Asked' into 'Electric Mainline' and into the full-blown sonic roar of 'Electricity', it's like having a front row seat at a Houston launch. 'Come Together' was a jolt of amphetamine pumped straight to the heart: it was as if the tent had come loose from its moorings and was floating three feet off the ground. And the electric hex of 'Cop Shoot Cop' (replete with the longest freak-out section of the decade) was an 'LA Blues' freestyle orgy that pushed the faithful well past the pleasure barrier. Absolute sorcery.

After that, exhaustion of the soul took hold. Fair play, then, to The Divine Comedy, who kept me rooted until dawn. As a crooner, Neil Hannon's far closer to Gainsbourg than Bacharach, too pervy for mothers to like, but too well-groomed to turn away at the door on Debs' night. And boy, can he pen a tune. 'The Frog Princess' is a classic in anybody's language, the point where the singer starts oozing sour blood all down the front of his immaculately tailored suit. Kudos too, to Neil's right-hand man Joby. Between the pair of them they can cook up breathtaking arrangements: one new tune, 'Thrill Seeker', is well up to John Barry standards. There was only one anthem to end it all, though, the evergreen 'Something For The Weekend'.

Outside the tent, the morning was making its painful presence felt. Front square resembled some bizarrely overdressed refugee camp. As I shuffled off campus, the Ball's last orgiastic death spasms were shuddering to an inevitable end. Taxis buzzed about Dame Street in convoys. I picked up my stethoscope and walked. n