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Balaam and the Angel |
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Me and my best chums back then, "China White" and
"Rape Murder", had enlisted a couple of reluctant pals to be our
bass-player and drummer , and primarily concentrated on learning covers as
our half-hearted attempts at originals ("Cherry Doll", "Blissful Kiss")
sucked ass in those days and I think we all knew it. I had a witchy little
girlfriend at the time who entertained me for days in her dizzying, pitch
black sanctum, who was really deep in with all these Current 93-Psychic
TV-Dead Can Dance-Diamanda Galas tortured, wailing,
moaning, grinding goth bands; but myself, I much preferred the glammier,
pop side of the Batcave- Sisters Of Mercy, Southern Death Cult,
the Bolshoi, Peter Murphy's "Love Hysteria", and
J.G. Thirwell. Alot of good goth shit made it to MTV's 120 Minutes
back then and some good stuff was even being played by Headbanger's Ball -Circus
Of Power, Michael Monroe, etc. BALAAM & THE ANGEL were
one of those bands we'd read about in the hard to get ahold of back then
NME's and Melody Maker's our girlfriend's older sisters all brought back
from college. |
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They looked cool enough, kinda like these gloomy vikings, so we were surprised when their "I Love The Things You Do To Me" video started seeing airplay that they weren't more grinding, like Alien Sex Fiend or something-in fact, they were more like our beloved Dogs D'Amour or Mother Love Bone Or Sea Hags than they were really gothic at all. POP. I seem to remember them getting a Boy Howdy profile in the pages of eighties Creem and both my death-rock contingent and my motorcycle crashers could all groove along when we finally tracked down the album, that was totally in line with our Axl and Zodiac inspired ethos back then - "Live Free Or Die". |
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| That was my plan, anyway. The memorable thing about this poignant tune, "I Love The Things You Do To Me" was they way it really reached my heart through all the whiskey, smoke, and mirrors. I was stunned by it's insistent, crystalline guitar hook as well as electric shaman, Mark Morris' naked, Lennon-like vocal. This guy might look like Field Of Nephillim, but he sang more like Daniel Ash, dig? The tune's basically a helpless plea to a junkie girlfriend who's unreachable, y'know? "I love the things you do to me/I love the things you say to me/ but I know, I can't help you now." We added this song to our melodramatic set-list but since we refused to play Top 40 metal shit like Poison and Bon Jovi, the local bars had all banned us from playing them and we were reduced to performing at parties and biker hog-roasts and tax-evading, hippie, Jesus freak jamborees in the woods until we eventually wised-up and migrated to the wrong coast. Anyhow, the lyrics to this first Balaam song just stuck with me, it seemed to grab me by the ruffle-y blue tuxedo shirt and insist I start at least remotely considering other people and got me vaguely contemplating the ripple effect all these narcissistic behaviors and carnal and drug and alcohol demented indulgences of mine might be having in the real lives of all these girls I was simultaneously romancing, as well as the other people I claimed to love. The young women I kept company with back then almost all seemed to be from highly repressed, abusive, evangelical religious backgrounds so I was sort of a lightning rod for anyone who wanted to "act-out". I think I still have that problem alot. Anyway, that song got me thinkin' and what a heavy thing for a catchy little pop song to accomplish, y'know. I was listening to Balaam & The Angel and Nick Cave alot back then, and they seemed to be jolting my consciousness a wee bit. _____________________________________________________________________________________ | |
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Like the sallow barbarians of Balaam The Angel and their mentors, the CULT, I was kindof straddling two subcultures at once-I fed my more conscious side with paperback philosophers and the romantic poets all these artsy dames were hipping me to back then, but eventually you get bored with tedious study and dusty pretension and realizing you ain't no Thomas Merton or C.S. Lewis you abandon the big dusty William Blake books and just wanna go get a slice of pizza. That's when you want the Dictators and Van Halen back, y'know? So as much as I always dug alot of the poncey brooders and anguished soapbox madmen all educated and fired up to do eloquent battle with the evil establishment, y'know, I'm a product of America like everybody else, lazy, stunted, self absorbed, so I'd drift back towards my self-destructive , cowboy lunatic drinking buddies and just wanna turn up the volume-on everything. Drink whiskey by the bottle, singing songs, lighting fireworks, kissing all the women. Gimme some debauchery, y'know? "I'm an ego star for ever after/Hide your mama control your sister" really spoke to me. The ID took over constantly-really, it was given free reign for well over a decade. Vanity, youth, testosterone, adventure, "Victory Or Death". I didn't join the army like alot of my friends, instead, I charged deeper on into rocknroll. |
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That
urge to drive recklessly down country roads towards distant Mystery Cities
in search of lonestar queens, cos like you, maybe, I REALLY WANTED TO
KNOW- Who WERE these mystery girls? Metal chicks weren't as literate as
the goth chicks maybe, but they sure were easier to get along with. It
didn't hurt my affinity for BALAAM & THE ANGEL that their hit song, "I
Love The Things You Do To Me" seemed to tip it's dusty bolero hat to my
favorite band at the time, Dogs D'Amour, with all it's lyrical allusions
to "Heroine" and the "State you're in". Balaam's thoughtful melancholy
always flirted with new wave's pop melodies ala Flesh For Lulu, the Alarm,
or Big Country, and in retrospect, I kinda wish they woulda spent more
time cultivating their Echo & The Bunnymen side, but hair metal ruled the
day and they just kinda went in that direction, instead.
These were the Headbanger's Ball years when even all the Cult's resplendent big neon glitter was being transmogrified into the spurs and bullets steak-metal of Rick Rubin's "Electric", y'know? It was the Decline of Real Raunchy Rocknroll for sure, when all the poodle haired spandex bands were dumbing the whole spirit of glam rock down in their white matching Osmonds jumpsuits and suckass ballads. "Live Free Or Die" had been this incredibly promising hard pop/goth rock record easily in league with all the other soda pop ruffians of the day, but the record labels were goading all the sleazy bands to be more commercial, even as they paraded all their jock manikins around pretending to be sleazy. The labels were always trying to beat the Dogs D'Amour and Four Horsemen into becoming Tesla or the Nelson Twins, so Balaam's follow-up record was a more generic hairband sounding album. Balaam & The Angel seemed to shadow the Cult's drift into mainstream mediocrity. Anybody else ever notice how similar Billy Duffy's guitar from "Heart Of The Soul" was to Skid Row's "I Remember You", feel-wise? |
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DAYS OF MADNESS Having cut their teeth in the punk and goth years, back in Scotland, BALAAM had previously released a string of e.p.'s and a debut full-length called "The Greatest Story Ever Told" on Virgin Records. Following their moderate stateside success with "Live Free Or Die" and a British tour with the Cult, the Morris Bros. released the sappier "Took A Little" e.p. in '89, their hard rock candy sound was sortof comparable to the Electric Angels or Kill For Thrills. Balaam toured the U.S. with the half-assed KISS unmasked line-up and L.A. GUNS. |
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The record co. made 'em tone down their original spaghetti western/demon preacher image that reminded one of the Mission UK or Fields Of Nephillim-both their distinctive look and sound had been compromised for the "Days Of Madness" album-a still very listenable album, any of B&TA's first three records are worth picking up for a few bucks a pop, but this more orthodox, safer, more faceless product kinda let the fan base down and went nowhere as far as attracting a major hairband audience. There were still some decent tunes on Days Of Madness if you like the glammy pop metal, but their gothic edge was gone. They shoulda stuck with the dusty trenchcoats, ammunition belts, dreadlocks and gothic, new wave hooks, if you ask me. I woulda gotten Steve Kilbey or Marty Wilson Piper from the Church to produce 'em, but in spite of all their obvious talent, BALAAM & THE ANGEL were corroded by the anti-rock conspiracy's bland production and the steady decay of their original vibe, which seemed alot more creative and heartfelt than their later compromises to corporate wank rawk. Mark Morris shortened the name to just BALAAM, releasing more rekkids after this one which I've never heard , but the years have done little to tarnish the luster of their beautiful breakthrough hit, "I Love The Things You Do To Me", which for me, remains a FLASH METAL CULT CLASSIC. ____________________________________________________________________________________ |
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-Pepsi Sheen is still searchin' for the philosopher's stone.
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Back in Killing Joke's Reagan "Eighties", we were
always trying desperately to form all these shambling, atrociously
incompetent and extremely drunken longhaired rocknroll bands, usually
without adequate drummers and with sophomoric names like Harlot and
Teenage Devil Dolls who probably all shoulda been heckled offstage,
but even they hayseed Metallica creeps in the Misfits t-shirts kinda
tended to humour us alot , mostly cos, aside from driving real aggressive
like, cow-tipping, or being on the wrestling team, there wasn't nothin'
happenin' at all. We were all there was-the only flames in town. You could
pay to see the old Doobie Brothers cover bands trying to integrate "You
Give Love A Bad Name" into their set at the redneck bar and risk a violent
beating in the parking lot for wearing the wrong t-shirt, or you could
hang with our coterie of misfit idols and outcast dolls at our band house
on the edge of town and meet girls and drink and be weird if you wanted.
In addition to becoming all purpose scapegoats even then, we were also
kinda being celebritized, for being these faint beacons of liberation in a
lifeless ghost town, and providing people with an example and offering
creative alternatives to the popular pastimes of the day which seemed to
be limited to cutting-off strangers in their cars in hopes of fighting
them in the Arby's parking lot, arson, or gas-huffing, I guess.