NECRO BLUES - Sioux City Pete & the Beggars (Steel Cage Records)
Woah! Talk about coming out of left field. I thought I knew a bit about the blues until I heard this. Steel City Pete is the working name of a self described blues man from the Midwest. Player, teacher & spreader of the word, he 
has put together an amazing and thought-provoking LP. Threads of religion, sex, politics & death twisted and pulled into a mix that’s beautiful, repellent and hypnotic in equal measures. But before we get too far into it, maybe I need to back up a bit.
The set up Pete & the Beggars use is simple- three guitars and one drum kit- and the sound will be familiar to anyone who’s ever heard Panther Burns, early Cramps, the Immortal Lee County Killers, or any of a dozen more. Stripped down snare drum beats keep things rock solid behind fuzzy guitars and plenty of slide, occasionally dropping back to simple steel guitar alone. There are odd samples and snippets of gospel singing and chanting mixed in here and there, usually referring to the tune that follows. There are a couple of blues standards covered, but only a few. It’s the subject matter of the originals that takes this someplace else. Drugs, death, violence, sex, and revenge are all on offer here.
For instance, “LA Black” takes a tour through that city’s dark pages, from the 1947 Black Dahlia killing to the murder of Sharon Tate in 1969, and the death rock scene that festered there in the early 80s, with nods to the Germs, Christian Death & 45 Grave thrown in along the way. I’m a little puzzled as to why it’s true crime writer John Gilmore that is highlighted, rather than James Ellroy, and the song doesn’t seem to have a point of view on whether the City of Angels is misnamed or not- but this on wins in the last round, with the final lines: “Stained panties, hard cocks, heroin/And burning LA black”, roaredover throbbing beats and stinging guitar.
The standard political discussions about the blues are usually confined to a/ whether or not white men can play it (yes they can) and b/ whether or not it can be changed from it’s historic shape (yes it can). I can’t recall anyone taking a lead from the music’s African origins and using it to highlight the appalling state of much of present day Africa. Steel City Pete drive his point home with “Cannibal”, a song about the politics of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, soon to be on trial for war crimes. The catch being that Liberia is a nation founded & settled by the Christian descendants of slaves who returned from America to their “homelands” in the late 1800s…
A children’s call-and-response playground chant leads into “Pedophilia”- the chant in question being about a young man riding the train all night long…no prizes for guessing what THAT refers to. No prizes for guessing what the song is about either- this is straightforward taboo breaking, over a mess of distortion. This is an effort that would have made Big Black proud back in their heyday. After a crisp fife-and-drum band opening, “Voodoo Motherfucker” fishes in the muddy pond of blues metal, while closing track “Necrophilia” is a strange deconstructed thing of speed guitar, tape loops and muttered vocal samples- very unsettling.
Put out by the team behind the excellent Carbon 14 magazine, with handsome and unsettling packaging, this may well turn out to be one of those legendary albums (like the Gun Club’s sulphur-and-magnolia scented “Fire Of Love”, that ignited my interest in the blues to begin with) that not many people own at the time, but that everyone will claim to have loved forever, 10 years after its release. Seek it out. - TJ Honeysuckle
