The mystery deepens...
Co-fronted by a Scotsman who makes like a Presbyterian preacher and speaks in a deliberately awful approximation of an American accent, and comprising a gang of sundry misfits who look like they've taken a wrong turn on the way to the Hank Wangford Band reunion, the Alabama 3 have always been something of a difficult proposition.
But it's still with some degree of disbelief that your correspondent finds himself in an admittedly packed and heaving Underworld, once again to witness one of the best live bands in the world playing a storming set to far, far too few people.
It's been two years since the Alabamas' big break, when their 'Woke Up This Morning' was plucked from total obscurity to become the theme tune to The Sopranos, probably the single biggest TV event of the turn of the millennium. But, through a mixture of record company politicking and good old-fashioned bad luck, the rag-tag Brixtonites have yet to capitalise on it.
They still give great show, as this, the first of four weekly appearances in this suitably subterranean steampit, ably demonstrates. Sporting the usual array of preposterous monikers - 'The Mountain Of Love' is still a personal favourite - the band's ability to hammer home their stinging critiques of reaction and conservatism is, if anything, even more sharply focussed than before.
But it's been a long time since A3 had anything at all to prove to the people who come to see them play in London. This is a congregation of born-again devotees, here to testify to the brilliance of the Alabamas' spacious, provocative, country and blues powered funk. And tonight the Rev D Wayne Love is most definitely preaching to the converted.
There are those who argue that by dropping the shtick, by ditching the American accents, the Stetsons, the radical posturing and the self-consciously wacky vibe, A3 would have more luck persuading the masses that their music deserves to succeed on its own considerable merits. But this argument misses most points, as a pre-encore address from Paddy Hill, one of the Birmingham Six, who spent 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, helps underline.
If Alabama 3 gave you all the reality that they represent without any of the satire, it would be like being hit repeatedly on the head with a spiked pole. Theirs is a hardcore message chosen not for its radical chic but because the people up there on stage believe it. And it's a message that would be weakened if it was bludgeoned home without humour.
Where this leaves Alabama 3, of course, is anyone's guess. Still a long way from being pop stars, still with a world to uplift, educate and entertain, they remain as fine a pop group as they have ever been. But reaching the rest of the world seems as remote a proposition as ever.
