We are The Primal Scream Appreciation Society... Imagine an LP that can hold its own alongside 'Let It Bleed', that burns at its own boundaries. Imagine Bobby Gillespie coming out of a pizza restaurant in Kentish Town and saying, "Melody, sex and violence. That's what I'm interested in, bands being totally into what they do, being on the verge of exploding. These are the things I'm into". Then retching on the slimy mozzarella.

On a bed a minute's walk from Pizza The Action, Bobby Gillespie sits playing with one of those tin guns that unfurls a flag saying BANG! when you pull the trigger. It's the only shooting up being done. Here's the news.

I don't want to sound like Boris Yeltsin or Brian Clough, but Primal Scream have come up with something a little impressive, and It couldn't have happened at a more opportune moment. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," squealed Gillespie's country women in Hacbeth. Had Shakespeare's harridans wanted to see what tomorrow held In store for rock 'n' roll they could simply have checked what was in the charts ten, 15 years ago today. The arrival of Primal Scream's 'Screamadelica' LP is vital, you now have this choice: Do You Want Tomorrow Today Or Yesterday Forever? Who draws the line between nostalgia and neuralgia? And are you prepared for an All Night Party Political Broadcast from me and Bobby Gillespie? Primal Scream have shown that if you give it all, you come close to getting it all. This is going to take some explaining.

"Great records are immortal things"

"We've got this theory," explained Bobby G in Brighton last week. "It's not even a theory. I think music is magic... magical, in the true sense of the word. Certain pieces of music make me feel strong, protected. It raises... it raises my soul. No, forget that, it protects me from bad feelings. Music protects us in such a powerful way, it makes you aware of possibilities. To a lot of people I think music's a commodity, not spiritual, it's something you put on the mantlepiece and it's there, like a set of golf clubs or an ironing board, whereas to us it's a holy thing, and none of us are even religious." Or you can look at it this way.

There is a train of thought in rock 'n'roll that bastardizes the need to go backwards in time for influence and instead goes back in time for good. In recent years Marvin Gaye, The Clash and Bolan (all Levi's), Bobby Vinton(Domestos), and Cream (Vauxhall) have all found themselves back at the top because of the power of advertising. Others, like Nat King Cole, have re-appeared because modern acts have released artistically inferior but commercially successful cover versions.

More immediately, singles from film soundtracks (Cher and Bryan Adams) have become the biggest selling records. The pop charts have become a marketing man's dream and a futurist's nightmare. We're so busy using music to go with films, cars, jeans and beer we've become accustomed to creative necrophilia. The message is this: Stop re-releasing or the pop kid gets it.

Such wholesale commercial exploitation is typical of the fear of progression and development that rests like a stillbom child in the hands of record industry executives. It's this that Primal Scream are an exhilarating rally against. Gillespie calls it "an aesthetic battle". A&R departments are under such pressure to produce successful artists fast, the emphasis placed so firmly on profit, that creative development has been left on the shelf. There are many exceptions, I know, but look at the charts. Listen to the radio. What's important is that YOU, the fan, has more idea of what's going on than the people paid a king's ransom to run record companies.

The shoe-gazers are forced to look down to avoid the glare beaming from the high gloss rubbish that pumps like effluent through the media. But shy dullards are inexcusable. Shoe-gazers are an eyesore and an earsore; being charisma-free doesn't pass for rebellion, it's simply sad.

"I think music is magic... magical, in the true sense of the word."

At the Grown-Up Shoe-gazing Convention that passed for a Pixies gig at Crystal Palace this year, I watched the singer from Cud in a gold waistcoat and black leather drainpipes languish on stage, totally free of style, sex or passion. He looked like a psychedelic Mick Hucknall having an asthma attack. His music, devoid of great pop, fine art, or beauty, led him through a Hall Of No Hope. After them the Milltown Brothers followed suit, bright eyed but blind to the possibilities of the artform

Throughout this I saw a timid boy, untouched by acne, crouched in his Robert Smith hi-tops and V-neck school jumper On his Army & Navy canvas bag the likes of Moose took pride of place alongside Joy Division I stared at this boy and he flinched, my friend pulled me on, I felt like an old man watching a conscript march into Flanders Field I didn't feel superior, I just knew there were better things than watching Black Francis growl.

And then 'Screamadelica' came out...

"GOSPEL REGGAE, free-formjazz. Country blues, old disco, rockabilly, punk rock, soul, House," Bobby Gillespie, the last living stick insect to leave the Ramones concert, pauses for breath. He is busy recounting the many varied forms of music his band listen to, the sort of music you will hear on 'Screamadelica'. He is not bullshitting; ahead of everything Bobby Gillespie is a music fan. In two days of interviewing he plays Charlie Feathers, Deep Purple, John Lennon, Syljohnson, James Brown, T-Rex, Lee Perry, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Dion with Spector and more. Though he sees Bowie and Bolan as role models, Gillespie is proud of the variety of influences Primal Scream enjoy. Bobby is The Eclectic Warrior.

"I think there's a lot of soul to what we do."

'Screamadelica' is testament to this love. It is a breathtaking album; midway through 'Come Together' you can hear the music fermenting. As for the guitars on 'Moving On Up', bend over, Keith, and let Andrew Innes show you the news. They don't sound derivative like The Black Crowes, but they've captured a spirit and used it to give their own sound a bloody good ramming. 'Inner Flight', the bubbling dive through the cosmos, should really be called 'Onner Trip'. Bobby loves his intergalactic metaphors, it's as if, to abuse the old Alien line, In Space Everyone Hears The Scream.

"Great records are immortal things," he says, ominously. "I think there's a lot of soul to what we do, there's a lot of blues inflections in there as well, I think we've got a feel that other people never have. When I say blues I mean our kind of blues, I don't mean John Lee Hooker... love him though we do."

For Gillespie, good music articulates something for the listener, he can remember quite clearly the first time he encountered 'Electric Warrior', hedescribes vividly the effect 'Starman' had on him. To Bobby, music is linear and has to be purposeful, a taste for one thing preparing you for the next. "If you'd been into Mott The Hoople then The Clash came you might have got into them, I liked both bands because one's prepared you for the other. The people I was at school with who liked Emerson, Lake & Palmer hated The Clash for the same reasons they hated Mott The Hoople. If you heard The Velvets play live and they got into free-form and you liked it, then you get a bit older and someone plays you some jazz, you hear Omette Coleman letting loose. Listening to the Velvets you'd never have known they might have been influenced by jazz, but listening to them gets you ready for it.

"I learned to play bass copying Jah Wobble bass lines'from PiL, and he was reggae influenced. When you hear reggae after, you can relate to it. The same with The Doors and Willie Dixon or the Stones and Bo Diddley... I could sit all night and trace lineage like that. The sax on 'Coming Down' (from 'Screamadelica') is free-form and it's going to be the first time a lot of kids have heard that. There's Country blues on 'Damaged' and old disco on 'Don't Fight It, Feel It'."