The Jesus and Mary Chain are Old, and That’s Okay
by Dave Elliott
I think back to the music I was listening to as a 13-year old dork in 1985, and it’s not a very hip playlist – basically, it was whatever Casey Kasem told me was good that week. I was too young, too sheltered in my (red) neck of the woods to even hear about anything cool in the world of music, much less find a way to actually explore it. While I be-bopped my way through the often-cringe worthy sea of the American Top 40 tunes (listen to Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time” and disagree, I dare you), there was a hell of a lot of cool music being made around the world…I just didn’t find it until I was old enough to join the military and move to a big city with a college radio station and MTV (I’ll never forget you, 120 Minutes). That’s how you found the cool stuff in decades past.
The first song I heard by the Jesus and Mary Chain was “Reverence” from their 1992 release, Honey’s Dead. Great song: driving beat, fuzzy bass, wall of distortion, controversial lyrics, maaaannn. Bought the cassette, blasted it, played air guitar on the steering wheel, trying to match the strange noises coming from William Reid’s guitar. How’d he even make those sounds? What was this strange, glorious noise?
It wasn’t until years later, perhaps the mid-nineties, before I listened to their 1985 debut album, Psychocandy. At this time, I was into the Cure, Depeche Mode, Catherine Wheel, Lush – I felt pretty hip to what was going on in the UK music scene. What I didn’t know is where much of it was born, and Psychocandy popped me on the head like a drunken grandfather telling me to go change the channel. Part noise-rock, part pop, part doo-wop, smattered with dark lyrics that both complemented and confused the music behind it, I found myself instantly sorry that I hadn’t discovered the album at the same time I discovered the Cure’s Disintegration. They would have been perfect companion pieces. Hell, throw in Joy Division’s Closer, and it would have been the trifecta of forlornness. Where’s my black nail polish? My eyeliner? My mother-loving hairspray?
Where was I? Oh, right – a military kid in his early twenties, discovering the roots of noise-rock. Going back in time from Honey’s Dead, which I listened to religiously. Climbing down from the branches to the roots, through Automatic and Darklands, finding the beginning: the revered debut album, Psychocandy. It was a fascinating, emotional journey, and I loved every minute of it.
Fast forward to now. May 2015. In my forties, kids, lame-ass, grown up responsibilities. In my never-ending quest to be a good father, my 16-year old daughter and I traveled to Denver to see one of her favorite bands in concert, All Time Low. It was a decent show, but boy, was I out of place. By, like, 30 years. I occasionally made eye contact with another member of the Sad Dad Club and nodded solemnly, the unspoken solidarity of knowing we had to survive this thing together. As far as I know, we all made it out alive and mostly unscarred.
The best thing about the trip, besides hanging will my cool-ass kid, was catching a glimpse the marquee of the Ogden Theatre, right across the East Colfax from our hotel, boldly displaying: 5/11. The Jesus and Mary Chain. The Black Ryder. All just 48 hours after the suburban teen angst of All Time Low. Whaaat? I’m there. Ear bleach, amIrite?
The opening act for the show was an Australian band that I hadn’t heard of before, the Black Ryder. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what we got was eight dreamy, poppy, gloriously lush songs. Drawn in by singer/guitarists Aimee Nash and Scott van Ryper, it was as if Lush and Mazzy Star had set up camp in the Grand Canyon and decided to cover some Sonic Youth and Belly songs. By their swirling finale, “Let It Go,” I was hooked, and I mayyyy even have forgotten that they weren’t the headliners. Just for a second, though, I promise. If you haven’t listened to them before, go to your favorite streaming music site right now and, at the very least, check out “Gone Without Feeling” and the aforementioned “Let It Go.” Go ahead; I’ll wait.
*busying myself*
Welcome back! Good stuff, right? That was just a small taste of what we were awash in that night. After you’re done reading this, perhaps you’ll skedaddle to your nearest music store to buy (or just sit there in your pajama pants and download) the Black Ryder’s first two albums, Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride and The Door Behind the Door. Just don’t download it illegally, guys – help them make a few bucks. I need to ensure I have another opportunity to be near Nash.
After a somewhat surprisingly short intermission (hey, that smoke pit is tiny and jam-packed with us folks in our forties, shuffling along), the lights dropped, the smoke billowed, and the Jesus and Mary Chain came out, readying themselves slowly and deliberately, sipping bottled water (a friend had told me had been at a show on the original, infamously violence-marred Psychocandy tour, and that they had come out too drunk to perform, the disaster lasting only about fifteen minutes followed by flying bottles and riots and carnage – all of my 155 pounds were braced for anything). Singer Jim Reid politely informed us that they would be breaking the show into two sets: a shorter assortment of some hits, followed by a brief intermission, and then Psychocandy performed in its entirety. The crowd understandably erupted into cheers and applause as the band launched into it.
And boy, did they ever. If you didn’t know it, you never would have suspected you were listening to a band 30-plus years into their career, playing songs they’ve no doubt played hundreds of times in front of thousands and thousands of screaming fans. Sharp-sounding and tight, buried underneath layers of feedback, scraping guitars and fuzzed-out bass, they sounded more powerful, more vital, that night than on any of their albums.
The highlight for me was “Reverence,” which they stretched out from the almost-four minute long album version to what seemed about seven minutes. Reid’s vocals were as cool as the other side of the pillow as he told us all about wanting to die like Jesus Christ. Like JFK. By the end, the repeated cries of “I wanna die…” became very nearly agonized, the crowd screaming right along, middle-aged fists pumping in the air, like it was 1992 all over again. It will likely go down as one of my favorite live music moments ever, up there with listening to ten thousand Metallica fans chant “Die! Die! Die!” during “Creeping Death” in 1989. Something about crowds chanting about death gets me going, I suppose. (Noting for my next head doc visit.)
After the first set, another brief intermission abruptly ended by the opening drums and guitar riff to “Just Like Honey.” Cue the crowd going nuts again, and it was well deserved. If Psychocandy suffered from one problem, it was a common one on nearly all small-label releases in the ‘80s – slightly muffled and dirty production. This was definitely not the case live. The crass crispness (or crisp crassness?) of the bass and guitars was urgent, dagger-like, forcing your body to absorb it. The thud of the kick drum, ruffling your shirt, made you bounce along whether you wanted to or not. At the risk of being labeled BLASPHEMER the album sounded a dozen times better that night, live and just a shade over thirty years later.
After the finale, “It’s So Hard,” there was a buzz in my body that wouldn’t leave for hours afterward (and, no, it wasn’t the beer or my happy pills). The droning, the thudding, the smooth-as-goth lyrics rattled around in my body as the lights came up and the brothers Reid and their band of merry men walked off the stage, again waving politely. It was likely just another routine night for them. Maybe somewhere in the back of their mind, they were thinking about a paycheck. Isn’t that what all the old bands do after so many years? I mean, come on – Mick Jagger has to want to blow his brains out every time Keith-Undead-Richards cranks out the opening riff to “Satisfaction” on stage, right? When (insert 2015 drummer here) starts whacking out the Shangri-Las drumbeat to open “Just Like Honey,” can Reid honestly feel the any semblance of the maudlin, affected emotion that led to the final verse of the song, “Eating up the scum is the hardest thing for me to do…”?
It doesn’t matter, frankly. Not anymore. The fans have aged along with the band (I spoke to one younger couple, perhaps in their early twenties, who seemed surprised that there weren’t more younger fans in attendance), and you don’t buy tickets hoping to see the infamous violence of the first Psychocandy tour. At this point, the pure joy comes not from the antics, the pageantry, the spectacle. Nope. It comes from hearing a goddamned classic album being played right before your eyes. Not just played, but played amazingly well. My body buzz was strong as the salt-and-pepper haired gents exited stage left. I wondered, though, did they know what it just meant to the fans? Did they see the awe in the aging eyes of the crowd?
Did they feel the reverence?
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