Jesus and Mary Chain - 23/5/2012. - review by Nick the Bookman

Well, I'm a little bit tardy with this review, but it's sort of worked out well. I planned to start by giving big love and respect to Jane and Mike, aka Songs For Children, who are the dynamic duo that have pulled off the coup that is Jesus and Mary Chain's HK debut. They are truly among the unsung heroes of the local music scene for the number of way cool bands they've bought here since 2008 when they both arrived in Hong Kong. I first met them DJing at the first Clockenflap Festival at Cyberport and they've always been very generous with getting my usually poverty struck form into their shows on the guest list. And there have been some excellent gigs down the years. Anyway, I said it worked out well because today Sunday 3/6/2012, there is a great story about them on page 3 in The Review section of the Sunday SCMP. Good job by Pavan Shamdasani and you've been credited in this piece in advance for any titbits I might "borrow" from your story.

Anyway, Songs For Children have got Jesus and Mary Chain to play in Singapore and Hong Kong. It's their biggest gig to date and apparently about 800+ people are in attendance at KITEC for the show. Big hi's to the usual suspects. Chunny and Sian. Simon. Noel and Barry (but no Nick). Miranda and her beau. John Transnoodle. My old mate Cliff from RTHK. Nick Wilshire for HK Clubbing is somewhere around I presume. He told me at the recent Sasha gig (another pending review. Be patient faithful readers. We'll get there sometime before the new millennium!) that he was coming. And to all the rest of you punters whose path I've crossed at other gigs, but we haven't got around to exchanging names, handshakes, saliva and/or other bodily fluids. Oops, better not let Marilena know about that last bit!

It's 2045 and The Yours are taking the stage. It's their second gig with Songs For Children after the recent Yuck gig. Obviously they're not one of the unknown bands referenced in the Review piece who to quote Mike "...we've asked to support an international name and turned us down because they needed to practise more. You don't get good by not playing live". The Yours are good and they don't mind supporting the headliners so they can get exposure and get better. Their set is basically the same one they played when opening for Yuck (see earlier review for the traumatic details) except they freaked out in a playing sense like a long tailed cat in a room full of rapid motion rocking chairs. Great stuff and over in about the time it would take the old JAMC to do a set and a half: i.e. 30 minutes. They're done and dusted and no doubt drinking the free rider hooch by about 2120.

In the meantime Mike is playing some bogglesome tunes on his laptop as the headliners get ready. The only songs I knew (and I'm showing my age here. Again.) were "Pushing Too Hard" by Sky Saxon and The Seeds and the original live version of "Kick Out The Jams (Motherfuckers)..." by The MC5. The overdubbed safe for prime time refrain is "...Brothers and Sisters". I think the MC5 is now the MC2 - the other three having died in the past 15 years or so.The live album is still one of the greatest ever. No argument required or needed.

It's about 2130 and the crowd roar is mighty decibelic. JAMC are on stage and Jim is saying "Hi, we're the Jesus and Mary Chain. It's nice to be here in Hong Kong." William's guitar is producing a long groan-drone intro and the band rip into "snake Driver". The crowd responds with the first of what I'm sure are many seismic sonic orgasms of delight. I'm now singing along via some old stale shrunken muscle memory to the second song which I discover days/weeks/whatever later is "Head On". I must confess now that I'm not all that familiar with the recorded output of the JAMC. Bits of "Psychocandy" the first LP are somewhere in my transom, but I'm relying on the heavy duty hard-core faniscenti to tell me what is what. So, jumping ahead to after the show, here's a big thanks for Simon for procuring the set list for me via the wonders of the interweb....

...it's about the eighth or ninth song and Murray the cameraman (who shoots a lot of film each year at the HK 7's along with Pete Klein) say's he's chuffed he came, but hasn't heard anything from the aforementioned "Psychocandy", but, hey the night is still young. At this point, JAMC have been on stage longer than The Yours and show no signs of slowing down. Probably because they're a quintet tonight. Basically, it's Jim on vox. Brother William on lead guitar. John Moore, a former member of JAMC and an ex-Black Box Recorder with Luke Haines - himself a surly former Auteur - on second guitar. Phil the bassist used to play with Lush. Finally, Brian is a spectacular drummer from wherever drummers are made/mutated/trained. The quintet has shown no signs of imploding yet...

I've spoken a bit too soon (and jumped ahead a little as well.) The ninth ditty "All Things Must Pass" is, well, taking a little longer to pass. Jim sounds a wee bit pissed and is having trouble finding his voice and key and the song stutter-starts/stops about three times. Amid a little bit of band banter that doesn't threaten to go nuclear. Jim says that some of the songs haven't been that well learnt. The audience is adoring and forgiving.

There's a pleasant surprise in store for song 13 when Jim introduces local fan Nicole as the backing vocalist for "Just Like Honey" Her voice is tremulous and a little bit lost in the mix, but hey she's singing with the JAMC and that's a memory to savour. Isn't that right Jane? I heard later you were coaxed on stage in Singapore to do the guest vocal honours on Honey. Mike told me that he told you that if you didn't do it, you'd regret it for the rest of your life. And Simon told me that it's up on YouTube in all its multi-angled glory. All part of the perks.

All of a sudden, its the 14th song. JAMC have been playing for a shade over an hour (that's about 3 former gigs worth of songs, so we can't say we didn't get value for money. I'm sitting on a big box at the back of the hall and wondering what the fuck is going on. Basically, JAMC have started to play "Reverence" and...wow!. Or do I mean "WOW!" This is one of those incendiary moments when a song just fucking trips me out. Briefly, I feel like I've flashed back to The Western Front. Let me try to explain. The song is in its lengthy guitar solo phase. It's as awesome as watching Jimi Hendrix play "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. The frenzied feedback like bombs dropping. The squalls of guitar like rapid fire machine guns strafing anything that moves. It's the magic point where chaos and craft form a gestalt sensory mindfuck overload. It's a hallucinatory, coruscating, visceral full frontal slamming assault on all my senses. The sickly green light show feeding through the smoke machines is like watching chlorine gas drifting and dissipating. The big white slow strobing blocks of light look like the visual equivalent of some hellish bombardment by Big Bertha guns. It's an absolutely stunning finale and I can only agree wholeheartedly with Chunny when he says this is why he thinks JAMC are the best band ever. The Horrors provided a similar sort of orgasmic epiphany when I saw them earlier this year do a 15 minute full on guitar wigout on "Moving Further Away". By the way, that's also up on YouTube. Again, courtesy of Simon. I'm thinking, that's a mighty fine high point to end the show on. Bravo!

Sian, Chunny and I have left the KITEC building. Shared a cab and made it to the Star Ferry, TST. Time enough to get the 2330 ferry home. No one else appears to have made the same ferry. Why is that I don't hear you asking? Well, I'll tell you. Everyone else stuck around a few extra minutes. Probably because they were still reeling in delighted shock from the last track. And because JAMC came back on stage after a few minutes and proceeded to play a nine minute encore of "Hardest Walk/Taste Of Cindy/Never Understand" All from Psychocandy. And the three of us missed it...

(Simon says the encore is posted on YouTube. And he's promised to try and download it for me. Because I'm not really the 21st Century type of techboy wonder. Hammurabi would probably be pissed off with me for failing to get up to speed on memorising my cuneiform. Enough for now. Until the next gig, further down the road. ntb.)

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