Archives for January 2017

Certain Songs #776: Jethro Tull – “Aqualung”

January 31, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Aqualung
Year: 1971

Jethro Tull were always kind of ridiculous, right?

I mean, they folksy prog-rock band led not just by a flautist — is there any more non-rock ‘n’ roll instrument than a flute? — but a flautist who looked like a fucking madman to boot.

Check out just about any Jethro Tull performance clip, and Ian Anderson is all crazy gestures and bug-eyed mugging as leaned into the mic to over-enunciate his vocals.

Certain Songs #775: Jesus Jones – “Right Here, Right Now”

January 30, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Doubt
Year: 1991

“It’s the Woodstock of the Democracy movement!” Those were the words of Tom Brokaw the night they started tearing down the Berlin Wall right around the time of my birthday in 1989. I have vivid memories of watching it sitting in my living room of my apartment at the corner of Wishon & McKinley, and for that brief moment in time, everything seemed possible.

It wasn’t just symbolic freedom I was watching, but actual literal freedom. And it wasn’t Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” it was messy joying living people who were doing it. It was reminder that eventually, the human spirit and need to be free and make as many choices as we can for our own lives can eventually conquer technocratic tyranny.

Certain Songs #774: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “I Hate Rock ‘n’ Roll”

January 29, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hate Rock ‘n’ Roll
Year: 1995

One last great single.

As the centerpiece, title track and reason for the final of the three odds and sods compilations that The Jesus and Mary Chain would turn out during their existence, “I Hate Rock ‘n’ Roll” is a glorious return to everything that made them so wonderful in the first place.

Loud noisy feedback-laden guitars? Check. Pretty sing-along melody? Check. Misanthropic lyrics? Check. Check. Check.

Certain Songs #773: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Sometimes Always”

January 28, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stoned & Dethroned
Year: 1994

And then things got dire for awhile. After the twin triumphs of Psychocandy and Darklands, the studied indifference that had always been part of the Reid brothers public personae began to creep into their music.

With the album titles hinting at the content within, 1989’s Automatic and 1992’s Honey’s Dead were . . . perfectly serviceable. The former had “Head On,” which inspired a pretty boss Pixies cover, and the later brought the noise back, but not the tunes.

Certain Songs #772: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Everything’s Alright When You’re Down”

January 27, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Barbed Wire Kisses
Year: 1987

Because each of the first two Jesus and Mary Chain albums (and really, I guess, all of their subsequent albums) were intended to capture a mood, they had plenty of songs left over to stick on the b-sides of their singles.

So it wasn’t really a shock when only a few months after Darklands they put out an album collecting those b-sides, covers, outtakes, and non-album singles.

Certain Songs #771: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “On The Wall”

January 26, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Darklands
Year: 1987

The Sunday morning coming down to Psychocandy’s wild, out-of-control Saturday night, Darklands was dominated by slow, languorous ballads, which would have never worked for me had they also not been so epic and gorgeous.

And the most epic and gorgeous of all was William Reid’s dreamy “On The Wall,” which showed up near the end of the second side and completely took it over.

Certain Songs #770: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Nine Million Rainy Days”

January 25, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Darklands
Year: 1987

So if — as we established yesterday — The Jesus and Mary Chain are happy when it rains, they must be absolutely ecstatic for 9,000,000 of them, right?

Not so much: “Nine Million Rainy Days” was a brutally despairing break-up song that started off like a dirge, and only picked up when one of the Reid brothers set the goddamned drum machine to the “Slow Groovy 60s” setting.

Certain Songs #769: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Happy When It Rains”

January 24, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Darklands
Year: 1987

Ah, the difficult second album.

Following up a debut album as well-realized and well-received as Psychocandy is a daunting task, to say the least. Some bands ::cough:: Violent Femmes ::cough:: stumble on their second album and never really recover.

But that didn’t happen to The Jesus and Mary Chain. Despite the abdication of Bobby Gillespe and sacking of Douglas Hart and the addition of — heaven forfend! — a goddamn drum machine, Darklands was a triumph its own terms.

Certain Songs #768: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Some Candy Talking”

January 23, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Some Candy Talking EP
Year: 1986

For all of the discussion surrounding The Jesus And Mary Chain’s Velvet Underground influence, I gotta admit that I didn’t really hear it as much on Psychocandy as a lot of other folks did.

I mean, it was there, of course — both formally in the floor toms / snare drums beats and informally in the noise that permeated the songs — but there was so much more going on than Velvets aping.

Certain Song #767: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Something’s Wrong”

January 22, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Psychocandy
Year: 1985

So in preparation for writing about the songs on Psychocandy, I read not one, but two books about The Jesus and Mary Chain. The first was the 33 1/3 entry on Psychocandy, which was terribly written, even if did impart some information, and the second was a better-written band biography.

And while I’m not sure I learned what I wanted to learn about the eternal mystery surrounding Psychocandy, both books insisted that their music had some roots in psychedelia, which I’d never really considered before.