Negative Jesus / Day-Glo Jesus

Due to spatial problems the records in the J section of the 1537 are packed in so tight that when I reached for a nugget of pure Glaswegian negativity this evening I got a second shot of day-glo indie dance Jesus as well. ‘Double Jesus!’ I exclaimed, ‘there’s a post in this. Quick Robin, to the spectra vortex-a-gram!’

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When I was about 16 I washed dishes in a local restaurant and really got on with the chef, Martin who was an older guy, friend of my parents and an ex-heroin addict who had been around a bit. I used to love his war stories about the bands he’d seen, the bands he’d met and catered for on tour*. Gently, but very rightly, mocking my rocktastic tastes he occasionally leant me some terrifying cassettes most immediately expunged from my memory for reasons of mental hygiene^. Occasionally one stuck though.

One rainy Sunday he lent me a taped copy of Jesus And Mary Chain Barbed Wire Kisses and told me the Jesus & Mary Chain were great, hated the USA and played really sarcastic cover versions of surf songs. It had never occurred to me you could play music sarcastically, or ironically before, Dio had not prepared me for this.

That description meant I was almost prepared for the wondrously negative assault of ‘Kill Surf City’, where a bitchin’ surf rock beat was assailed by slashing dissonance, guitars doing things that would make luthiers weep and lyrics that Brian Wilson would baulk at:

I hate honey and she hates me
But that's the way it's supposed to be
I'm gonna run, gonna run till I hit the sun
Some evil cunt's gonna get my gun
I'm gonna kill surf city, got to get me a gun
Got to fry surf city with a nuclear bomb

Then Barbed Wire Kisses just plunged me into a world of nightmarish hostile cravings, screeching treble and self-loathing via ‘Head’, ‘Hit’, ‘Rider’ all short of tune and frightening to my teenage ears^^. I knew and understood the concept of heavy but I had never heard music that was actively designed to be hostile to the listener before.

But then there was a poised doomed romanticism to the likes of ‘Don’t Ever Change’ and ‘Psycho Candy’ that I found myself responding to, it was a respite at least before we hurtled back into an uncaring void of struggle.

The second side of Barbed Wire Kisses hurtles towards sunglasses-at-night, making-love-on-the-edge-of-the-night, Duane Eddy leather jacketed perfection with ‘Sidewalking’. It still sounds pretty sexy to me today, proper New York cool via East Kilbride which makes it even better.

Their numb, drugged-flat, eerily potent cover of Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love’ plumbs all manner of existential angst Mr Diddley didn’t. Then to flip from that into their dead-behind-the-eyes cover of ‘Surfin’ USA’ and to cut a manic straight preacher into the end of the track is pure excitement. Even the next track, ‘Everything’s Alright When You’re Down’, manages to be upbeat for about half its length too in sympathy with the new mood.

Of the last clutch of tracks the acoustic version of ‘Taste Of Cindy’ is by far the best, sweetly poisonous, just like her knife.

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Listening to that tape on my rainy walk home was important, it challenged some assumptions about what rock could and maybe should be. I knew then that it could hurt, it could challenge and it could be far more deviant than I’d previously fathomed and a lot of the rebellion I’d scented previously had been about entertainment. Lovely, now pass me that Poison tape again please.

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During my university days Jesus Jones morphed from being a bit so-so into banging out day-glo dancey indie tracks that I have fond memories of throwing myself around dancefloors to. I seem to recall they dressed funny and were a bit crap around the edges. Mrs 1537 had a cassette of their LP Doubt.

Anyway in a spike of nostalgia last year I spotted Jesus Jones International Bright Young Thing on a garish picture disc in a record shop in Stirling and bought it. Yay, reliving my youth!

Disappointing and empty is my immediate reaction. Good luck to you if can make it all the way through the A-side ‘IBYT 12’, the original version is better but not an infinitesimal fiddly fraction as good as I remember it being.

Ah well it looks nice and maybe context is everything when you’re Jesus-ing and I just prefer to take mine dark and confrontational.

1149 Down.

*he was at the New Year’s Eve gig the Ramones recorded for It’s Alive! and told me that being a chef for the bands at the Monsters Of Rock festival was an absolute lowlight, Iron Maiden being a particular ‘bunch of fucking pricks’; his words, exactly.

^you haven’t been truly frightened until you’ve listened to an hour of Whitehouse and/or Throbbing Gristle, walking home along unlit country roads on a moonless night.

^^although I can appreciate the tune in ‘Rider’ now.