The Counterforce No. 49

The Jesus & Mary Chain, Postcards From Scotland

Never Understood, the new book about The Jesus & Mary Chain, may very well be the best book I’ve ever read. I saw it on sale at the merch booth last week at the New Haven show but unhappy with the sound of the gig, as mentioned last Counterforce, I decided not to buy it. But seeing them again brought up a lot in me. They were my favourite band for years from pretty much the time I first heard them and bought Honey’s Dead in the summer of 1992. I still think Far Gone & Out is one of the most best songs I’ve ever heard, though for a long time, if asked I would often reply that b-side Sometimes was my favourite song of all-time. Great melodies and noisy guitars. And Sometimes has that rare (for them) I iv chord change that I love 

And even now every time I hear Head On I think it’s absolutely brilliant, sums up so much. Yes, it’s obviously about drugs, but isn’t music the best drug of them all? 

So pondering the existence of this new book the following day, I checked to see if there’s an audiobook version. And there is! Read by the Reid brothers themselves. And I as an American can actually understand what they’re saying. I think, as hinted at in the book, they may have toned down their accents for the listeners.

And what a book it is. They got so little press in the 90s when I started to get into them, and what write-ups there were focused on their reticence and curmudgeonliness. But this isn’t like that at all. They’re both very forthcoming and the story is a great one. I loved hearing about them borrowing Dalí books and Can records from the East Kilbride library. I don’t usually dig childhood stuff in biographies, but this was different. Them talking music is especially interesting, all the gigs they’d seen, Joy Division, wow, and later their kerfuffles meeting some of their heroes. Jim in particular has a wonderful way of putting things, seemingly casual sentences whose word choices resonate out into the wider story. And of course I loved hearing him talk about Van Halen. William’s half too, none of this was miseryguts stuff at all. They addressed their differences and spats over the years, but also their love for one another and their family and that really came through. Hearing about the things that made them happy and that they thought were beautiful really enhanced the story. Plenty of little things too, like William talking about his cats - also named William and Jim - and the Creation Records answering machine incident. I really loved this book and could easily have listened to one three times the size. I would’ve loved to have heard more on Automatic and Honey’s Dead.

The Mary Chain were everything to me back in 1992/1993 and for years beyond. I had that giant - seriously giant - five foot tall poster of the Head On single in my room. And when my father took me to Scotland when I was 17* to visit our relatives in Falkirk, I had him drive through East Kilbride just so I could see it. In those pre-internet times and not really knowing where to go, it didn’t leave too much of an impression. Though I met distant cousins, all in their 30s, who would smile and exclaim ‘oh yeah, the Mary Chain, I used to listen to them’ and there’s me gobsmacked that the band wasn’t still an essential part of their daily lives like they were mine.

(*Years later I found the list of records I wanted to buy on that trip, top of the list was ‘the second Kingmaker album’)

Jim speaks with lingering disbelief about his interactions with his heroes but the few brief times I met either brother are fond memories for me

The first time I got to see them was in October 1994 on the Stoned & Dethroned tour. I had moved up to Boston for school about a month before and they were coming to Avalon, Mazzy Star and Velvet Crush opening. The show was everything I wanted it to be. Loud, chaotic, and with the giant GAME OVER flashing on screen to signal the end as swarms of feedback rang out through the hall. They were playing in Providence a few days later and there was no way I was going to miss this. My roommate/best friend was doing his best to dissuade me at the time, fearing my already apparent disinclination towards school, saying “I care about music just as much as you do and I wouldn’t go”. He had no idea. I caught the bus down, which dropped me off in front of the Biltmore hotel and I made my way to Lupo’s. The show was great. Hope didn’t come out for Sometimes Always, everyone assuming they’d had an argument. But the encore included their cover of New Kind Of Kick and they ended with I Hate Rock N Roll. This was amazing, I was thrilled I stuck to my guns and got to experience this, a new song by my favourite band in the world that no one’s ever heard before. I had to stay up all night to get the 6AM bus back so I alternated between sitting in Dunkin’ Donuts reading the Rousseau book I’d brought with me for class and just wandering the streets of Providence. On one of these later perambulations, William and I assume their tour manager drunkenly turned onto the street ahead of me, and I overheard that they were lost. I piped up and it turned out their hotel they were looking for was the Biltmore, so I offered to show them where it was. Trying to contain my excitement, I complimented I Hate Rock N Roll and the show in general, William kinda barking back “Well, I should hope you liked it!” We soon got to our destination and they thanked me and went up to their rooms. I was elated. When I returned to the Biltmore to catch my bus a couple hours later, I asked if I could sit in the lobby until it arrived and, permission granted, heard the desk people talking about this British band that had just left, paying everything in cash. When I saw William standing in front of the Hotel Duncan pre-show in New Haven last week, I thought it was a nice little call-back to this

When the Munki tour was happening, my sister and I were going to miss the Boston show due to a family vacation so we drove the six hours to Baltimore and DC to catch those gigs. Baltimore especially was every bit as shambolic as you’ve heard about. Still loved it

And when Freeheat played The Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge, MA in October 2000 is one of my favourite drunken interactions with rock stars. They did Teenage Lust and it was awesome. When they left the stage to feedback already quite drunk, I grabbed one of their Coronas from the stage and clocked that Jim had gone to the upstairs room. I gave him a few minutes out of post-show politeness and also probably to gather my nerve. I had recently become part of a local record company and I quickly devised a plan on the spot. Sneaking to the upstairs room/office, my opening words to my hero were:

“Great show, I’m glad you haven’t lost it.”

Jim Reid: Me too.

Me: Cause I was worried.

Jim Reid: Me too.

I then offered to put out the Freeheat record and Jim replied:

“Do you have a million dollars?”

Me: I’ve got $25.

At which point we both smiled and I snuck off back downstairs.

I moved to London in the autumn of 2003 for a couple months to do some recording. London is my favourite place in the world and I’d still be there now if my visa hadn’t run out. The first time I ever set foot in the city in July 1992, a week or two after I bought Honey’s Dead, it just felt like home to me. And living there was amazing. So much great stuff to do any night of the week. And shortly after I arrived I learned that Sister Vanilla - William & Jim’s sister Linda, who sang on Moe Tucker - was playing at Water Rats. It was a killer show and afterwards I couldn’t believe it, she was just standing in the corner talking to her brother Jim! This really cemented to me how great a city London is, that stuff like this could just happen. So I went up to say how much I enjoyed the show and I also asked Jim what he was up to. He was every bit as shy and uncomfortable as he says he is in the book. And I’ll never forget Linda answering for him “He’s been making babies”. That Sister Vanilla record is really good too, I still listen to those songs. A great version of The Two Of Us and it’s Can’t Stop The Rock that gets stuck in my head the most

I also just finished reading Grant McPhee’s Postcards From Scotland: Scottish Independent Music 1983-1995. Good timing as of course the Mary Chain are in it. But the main reason I bought it was for more info on The Pastels (there really should be a Pastels book) and Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes. I have an incredibly fond memory of being in Avalanche Records in Edinburgh in the summer of 2003 and coming across their A Cabinet Of Curiosities LP. It could’ve just been that shade of green the sleeve is in, I’d never heard of them before, but I snatched it up straight away. And I’m kicking myself now cause I don’t have it anymore, must’ve sold it in one of my more desperate times, and this goes along with my feelings the past couple years of regretting every book and record I’ve ever sold. There’s only one copy on Discogs, and for $62.50. Very good tunes, and although only a handful of them are streaming, I wisely put the mp3s on my phone last year.

Postcards is a deep-dive oral history with a lot of the major players contributing. Martin Hayward’s accounts of his time in The Pastels are very informative. And as a whole, it’s great that I now have another huge list of things I want to hear.

I loved The Soup Dragons when I heard Divine Thing in April 1992. Having just been broken-up with for the first time, I of course associated the song with my ex-girlfriend. Seems insane looking back on that now. I saw them at Toad’s Place in New Haven that July with Catherine Wheel opening. Great show. Had no idea they went on to do stadiums after that. Toad’s says it’s 1000 capacity but seems a lot smaller. And because of the era’s limitations to having access to things, I had never heard their first single Whole Wide World before. What a great energetic burst of pop. 1 minute 49 seconds. And, as they point out in the book, freaking LOUD.

Delighted to read Gordon Keen saying that Eugenius has “hours of unreleased material” recorded after Mary Queen of Scots. I freaking loved Eugenius. Such a great memory of them doing The Moon’s A Balloon at Toad’s Place in 1993.

Lots of BMX Bandits in the book, of course. Having me wish my local store Secret Sounds was still around, where I bought the Serious Drugs single in 1992

And a good amount of Teenage Fanclub in there too. I saw TF at Toad’s Place March 2, 1992 and it was such a great show. We met them too, just hanging out in the back of the club. Uncle Tupelo was opening and it was my introduction to Jeff Tweedy. The two bands joined forces in between sets as - as they themselves said - ‘either Uncle Fanclub or Teenage Tupelo’ and covered I Wanna Be Your Dog. Teenage Fanclub also covered Alex Chilton’s Free Again that night, first time I ever heard that song. Loved it of course and another fond memory of buying the single at Secret Sounds

And as far as this list of records and bands to hear, so far a.c. acoustics sound amazing. The talk in the book about what an excellent drummer Dave Gormley is is spot on