Jesus and Mary Chain 2012 Tour
 

So I just picked up tickets to see the JAMC on September 6th in Atlanta. I missed out on JAMC in their hey-day, but am wondering if anyone around these parts has seen them in 2012 (or in recent years). I'm pumped either way, but what should I expect?

Psychocandy sucks though.

Lucky... I might splurge and go to Hopscotch music festival in North Carolina this fall, where they're sort of headlining. I'm worried that they've gone the way of Gang of Four or The Fall and are just too old to have their edge, especially since the really great Mary Chain songs like the ones on Psychocandy featured a very different lineup. I have no idea what to expect.

^
who are you & what have you done with the real Starcat? :mad:

Don't expect anything then you won't be disappointed.

I've seen them multiple times 'back in the day' when they were famous for never leaving their stools.

I'd love to see them again. Not sure if they are coming back to Texas soon though..

The Fall may not be very good these days but they still have their edge, in many ways the most edgy part of The Fall (in this century anyway) is they will deliver a steaming pile of rubbish now and then, like a teenager harrassing you by dumping medical waste on your doorstep in the middle of the night, but at least you know they will help you clean it up the next morning.

Anyway, almost all of these reunions have looked utter dogshit with the notable exceptions of Mission of Burma and Swans. Apart from that, the shit stuff from the eighties has remained essentially shit, whereas the good stuff has defiled itself in front of you by getting back together and essentially achieving nothing.

Why is this something that I wouldn't say? I love gang of four and the fall and jesus and mary chain especially, which is why I'm afraid that they wouldn't be able to recreate alignment of stars that made them perform great songs decades ago

That's a cool metaphor even if it doesn't make much sense... The fall is still edgy though I suppose, in that you get to see Mark Smith stumble around and spit a lot. That still doesn't mean I'll pay $80 to see him perform. I feel like it would just make me sad

Its not a metaphor, its a literal statement of my actual opinion.
Unless youre talking about the medical waste thing, which is a similie. But anyway,

I wouldnt pay that much to see MES at this stage either, i saw them in 2006 and then again at a festival in 2010 and had a great time at both. He has been stumbling around since about 2002 when he got a consistent live band together. I dunno if youve heard any of the albums from the last 10 years, but a couple of them are really good, and even the others have some decent moments even if they are stinky as a whole

I guess I owe them a listen... I've been going off of live performances that I've seen online and the reports of disappointed friends. I still count them as a favorite, though.

Dinosaur Jr's reunion tour that featured You're Living All Over Me was mint. I have to believe that album sounded better now-a-days than it did in the 80's. Their subsequent albums have been pretty damn solid too.

Dinosaur Jr's reunion tour that featured You're Living All Over Me was mint. I have to believe that album sounded better now-a-days than it did in the 80's. Their subsequent albums have been pretty damn solid too.

Dinosaur Jr's reunion tour that featured You're Living All Over Me was mint. I have to believe that album sounded better now-a-days than it did in the 80's. Their subsequent albums have been pretty damn solid too.

Dinosaur Jr's reunion tour that featured You're Living All Over Me was mint. I have to believe that album sounded better now-a-days than it did in the 80's. Their subsequent albums have been pretty damn solid too.

Dinosaur Jr's reunion tour that featured You're Living All Over Me was mint. I have to believe that album sounded better now-a-days than it did in the 80's. Their subsequent albums have been pretty damn solid too.

Reading the same point four times in a row is a better analogy for listening to Dinosaur Jr than anything i could come up with, i must say.

Don't expect to have your life altered, as it may have been if you'd seen them in 1986, but if you go in with an open mind and realistic expectations, you'll be satisfied. They can still put on a show, and they're definitely worth seeing. They're one of my favorite bands and I wish I'd been more than four years old when Psychocandy was released.

Psychocandy shit? Give me a fucking break.

I can't think of many bands that would be pleased to play in front 90% of
the morons who post on internet music forums.

I didn't see them in 1986, but I saw them in 1987 and it was dull as ditchwater. Saw them play a greatest hits set in 2007, and it was 100x better.

They got better at writing songs pretty much after the first album. I don't think they ever went completely shit.

I saw them in 1986 and to be honest already by then their reputation was such that I don't think I could fairly judge their performance because of it. But I'm glad I got to see them while they were young and arsey.

And it was a rare gig where they played a full set. And they were upstaged somewhat by the support band.

I saw them again in 1998 when they weren't "in a good place" artistically and they were pretty dull.

A Mary Chain greatest hits set is Psychocandy, verbatim.

Their songs may have been better written on later albums, but it was at the loss of their noisy, dissonant sound that made them something more than a run-of-the-mill alt-rock band.

That wouldn't be a greatest hits. A best of perhaps.

And the term "alt-rock" wouldn't have existed then and if it did JAMC were more comparable to other British indie bands of the time (Primal Scream, The Jazz Butcher, Biff Bang Pow! etc).

I don't know if I'd agree that they wrote better songs after that but it's arguable and certainly a handful are on a par. I just think they're one of those bands that had one big statement in them which (album-wise) they made perfectly on Psychocandy, with everything after that feeling (to me at least) a bit too much like them trying to forge a career. Saying all that, I do have a soft spot for Darklands.

Don't believe the hype, kiddo. The only thing that stopped JAMC from being a run of the mill indie band from the very off was the fact that they had a reputation for somewhat fiery live shows, and that's the reason that the music press picked up on them, nothing to do with the music. And Psychocandy contains just as much tosh as any other indie album of the time (and just as much as any of their subsequent albums), but it has been hidden beneath the noise (which wasn't something as unique to them at the time as mythology would like you to believe, you couldn't move for noise and distortion in UK indie music at the time).

Balderdash.

I say "alt-rock" as an insult to late- Mary Chain albums. I'm saying that if you listened to them now, they'd sound like something cranked out by any of the 50 billion generic rockbands polluting the world.



I'm not speaking from the hype, I'm speaking from having listened to all of their albums thoroughly. The noise might have been the only thing going for them on Psychocandy, but if noise was the only thing needed to save their other albums from being boring as hell then it's their own fault for abandoning it.

I've seen them in recent years too, but I guess I just assumed it would be the other way around, and that I was seeing them long after their live peak. But I was in first grade in 1986, so I'll take your word for it.

I was thinking about seeing them until I saw tickets cost $70. No thanks. I saw them and a bunch of other bands at lollapawatever in the 90s for $30 total. I doubt they're twice as good today as they were back then.

I don't know what to say. Perhaps in 15 years time people will laugh at anyone picking up an instrument to stir up some excitement altogether.

I think what elevated Psychocandy above its peers wasn't the noise (as Pookie and Blunderbuss have pointed out) but the songwriting. I don't think that album would've endured much beyond the hype were it not for the fact that beneath the feedback there's some absolutely classic pop songs. I heard lots of distortion pedals in the mid 80s but not many songs as brilliant as You Trip Me Up, The Hardest Walk or Just Like Honey.

I agree... But I can't quantify whether or not Psychocandy was any better than some grimy British noise band that played a couple of grimy gigs in the grimy bars of Leeds or Manchester and put out a few grimy EPs and then all died grimy deaths. Because I wasn't there and haven't heard it all yet. But I'm prepared to contest Pookie and Blunderbuss if what they're saying is that Psychocandy was just noise but that their later albums were somehow better

i'm going

I'm certainly not saying that. The opposite in fact. I'm saying that there was a lot of noise around but JAMC were more than just noise. The first three singles (Upside Down, Never Understand & You Trip Me Up) were up there with the best tunes of the time (along with this and this).

Psychocandy had more great songs but was never a great album. And after that they continued to produce albums with great songs and a lot of filler. To me Automatic was probably their best album overall.

Let's all take a minute to reflect and watch this brilliant video on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yLOk...ature=youtu.be

We'll be back at 6:15 pm for canapes and drinks, followed by an insightful lecture on Patti Smith's hair by Sway.

See you later.

I wanted to laugh. But I didn't.

Thoroughly pissed off about that.

Why Automatic over Psychocandy, though? What did it do better?

The best songs on Psychocandy are better than any on Automatic but Automatic is a better album overall.