Comments on: UB40 and CHRISSIE HYNDE – “I Got You Babe”

By: thefatgit

thefatgit — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:14:46 +0000

I recall a huge amount of hype surrounding JAMC in the music press. I suspect the source of this was Alan McGee himself. I also recall his quote: “I like leather trousers, I think they’re cute”. Psychocandy also featured in Pete Nash’s long running “Striker” comic strip in the Sun(recently ended BTW). It appeared in young Nick Jarvis’ record collection. Odd considering Jarvis was styled after a mid 80′s soccer casual.

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:05:24 +0000

If the existence of dreary Student Union mediocrity like the Jesus and Mary Chain and their ilk isn’t a very good reason for why Rave had to happen I don’t know what is…

By: abaffledrepublic

abaffledrepublic — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:03:02 +0000

Chrissie: ‘Neither of us have had a hit for a while. The record-buying public suddenly can’t get enough of the 60s after watching Live Aid. If we team up and record a 60s cover we’ll be quids in.’

Ali: ‘Last time we did an anaemic cover version the record-buying public fell for it. No reason why they shouldn’t again.’

If people are going to be as nakedly careerist as this, why can’t they at least produce something worth listening to instead of this turgid waste of vinyl? 2 is about right. Dull, dull, dull.

By: punctum

punctum — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:53:09 +0000

Test Dept worked once on record: 1986′s The Unacceptable Face Of Freedom is one of the records of its decade, in every sense. Visually I concur they were absolutely spectacular and truthful.

Swans were 1968 Michael Mantler relocated in mopey hell kitchen and all the better for it.

Incidentally I ran into Eddie Prevost once on an entirely separate occasion from the one mentioned above and he was moaning about TD having ripped AMM off…

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:47:09 +0000

Test Dept’s big theatrical spectacles were often excellent, except on record; Einsturzende made sense once you realised their real shtick was delicacy not (as billed) collapse; Swans — hmmm, yes, I will have to work on this. I believe at the time — ie in about a year’s time, popular-timetable-wise — I could be found arguing that Swans worked best if you played their records at the same time as someone (anyone?) else’s. In an interview with Herbie Hancock: I bet he was pleased when he read it back…

By: Mark M

Mark M — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:28:10 +0000

Re 48 (by way of further avoiding thinking about UB40), I found that most of the much vaunted noise of the time sounded “meagre”, not just on the Peel show via a £25 radio/cassete player, but also on vinyl or tape. Swans, for example, to me sounded more like a sullen plod (not so different from UB40, then) than the march of the apocalypse* promised in the press. Live, obviously, was a different matter, but sheer volume is cheap trick.

*Thouhgh like the Lineman, at point 50, I realised I wasn’t looking for a sonic end of the world, anyway.

By: punctum

punctum — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:42:46 +0000

Like ’81 and ’82, a great year ill-served by its number ones – 1967′s number twos were much better.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:33:01 +0000

#61 – for number ones at least there’s not a lot to choose from – and generally ’67 was a weird year in Britain: everyone trying to make albums, not many actually good at it yet, our mostly twee take on psychedelia, hitmakers taking their eye off the ball singles-wise and bubblegum, reggae, etc not in place yet to take up the slack…

By: admin

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:13:56 +0000

“I hope Tom thinks about producing some stats”

what are the chances? ;-)

By: ace inhibitor

ace inhibitor — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:04:14 +0000

re #59, as things stand then, 1985 was officially, statistically, a better year for pop than 1967. luckily there’s a good chance that the next few weeks will change that.

By: Mark M

Mark M — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:34:59 +0000

Re 57*: Hair.

By: swanstep

swanstep — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:25:53 +0000

A graph of yearly averages and medians so far is here if anyone’s interested.

By: swanstep

swanstep — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:01:52 +0000

re 53: Vaguely relatedly, 1984 was the top average (#4 median) Tom-score year so far (without reweighting for time hits spent at the top). Regression to the mean has been a bear after other peak Tom-score years: 1958, 1966, 1979 (and near-peak 1971), and so far 1985 is following that trend, even without the horrid year end dip that appears to be coming! I hope Tom thinks about producing some stats posts at the end of this year (i.e., to cover up to end of 1985 as a true ‘first half’ of Popular break-down) with proper weighting of hits, and various sorts of moving averages.

By: anto

anto — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:22:43 +0000

From Upside Town to Sidewalking the Mary Chain were frequently astounding. I would hold up Psychocandy* as one of the best debut LPs by anyone, not to mention one of the most appropriately named.
By the way JAMC did breifly straddle the gap between NME cred and pop fame. They appeared on the cover of Smash Hits and popped up on TOTP to perform the glorious “April Skies” in 1987. They were also chucked off ITVs pathetic competitor The Roxy for either taking it too seriously or not seriously enough???? The show was axed soon afterwards.

* Does anybody else find it odd in ” High Fidelity ” when Jack Black recommends JAMC as complimentary to Echo and the Bunnymen when in reality the two groups sounded nothing like each other?

By: Mark M

Mark M — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:48:44 +0000

Re assorted points above: Never Understand was a proper dizzying pop moment for me – I knew nothing about the Mary Chain before I heard it on the radio and went “what the hell was that?” I was 14, which I guess was about the right age for that reaction, and although I was deeply versed in classic rock, they sounded pretty new to me. They indirectly became my gateway to all sorts of cultural things that the Reid brothers may not (or may) have known about. And as it happens, I still like the production on Psychocandy. I do think, though, that pretty quickly I wanted them to be something other than what they were (ie no leather trews).

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:57:54 +0000

Worse crimes against reggae? Yes, but they’re all by UB40 as well.

By: Ludovic

Ludovic — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:58:06 +0000

Och, I don’t think it’s that bad. Not the worst crime against reggae, by any means. One of its problems, in this humble listener’s opinion, is that it suffers by comparison with the Sonny and Cher original. Ali Campbell’s voice is better than Sonny’s and Chrissie’s is, frankly, not a patch on Cher’s so it all sounds a bit wrong.

The follow up though, as one other lovely contributor has pointed out, was lovely. If memory serves me correctly(And it frequently does not) it came ‘free’ with the ‘Baggariddim’ album but was still a sizeable hit when released on its own.

By: Steve Mannion

Steve Mannion — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:38:10 +0000

I just had a peek at the rest of the year and wow we have surely entered the worst run of #1s in Popular history to date (later years may yet top it)…

By: Conrad

Conrad — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:11:09 +0000

JAMC were infamous for chaotic 20 minute gigs as I recall.

I loved the first two JAMC singles (Never Understand in particular) which I discovered while working as a volunteer on a kibbutz incidentally.

But by the time of their album I felt they’d said all they had to say on those two singles and the LP was a bit of a let down.

edit – just read the above few posts, so this is rather repeating the point…

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:34:42 +0000

well they always basically wanted to be mid-doors depeche mode AND THEY HAD THEIR WISH GRANTED

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:24:59 +0000

Re 48: Yes, at the Electric Ballroom in ’85 and it wasn’t very good. One ten minute racket with “fuck” and “Jesus” shouted over the top. No riot (people had clearly gone expecting one which must have made for a very different experience to Punctum’s), just a disappointing sense of a non-event. Alan McGee spotted a gap in the market for a McLaren-ish figure that the press could love/hate, ditto for his charges.

They didn’t seem like anti-music to me. Personally, I like a good tune. So while I tried quite hard to listen to and appreciate Test Dept, Swans, and other highly praised noiseniks, the JAMC were always going to appeal to me more. That said, their bad hair, semi-goth gear and lack of charisma stopped me from really loving them.

Also they broke one of pop’s golden rules by carrying on way too long. Taking out the feedback so you could hear they really could write a tune (on Darklands) seemed such an obvious, boringly rockist move.

By: punctum

punctum — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:21:54 +0000

I first saw JAMC at Night Moves in Glasgow in spring ’84. They were supporting a bunch of no-marks called Rhythm System and got canned off after about ten minutes. Great stuff, and there was a long ‘phone-in debate about it on the Billy Sloan Show on Radio Clyde that night, the callers’ gist being JAMC being talentless poseurs who couldn’t play their instruments unlike Real Musicians e.g. Rhythm System oh the irony. I rang up and quoted AMM at them and B Sloan went ???????

A couple of years later I bump into Eddie Prevost at Bethnal Green Library and he’s fuming about grrr Mary Chain ripped us off something rotten heheh.

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:56:48 +0000

Wichita did you see JAMC? Then, I mean — I saw them years later, but not at the time, and frankly felt, on record, they were meagre given the end-of-all-art claims being routinely made for them.* Also I hugely distrusted the nexus of complicity that Creation seemed to have set up with the press (I was a bit outside it, and doubtless merely jealous — plus i’m not sure my own subsequent relationship with Blast First was any healthier in retrospect…)

*Probably I knew too much about noise and anti-art and anti-music and etc, and was jaded. This is the year that Attali’s stupid book was published in English — not that we really grasped how stupid it was at the time! We liked it!

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:28:05 +0000

Re 45: I’d still stand by the first 4 singles, and You Trip Me Up’s disorientating industrial noise with a strong (60s, if you like) melody underneath effectively opened the door for MBV and shoegazing. The J&MC also gave Creation a profile it hadn’t had with its first 10 or so releases (Primal Scream’s It Happens came out in summer ’85). They were unquestionably EXCITING at a time when pop’s counterculture was at a low ebb: reduced circumstances, I know, but Upside Down was a New Rose for generation of guitar bands. The latter part of ’85 brought a promising debut single (Wedding Present, Meat Whiplash, 1000 Violins, Primal Scream, Razorcuts) on a weekly basis.

Production-wise, I agree. Joe Foster vs the Phil Collins gated snare. Trebles all round!

By: The leveller

The leveller — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:50:46 +0000

Running up that hill was just awesome, relentless, otherworldly, enigmatic and timeless. Too good for number one.