Deep One Perfect Morning

This coming Saturday we were supposed to be going to see The Jesus And Mary Chain perform Darklands at Manchester’s Albert Hall. Darklands is/was their 1987 album, a record that saw them replace the departed Bobby Gillespie with a drum machine and abandon the feedback drenched treble- fest of Psychocandy with an album that split opinions. Some Mary Chain fans saw it as an exciting next step, an album where you could hear the songs, and audibly make out the guitars not just the overloaded amps, an album with a stripped back, dark sheen but undoubtedly a poppier sound. Some saw it as a sell out. I’ve got a lot of time for Darklands- the hit single, too pissed on Top Of The Pops to stand up straight buzz of April Skies, the William sung title track and gloom of Nine Million Rainy Days and On The Wall, the sweet sting of Cherry Came Too, the buzzsaw pop of Happy When It Rains and this one…

Deep One Perfect Morning

The gig and tour has been postponed, a response to Coronavirus and the restrictions placed on gatherings of crowds in many European cities. It seems most un- Mary Chain like to be laid low by a virus. The Reid brothers of 1987 would have slagged it off in the music press, sneered at it, compared it to Bono or John Lydon and then got pissed and fallen over. While playing the full twenty five minutes of the gig.

The whole Coronavirus situation is becoming increasingly scary. I was in a meeting after work last night where we planned for the possibility of having to close the school and how we’d deal with and prepare for years and classes preparing for exams. The exam season starts on Monday 11th May, what scientists are saying could be the peak of the epidemic. If we have to close there will be classes who won’t have enough time to complete GCSE or A level courses. The tone of the government’s briefing last night was very different from the one on Friday and I’m guessing that school closures are moving into when not if territory although the government’s advice is contradictory- avoid pubs and restaurants but feed hundreds of children in school canteens, avoid social gatherings but put thousands of children into the same building every day. In the meantime we have both children and staff in self isolation and expect numbers to increase as the week goes on. On top of this our eldest child Isaac is in the vulnerable group and so now moves into a situation where he is to be in self isolation for twelve weeks. We are in very strange times and they’re getting stranger.

 

Show Me How You Do That Trick

There’s a dreamlike quality to The Cure’s Just Like Heaven, a 1987 single recorded in the south of France. The instruments come in one by one, the quicktime drums and melodic bass then rhythm guitar, followed by keys and lead guitar, and finally Robert Smith’s lyrics and thin vocals, inspired by a trip to Beachy Head with Mary. Smith says it is about ‘kissing and fainting to the floor’ and that sense of giddy weightlessness crosses over into the music.

Just Like Heaven

Dinosaur Jr’s 1989 cover is faster, louder and messier. It still carries the sense of weightlessness but is rooted in small venues, spilt beer and feedback.

Just Like Heaven