I did realise its 'importance' when I came upon some 1985 music papers, which were otherwise very listless and chock full of the likes of Paul Young and The Alarm. But even there you've got this lingering suspicion that it's all a bit of punk nostalgia - ooh! we've found a new Pistols! In the absence of anything but my memories to go on I've got to say DUD.

No rambling stuff this time but Psychocandy was *THE* album for me when i was growing up. Total classics every song (well, actually, maybe not all of them...).

100% gold classic, honest.

a fucking MASTERPIECE 'tis. "some candy talking" suffers from production but otherwise glorious melodies, heart-stealin' harmonies, delightfully nihilistic lyrics (yeah, you can't take 'em seriously -- that's a bad thing?), a sense of ROCK that neither the velvets nor any shoegazin' pansies could even pretend to, and OH the noise. smears, sunrises, rainshowers, it's all there. seemingly simple but smarter'n' you might think.

I think someone once said you could sum up JAMC with a few words - 'gun, candy, jesus, honey, fuck, sky.' Have I missed any?

One of the best albums of all time. That simple. A work of exhilarating, nihilistic sheer fucked-up fun. Music to riot to. With tunes.

ps Anyone agree that the old Sunkist advert bore a certain resemblance to 'Never Understand?' 'Drink it in the su-u-u-n etc' or was I just doing too much acid at the time?

I think that's a very interesting angle, and very well said. I fear that the enthusiasts for 'Psychocandy' on this thread are being nostalgic. Why fear it? Perhaps because it means they're happier than me, for I count nostalgia a fine thing, a close thing to love; and if they can muster nostalgia for this particular record from 1985, they have something going for them that maybe I don't. Nonetheless, my point is still that I think the rosy view of the JAMC owes a good deal to emotional extra toppings, not to the record itself. Quite possibly 'PC' is their best LP - though I always felt that Darklands had the best *titles* - but I don't know that that's saying much. For many years I waited in vain through track after track by the JAMC to hear... a minor chord. Minor chords aren't, I believe, terribly complex things: I recently saw Em described amusingly as 'the people's chord'. But the JAMC eschewed these very basic building blocks of pop, either because

a) they hadn't thought of using them - an astonishing proposition; or b) more along the Aristotelian lines above, they were pursuing a particular aesthetic (if that's not too elaborate a word for this) project which banned minor chords.

But I don't think the motivation matters. I think what matters is that the absence of minors impoverished their pop songs: and this is just one little, quasi-representative instance of the generalized impoverishment of their writing. 'Writing'? What did it amount to? E- A-B-A, here she comes, walking down the street, etc - stuff which is fun once, twice, even the eyebrow-raising fifth time, but once it becomes plain that that's your entire take on creativity, it seems almost desperate.

In many ways I could happily listen to 'PC' again now. It has its pleasures, it may have had its historical significance (but I don't really think it should be compared to the staggering invention and emotional landscapes of 'isn't anything') - but it is indeed a one- trick pony. It could be fun, even exhilarating in the right circumstances, but I think we now have enough hindsight on the JAMC to know that they weren't really brilliantly playing dumb... they were just dumb.

So, were JAMC '85 stupid or stoopid? And, if the former (genuinely dumb), isn't this a whole lot better than pretending? With subsequent LPs, did they reveal themselves as stoopid or confirm their real, 24-carat stupidity? Can anyone cite examples of post-JAMC stoopidity - bands that thought "well, we *can* play minor chords, but we want on the Reid gravy train (cheap day return) to rock'n'roll oblivion (back by tea-time, if poss)".

3 Chords, none minor. A problem for them?

A problem for us? Possibly.

I remember when I first saw JAMC doing "Never Understand" on "Whistle Test" and my jaw hitting the floor at the way the way a fairly "nice" song with youthful (if indistinct) vocals was being propelled by white noise guitars, triple-tracked unrelenting feedback, and anguished howls in the background! Even some of the "ballads" (Which are the weakest part of JAMC's stuff) have a strange cavernous quality, probably due to the overuse of reverb throught the entire album. I reckon a lot of the sound was accidental, (eg the way the use of echo magnified the guitars into a Phil Spector style Wall of Noise) but some of the other areas (especially in the feedback and noise overdubs) suggests pretty deliberate attempt to make something out of the noise.

OK, I may be making it sound like a triumph of style of over substance, which is probably the case, but the idea of using a sound style more associated with "non-music" as a musical tool is a pretty neat idea! And no matter how much JAMC actually intended to go in this direction, there are quite a few good examples on "Psychocandy" which suggest this is viable idea. :)

Michael.

www.sowingseeds.co.uk I even named a website after one of the tracks.

Taste the floor bitches, Steve

Just playing music that comes out of yer balls & brains instead of taking sabbatical years, reading postmodern essays, drinking red wine, composing epics on an ancient piano, feeling ruined by 'the system'(?) or talk about the latest Uzbekistan translation of Baudelaire's poems. That's more an OK-computer thing. Now, Psychocandy is made for the no-nonse rocklover who takes music for real. Drinkin', smokin' & fuckin'. THAT'S what life is about, isn't it.

Uuuhhhhh... how odd. I still cannot get my head around the CD of it. It's like watching home movies on cinemascope. That album needs the warmth of well-worn vinyl, the crackle and pop of your own particular abuse humming along with the gale of noise.

But obviously, erm, given my temperment and history, CLASSIC, it changed my life, etc. etc. etc.

THREAD REVIVAL!

Inevitably, this was one of the very first Classic or Duds. I was thinking of starting a "Say something interesting about the Jesus and Mary Chain" thread today, but we may as well do it here, as Ben Mann and the Pinefox already made a good start upthread.

Another supp. question: leaving aside whether it's any good or not, how in retrospect do ILMers assess the influence of Psychocandy on later music, great or small, and IYHO is that GRATE or crap?

BTW, as is the case with many famous white-boys-with-guitars LPs, I have never heard it (I know the singles obv).

I was surprised by how current they sounded when I saw "Lost In Translation" which uses them in the soundtrack. I don't think I'd listened to the album in over ten years.

What always annoys me (though I'd love to find out that I'm wrong) is that with all their singles collections, they never got around to compiling "Vegetable Man" from their first single. That's the first time I heard that song, and their version is so great (and also makes it clear that they weren't influenced by VU only).

Darklands has its moments as well, but Psychocandy still casts the tallest shadow.

(btw, True, Vegetable man never got compiled)

For what it's worth, utter classic. It's the only record of theirs you really need (and Barbed wire kisses too I suppose), everything else is just a retreat into sulky self parody.

As for me, I could never get into most of the post-Psychocandy singles, really, save for a few exceptions. It's mostly due to a personal peeve and the fact I haven't listened to the other albums so I know not of the tunes' context within the albs. I own the singles compilation and I usually find myself listening to the early PC-era songs the most, so I tend to opt for the debut instead. To my ears, the production past Darklands is rather dull, thus, failing to bring out the rawk lobster in them, that unpleasant prickly sensation, the hematomas, the danger (of hearing loss)! The whole drum machine synthetics of the latter-day material I happen to find pretty boring. That cavernous quality and tinny, quasi-shitty fidelity of the Psychocandy recordings gave the music that life-sustaining edge. Kitten teeth that gnaw naggingly. Rosebud swabs. It's some seriously kinky shit, that.

Favorite non-Psychocandy track of theirs: "Kill Surf City", a slogan I used to scrawl on walls and blackboards as a petulant yoof.

An old thread revival for the tenth birthday...

(10 years ago)
good grief that makes me feel old