The Jesus & Mary Chain played Bexhill more than three
decades after they launched their career by provoking a riot in a London squat. Last night t
he De La Warr Pavilion was taking no chances. The sedate Sussex town’s premier entertainment
venue was awash with bulky bloke security operatives. Gauleiters confiscated plastic
bottles from unsuspecting punters, unless, like me, they were armed with a fictitious
“medical condition”. Otherwise they were
instructed to present a lottery ticket after the show in order to win back
their offending pre-bought soft drinks or home-bottled tap water. You have to
pay for water inside, one of the many walkie-talkied heavies informed me, as if
the explanation made this particular practice of coercive capitalism any more acceptable, or legal given that bars and clubs are obliged to give
customers tap water for free.
Before the sonic escapades of the JMC, a
privileged-sounding, floppy haired young rock god by the name of Willow
Robinson bored everyone shitless with his stupefyingly soulless appropriation
of Free and country rock clichés. For once I understood why most gig-goers stay
in the bar for the support act. Willow
was accompanied by a Silent Bob-lookalike on bass, replete with sun-glasses and idiot hat, while an extra from the gym thumped the drums. I like the JMC, but if they signed-off on
this public school, poodle-haired, ponce and his cod-rock posturing, not to
mention a goon squad more suited to a UKIP rally, then they, and the
DLWP,
deserve a slap.
Jim and William Reid did their thing, backed by three other
musicians and occasionally a female singer. Jim was typically, I guess, hard to
see amidst a lighting arrangement suited to mystique and mind-bending.
Their
performance was at times as rocky as they actually became in the 1990s, but at others it
almost reached the psych-goth transcendence of their early work. By definition
this included excellent takes on ‘Some Candy Talking’ and ‘Just Like Honey’. In their second set –
JMC don’t do encores – they totally kicked out the jams and took both new and
old material to another level. They closed with what Jim said was a new song. Initially
fairly normal by JMC standards, half-way through though they suddenly dropped down a few gears and the
song morphed into a warped, feedback-heavy, slow-mo wig-out that decreased my
heart rate by half. Amidst often intense red light and, I think, unintended,
shadow projections (see pictures), the JMC had taken this punter on a trip,
aided only by a plastic cup of Guinness.
