Coachella just made my life.

First, it was announced that Rage Against the Machine would be reuniting for coachella but now even greater news is that my favorite band of ALL TIME, the Jesus and Mary Chain, would also be reuniting to play this year’s Coachella!!!!

I can’t stress enough how amazing this is. For those of you guys who aren’t in the know, the JAMC were the coolest band to come out of the 80’s. Their first record, Psychocandy (which I’ll get to later), was drenched in feedback and contained tons of great songs about being on Heroine, buying Heroine, and how much they love themselves. They also gained a lot of infamy for their riot inducing shows, although they never started the riots since they were too busy not caring enough to play more than 15 minutes. Did I mention they used to have Bobby Gillepsie from Primal Scream on drums?!?!

Now, as I mentioned earlier, most people hail Psychocandy as the greatest thing the band ever did, but I completely disagree. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great album, but the Jesus and Mary Chain definitely made albums that, although may not have been as “groundbreaking”, were packed with just as many great songs. Darklands found the band shedding their signature feedback drenched songs and features some of my favorite JAMC tracks (okay, I can pretty much say that about any of their albums, but whatever man). You really can’t go wrong with any of their albums, even their least popular ones. Take their 1989 album, Automatic, for instance. Everytime I read anything on the Mary Chain, it always mentions what a bad album Automatic was, but songs like “Blues From A Gun” and “Headup” (which was later covered by the Pixies), are great.

It kind of makes sense that the Jesus and Mary Chain are reuniting too, as Rhino Records recently remastered and rereleased the Mary Chain’s first 5 albums. You should definitely check them out. They all sound way clearer and come as dualdiscs with a bunch of their videos. That means if you pick up Honey’s Dead (a reference to their most famous song, “Just Like Honey” from Psychocandy), you’ll be able to see their video for the song “Reverance”, which was banned from TV due to the controversial lyrics “I wanna die just like Jesus Christ/I wanna die on a bed of spikes…I wanna die just like J.F.K./I wanna die in the U.S.A.”. It’s great.

Really, I know the Jesus and Mary Chain don’t receive a ton of press anymore, especially here in the states where they’re practically unheard of, but I cannot stress enough what a big deal this is. The band broke up after releasing their last album, Munki, on Sub Pop<a in 98′ and have not played together since, despite main songwriters Jim and William Reid being brothers.

So now that you know, go out and buy their records and I’ll see you at Coachella.

Tags: News //