{"id":978,"date":"2012-09-27T21:08:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=978"},"modified":"2026-06-27T21:10:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T21:10:26","slug":"jesus-and-mary-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=978","title":{"rendered":"Jesus and Mary Chain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>September 2012, Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, Ga.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s fucking amateur night,\u201d snarled (a maybe tipsy?) Jim Reid to the capacity crowd in Atlanta. His band, The Jesus and Mary Chain, was struggling to work out the opening to \u201cSidewalking,\u201d but no one seemed to care about Reid\u2019s wariness. After all, JAMC was back on stage, playing its fuzzy feedback with wild abandon, and giving the people a setlist of songs it longed to hear (if the riotous reaction was any indication).<\/p>\n<p>I won\u2019t lie, I\u2019ve was waiting to see this band for years, so JAMC could have walked on stage and mimed show tunes and I would have left satisfied. What it did instead was showcase a sound it created and perfected through years of stellar albums, and while it showed its age at times on this night, there were far more moments of pure musical joy than fumbles for chord arrangements.<\/p>\n<p>You never know what a band will play after returning to the stage from a long hiatus. When The Pixies made its first comeback tour in 2004, I went in not sure what to expect but left with a show I remember in full to this day. The same could be said for this one, as one song after another was sprite and electric \u2014 \u201cHead On,\u201d \u201cFar Gone and Out,\u201d \u201cBlues From a Gun\u201d. When the band did figure out \u201cSidewalking,\u201d a song I never thought it would play, I was good for the night. Add \u201cSome Candy Talking,\u201d \u201cHappy When It Rains,\u201d \u201cJust Like Honey\u201d (of course), and the set ending \u201cReverence\u201d and it was more than I could take (actually, I would have loved to hear \u201cApril Skies,\u201d but I shouldn\u2019t be so greedy).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReverence\u201d was something special. Letting the band build behind him to a roaring growl, Reid snapped out the opening line \u201cI want to die just like Jesus Christ\u201d with added fervor. Standing stock with his hands out wide, his constant screams of \u201cI want to die\u201d at the song\u2019s end was unforgettable.<\/p>\n<p>The band returned for a three-song encore \u2014 highlighted by the guitar squealing \u201cNever Understand\u201d from the band\u2019s brilliant debut <em>Psychocandy<\/em> \u2014 then disappeared as the curtain came to a close. My 25 years of waiting were satisfied in a little under an hour and half \u2014 I don\u2019t want to die like Reid\u2019s refrain, but I\u2019m safe saying now I can once I\u2019ve seen the power that is Jesus and Mary Chain live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>September 2012, Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, Ga. \u201cIt\u2019s fucking amateur night,\u201d snarled (a maybe tipsy?) Jim Reid to the capacity crowd in Atlanta. His band, The Jesus and Mary Chain, was struggling to work out the opening to \u201cSidewalking,\u201d but no one seemed to care about Reid\u2019s wariness. After all, JAMC was back on stage, playing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[173],"class_list":["post-978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-jesus-and-mary-chain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":980,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions\/980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}