Just blowing my head off - Jim Jones Revue

[Albert Tatlock]

Most exciting thing I've seen in a long time ... Maybe since Strummer and Jones were at it ...

 

 

Just click on anything by then in Youtube after that.

[Albert Tatlock]

... like this one ...

 

[Albert Tatlock]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/glastonbury/8578144/Jim-Jones-Revue-Britains-last-rocknrollers.html

 

 

Jim Jones Revue: Britain’s last rock’n’rollers?

By Andrew Perry

 

Daily Telegraph 7:00AM BST 16 Jun 2011

 

Out-and-out rock’n’roll bands are, at present, in desperately short supply. The British music press are scouring the nation for a young combo worth hyping, with little success. Oasis have split up, and Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye have yet to impress. Ten years ago, in similar times of need, we looked across the Atlantic to the Strokes and the White Stripes, but this year, the former delivered a lukewarm synth-pop record, and the latter announced that they’d disbanded. Who is there?

 

A plausible answer is: the Jim Jones Revue — a group of inveterate rockers, whose moment in the limelight seems to be imminent. This time last year, the five-piece ensemble were still playing in grotty pubs and clubs around the country, but they have quickly graduated to — and sold out, in advance — places like Camden’s 1,500-capacity Koko, pretty much by word of mouth.

 

They are by far the most exciting straight-ahead rock’n’roll band Britain has produced in a decade or more. Their sound is a highly adrenalised reactivation of the shrieking, piano-pounding early rock of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. One could argue all day about what makes them relevant today, and not retro — for one thing, they certainly wouldn’t have got away with their punky, lo-fi aesthetic in the 1950s — but ultimately it’s their sheer energy, exuberance and, frankly, excellence, which has won them their following.

 

When I meet them during a breather of just a few hours on their tour, they’re as breezy and enthusiastic as a bunch of teenagers fresh to the road.

 

“Being in a band — I would do anything to do it,” says Jim Jones, the band’s hollerer and guiding light. “I always knew it was what I needed to do. It’s not because of money, or where we’re positioning ourselves in the market, or any of that rubbish. You just feel it in your bones.”

 

Jones, in fact, has considerable “previous”: he first surfaced in the late 1980s fronting High Wycombe’s Thee Hypnotics, whose heroes were, audibly, the Rolling Stones and Iggy & the Stooges. It was while struggling thereafter in the more 1960s soul-inspired Black Moses, that he crossed paths with the Revue’s future guitarist, Rupert Orton (younger brother of Brit-winning folkie Beth), who was promoting vintage blues soirées around London, under the irreverent banner Not The Same Old Blues Crap. As Black Moses crumbled, Jones and Orton set out to take rock back to its 1950s source.

 

“We wanted people in the band who knew what they were doing,” says Orton. “People who’d got an understanding of their instrument, and the kind of music we wanted to play. Not to belittle younger bands, but we wanted men, you know?”

 

In 2008, these journeymen with greased-back quiffs were swimming against the tide of alternative rock, where hip young things with asymmetric fringes were largely tinkling out New Wave synth-pop. The contrast couldn’t have been more stark when, that year, they recorded their self-titled debut album in a dingy rehearsal room, live, in two days flat. “If you turned it up too loud, it just became white noise,” Orton proudly recalls. “It was a statement of intent: this is what the band is like, take it or leave it.”

 

It sold next to nothing, but the band really existed for blasting out their scabrous boogie-woogie on stage, for however many like-minded souls would pay to listen.

 

“We all remembered the first gigs we went to as kids,” says Orton, “where you got your head blown off by the excitement of seeing a visceral rock’n’roll band — for us, it was Johnny Thunders, the Birthday Party, the Ramones, the Clash. But we couldn’t see that kind of thing around anymore, so it was like being on a mission — if nobody else is going to do it, we need to do it.”

 

The Jim Jones Revue’s cause was furthered by Jim Sclavunos, the drummer from Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds and Grinderman. Also a highly able producer for hire, he helped them bring order to their chaos on their second record, Burning Your House Down, without taking away any of their excitement. With its nods towards punk and post-hardcore as well as lashings of primal rockabilly and R’n’B, it could only have been made in post-millennial Britain.

 

Jones, a full-tilt blues shouter of the old school, says his lyrics are “anything but pink Cadillacs and bobby socks. They’re dirty red buses and difficult women in Lower Clapton”.

 

He pooh-poohs the notion that his age ought to preclude him from his whooping and cavorting on stage, noting that Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, the veteran Chicago bluesmen, “didn’t have much of a career until they were pushing 40”.

 

He also laments the fact that there are precious few artists from the original rock’n’roll era still treading the boards.

 

“Bo Diddley died last year,” he says, “and every time you see another one drop off the list, you look around and go, 'Who’s left?’ The other day, I suddenly thought, 'Oh s---, it’s us!’ I don’t presume to be as good as those people,” he says, “but who else is carrying the message?”

[Albert Tatlock]

So, next headlining London show is on the Thursday before the Friday and Saturday Wilco double header. JT and co may need to up their game to avoid an anti-climax