164. The Jesus And Mary Chain
Shepherds Bush Empire
5 April 2017
The last time I saw The Jesus and Mary Chain, I likened it to watching Disaster Area, the fictional band from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who were so loud they had to perform from orbit while the audience listened in bunkers several miles away. It wasn’t a metaphor. It was an eyewitness report. That gig left me partially deaf for two days and convinced me that Glasgow’s finest were in direct breach of at least three Geneva Conventions. So, what on earth possessed me to do it again?
Nevertheless, Two of my friends and I met at a pub nearby, at least two of us fortifying ourselves with alcohol and toddled off to the venue. What awaited us was less a concert and more a test of human endurance. The place was packed tighter than an EasyJet overhead locker. We found ourselves perched on a staircase, wedged behind two of the largest humans I’ve ever seen outside of a Marvel movie. The air was thick, the humidity biblical. Within minutes, I was drenched, dehydrated, and questioning recent choices. The temperature rose steadily until the room felt less like a gig and more like being transported through the Azores in a shipping container. Then the sound started.
Now, I say “sound,” but what I mean is: apocalyptic sensory warfare. Forget turning it up to eleven, this was triple digits. You could see the air vibrating. Every riff hit like a depth charge. Every snare was a minor earthquake. I’m fairly certain the venue moved three inches closer to France during the first song.
By track three, my internal organs were doing a conga. My vision blurred. And somewhere between the feedback squall of “Just Like Honey” and the industrial-strength migraine of “Reverence”, my nervous system gave up entirely. Full-blown panic attack. Not metaphorically. Literally. My fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and flight won.
I bolted. Out through the crowd, into the cold night air, across the traffic gyratory, and onto the nearest patch of grass, where I sat, gasping, blinking, and trying to remember how to exist in a world that wasn’t vibrating at 120 decibels.
It took twenty minutes, deep breaths, and a bottle of water before I regained a sense of self. I have never had a panic attack before or since. Only The Jesus and Mary Chain managed to weaponise rock’n’roll so effectively that it literally broke me. Still, fair play to them. Most bands just aim to make your ears ring. These lads made my soul try to evacuate through my ears.