This summer has sucked for me. My family has been summering overseas and I have been filling my useless empty hours with heavy doses of work, strong beer, and recreational violence. This fucking season has been hot ,painful and lonely. Wah wah.
I really only had two things to look forward to this summer. One was seeing Murder City play on FSS home turf, the other was seeing The Jim Jones Revue. Murder City tore it up, as you would expect. I’ll get to Jim Jones in a minute.
Expectation can be a motherfucker. How many times have you been waiting for an album to come out or a band to come to your area? You convince yourself that this record or show is going to be the business and then they just suck. Lotsa times. These things happen. So I got to thinking that this Jim Jones show may very well be a bust. Yeah there has been a lot of chatter going around about them putting on serious live shows, but fuck all that. Just because Spin gives something their stamp of approval doesn’t necessarily mean I will.
So we get to Maxwell’s and because I have money I am drinking as fast as I can. Then I am buying vinyl from the merch table, because I have been drinking as fast as I can. And the whole time I’m thinking, “Fuck, I really hope they don’t suck”. I just dropped thirty bucks on their records, I’m eight pints of beer in and I gotta get up in a couple hours for more training. This may prove to have been an expensive waste of time. Then they took the stage and straight blew it up.
See, I have made the point about people being true believers before, it is the difference between just doing something and doing something so hard your eyes bleed. Jim Jones and the rest of his band believe in Rock and Roll. And Jim himself, kitted out like the Preacher from “Night Of The Hunter”, demands you do so as well. You could make the argument that re-tooling 1950’s style rock in 2010 is a cornball move and that the piano is for douchefaces. And I would agree with you. But this isn’t about retro bullshit, Jim Jones basically plays stripped down maximum fuckin’ R and B and they do it loud and fast. Nothing kitschy about it and no-holds-barred.
So yeah, Jim Jones and company did not disappoint in the slightest, they helped make my summer less miserable. If you can, see them live. You won’t regret it.
For more Jim Jones Revue check out their Daytrotter Session and their WFMU Session from the weekend they played Jersey.
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Hell yeah! Great review my man Padraig!