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theseimmortalsouls · 30 days ago

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Beautiful Losers: Jim Reid of The Jesus And Mary Chain’s Baker’s Dozen via Quietus

Eschewing what he sees as the wilful obscurity of previous Baker's Dozens, Jim Reid takes Daniel Dylan Wray through the 13 records that "chiselled out The Jesus And Mary Chain"

“I tried to be honest,” says Jim Reid, when I ask him if this collection of records has any kind of unifying theme. “I looked at a couple of other people’s lists and I think some people were just being deliberately obscure and I didn’t want to do that.”

Instead, what you have here are records that have been utterly, undeniably, and infinitely important to the life of the Jesus and Mary Chain man, who has just co-authored the acclaimed memoir, Never Understood, with his brother William Reid. “They may seem a bit obvious,” he adds. “But I guess the brief is records that shaped your life and, well, the records that shaped my life are not the ones that I discovered three weeks ago. These are the records that really did chisel out the Mary Chain. So while they may seem a bit obvious now, at the time that we discovered them they really weren’t.”

However, as our conversation carries on, Reid does begin to pick up on something. “There’s a bit of a theme, I’m just noticing,” he says, as we’re in the middle of chatting about The Pastels. “Looking at this list, it’s all bands that should have made it that never did.”

So, from proto-punk classics to unearthed 60s folk records via a CD he found in his bag with no recollection of how it got there, these are the records that have proved to be a vital road map for Jim Reid’s life.

New York Dolls - New York Dolls

I was first aware of the New York Dolls when they were on the Old Grey Whistle Test and I watched it and I thought it was great. At the time I was still really young and listening to the likes of Slade. What I remember about that performance was that it felt like somebody had snuck in and like they were about to get kicked out at any moment. I never watched the Whistle Test that much because every time I watched it, it just seemed like, ‘Oh my God, why are these guys playing this non-song for 25 minutes?’ And then occasionally you’d watch it, just to check that it was as shite as you remember, but on this occasion, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is like one of the bands I like.’

But I had forgotten all about them until punk rock. Every interview you read it was mentioning the New York Dolls, so it was like going back to troll through that. I remember when I first heard the Sex Pistols and it was like where did this music come from? I’ve never heard anything like it. And then when I heard the New York Dolls, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s where it came from.’ They are typical of everything we as the Mary Chain are into, it just seems like they’re the real deal. And then you get all these fucking idiots that come along that seem to get all the record sales. All the success seems to go to the wrong people, like Aerosmith and Kiss, when it should have gone to the fucking Dolls. They should have been playing stadiums, not these twats that wear this stupid fucking face makeup for Christ’s sake.

2. Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power

I could have just as easily picked the first record but Raw Power, again, like the Dolls, everybody was referencing it in the punk movement and doing covers. The Pistols did ‘No Fun’. And you go back and you listen to these things, and it just was punk. It’s not like it was like punk, it was punk before punk existed. This is an album that plays like a greatest hits. You don’t want to lift the needle up. Every song could have been a single, and every song seemed to be better than anybody else’s music. Again, it’s like, why aren’t they huge? Iggy was just like God. I mean the cover of that record; I remember just staring at it in a record shop window and just thinking ‘Who the fuck is that?’ I would have bought that record just for the cover but it was just a great record anyway. Iggy was like Mick Jagger without the showbusiness.

3. The Pastels - Slow Summits

This record feels like where The Pastels were moving towards for a while. They’d always had great songs but the productions could sometimes be a bit lo-fi and scratchy, which I also love, but by this record they had kind of got into a groove. And it wasn’t just great songs. It was like a great performance of great songs. It was something that they hinted at before, but it all just seemed to come together here. The Pastels are another one of those bands that really should have been huge. On planet Jimbo, if I could run the world, this would be the music that would be pumping out the radio, instead of the shite that was at the time [this record came out]. Also, it’s not expected for an album as late in their career to be this great. An awful lot of bands don’t get better with age but with The Pastels the standard stays high. I love that.

4. Suicide - Suicide

It's one of those records, if you’ve never heard it before and you played it to somebody and said, ‘When was this released?’ They’d probably think it was now. It was decades ahead of its time. I mean, that’s probably the wrong way to look at it, as it just doesn’t sound like anybody else. Most records, you can pick them apart, and be like ‘Oh, that bit reminds me of The Stooges or The Beatles, or what have you’, but with Suicide, when you hear that record, you have no idea where this came from. You don’t know where the reference points are because there seem to be none. And that’s kind of almost unheard of in music. It’s like it’s from another planet and you treasure it because it feels like this little nugget that you found.

5. Siouxsie And The Banshees - The Scream

By the end of punk, it was kind of like, what comes next? And nobody knew. There was a bit at the beginning of 1978 where you were thinking punk had run its course, so what do we do now? There were a couple of bands that led the way, and the Banshees were one of those. This record, you can hear that it came out of the punk movement, but it moves on, whereas hardly anybody else did. It was like punk, but different. Punk attitude, but not a punk sound. The guitar just sounded incredible. It was like, how is he doing that? And those two guys, Kenny Morris and John McKay, when they left the Banshees were still a great band but I think that they should have done whatever it took to keep those guys in the band. [Morris] was a great guitar player, he was just so inspired.

6. Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

The first time we saw them was on this program Something Else, a teenage youth program or something, which was generally pretty shite, but they had occasionally good bands on it. We’d never heard Joy Division and we watched that performance on that TV show, and it was like, fuck. It was like what I imagine if you’re a kid and you see The Doors for the first time or something. We were just knocked out and we went to see them shortly after that at the Glasgow Apollo. It was them and the Buzzcocks but everybody, and I’m talking about everybody, was there to see Joy Division. Fucking jaws dropped when they came on. And the poor Buzzcocks were great but they couldn’t follow it. It was so intense. If I’m being totally honest, when I first heard the record I felt as though they could have done with those live rough edges on it a bit more but I just love the record now for what it is. I’ve lived with this record for so long that I can’t imagine it any other way.

7. Subway Sect - We Oppose All Rock & Roll

This is the only compilation on here but it’s because The Subway Sect never made that record that they should have made. There was a point during the punk times where I always felt the Subway Sect were going to be the next big thing. They seemed primed to be the future, the next big thing, and then they went away to make an album and it just took too long at a time when everything seemed to be: what’s going to happen in the next five minutes? They left people waiting too long and everybody forgot about them by the time they came back music had moved on. When they came back it was quite literally a different band. But on his compilation, you get as close to what I consider to be that classic Subway Sect album that never came out. There are four tracks here that were recorded for a Peel Session, and they’re just fantastic, along with the first two amazing singles.

8. The Saints - (I’m) Stranded

Of all the places for one of the best bands to come from, it’s Brisbane, Australia. And they were doing it way before anybody else. They were playing live in like, ‘73. They were just an amazing band. Sort of like the Australian version of the Ramones but they didn’t look the part. I remember at the time thinking, those guys need to go to the barber. But that’s how shallow a lot of people were about bands at the time and they didn’t get the recognition they deserved. And I feel it was because of the way they looked. Never was a more punky record made but for some reason, well, for the reasons I’ve just said, they were criminally overlooked. I’d love to have seen them live but never did.

9. The Cobbs - Trophies For Lovemaking!

They were originally called Ty Cobb, named after an American baseball player. I did a late 90s tour of America with my band Free Heat but it was more of a fucking drink and drugs tour of America than a rock and roll tour. We played a gig in Philadelphia and we hung around after the gig and went out for dinner with some people but I was totally fucking wasted. I don’t remember any of it. But I got back home after the tour and I found this CD in my luggage and it was this album before it ever came out. I played it, and I was like, ‘Fucking hell, who’s this band?’ Ben, who was in Free Heat, was my lodger at the time, and he was like, ‘That was those people we went out for dinner with in Philadelphia. Don’t you remember?’ I couldn’t remember any of it and I called him up because the number was on the CD. I said, ‘Your record’s great’. I expected that they were going to be huge any moment and it just never seemed to come together for them. They made some records under the name of Mad Action and I don’t know why it never happened for them because they’re one of the best bands I’ve ever heard. I think it’s all home recorded and I’m a sucker for lo-fi, I can’t get enough of it.

10. Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum

Mark was playing in London and he asked if Free Heat would support him, and at the time I wasn’t really that aware of who he was or any music that he’d made. He sent over this CD and I was like, ‘Fucking hell, this is amazing.’ And we didn’t do the gig because I was in a bad way at the time. I was totally off my tits all the time. And I just felt as if I went out there and played, I would make an absolute twat of myself. Free Heat had kind of disintegrated a bit, and me and Ben thought about doing it for about five minutes and just thought we were in no shape to do anything, so we turned it down. But I’d loved to have done it. if I was in better shape, I probably would have. It’s got loads of songs on it and every one plays like a single. You don’t get enough records like that. It’s just like a greatest hits record.

11. The Beatles - Revolver

All the others I’ve picked are almost like beautiful losers and The Beatles are the only winners here. We always loved The Beatles, me and William. Everybody goes on about Sgt. Peppers… but fuck that, this is the one that everybody should go on about. This changed music forever I feel. And it’s just bizarre to think this was three years after With The Beatles. To hear stuff like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, it’s mental it came three years after ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’. I loved punk rock but it didn’t exclude everything else. I felt that the people who took to punk like that were seeing it all the wrong way. Punk was to open doors, not to close doors, and we loved The Beatles before we loved punk. It wasn’t like overnight you chuck all your old records away. That would have been utterly moronic. This album just morphed into something that nobody could have predicted. I think music changed overnight because of it.

12. Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day

She was a name that I’d heard but didn’t really know anything about for years. It might have even been through a song on an advert in the noughties or something like that that I first heard her music. I don’t remember. But I totally got it on the reissue. Then I read an interview or a review and it was telling the story about how she nearly made it in the 60s and this record came out and nobody gave a fuck about it at the time. But copies were selling on eBay for thousands of pounds. I thought, ‘What an interesting story.’ I heard the song ‘Diamond Day’, thought ‘That sounds great,’ and I went out and bought the album and I absolutely loved it. And the compilation that came out of all of her 60s stuff as well. She’s extremely talented.

13. The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico

I could have picked any Velvet Underground record. Anything that’s got The Velvet Underground written on it, you must play. That would be my advice to the youth of today. They’re like the indie Beatles. They’re culturally as important as The Beatles. How many bands have started because of the Velvets? And the way they looked in 66/67 was it. That was how all indie bands were going to look forever after that. And the music was just so fucking amazingly uncompromising. I mean, to sing a song like ‘Heroin’ in 1967, it’s just incredible. Glorifying drugs, glamorising drugs. These people took smack, so why not sing about it? Then just the fact that that’s on the same album as ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ and ‘Sunday Morning’ is just astounding. The whole idea of the Factory scene just seemed to us to be absurdly glamorous. I’ve always felt that pop music could be too saccharine at times, and that people ought to take a lot more chances than they appear to. And I think The Velvet Underground was a band that just didn’t give a shit what anybody had to say about what they were singing about. The subject matter was just something that people didn’t do at that time. It was light years ahead of everything else. The Velvets and the Stooges were just like a road map. It was like we were receiving little signals from a parallel universe in the shape of Velvet Underground records.

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