Honey's Dead - The Jesus and Mary Chain

You can't beat the banning of a track to increase it's circulation and ultimately sales. I've often wondered if morale crusaders realise this when objectivng to a movie/song/whatever* (*delete as appropriate). The pop and rock music genre is not short of examples of tracks or videos that have been banned. Yet in attempting to wipe them for the airwaves and TV sets it gives them increased vigour and energy. Punching through the paper thin barrier of the ban.

I remember dozens of hushed conversations on school playgrounds and in the corners of corridors. Out of the ear-shot of teachers - you see teachers represented in our minds the establishment. Clearly we didn't know what 'The Establishment' was. Not a clue. But we knew instinctively that they wouldn't understand. How could they? They didn't listen to music, watch TV or movies...... One such momentous and notorious banned song was Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Relax'. OMG! To be honest, I didn't have a clue what it was about until a much street-wiser friend (I'm looking at you Mr. R) brought me up to speed. He had a habit of doing that - revealing things that I didn't know needed to be revealed. Take Madness' 'House of Fun' for example. I was happy in my naive knowledge that it was about a ..... well a house of fun until he informed me that it was actually a coming of age song - about someone trying to but contraceptives from a chemist. Well who knew? Clearly not me as I was shocked, albeit belatedly. But would 'Relax' have been such a massive hit if it hadn't been banned? I doubt it.

So that brings me, in a roundabout way, to 'Reverence'. The opening track of 'Honey's Dead'. An absolute monster of a song; dark, menacing and brooding. As soon as the BBC chiefs heard the opening salvo of "I wanna die like Jesus Christ. I wanna die on a bed of spikes. I wanna die like JFK" they must've nearly choked on their Earl Grey. So they did the only 'logical' thing and banned it from Top of the Pops. The nation was safe once again. But you can't keep a lid on a song as bold as that. And that is what I suspect worried 'The Establishment'. The loss of control. Banning something is a knee-jerk reaction but futile - it doesn't work and never will. More so now YouTube is spreading around the globe.

Besides I could never understand the hypocrisy of what would constitute the banning of a song. References to religious icons is frowned upon whereas rap songs and their misogynistic lyrics slip by the censors unnoticed. Religious imagery. No. Violence towards women. Absolutely fine. But I'm digressing.....again. And besides this soap box is getting too wobbly.

I bought 'Honey's Dead' on the back of 'Reverence'. I'd not bought anything by JaMC before but I loved this track; the loud fuzz of the distorted guitars, the slow rhythm of the drum machine and... yes the lyrics. I knew it would get up people's noses so I wanted to help give it a push. But the rest of the album is just as good and thankfully lighter in tone. Find me a better guitar pop song than 'Far Gone And Out' and I'll happily bare my bum in Binns window. Maybe.

So let's hear it for banned songs. But ssshhh. Don't tell the teachers!