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NEWS -
BeOn 25 April, Beggars Banquet are re-issuing the first three Gene Loves Jezebel albums in de-luxe, expanded editions.
Fronted by androgynous twins Jay and Michael Aston and featuring an evolving cast of musicians (including All About Eve's Julianne Regan), the early recordings had an experimental edge that has kept the music fresh today. The Jezebels didn't follow the shiny, neutered pop yearnings of their contemporaries but were always attuned to the darker side of romance and sex. Like most early 80's bands, they had been weened on ‘Glam rock', but it was the underground that was receptive to their punk-funk undertones and vision. They're a reminder of a time when musical explorations were encouraged, indie was actually alternative, maverick wasn't marketed and Gene Loves Jezebel just might have been contenders.
Long unavailable (even on CD), these editions are mid price, double CD sets which feature all the recordings released between 1982 and 1986. Disc one of each set is the original UK album remastered from studio analog tapes and disc two collects singles, mixes, rareties and unreleased tracks. As expected from a Beggars Banquet re-issue, the packaging is comprehensive, with full track details, lyrics, unseen photos and new sleeve notes.
* indicates tracks previously unavailable on CD
Promise
CD 1 - The album has been restored with the very rare original version of "Wraps And Arms" which was substituted on all subsequent worldwide pressings (and CD releases) with an alternative take. No one remembers exactly why.
Upstairs
Bruises
Pop Tarantula
Screaming For Emmalene
Scheming
Bread From Heaven
Influenza
Shower Me With Brittle Punches
Wraps And Arms *
Psychological Problems
CD 2 – Includes the first ever re-issue of the long deleted, 1982 debut EP "Shaving My Neck" and early, alternate single versions.
1. Shame (original version) (unreleased) *
2. Influenza (relapse)
3. Stephen (original version) *
4. Walking In The Park *
5. Wraps and Arms (version 2)
6. Bruises (extended version) *
7. Punch Drunk
8. Brando (Bruises) (extended version) *
9. Scheming (original version) (unreleased) *
10. Screaming (for Emmalene) (single version) *
11. So Young (Heave Hard, Heave Ho)
12. No Voodoo Dollies
13. Shaving My Neck *
14. Sun And Insanity *
15. Machismo *
16. Glad To Be Alive *
* tracks previously unavailable on CD
Immigrant
CD 1 – Currently on offer second hand at Amazon for $50, this is an alternative 80's classic. Produced by John Leckie (contemporaneous with The Fall's ‘This Nation's Saving Grace'), astute Stone Roses fans may find some of the drum sounds familiar… It became an Indie no.1 album.
Always A Flame
Shame
Stephen
The Immigrant
Cow
Worth Waiting For
The Rhino Plasty
Deep South Wale
Coal Porter
CD 2 – featuring the full version of "Flame" produced by Steve Harley (Cockney Rebel) as well as two early drafts for songs performed for a John Peel BBC session.
1. Desire (extended version) *
2. Flame (extended Harley version) (unreleased) *
3. The Cow (extended version) *
4. One Someone
5. You Weaken Her (Cow) *
6. Shame (Whole Heart Howl) *
7. Thin Things
8. Gorgeous
9. Waves (BBC Session) (unreleased) *
10. Five Below (BBC Session) (unreleased) *
11. Always A Flame (Alternate version) (unreleased) *
* tracks previously unavailable on CD
Discover
CD 1 – A Top 40 UK chart entry, this was the album that got the band signed to Geffen records in the USA and introduced the classic line-up.
Heartache
Over The Rooftops
Kick
White Horse
Wait And See
Desire
Beyond Doubt
Sweetest Thing
Maid Of Sker
Brand New Moon
CD 2 – The bonus disc includes some tracks never issued on vinyl, let alone CD, which were only avilable on cassette single.
1. Desire (Come And Get It) (extended version) *
2. Sapphire Scavenger *
3. New horizons *
4. Message (Original version) *
5. Heartache (UK Club Mix) *
6. Before Doubt *
7. Suspicion (Original version) *
8. Deli Babies *
9. Vagabond *
10. Lipstime *
11. Down To The Water *
12. Heartache (part 2) *
13. Sweetest Thing (extended mix) (unreleased) *
14. Psycho 2 *
15. Sweetest Jezebel *
For further Gene loves Jezebel updates contact
Jay Aston site www.genelovesjezebel.co.uk
Michael Aston site www.genelovesjezebel.com
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VOODOO DOLLIES
The Best of Gene Loves Jezebel
- - Upstairs
- - Bruises
- - Influenza (Relapse)
- - Always A Flame
- - The Cow
- - Stephen
- - Heartache
- - Desire (Come and get it)
- - Sweetest Thing
- - Beyond Doubt
- - Gorgeous
- - The Motion Of Love
- Twenty Killer Hurts
- - Jealous
- - Kiss Of Life
- - Josephina
- - Break The Chain
- - Who Wants To Go To Heaven
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- released September 1999 in USA
available now on mail order
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- From the moment they first appeared on a London stage, at the ICA Rock Week in 1982, Gene Loves Jezebel were going to be special. There were, of course, two of them - Gene, who limped like rocker Gene Vincent, after Michael Aston broke his leg playing football; and Jezebel, which is what a friend thought Jay Aston's name was, the first time they were introduced. And because they were twins, and had always been close, Gene Loves Jezebel fell out of their mouths before they knew what they were saying, when they got that first gig and were stuck for a name.
Only it wasn't that simple really, because there were other people playing with them - drummer James Chater, bassist Steve Radwell, guitarist Ian Hudson, a tumultuous roar behind the Welsh brothers' vocals, rhythmic, rolling, sending shards of sound shooting every which way, then shattering against the back of your brain. "Shaving My Neck," Gene Loves Jezebel's first single, was only ever intended as an ugly demo, a hint of how loudly the brothers could shriek, but "Melody Maker" made it their single of the week, the city Goths adopted it as a statement of intent, and before the group had even found its way, a candlelit path had been lighted for them.
Even in an age of towering shadows, the era of Bauhaus and the Virgin Prunes, Southern Death Cult and the Birthday Party, Gene Loves Jezebel were offering something unique. Musically, they were like nothing on earth: visually, they were like nothing below or above it, Jay and Michael prowling the stage, in lady's clothes and shocking bright hair, cackling, caterwauling, crazy as they could be, but radiating a wild, livid beauty. In the chaos there was colour, in the discordancy a melody.
A string of bass and drummer changes did not dent the dementia (All About Eve's Julianne Regan played bass for a while, and a friend named Kymille briefly came in to scream); a string of singles did not shake the dark shadows. But Gene Loves Jezebel were developing regardless, and making a mark that could not be mistaken. Beneath the kohl and crazy colour, behind the batcaved beat of the critics, behind all the preconceptions which Gene Loves Jezebel were ever stuck with, there was something else scratching its way to the surface.
It took Gene Loves Jezebel one album, 1983's "Promise," to show what they were made of, the whipping, whooping cataclysmic surge of "Upstairs," the brooding warp of "Influenza," and so much more besides; and a second, "Immigrant" - highlighted by the so-delightful "Cow" - to shake off the final shadows of their past. They worked with John Cale and Cockney Rebel's Steve Harley; and in 1986, Gene Loves Jezebel emerged with the sound which would reshape the decade.
With former Chelsea / Generation X guitarist James Stevenson filling the role which Ian Hudson vacated on the eve of a 60 date American tour, Peter Rizzo bringing some permanency to the bass position, and Chris Bell dropping by to play drums, Gene Loves Jezebel's third album, "Discover," was launched with what remains the band's signature song, the club-friendly, arena-shaking "Desire."
Produced by Peter Walsh (an earlier version was recorded with producer Alvin Clark), and an instant American radio hit, "Desire"'s insistent yelping and compulsive riffing would provide the template for some of the broadest extremities of what would emerge from the late 1980s as 'Alternative Rock'. From early Jane's Addiction (who opened several of the band's US dates, and were never afraid to wear their allegiance on their sleeve) to primal Guns ‘n' Roses, from the bombast of the Cult to the bomb blast of Nirvana, "Desire" hangs over the age like a mortgage, a debt that will never be repaid.
Recasting modern rock from the increasingly turgid stadium battlecries of Simple Minds, U2 and the Springsteen society, all the sounds which soothed the savage beast as the 1980s hit their mid-riff, offering something true, raw, wild and wiry, Gene Loves Jezebel reinvented excitement for a whole generation - on record, on video, onstage and on and on. Because there was plenty more magic where "Desire" came from. Powering through the remainder of the year, the explosive "Heartache" and the addictive "Sweetest Thing" both proved that the initial breakthrough was no fluke, pushing Gene Loves Jezebel into America's hearts and charts, then driving them back into the studio to record their follow-up album.
Too much, too soon. The band wasn't ready for the studio, and they certainly weren't ready for the pressures brought to bear by being just one step away from a massive step forward. Michael was miserable, Jay was jaundiced, and as what would eventually become "House Of Dolls" took shape, Gene Loves Jezebel's own house of cards collapsed. Michael quit, and the remaining band now look back on the album as something which literally changed while they watched it, from a dense, driven document of the life they wanted to lead, t101.5o a widescreen crash to follow up the smash. "Motion Of Love," Gene Loves Jezebel's next chart single, started out sounding like Joy Division, says Jay; it wound up something else entirely, and the album followed suit. "House Of Dolls" became Gene Loves Jezebel's biggest seller, and was further from home than they'd ever wanted to go.
Regroup, retrench, and briefly, reform. Michael returned for the "House Of Dolls" tour, but the tensions which once fired the onstage act, now fuelled the backstage battles as well. Through America, the Far East and Europe they went, and when it was over, they went their separate ways: Michael to Los Angeles, where he married and launched a solo career; Jay back to London, where he recast Gene Loves Jezebel. And by the time the band was sighted again, two years on, and one album older, the changes had all been seamlessly absorbed. 1990's "Kiss Of Life" album might have had a different sound, might have moved in a whole new direction, but it was still unmistakably Gene Loves Jezebel, and it still burned hell for leather.
While "Jealous" continued the group's upward trend in America, their biggest chart hit yet and a non-stop MTV favourite, the title cut tracked back to the band's earliest efforts, then reached forward to cast the dice anew, to lay the foundations for the future. James Stevenson was now Jay's main partner in crime, his fluid guitar laying where Michael's vocals once stood, maintaining the dislocation, but relocating it too, until every song was a new sonic sculpture, and every gig was a celebration of imminent possibility. And if a projected American tour hadn't collapsed while "Jealous" was topping the modern rock chart, then those possibilities would surely have blossomed there and then.
But it did collapse, and the momentum faded, and while Gene Loves Jezebel cooled their heels in Europe, America moved on to other fascinations. By the time the band was back in the States, in 1992, with their "Heavenly Bodies" (and new drummer, Robert Adam), the momentum had slipped and the moment was lost. A new single, "Josephina," slipped into undeserving darkness; another song, "Break The Chain," went unheard despite Jay's protests that it was the best he'd ever written... and when the band's new U.S. record company followed the album into the dumper, it was plain an era was approaching its end.
Jay followed Michael's lead into the land of solo recordings - his "Unpopular Songs" album was finally released four years after he started work on it. A few archive releases kept Gene Loves Jezebel's name alive a little longer - a vague hits collection which was only released in America; a double live album which was only out in Europe... and then in 1997, came the news that the group was reforming, the twins were reuniting. Through the year, a new Gene Loves Jezebel toured America, a fifteenth anniversary bash which was everything it ought to have been, and nothing that anyone expected.
And though the Astons are now separate again, in a way the love affair still carries on as before, in the diametric dramas of Gene and Jezebel's savage greatest bits. From the impulsive dance of "20 Killer Hurts" to the avant-swagger of "Stephen"; the pure pop majesty of the yearning, burning "Gorgeous," to the violent contusions of the prototypical "Bruises," Gene Loves Jezebel still have the world at their fingertips... and it's a world which they created in their own stunning image. We will never see their like again.
- Dave Thompson
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