低沉的振奋：来自 The Jesus and Mary Chain 的全新纪录片

“那个时候，各种风格的音乐都在向一个坏的方向发展，”乐队在片中这样说道，“独立音乐也丧失了征服大众的野心，缩在小角落里沾沾自喜。所以我们想改变这一切，让大家知道并不是只能去听那些在电台里播放的垃圾音乐。”

It’s impossible to imagine now just how messed-up and weird The Jesus and Mary Chain must have appeared when they formed in 1983.

“At that time, music just seemed to have gone in a bad direction.” The band told in the film. “ And so we wanted to change music. Show people that it didn’t need to be this trash that was coming out of the radio.”

JAMC 就这样成立了，这支来自苏格兰的另类摇滚乐队由 William Reid 和 Jim Reid 兄弟俩共同组建。嗡嗡作响的实验噪音，交织着甜蜜迷幻的柔美旋律，他们的音乐有着难得一见的双重品质：既能保留忠于自我的独立内核，又具备成就“爆款”单曲的流行品质。

“我们爱地下丝绒、滚石这样的乐队，他们都创造出了伟大的音乐，我们知道这是可以做到的。”两兄弟接着说，“我们希望各式各样的人都能听到我们的音乐。”

So we get the basics: they’re a loud, buzzy, sweetly hypnotic alternative rock band from Scotland, consisting mainly of brothers William and Jim Reid. They had that rare double-quality: a cool “indie” sound with a hot “pop” quality.

“We loved the Velvet Underground, but we loved the Rolling Stones too,” the Reids say. “We wanted everyone to hear our music.”

或许人们对 JAMC 的最初印象，来源于许多与音乐本身无关的东西。无论是从一袭黑衣的冷酷外型， 还是对周遭世界的满腔愤怒与不屑一顾，这支乐队充满对抗性的处世态度总是令人侧目。而最人们津津乐道的，莫过于兄弟俩一点就着的脾气，使得他们随时随地都可能当众大打出手，甚至在舞台上也毫不避讳。

这并不妨碍他们的处女专辑《Psychocandy》成为传奇——许多并不是 JAMC 的歌迷的人，也很有可能从某部电影中听过当中那首著名的大热单曲《Just Like Honey》。

“《Psychcandy》这个名字本身就是对专辑的一个最好诠释，”Jim Reid说，“除此之外，所有的评论和描述都不重要了。”

In the beginning, though, people heard a whole lot else apart from the music. They were known for their legendary fights and confrontational attitude: dressed in black, angry with the world, zero care given to anything and anybody. Their debut album, Psychocandy, is a legend – known even by non-fans for its single ‘Just Like Honey’.

“The title tells you everything you need to know,” says Jim Reid. “That’s what you get inside. It makes everything else – reviews and descriptions – irrelevant.”

也许是 William 和 Jim 两兄弟的暴躁脾气所带来的影响，他们的音乐现场不仅在台上充满冲突，台下的观众也常常制造骚动，使得警察不得不一次次的亲临现场维护秩序。各种矛盾争端频发，加上乐队因此而收获的恶劣名声，JAMC 在 1999 年宣告解散。直到 2007 年，在 Coachella 音乐节的压轴舞台上，“臭名昭著”的 JAMC 又隆重地回到了乐迷的视野中，而他们遗世独立的态度看起来丝毫未变——在这场演出中，为乐队担任和声的是大名鼎鼎的好莱坞影星 Scarlett Johannson，这哥俩甚至没有在台上正式的介绍一下她。

Their dangerous reputation and volatile tempers led to a break-up in 1999. Their cult only grew in absence. When they reformed in 2007, they headlined festivals and traveled the world. Scarlett Johannsen joined them on stage. The dangerous reputation is intact, and the band is going strong to this day.
说到这里，那么问题来了，当我们听 JAMC 的时候，到底在听什么？聆听 JAMC 音乐的过程，是一场充满冲突与变革的奇幻之旅。当音乐声响起，在你的脑海中会有着如魔法制造一般的化学反应。
That’s the basics. But the important question has always been: why should youcare?
You care because listening to JAMC is a transformative experience. When you hit ‘Play’, something magical happens in your brain.

“音乐作品本身就是我们的表达方式，当作品被创作出来。喜欢与否都是由别人来评说的了。至于我们自己，从来不会浪费时间考虑怎么描述自己或者我们的创作。”——Jim Reid

在 JAMC 的音乐现场，尖锐的啸叫与失真噪音往往是人们收获的第一观感，而在这如旋风般层叠裹挟的噪音中心，却包裹着恰如其分的甜美流行旋律。这也正是 William 与 Jim 这两位乐队核心创作者的高明之处——当你适应了那嘈杂的音色与直截了当的歌词，抓耳的旋律会如蜜糖一样，一点一滴地流入耳道，沁入你的心。

There is a part of your brain reserved for tune storage.

How else, then, are so many songs by The Jesus and Mary Chain burnt permanently into our minds, like soundtracks to a world on fire?

On the surface – what’s even there to recall? Drenched in howling feedback and burnished in layers and layers of noise, the average JAMC song can sound like a warm bath of fuzz, and not much else.

The Reid brothers, though, as JAMC’s central songwriters, relished this paradox. Their early live gigs were legendary – 15-minute bursts of violence and rioting that led to them being banned in large parts of the UK. That didn’t stop them, of course – they’d just come early, pretend to be the support band, and disappear through the back before anyone caught on.

Thrilling as it was, it didn’t take long for the Reids to become irritated that the feedback was getting more attention than their songwriting. And they responded to this in exactly the way you’d expect them to: they did absolutely nothing about it.

“Everything was kinda shit in the 80s,” the Reids tell us. “We just made the kind of music that we were surprised no one else was making.”

“看演出现场也好，听作品也好，他们都会让人感受到那种直接真诚，不骗人的东西。”——李青，Snapline乐队

“80 年代所有的事物都一团糟，那时候没有太多的摇滚乐，也没有什么值得我们一听的流行歌曲。”说到这里，William 扭头转向哥哥，“你比我会说，你来。”

“我们不太喜欢 80 年代的音乐，我们想把流行音乐和噪音音乐结合起来，当时没有人在做这样的音乐，所以我们做了。”后者补充道。

也许 JAMC 的甜蜜并不是那么容易被捕捉，然而当你穿过令人迷惑的噪音壁垒，发现了当中的美妙之处，就再也无法忘怀那种难以忽视的快感。“噪音就像是乐队的第五位成员”Willam 如是说。

There is a part of your brain reserved for tune storage, and JAMC’s tunes are a direct, potent hit.

Mighty, savagely beautiful, redemptive. Psychocandy and Darklands have the kind of lyrics that people don’t write very often: simple, direct, mysterious, resonant – in other words, proper lyrics, instead of tenth-rate poetry.

“It’s direct and genuine, with no dishonesty,” says Snapline’s Li Qing.

The genius, the absolute genius, of JAMC’s songs, though, was that beneath the noise, beneath the mystery and the lyrics, was something sparkling: pure, catchy pop.

You can hear this most clearly on Barbed Wire Kisses, their collection of B-Sides from the band’s early days. Without a blanket of noise to protect them, these stripped-down songs are absolute pop perfection – perfect little drips of sweet, sweet gloom pop. Just like honey.

“我们也很想做到像他们那样，在噪音实验和流行乐之间做到一个很好的平衡。”——杨海崧，P.K.14乐队

令人愉悦，却又充满疏离感；令人沉迷，却在你浅尝辄止时刺激与挑战着你的神经。这样的音乐，无论当年还是现在都很鲜见。

“在过去的这几十年，摇滚乐正在缓慢地走向死亡，新的东西越来越少，人们只是不断重复利用着旧的想法。也有好听的音乐，但都是建立在过去的基础上的。”Reid 无奈地说，“当你听到一个有点像 Joy Division 的年轻乐队，但却不如他们好，那我为什么不直接去听 Joy Division ？”

“我也不太懂现在的主流音乐了”，William 随后补充道，“有人跟我说有一首Drake的歌得到了几十亿的播放量，我想那大概挺值得一听的。可当我去找来听了之后，‘hennnessy in my handy，hennnessy in my handy，hennnessy in my handy，’，让我感觉像度过了漫长且无聊的十分钟。”

“It’s the perfect balance between darkness and light,” says PK14’s Yang Haisong – whose own work was hugely influenced by the Reids.

The sugar rush of a JAMC song is hard to resist, and once you’ve broken through the wall of feedback that shields the prize – it’s impossible to ignore. It’s gorgeous and jarring in equal measure. “The noise was the fifth member of the band, you know” says William.

No one was making this music back when they started, and no one makes it now: songs that are welcoming and alienating at the same time. Songs that are meant for you obsess over but challenge you first to understand them.

“Rock music’s been dying for decades,” Jim Reid says with characteristic disdain. “Everything is just based on something you’ve heard before.”

在当下的音乐行业中，市场营销的重要性似乎已远远大于旋律与音色本身。在广告片和短视频里，在电梯间和公共交通上，我们被千篇一律的模式化流行乐一遍又一遍地洗脑，在大众传媒操控下迷失了最真实的渴求与欲望。 幸好还有 JAMC 这样的乐队，他们既有着过人的创作天赋，又能时刻警醒地隔绝着外界影响。如此，源源不断地为我们继续供给音乐养分。 Take a look around the world of music today.
Marketing matters more than the rhythms and sounds. We’re fed recycled garbage in a steady drip feed of ‘singles’. Music assaults us everywhere, from ads and elevators to subway stations and malls. It manipulates our attention, our desires. It’s cynical and selfish, as shallow as it can get away with. The idols can’t sing. The rock-stars can’t play. Everything was s*** in the 80s, and for the fan of alternative rock, everything feels s*** now. But hey, we still have JAMC. We have the sweet bliss of their songs, and the zero-care-given attitude that can still produce amazing, transformational work.
Even if they themselves have no idea how.
“You can’t analyze your own music too much,” says Jim Reid. “At some point, it just has to come from the heart.”
JAMC demand your heart, they demand close attention, and reward those who commit. It’s music that invites you to come in closer, give in to the chaos, and live in the moment. Music that asks you to never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.
Reduced to words it sounds chimeric, but realised as music it makes perfect sense. There is a part of your brain reserved for tune storage, and it’s waiting for that JAMC hit.
Just hit play.

作者：Krish R

编译：蘑菇Dee