The healing powers of rock’n’roll are well documented. It’s a relief to report, as we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, that despite the establishment’s doing its level best to stop the kids getting down, not only is rock’n’roll in rude health, but that in the hands of certain practitioners, it's doing better than ever.
At What’s Cookin’ in Leytonstone on the Saturday night before Christmas, the Jim Jones Revue testified that they are one of the best rock’n’roll bands on Planet Earth, if not the best.
It seems not so long ago that their guitarist Rupert told me that he didn’t think What’s Cookin’ would be suitable venue for their incendiary highball of Sun-meets-SubPop shitstorming. I suppose he thought that it might be too much of a genteel country-roots sit-down supper club. Fairplay then to proprietor Ramblin’ Steve for convincing them otherwise. Now little more than a year later, Jones and Co are bigging up the club as one of their favourites, and returned to give it their second Xmas Party seal of approval.
If you’ve yet to experience the JJR, it’s fairly straightforward to suggest a meeting of minds between Jerry Lee and Little Richard, who went on to sire from their loins the conjoined twins, MC5 and New York Dolls who, on a visit to the UK, hopped into bed with Dr Feelgood. Then took a lot of bad drugs and recorded their debut album in a tin shack filled with scrap iron, just as a hurricane hit. You get the picture? You wish, you’re not even close!
One of the most amusing things about the JJR is their goatlike desire to stand on things. No burned-out Chevies to hand? How about a couple of the soon-to-be-condemned rickety tables upstairs at The Sheepwalk? In all honesty they’re about as sturdy as the very floor we’re standing on, which bounces a full eight inches under the gale force of Jones’s rough-as-shit-and-sandpaper bellow.
You’d think, if you’ve seen ‘em once, you’ve seen ‘em a dozen times. But proving there’s life in the old dog yet, the JJR just get better and better. Hard to imagine a better all-devouring earth-shattering rock’n’roll experience. So don’t even try.
