Camden News - The Jesus and Mary Chain | Fitzjohn's Primary School

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Camden News - by SIMON WROE
Published: 3 July 2008

John Moore

Will there be a Chain reaction at school’s rock gig?

THEIR early gigs were unbroken walls of feedback, where instruments were trashed and audiences rioted at the end.
Now members of infamous experimental rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain will play their
toughest gig yet – at a Hampstead primary school.
The rock’n’roll journeymen will be vying with a cake stall, a bouncy castle and a display of sumo wrestling for the attentions of children and parents at Fitzjohn’s Primary School summer fair in Fitzjohn’s Avenue on Saturday.
John Moore, one-time drummer and guitarist with the band and founder of Black Box Recorder and Expressway, was persuaded to do the gig by his seven-year-old daughter, a pupil at the school.
Mr Moore, now a music writer for the Guardian who lives in Belsize Park, said there would be no “squalls of feedback” or “screeching soundscapes” – just good ol’ fashioned rock’n’roll.
He said Black Box Recorder’s cult classic, Life is Unfair: Kill Yourself or Get Over It, will not be performed.
But he promised the band – comprised of fellow Jesus and Mary Chain guitarist Phil King, who has flown back from Buenos Aires to fit the gig in, and drummer Ben Swank from Detroit garage rock band The Soledad Brothers – was still “fairly heavy”.
He said: “When we rehearsed the other day we were a bit scared we might terrify the children rather than entertain them.”
Although Mr Moore has played Glastonbury and toured the States, he admitted he was a little daunted by the prospect of his first school fair.
“I’m really nervous,” he said. “I don’t know what it will be like. I’m just hoping the headmaster doesn’t pull the plug. We might get arrested for upsetting the neighbourhood.”

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