Star Scene: Mike Edwards

JESUS JONES ~ Right Here, Right Now!

Interview by Mary Boukouvalas

Mike Edwards of Jesus Jones enjoys a frenzied scene, involving music and racing mountain and road bikes.

Jesus JonesLuckily Edwards, and the whole band, loves to tour. “Between cycling and music there is not much time left, a bit of sleep now and again. We’re one of those bands who love touring. I’ve never understood those who moan about touring. We love touring and travel; loads of time to stick around and listen to music and more than that, get to visit loads of exciting places you wouldn’t have got to otherwise and that’s the view we had of Australia. So many great memories there. The last time we came was in 2011 and we had the most fantastic time. It was just so exciting to be there”.

Playing live and touring doesn’t seem to take its toll on the energetic, vivacious Edwards. He is proud of the fact that Jesus Jones has remained the original lineup, the same five guys it all started with. They have grown up together, and Edwards recalls a few on-the-road anecdotes that maybe the bassist wouldn’t want anyone to know about. “I remember being in a hotel in Washington DC, hearinimageg the rest of the band having a party in the room above me and they were really quite raucous and I remember I got out of bed and, in my dictatorial mode, ran up the stairs. I walked into the room, and there on the sixth floor, I can see our roadie standing by the window and the window was open and I realized he was holding the bass player by his ankle. And I thought I’m just gonna pretend I wasn’t here”.

“Our bass player tends to monopolise these kinds of things. I think the crowning moment was when he woke up in a duck pond, in the Imperial Palace garden, in Tokyo. He was wearing someone else’s business suit. And he’s the last person in the world to wear a business suit”.

Now the leading purveyors of the early 1990’s Indie/Alternative Dance scene, Jesus Jones, return to Australia and are playing their influential Doubt album in full. Though Edwards says he “Cant give advice to bands these days the music industry is radically different,” he did in fact have excellent counsel: [pullquote]“One thing I would say is that you have got to be really inspired by what you do; this counts for more now than it did back then you have to do it for the love of the music everything else comes from that”.[/pullquote]

Personally Edwards states that: “Different people at different times have influenced me in my life. My first public performance was miming with fishing rods to a T Rex song. Glam rock that was the kind of stuff that influenced me earlier. I used to love The Sweet. After that I was very much into the Sex Pistols.

When they came out they were just brilliant; it was fantastic. For me, punk went off after that and I was much more into heavy guitar music, like Australia’s AC/DC. Soon after that I would say that guitar bands like REM leads into people like and U2 in the early days other bands like That Petrol Emotion and then there was Wonderstuff, who were friends with us. Beastie Boys and Public Enemy were brilliant, and at the end of the 80s the Acid House revolution did feel very much like punk in which it was clearing everything out and it was the only thing really worth listening to”.

[pullquote]“For me it then seemed a pretty obvious thing to take all those different influences and to bring them in to one band. I didn’t see why all those disparate things had to remain disparate”.[/pullquote]

Jesus Jones’ sound melds all different genres into a fabulous melting pot so it’s not surprising when Edwards says that he would describe their sound in food form as “Chili con carne; it’s spicy, lots of different ingredients and it’s going to make you feel hot and sweaty”.

Edwards jokes about expectations and says: “I would like to tell you that on this tour we’re going to bring on exploding dinosaurs or we are going to fire someone from a cannon. By and large we’ll probably do [our live show] a bit better these days, we ‘ve had a bit of practice over the last 30 years”.

“We’re playing Doubt top to tail. But when you program an album, I’m going back to the days of vinyl and Doubt was a 12” record, it doesn’t necessary work that way live, so we had to tweak a few things on some songs, and we can mess around with some songs. Obviously we wouldn’t mess with International Bright Young Thing and Right Here, Right Now because they’re amazing as they are so we will be keeping them the same, but there are songs on the record we were less happy with when rehearsing in the UK so they’ll be tweaked a little. So we’ll belt them out, and we’ll also do fan favourites, band favourites from other albums. [pullquote]And depends how badly we are going down, we might bash out something AC/DC”.[/pullquote]

Edwards continues, “You would have to be a fool to turn down (this tour). It is going to be a real privilege just to play there. We’d play in the back of someone’s garden. You’ll only have to provide a few beers”.

Jesus Jones’ Australian tour dates:

Thursday 12th March: The Zoo, BRISBANE

Friday 13th March: Corner Hotel, MELBOURNE

Saturday 14th March: Factory Theatre, SYDNEY

Sunday 15th March: Rosemount Hotel, PERTH

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For tickets and more information:

Jesus Jones
Photo by Mary Boukouvalas The Palace, Melbourne 2011

 

Jesus Jones
Photo by Mary Boukouvalas The Palace, Melbourne 2011

 

About Mary Boukouvalas 1643 Articles
Mary is a photographer and a writer, specialising in music. She runs Rocklust.com where she endeavours to capture the passion of music in her photos whether it's live music photography, promotional band photos or portraits. She has photographed The Rolling Stones, KISS, Iggy Pop, AC/DC, Patti Smith, Joe Strummer, PULP, The Cult, The Damned, The Cure, Ian Brown, Interpol, MUDHONEY, The MELVINS, The Living End, Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against The Machine, The Stone Roses –just to name a few - in Australia, USA, Europe and the Middle East. Her work has been published in Beat magazine, Rolling Stone magazine, Triple J magazine, The Age Newspaper, The Herald Sun, The Australian, Neos Kosmos, blistering.com, theaureview.com, noise11.com, music-news.com. She has a permanent photographic exhibition at The Corner Hotel in Richmond, Victoria Australia.

1 Comment

  1. Yes I will tell you about Mike Edwards of Jesus Jones. I was travelling from last pan am flight from LA to UK to interview Cliff Richard. I had a guy chatting me up on the plane so Jesus Jones thought I needed rescuing and sent me a bottle of wine. I had to go thank them. They asked me to join them. I sat next to Mike and we all got on well. Mike and I just clicked and halfway through the flight we kissed it was magical and nothing I normally would do but the chemistry was wow. I didn’t know who they were and I have met a lot of famous ppl and dated some so I don’t get star struck. I thought we found a great thing. We didn’t even feel the plane land starring in each other’s eyes. But straight of the plane he just looked at me and said goodbye. After all those years I found out he was married or about to at that time. I was angry at a great memory shattered and I never thought he would be like that. After all these years it upset me and I felt a fool. He could of least let the other guy chat me up I was talking too. Who knows .. haaa

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