AN ENGLISH JEZEBEL IN AMERICA
By Craig Lee| “We embrace color and romance!”
J. Aston, who leads the English band Gene Loves Jezebel with his identical twin brother. Michael may get offensive when he describes the group, but then this band – which plays the Roxy tonight – is hardly known for |
 |
Despite the florid prose, Gene Loves Jezebel delivers a serious musical punch, and critics have compared the group to everyone from U2 to England’s theatrical Virgin Prunes. Since forming in 1983, GLJ has released two albums in England, and the more recent, “Immigrant,” has just been licensed to the American independent label Relativity.
The records are filled with a lot of atmosphere and an underlying sense of spacey mysticism, but on stage the band displays a raucous rock ‘n’ roll stance that has as much to do with showy glam-rock as with the darker end of the post-punk spectrum.
J. Aston is the “Jezebel” of the group, a nickname he earned for the colorful persona he adopted after hitchhiking to London from his home in Wales. When the band started. Aston’s heavily made-up face and colorful clothes put him squarely in the androgynous-rock camp, but these days he’s been toning down the gender bending.
“I wanted to become more of a part of a group,” Aston explained during a phone- interview from Berkeley earlier this week. “Before, I felt that I was the strong one, that everything had to do with me, but now I feel more comfortable with everybody being as one, with everybody being as strong as me.”
The group needs all the strength it can get as it tours America on a shoestring budget – an endurance test for a band that rarely toured in England.
“’We started with a bigoted naïve attitude,” Aston said, explaining GLJ’s early avoidance of performing. “ We know best! We don’t have to play live!’ The curious thing was that we found we actually do enjoy playing live and we get a lot of energy off it. America’s an enormous challenge for us because we’ve never done anything like this before. We used to complain about driving 200 miles and yesterday we did 750.”
“But most of our shows here have been brilliant. We played last night in Salt Lake City for more people than we ever did in England, and the reaction was phenomenal – they really embraced us.”
The British press wasn’t always that enthused about the group. Back home, Gene Loves Jezebel has been dismissed as a part of trendy pop movements like the short-lived "positive punk" and “Batcave" scenes.
“It’s infuriating in some ways.” Aston said. “I think those groups dealt in darkness and alienation. We deal in color and communication. I wouldn’t mind us being attached to some kind of wave if we could reap the benefits of that wave when it’s happening. But when that wave’s been tossed away, to be put into it is quite frustrating.”
Equally frustrating have been several career roadblocks, including separate recording projects with fellow Welshman John Cale and ex-Cockney Rebel leader Steve Harley – not a note of which was ever released.
Despite the setbacks and the financial bind, Gene Loves Jezebel fights on, making its raging way across America.
“We’re pretty poor as people,” Aston said. “We’re a pretty ragged bunch. We pull ourselves together like gypsies. It sounds corny, but everyone around us is very much a part of what we do,…….feeling is very warm…….we’re here and that…….exist.”
Previous Article |
Home |
 |
Next Article |