http://www.maliciousdamage.com/gallery/jaz/jaz86.htm

Only joking, Alex ;)

1) It's basically a proto-type for Jay-Z-Nas-Throwdown, innit? Except all the nutters are on the same side.

2) I'm not sure, but this may be the first recorded case of Alex in NYC using the word "pabulum" on ILM.

I wuv this board so.

Not that this means I loathe / love the Joke, mind you. The one clip I heard @ Amazon this morning (whilst shopping) didn't do much for me, except make me giggle a bit. (I'm on antibiotics, though, so don't mind me if I laugh @ inappropriate times.)

For the record, information on the offending symphonic records (aided & abetted by a Mr. Jaz "Not Pazz" Coleman) can be found here. And here. AND here. AAAAAAAAAAND ... oh, just check his list of credits. (Working for Disney - how's that for HONOURING THE FIRE!?!)

Anybody up for forming a band with me called the Fire Honourers? I'll play drums.

(ain't no hole in the washtub, jess.)

this thread took 25 minutes of my life and i want it baaaaack.

http://www.maliciousdamage.com/gallery/jaz/jaz83.JPG

I'm just reviving this thread, because I think the time for the return of the Joke is close at hand! Discuss.

...their material as of late is just too muddled for me...

Well done Dr C for withstanding the full onslaught of what reads like the Metal Hammer letters page. My Band Is Bigger Than Yours Is. And Tom for his well worded (and apparently effective) intervention.

I hope I don't relight the fire with the above comments...

I thought I'd join in at this point becuase I think KJ's first two albums are extraordinary. I can see why they might turn people off and am trying to think where I would point the unconvinved listener.

I give them credit in my personal listening biography for turning me on to the bass guitar, but I guess I could have 'found' it through several other bands you cite.

The one piece of music by them that I find truly uncanny is 'Requiem'. It's quite terrifying - which may not be your bag - but there's a martial beauty to the riff and an industrial groove to the bass that sets the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. I can see where the High Romantic classical comparisons come from.

The album version of 'Wardance' is a close second. I think the power of it can be compared to films like Apocalypse Now, in that it can take you right into the heart of something very violent and very evil: a neo-primitivist total war.

You may not want to go there, of course, but it's quite an achievement. The bass riff holds the song together, and is just a split second too slow: 'music to march to', indeed. The single chord guitar 'riff' does nothing until the last verse, when it goes up an octave, an extraordinary effect.

'Tomorrow's world' off that album has a kind of glistening, glass like beauty ... but only on the Peel session. So my fantasy c60 (sorry, fans) would go there next...

...and then into the version of 'Turn to Red' from the first 12" with the extraordinary (in 1978) statement that is a Diana Ross synth line over a lyric that is straight outta Nietschze.

Then, I guess, from the second album, 'Unspeakable' - for claustrophobia and wierd production - and 'Tension' - for a kind of post Nuclear sub Motown vibe. I've always enjoyed putting it after 'Knock on Wood' on mix tapes.

What were they about?

At this period at least I think they're very consistent and thorough in their ideology and I'd stick them somewhere in the highly individualistic/anarchistic (and, like it or not intelligent) post-Nietschzen Far Right. That is, there's was the ultimate 'free market': a world peopled by instinct-following supermen who have a right to ignore moral strictures and who exist in a state of total war. Those who cannot suvive in this Darwinian nightmare go sheep-like to the wall.

To these ears, it all turned to sub-HM mush after Jaz's little sojourn in Iceland and everything from Revelations on is ugly in the ugly way rather than ugly as in beautiful. But I might have missed something great as I lost interest.

I actually saw the Brighton gig at which Jaz 'lost it' and vanished to Iceland and it was one of the most uncanny experiences of my life - at a couple of moments I swear something supernatural was going on. If so, it didn't appear to do Jaz any good. The other three stood there as always, looking like a Sid Vicious/Syvester Stallone android studying for his A levels.

I also saw them on their pre-Revelations post-Iceland comeback tour and it was all horribly, horribly rockist, really.

I hope all this provides some insight.

Incidentally, if you'd really like to know what Jaz was on about, feast thine eyes (and prepare your aspirin bottle) for his original manifesto, "An Irrational Domain", which some poor soul handily transcribed:

http://www.an-irrational-domain.net/odic/aid-odic1.html

As noted, the band are purportedly back in the studio as we speak, with both Raven and Youth sharing bass duties, Andy Gill of Gang of Four producing and Ted Parsons on Prong on the drums.....rumors of a return of original drummer Big Paul Ferguson remain in the wind, but no concrete confirmation as of yet.

That's nice.

"Your turn, Raven"
"No it is thine, Youth. For your mighty bass doth conjour a magick most strange and mysterious"

(Jaz) "Come on you guys, decide! I said I'd be home by 9. Mum gets awfully worried if I'm late"

somethign tells me this thread has not really persuaded Dr C (or perhaps several silent others) that KJ have more to offer than some over-serious music hall post-Black Sabbath heebie geebies..

post-1981, I feel somewhat similar.

But I agree that the words to Butcher are extraordinary.

And, Jon, calling you a cretin for qausi-disrespecting the Joke is hardly an insult. Wait `til I really get rolling (i.e. when a frothing Killing Joke zealot insults you.....YOU'LL KNOW IT!)

I'm going to get out my battered old pope-and-nazis t-shirt tonight and write 'qausi-disrespect the Joke' on the front. Surely a mantra to live by.

Dr C. - was that in Reading when Sub-Active supported them?

If so, are you sure you didn't get confused and leave after the support band?

(former lead vocalist of Sub-Active....)

I mentioned The Joke on another thread about bands I used to love but just don't listen to any more.

This is true, but I feel I should make it clear that the reason I don't find myself wanting to listen to them any more is because I hear their influence ALL THE TIME; reproduced, corrupted, distorted and diluted in every pompous, over-blown goth-rock / industrial band that's spewed out it's ill-conceived drivel in the last 20 years.

It's easy to mock them as a combination of metal and punk - but let's not forget that Nirvana have been put on a pedestal for doing PRECISELY THAT, a full 10 YEARS later (I defy anyone to listen to "Bleach" and deny the Killing Joke influences at work there, presumably before Mr Cobain had encountered The Pixies!).

The influence of Killing Joke is enormous and largely unheralded.

Fwiw, I don't listen to Nirvana these days either, because of the hordes of unisnspired second-rate they too have inspired.

More important point - isn't it odd to avoid a band *because they inspired some crap*. I mean, why not avoid the crap instead? Someone start a thread!

It's not that I'm consciously avoiding KJ, just that I very seldom find myself actually wanting to listen to them any more.

I think the issue is that my taste for that type of music has been diminished by all the crap.

HA! HA! HA! - That's farfuckingoutasite funny. And to think I always thought that band had all the earthshaking power of the last time Noel Coward went on a bender, smudged his lipstick and smashed a Waterford goblet or two. Thanks for the correction.

Jawohl, dem Nordic pagan fire eaters, dey so visceral extreme, nicht wahr? And dat Jaz Boorman mit der dingdang fiery spear of destiny: no mark begets a lineage of village oaf no marks. Big fucking deal.

Roll Over Adorno ... and tell Tanya Headon that lines like this inspire me to hate all music too. If not that, well, hating all music fans is a good place to start.

But to contribute to this very constructive thread, I hasten to mention that my favorite Killing Joke songs have always been "Saucy Jack", "Deutschland über alles", "My Ding-a-Ling" and "We Didn't Start The Fire" - in that order. Leni Riefenstahl I find to be the sexiest member of the group. She so visceral extreme to the utmost methinks; not to mention being approximately half the age of Jaz Boorman.