Obsessions (1) - Joy Electric
Twelve years ago, I became a Christian.
Those of you who are Christian understand the transformational process that usually proceeds salvation. As the spirit becomes more aligned with both the heart and the mind, familiar patterns in life begin to take on a whole new meaning.
Case in point: music. On a youth trip to Gatlinburg one year, I found a booth selling Christian rock and roll. Coming from a purely secular background, the idea seemed oxymoronic to me. Christian rock and roll? At the time, I thought (and I'll be honest), "Could anything be more pussyfied?" Of course, the irony fascinated me. How could it be done? So I went to the bookstore at Bryan College and bought my very first Christian rock and roll album ever, The Choir's Speckled Bird. I brought it home, unwrapped the packaging, and put it into the CD player.
I don't know what I expected, but what came out of the speakers, and what I heard that day, dropped a bomb on me. There was an entire universe of music out there, music created by Believers, Brothers and Sisters, that bypassed the Praise & Worship and Michael W. Smith sections and went straight to the youths on fire.
Rhea County High School, for being a teaching institution smack in the middle of Redneck Nowhere, produced an uncanny amount of progressive-thinking, alternative-oriented individuals. Some of these individuals went on to form numerous rock and roll bands, but this has been discussed elsewhere. That said, however, you can understand my access to independant music, Christian or otherwise.
Via Christian bookstores, mail-order catalogs, and the burgeoning medium of the Internet, and by the recommendation of my friends, I managed to amass a pretty diverse collection of "indie" Christian rock bands....
[INTERLUDE: Picture it: Florida, 1993. The summer before my freshman year in high school. I'm with my mom in a gigantic Christian bookstore in Ft. Myers. There's a set of headphones and an impressive amount of demos to listen to. I pick several CDs based on album covers alone. One of them is an album by a band called Joy Electric. The album cover is solid white, with the name of the band written in a mixture of green letters, candy canes, and red flowers. Go figure. Looked "alternative" enough. I popped the CD in and pressed play. What came through the speakers assaulted every musical sense I possessed at the time. It sounded like a gay British chick singing over Casio-keyboard Nintendo music. I quickly pressed the Stop button and ejected the CD. Definitely a non-purchase.]
.... Chief among them was Starflyer 59. At the time, SF59 could've been considered a "shoegazer" band. ["Shoegazer" rock originated in Great Britain (arguably by the band My Bloody Valentine) in the late 80's, early 90's, and "stayed cool" till about 1997. It was characterized by massive droning "walls of sound" created by the electric guitar (or sampler), overlaid with beautiful, romantic melodies and ethereal, almost whispered, vocals.]
One of SF59's earlier albums, the She's the Queen EP, came out in 1994, my freshman year. One of the tracks on the EP was a remix of the song "Blue Collar Love" by a band called Joy Electric. (Turns out the man behind Joy Electric is the brother of the man behind Starflyer 59). I hated that track at first, and I skipped it all the time. But then one day I listened to it... I really listened to it... And it sounded different. I played the remix again. And again.
And over and over again. It became my favorite song. My favorite song, ever. I didn't understand why... I couldn't understand why... But the song sounded... right. The sounds, the audible textures created by the synthesizers, they sounded... perfect. Every note was perfectly placed, every robot-like noise, every electronic bubble, they were all in perfect resonance, in perfect harmony. The warbling, rumbling bass, the spooky melody, the sampled drum loop... everything seemed to fit.
This astonished me. There I was, devoted to rock and roll, to the rawness and charisma of the electric guitar... and yet I was being swept away by the laser-guided melodies of synthetic groove.
But it wasn't techno. Sure, there were 4/4 beats, and 200 BPM tempos sometimes, but underneath the drum machines and electronic bass-lines were unforgettable and consistantly catchy pop melodies that burrowed like sandworms into your brain.
Back then, around 1994, the Internet hadn't really taken off yet. Mail order was still mostly via catalog. At the time, Tooth and Nail Records (Joy Electric's label) did a really neat thing by packaging catalogs with their CDs, so if you bought one of their CDs from a bookstore, through mail-order, whatever, you had a catalog there to browse through. And they did another really neat thing (for us music idiots) by adding a "Recommended if you like (blank)" beneath the albums being advertised. Through one of the catalogs I ordered the first two Joy Electric albums, Melody and Five Stars for Failure.
...The Melody Years
For two years, that album was my life. I lived and breathed Melody. I studied the electronic textures beat by beat, and memorized every blip, bleep, and boing. Like a monk I transcibed the lyrics by hand while listening to the album at night on my Discman. Where ever I went, I made people listen to it. If they came over, it's all I played for them. "Do you hear the sounds, man? Aren't they awesome? Listen to the melodies! They're so beautiful... so catchy!" Almost no one liked what they heard.
"This sounds like Nintendo music."
"He sounds like a girl."
"It's too... happy."
"There's no guitars."
When my algebra teacher, Mr. Ludwig, found out I was such a huge fan, he did one of the nicest things ever and went out and bought me the now famous Melody-logo Joy Electric t-shirt (my favorite Joy Electric t-shirt of all time, which I still own and wear). I tried to wear that shirt as much as possible, to school, to movies, to the mall, everywhere... I used it as a way to weed out the cool people from the ignorant people. If someone approached me and would say something about my shirt, I'd know they were instantly cool. The sad thing is, no one EVER said anything to me about my shirt. Just, "What's Joy Electric?" Which, of course, gave me the most excellent opportunity to share with them the gospel of synthpop music...
...I Sing Electric
I think the reason why I love Joy Electric so much is because no one else is producing music quite like this. A lot of bands come close, some from the past, some present, but there has never been a musician quite like Ronnie Martin (the frontman behind JE). He's managed to take the best aspects of electronic musis and pop music and fused it with a progressive rock mentality.
I still use Joy Electric as a coolometer. Anybody who's ever heard of, or, more importantly, owns a copy of a Joy Electric album is automatically cool in my eyes. Only people with a certain music aesthetic can appreciate, let on listen to, a full-length JE album. Like any fans of indie bands or underground musicians, we're rabid and tenacious. We'll proselytize on the streets and in your homes; we'll force you to listen to him in our cars; we'll purchase everything Ronnie produces, or is remotely associated with. He could make an album of yukelele nursery rhymes and I'd still probably buy it.
It's been eleven years, and Joy Electric is still going strong. Ronnie Martin is one of the most prolific artists of our time; he pumps out a full-length album about once a year, and fills the time in-between with short-length EPs, singles, and remixes. I'm proud to say I own all but two EPs and one single. My collection boasts two vinyl LPs, a 8" vinyl single, two videos, a hand-written letter from Ronnie himself, numerous pictures from shows, stickers, posters, postcards, and over a dozen albums.
There's something about the Laserboy's synthesized melodies that I find warm, enchanting, and uplifting. They're also very sad. In the end, though, you can consider Joy Electric one of my dearest obsessions.
Those of you who are Christian understand the transformational process that usually proceeds salvation. As the spirit becomes more aligned with both the heart and the mind, familiar patterns in life begin to take on a whole new meaning.
Case in point: music. On a youth trip to Gatlinburg one year, I found a booth selling Christian rock and roll. Coming from a purely secular background, the idea seemed oxymoronic to me. Christian rock and roll? At the time, I thought (and I'll be honest), "Could anything be more pussyfied?" Of course, the irony fascinated me. How could it be done? So I went to the bookstore at Bryan College and bought my very first Christian rock and roll album ever, The Choir's Speckled Bird. I brought it home, unwrapped the packaging, and put it into the CD player.
I don't know what I expected, but what came out of the speakers, and what I heard that day, dropped a bomb on me. There was an entire universe of music out there, music created by Believers, Brothers and Sisters, that bypassed the Praise & Worship and Michael W. Smith sections and went straight to the youths on fire.
Rhea County High School, for being a teaching institution smack in the middle of Redneck Nowhere, produced an uncanny amount of progressive-thinking, alternative-oriented individuals. Some of these individuals went on to form numerous rock and roll bands, but this has been discussed elsewhere. That said, however, you can understand my access to independant music, Christian or otherwise.
Via Christian bookstores, mail-order catalogs, and the burgeoning medium of the Internet, and by the recommendation of my friends, I managed to amass a pretty diverse collection of "indie" Christian rock bands....
[INTERLUDE: Picture it: Florida, 1993. The summer before my freshman year in high school. I'm with my mom in a gigantic Christian bookstore in Ft. Myers. There's a set of headphones and an impressive amount of demos to listen to. I pick several CDs based on album covers alone. One of them is an album by a band called Joy Electric. The album cover is solid white, with the name of the band written in a mixture of green letters, candy canes, and red flowers. Go figure. Looked "alternative" enough. I popped the CD in and pressed play. What came through the speakers assaulted every musical sense I possessed at the time. It sounded like a gay British chick singing over Casio-keyboard Nintendo music. I quickly pressed the Stop button and ejected the CD. Definitely a non-purchase.]
.... Chief among them was Starflyer 59. At the time, SF59 could've been considered a "shoegazer" band. ["Shoegazer" rock originated in Great Britain (arguably by the band My Bloody Valentine) in the late 80's, early 90's, and "stayed cool" till about 1997. It was characterized by massive droning "walls of sound" created by the electric guitar (or sampler), overlaid with beautiful, romantic melodies and ethereal, almost whispered, vocals.]
One of SF59's earlier albums, the She's the Queen EP, came out in 1994, my freshman year. One of the tracks on the EP was a remix of the song "Blue Collar Love" by a band called Joy Electric. (Turns out the man behind Joy Electric is the brother of the man behind Starflyer 59). I hated that track at first, and I skipped it all the time. But then one day I listened to it... I really listened to it... And it sounded different. I played the remix again. And again.
And over and over again. It became my favorite song. My favorite song, ever. I didn't understand why... I couldn't understand why... But the song sounded... right. The sounds, the audible textures created by the synthesizers, they sounded... perfect. Every note was perfectly placed, every robot-like noise, every electronic bubble, they were all in perfect resonance, in perfect harmony. The warbling, rumbling bass, the spooky melody, the sampled drum loop... everything seemed to fit.
This astonished me. There I was, devoted to rock and roll, to the rawness and charisma of the electric guitar... and yet I was being swept away by the laser-guided melodies of synthetic groove.
But it wasn't techno. Sure, there were 4/4 beats, and 200 BPM tempos sometimes, but underneath the drum machines and electronic bass-lines were unforgettable and consistantly catchy pop melodies that burrowed like sandworms into your brain.
Back then, around 1994, the Internet hadn't really taken off yet. Mail order was still mostly via catalog. At the time, Tooth and Nail Records (Joy Electric's label) did a really neat thing by packaging catalogs with their CDs, so if you bought one of their CDs from a bookstore, through mail-order, whatever, you had a catalog there to browse through. And they did another really neat thing (for us music idiots) by adding a "Recommended if you like (blank)" beneath the albums being advertised. Through one of the catalogs I ordered the first two Joy Electric albums, Melody and Five Stars for Failure.
...The Melody Years
For two years, that album was my life. I lived and breathed Melody. I studied the electronic textures beat by beat, and memorized every blip, bleep, and boing. Like a monk I transcibed the lyrics by hand while listening to the album at night on my Discman. Where ever I went, I made people listen to it. If they came over, it's all I played for them. "Do you hear the sounds, man? Aren't they awesome? Listen to the melodies! They're so beautiful... so catchy!" Almost no one liked what they heard.
"This sounds like Nintendo music."
"He sounds like a girl."
"It's too... happy."
"There's no guitars."
When my algebra teacher, Mr. Ludwig, found out I was such a huge fan, he did one of the nicest things ever and went out and bought me the now famous Melody-logo Joy Electric t-shirt (my favorite Joy Electric t-shirt of all time, which I still own and wear). I tried to wear that shirt as much as possible, to school, to movies, to the mall, everywhere... I used it as a way to weed out the cool people from the ignorant people. If someone approached me and would say something about my shirt, I'd know they were instantly cool. The sad thing is, no one EVER said anything to me about my shirt. Just, "What's Joy Electric?" Which, of course, gave me the most excellent opportunity to share with them the gospel of synthpop music...
...I Sing Electric
I think the reason why I love Joy Electric so much is because no one else is producing music quite like this. A lot of bands come close, some from the past, some present, but there has never been a musician quite like Ronnie Martin (the frontman behind JE). He's managed to take the best aspects of electronic musis and pop music and fused it with a progressive rock mentality.
I still use Joy Electric as a coolometer. Anybody who's ever heard of, or, more importantly, owns a copy of a Joy Electric album is automatically cool in my eyes. Only people with a certain music aesthetic can appreciate, let on listen to, a full-length JE album. Like any fans of indie bands or underground musicians, we're rabid and tenacious. We'll proselytize on the streets and in your homes; we'll force you to listen to him in our cars; we'll purchase everything Ronnie produces, or is remotely associated with. He could make an album of yukelele nursery rhymes and I'd still probably buy it.
It's been eleven years, and Joy Electric is still going strong. Ronnie Martin is one of the most prolific artists of our time; he pumps out a full-length album about once a year, and fills the time in-between with short-length EPs, singles, and remixes. I'm proud to say I own all but two EPs and one single. My collection boasts two vinyl LPs, a 8" vinyl single, two videos, a hand-written letter from Ronnie himself, numerous pictures from shows, stickers, posters, postcards, and over a dozen albums.
There's something about the Laserboy's synthesized melodies that I find warm, enchanting, and uplifting. They're also very sad. In the end, though, you can consider Joy Electric one of my dearest obsessions.
posted by Billy at 11:50 AM
2 Comments:
Joy E ruled my world when I was in high school too. Great, great stuff.
I have most of the newer albums, along with two vinyls and a 7 inch... also got a copy of Rainbow Rider from a friend, which is the project Ronnie was in before Joy E and after Dance House Children (I have 2 cassettes of DHC stuff, it's not quite as cool).
If you can't find Rainbow Rider anywhere, let me know and I could... um... hook you up. Someone like me, but legally distinct from me has a copy he could send you.
peace, brock76
Talk about a small world... I attended a youth camp several summers at Bryan College! Dayton, TN... same one???
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