Jesus Jones
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Jesus Jones is a British London-based rock group that recorded and performed in the late 1980s, throughout the 1990s, and into the 2000s.
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[edit] History
Incorporating elements of electronic music styles such as house and techno to an indie rock format, along with fellow British groups such as The Shamen, Pop Will Eat Itself and EMF, Jesus Jones were one of the leading purveyors of the early 1990s "indie dance" scene. The band is led by Mike Edwards.
They achieved initial critical acclaim with their 1989 album Liquidizer, and in particular, the single Info Freako, which featured buzzing rock guitars with samples and a hip-hop sensibility, relatively new for the time. They are best known for the track Right Here, Right Now on the 1991 album Doubt. It is a song about the swift end of the Cold War, and was a Top 5 hit in both the U.S. and the UK; and which was resurrected a decade later as an advertising jingle for the American retailer Kmart, an image campaign for CBS News, and was used in promotional advertisements for the now defunct TV channel, TechTV.
Other hit singles from the Doubt album included "Real, Real, Real" and "International Bright Young Thing". In the year that Doubt was released, Jesus Jones won the "Best Newcomer" award at the MTV awards.
The follow up to Doubt was Perverse which, although a big seller, did not reach the worldwide hit status of Doubt. The fourth album, after a hiatus of some years, was the ironically titled Already, after which Jesus Jones and their record label EMI parted company. The band remained in contact and came back with London in 2001 on the indie record label Mi5 Recordings, which was critically praised[citation needed], but not a big seller. EMI issued Never Enough, a collection of greatest hits whilst, in the meantime, the band moved from the North American-only Mi5 to the newly established Mi5 Recordings UK.
In 2004 they released the EP "Culture Vulture", whilst in 2005 DJ and record producer Robbie Riviera had a club hit with a remix of "Right Here Right Now", but did not manage to follow his previous single "Bang" into the Top 40.
[edit] Musical Innovators
Jesus Jones are less widely known as musical innovators as band leader Mike Edwards is a enthusiastic proponent of new music technology and presented a brief BBC Radio series describing its history. Some reviews of the songs on the bands first album - produced by legendary Blondie producer Craig Leon - described them as lacking structure, but this was perhaps to miss the point: as the title Liquidizer suggested, the album was more of a call to arms for the new sampling technology, throwing in literally everything but the kitchen sink. Few albums can claim to contain within a few minutes of each other samples as diverse as Big Black, Star Trek and Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares.
Their first producer Craig Leon described them as "easily the loudest band in history" which is disturbingly similar to the way writer Douglas Adams described his fictional rock band Disaster Area: "not just the loudest rock band of all time, but the loudest noise of any kind, ever".
The 3rd album, Perverse lays claim to being the first rock album recorded entirely digitally and in fact contains - remarkably - no actual live guitars; hence the title.
[edit] Trivia
Allegedly, while vacationing in Spain, the band noticed they were "Joneses" (Brits) surrounded by people named 'Jesus', hence the name "Jesus Jones". The Frank Herbert novel "The Jesus Incident" also includes a major character of the same name.
[edit] Cultural references
In the animated series Family Guy, in the episode Road To Europe, Stewie and Brian are stranded in the Middle East after embarking on the wrong plane. When learning that Middle Easterners only heard 1980s rock music recently, Stewie pities them once they have to “suffer through” Jesus Jones.
The Venture Bros. episode "Twenty Years to Midnight" contains the following exchange:
Pirate Captain: Jesus Jones, now there was a band. Yuppers, back in the summer of '91, we all thought they was gonna be the future of rock 'n roll.
Dr. Jonas Venture, Jr.: They sound great.
Pirate Captain: Were great.
Dr. Jonas Venture, Jr.: They're not around any more?
Pirate Captain: No sir... not so's anyone would notice, anyway.
[edit] Band members
- Mike Edwards (born Michael James Edwards, 22 June 1964 in London) - Vocals, guitars, keyboards.
- Jerry De Borg (born 30 October 1963 in Kentish Town, London) - Guitars.
- Al Doughty - (born Alan Jaworski, 31 January 1966 in Plymouth) - Bass.
- Iain Baker (born Iain Richard Foxwell Baker, 29 September 1965 in Carshalton, Surrey) - Keyboards, programming.
- Gen - (born Simon Matthews, 23 April 1964 in Devizes, Wiltshire) - Drums, additional percussion.
[edit] Discography
| Year | Title | Label | Other information |
| 1989 | Liquidizer | Food | reissued in 2002 (label: Food) |
| 1989 | "Info Freako" | Food | |
| 1989 | "Never Enough" | Food | |
| 1989 | "Bring It On Down" | Food | |
| 1990 | "Real Real Real" | Food | |
| 1990 | "Right Here Right Now" | Food | |
| 1990 | "International Bright Young Thing" | Food | |
| 1991 | Doubt | Food | reissued in 2002 (label: EMI) |
| 1991 | "Who? Where? Why?" | Food | |
| 1991 | "Right Here Right Now" Re-release | Food | |
| 1992 | "The Devil You Know" | Food | |
| 1993 | Perverse | Food | |
| 1993 | "The Right Decision" | Food | |
| 1993 | "Zeroes And Ones" | Food | |
| 1993 | Scratched album (Japan only) | EMI | |
| 1997 | Already | Food | |
| 1997 | "The Next Big Thing" | Food | |
| 1997 | "Chemical No.1" | Food | |
| 1999 | Greatest Hits Album Japan Only | EMI | |
| 2001 | London | Mi5 Recordings/Koch | |
| 2002 | "Nowhere Slow" | Mi5 Recordings/Koch | |
| 2002 | "Come On Home" | Liberty | |
| 2002 | "In The Face Of All Of This" | Mi5 Recordings/Koch | |
| 2002 | Never Enough: the Best of Jesus Jones | EMI | |
| 2004 | "Culture Vulture" | Mi5 Recordings UK | |
| 2005 | "Right Here Right Now" (Robbie Rivera featuring Jesus Jones) | Nebula |
