I was watching "School of Rock" the other night. (good show)

One of the tunes in the soundtrack was a new recording of the heavy riffs in 'Complications' from the First Album. Just hearing the riffs took me back to early college days. ('81-'82) A time in my life when things were totally in flux and imperfect. So I hear ya and feel ya.

Totally pricked up my Killing Joke ears. Now I've been jamming KJ in the car for the fucked up LA commutes. Helps to relieve the stress.

KJ is by far one of the most under-rated bands in rock history!

Does anybody actually know what a PANDY is? (last track side one of KILLING JOKE-REVELATIONS-HERE COME THE PANDIES)

Killing Joke are a band I have followed for many years so their meaning to me has altered with time.

In the days that punk (I beleived in the DIY ethics of punk wholeheartedly) was dying out and I was in despair over my life, my fucked up relationship, my homelessness and the future of music, a friend, who was allowing me to sleep on his floor/smoke all his grass introduced me to Killing Joke.

Their music became a focal point for my aggression , paranoia and substance abuse.

I even remixed a version of change to last 30 minutes so I had a good tune to fuck to when I met my subsequent GF.

The second album came out, then Ha! and Revelations, then Fire Dances and I was still with the same GF. I recall her collaring Jaz at Sheffield Top Rank on the Fire Dances tour and telling him we fucked to their music. He put us on the guest list for the Liverpool Royal Court (I think was the venue.. or Empire) and I turned up there with a new girl, and got drunk with the opening band (Crown of Thorns) and watched Joke from the wings.

Subsequently I saw them loads of times as each album produced yet another tour, but they failed to generate anty excitement until they played the Leadmill, Sheffield at the same time they launched 'Odic', and invited me to the Porchester gig.

I hitched down the night before, and with all my money hidden in my para boots pleaded poverty when some bikers started talking to me on Portobello Road. I ended up being dragged to a pub and drinking with Hells Angels all afternoon, at their expense, then they gave me a lift to Porchester Hall. Fuck I was shitfaced. The security staff had to help me up the stairs.

One of them pinned a 'helicopter' enamel badge onto the lapel of my leather bike jacket, it took a week for me to see anything significant in this.

There was a buffet, I picked up a bowl of tartare sauce and asked around for a spoon. Somebody dressed as a jester took me to the bar where some fool gave me one. I ate the whole fucking bowl, under the misapprehension that it was some kind of yoghurt.

Then fell asleep.

I woke up at various points of the evening, ended up leaving as Phil and a bunch of others were frantically packing stuff away, Geordie was around looking coked off his head but acting cool.

I decided to walk to my accomodation for the night at a Generals house in Westminster and ended up picking up some chick in a Kreator T-shirt en route somewhere, and sobered up pretty damn quick, thanks in no part to the generals batman providing numerous mugs of black turkish.

Next I saw 'em was airing more material from Extremities at Kilburn National Ballroom, no women that night, in fact the only offer I got was an absolutely humungous goth girl from Leeds, but having dropped three tabs of the finest that Amsterdam has to offer, a woman not on my wavelength was the last thing I needed.

Onto the Extremities tour next, fucking blinding. Got on the guest list no probs at Sheffield Uni, dropped two tabs of window pane and its the most bass heavy I have heard Joke (up until the Death and Resurrection tour) excellent opening number 'Inside the Termite Mound' followed by an amazingly atmospheric set really blew me away and had me rocking for weeks.

I kind of lost interest in Joke for the Democracy tour (hated the album) but took my latest love to see them last time round... strange situation, I was stage right at Sheffield Leadmill taking a few snaps of Raven with my dogs-bollocks digital camera when all of a sudden this arabic looking dude lunged at me and tried to grab my camera. I found it on the floor but it'd burst open and spilled the batteries, so pocketing it, I sought out this guy and smashed him square on in the face.

He came back at me, instead of trying to punch me he was trying to throttle me, so I punched him a couple more times and he let go and faded into the crowd. That wasn't the end of it though because at various stages of the night he again lunged at me and tried to throttle me, with the same result every time, I'd land one on him, he'd let go and disappear, only to attack me again twenty minutes later.

After the show, I was in the bar room when he walked in and was waiting to be served so I walked up to him, tapped him on the shoulder, he ran like fuck, telling the bouncers I had a knife on his way out. I allowed security to search me, no knife of course, but the weird bastard had disappeared.

So, Killing Joke represent a whole range of memories to me. Sex, drugs, violence, its all there.....

This is a little blurb I posted on my own blog re: the upcoming Hosannas Cd, but it has a quick thumbnail of what Killing Joke mean to me:

MARCH 6TH, 2006
I was cruising YouTube last night and found the first video from Killing Joke's new CD (release April 3rd), "Hosannas From the Basements of Hell" (always so cheerful, ne?), and to me, it heralds a return to the blood and thunder days of the Killing Joke of old. While I did enjoy their 2003 release (the one with "The Death and Resurrection Show"), it was still somehow...lacking a certain something that I always expect from a KJ CD (the same missing link that prevented me from keeping my copies of "Pandemonium" and "Democracy"). It had hints of that missing element, but it never quite came through.

THIS song does. This is the way you expect KJ to be-menacing, off-putting in a visceral way, a bit crazy in the head. The video is classic, with Jaz made up in horrid, homeless Death Clown drag and running around brandishing a torch. Add the eating of entrails and a parade of mentally unstable-looking homeless people shambling around a sewer in Prague and you've got yourself some video fun!

I've been following Killing Joke since their inception, way back in, like, 1980 when the first self-titled album (yes, the shit was on vinyl back then!) came out, and I'd never heard such sounds! Droning keyboards, tribal drums, and this skittery little guitar that always sounded like it was just about to go very seriously OFF on its own tangent at any given moment. And the vocals--this was some of the angriest dance music Hell hath ever spawned. It was a seeming car-crash of musical elements that just should not have gone together, and yet, somehow it was the most vital, heart-pumping stuff to come out of the time.

Later, the band started introducing more of their philosophy into the mix-a bit of pagan glory, Thelema and Crowleyan mysticism, High Ritual Magick-and there was a whole new reason to dig KJ. They gave you intellectual, spiritual food, AND music to dance to!

They are one of the few bands still around today without whom none of many of my other favorites (Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, any number of "Industrial" bands, etc.) would ever have existed. Killing Joke took chances making the music THEY wanted to make, with no concern for whether they'd chart or not. They were volatile, brutal, intelligent, and more than a little unhinged. They influenced me and my band mates back then to investigate paths of spiritual work that we may never had encountered otherwise. We adored their music, emulated it, woke up to it, went to sleep with it at night...they were the Sun in our tiny solar system.

And I'm very happy to say, they still are! Here's to 25 years, mates! We're all still alive, we're still angry and questing for the New Day, and we still want to drink and dance 'til the dawn to the beat of the drums!

Ta!

PS-to Geordie...we owe you a carton of blue label American Spirit, Bruh!