Too Much Joy

All Music Guide:

Too Much Joy was part of the explosion of collegiate comedy rock in the late '80s, distinguishing themselves with a more mature side than the Dead Milkmen and a simpler, speedier punk-pop approach than the arty King Missile. Starting out via the independent route, the band spent several years on a major label before drifting from view. Although they never had the breakout MTV novelty hit that some of their peers managed, they had an amusing ride along the way -- they were sued by Bozo the Clown over a sample, arrested in Florida for performing a set of 2 Live Crew songs, and had a song briefly adopted by Newt Gingrich's congressional campaign.

Too Much Joy were formed by four high-school friends in Scarsdale, NY, a mostly upper-middle-class suburb north of New York City in Westchester County. Vocalist Tim Quirk, guitarist Jay Blumenfield, bassist Sandy Smallens, and drummer Tommy Vinton first started playing together in 1981, when they were all in tenth grade. Calling themselves the Rave, their repertoire initially consisted of Clash covers, but they began to work in original material when they realized that their audience wouldn't know any better. When the quartet graduated from high school in 1983, they split to attend separate colleges, but kept the band going during their breaks from school, occasionally making self-financed recordings in a small studio. Eventually they settled on the name Too Much Joy, allegedly taken from a phrase Quirk had scribbled on paper while tripping on mushrooms.

Too Much Joy reunited to give music a real shot in 1987, when all of them had graduated from college, and compiled their recordings of the past four years into a debut album. Green Eggs and Crack was released by the small Stonegarden label that year, and the smart-alecky humor of songs like "Drum Machine" helped earn them a small collegiate following and a deal with the southern California indie Alias. Their second album, the more consistent and musically accomplished Son of Sam I Am, appeared in 1988, and featured a cover of LL Cool J's "That's a Lie." It also introduced the song "Clowns" with an unintentionally suggestive soundbite from a Bozo the Clown record; when the band explained the source of the sample in interviews, Bozo caught wind, sued them, and forced its removal from subsequent pressings of the album.

Son of Sam I Am earned Too Much Joy a major-label contract with Warner subsidiary Giant, which re-released the band's sophomore album in 1990. While waiting for their major-label debut, Cereal Killers, to be mixed for release, the band caught a news report on the arrest of the 2 Live Crew by Broward County authorities for performing obscene material. As a protest against censorship, Too Much Joy flew to Florida and performed a highly publicized club show on August 10 that featured a generous selection of songs from the 2 Live Crew's As Nasty as They Wanna Be album. They were duly arrested, thrown in jail for a night, and charged with obscenity, giving a substantial boost to the release of Cereal Killers in 1991. The single "Crush Story" was a college radio hit, and songs like "Long Haired Guys from England," "Theme Song," "King of Beers," and "Thanksgiving in Reno" helped expand their cult significantly. A supporting EP, Besides, coupled the album's core ballad, "Nothing on My Mind," with outtakes like the infamous "Take a Lot of Drugs."

Too Much Joy returned in 1992 with Mutiny, which found both their lyrics and musicianship heading down a more mature path (albeit with slightly less polished production than its slick-sounding predecessor). The lead single, "Donna Everywhere," got some more attention from college radio, but on the whole, the band's cleverly ironic sense of humor was much less in evidence, and some of the following they'd won with Cereal Killers began to lose interest. Giant dropped them in 1993, and bassist Smallens decided to leave in 1994; he was replaced by Mutiny producer William Wittman. Also in 1994, a Too Much Joy fan who was working for Newt Gingrich convinced the Congressman to adopt TMJ's "Theme Song" as a campaign anthem; Gingrich agreed, but quickly backed off when he found that the band also recorded songs like "Take a Lot of Drugs."

After a long layoff, TMJ signed with Discovery and issued ...Finally in 1996, which continued on the path to musical and lyrical maturity, while returning them to the less polished punk attack of their earlier albums. The band subsequently went on an unofficial hiatus, as its members followed day jobs that took them to different parts of the country. They did manage another release in 1999's Gods & Sods, a collection of B-sides, rarities, outtakes, and the like that appeared on the small California indie Sugar Fix (which also reissued Green Eggs and Crack with three new tracks from 1993). Although TMJ seems to be defunct (or at least "on hiatus"), masterminds Quirk and Blumenfeld continue their musical explorations as the group Wonderlick who released their self-titled debut in 2002.

Wikipedia:

Too Much Joy is an American alternative rock music group. The band formed in the early 1980s in Scarsdale, New York.

Members

The original members were Tim Quirk (vocals), Jay Blumenfield (guitar, vocals), Sandy Smallens (bass, vocals) and Tommy Vinton (drums). During 1982-1983 Tommy LaRussa temporarily replaced Vinton as drummer. Smallens departed on amicable terms in 1994; producer William Wittman joined on bass guitar and vocals after Smallens's departure. Blumenfield was also in Fields Laughing (who released an EP in 1985 on Stonegarden Records) and Smallens was also in Beauty Constant (whose Like The Enemy LP was issued in 1987), Wittman continues to play with Cyndi Lauper.

History

The band, originally called The Rave, took the name Too Much Joy after a phrase Quirk found written down after his first mushroom trip.[1]

After the success of their third album Cereal Killers, TMJ released several other studio albums, but none achieved the same popular success. In 1997, TMJ announced a hiatus, saying that the commercialism of the music business had taken the "joy" out of performing. Too Much Joy emptied its vaults in 1999 and 2001 to produce the album Gods and Sods, composed of studio outtakes and demos from the period between Mutiny and ...Finally and the live album, Live at Least. The later incarnation of the band briefly reunited in the early 2000s to record the one-off holiday single, "Ruby Left a Present Underneath the Christmas Tree." Although TMJ remains inactive, if not technically defunct, its members have since formed the sometimes overlapping subprojects The ITS, Surface Wound, and Wonderlick.

TMJ found themselves with celebrity fans Penn and Teller, to the point where Penn directed the video for Donna Everywhere,. Penn liked the guys in the band so much that he took the opportunity to jam with them in the studio when the opportunity presented itself.

2007 Reunion

While never officially broken up, the entire band performed for the first time in 10 years on May 4, 2007 at the Knitting Factory in New York City. The opening band, The Final Stand, included Tommy Vinton's son Tommy on drums and Sandy Smallens' son Ziya on bass, followed by New Jersey's The Impulse. Both TMJ bassists, Sandy Smallens and William Wittman, took part in the performance, trading between second guitar and bass. The concert was a celebration of drummer Tommy Vinton's retirement from the NYPD.

Legal issues

Bozo the Clown lawsuit

TMJ were sued by Bozo the Clown for including a sample taken from a Bozo the Clown album in the intro to the song "Clowns" on the independent release of Son of Sam I Am. The five-second sample ("I found something in one of my pockets. It was about as big as your shoe, but it was shaped like a rocket!") was pulled from the track when the album was re-released by Warner Bros. Records. The song "Clowns" went on to be used in the soundtrack to the movie Shakes the Clown (also without the sample).

Florida arrest

In 1990, the members of Too Much Joy were taken aback to learn that hip-hop group 2 Live Crew had been arrested on obscenity charges in Florida, and that a record store owner had been arrested for selling their music. In response, the band planned a protest concert in which several acts would cover a 2 Live Crew song in Miami. Failing to drum up much commitment among other bands, Too Much Joy themselves played a number of selections from the Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be album, and wound up spending a night in jail. Tim Quirk recalled the incident in an interview with The Onion A.V. Club. [1]

Secret Service

Lead singer Quirk was detained by the Secret Service after a performance where he made a joke about strangling President Clinton. Although the band believed that President Clinton's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was in the audience at the time, reality was that the Secret Service contingent was there to 'protect' an obscure foreign ambassador. It being a longstanding Too Much Joy tradition to tell an obvious lie in the break section of their version of the L.L. Cool J song, "That's A Lie", Quirk explained at some length that the band was well aware of the presence of agents with coily cords in their ears and that the Secret Service was "not famous for their sense of humor". So it was explained further that the song was called "That's A Lie" and that the band is known to tell a lie at this point in the song at which point "my friends will jump in and sing 'that's a lie'... so If I were to, for example, say that I voted for President Clinton but when I see him eviscerating the Bill of Rights it makes me want to strangle him, you'll understand that I don't mean it because..." and then the band came in singing "that's a lie". This would have been the end of the story but apparently the Secret Service felt obligated to take it as a serious "threat". Two hours later, at the end of the show, they detained the band and questioned Quirk until they were satisfied that the band was not in fact on a mission to assassinate Clinton. Apparently they never heard, over the noise of the crowd, that Tim had announced the next song ("I Want To Poison Your Mind") as "I Want To Poison The President."

Reviews

TMJ was compared to musical contemporaries They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies because of its unconventional style, grassroots fan appeal, and quirky yet honest and insightful lyrics like:

We sleep on floors and live on crumbs, We're a bunch of ugly bums. A great idea when we were smashed... Turning anger into cash. To create, you must destroy. Smash a glass and cry... Too Much JoyTheme Song, (Cereal Killers, 1991)

Green Eggs and Crack

The band's first LP, entitled Green Eggs and Crack was released in 1987 on the small Stonegarden label; it collected material the band had recorded during the previous four years during college breaks, as well as during their senior year of high school for Quirk, Blumenfield and Smallens and freshman year for LaRussa. LaRussa appears as drummer for "James Dean's Jacket" and "Don Quixote." All other tracks have Vinton on drums. Allmusic describes the album's songs as "often extremely clever and catchy," although "clearly the work of over-educated, under-employed, upper-middle class kids with far too much time on their hands". [1] When the album was re-released in 2002, The Onion called it "a thinly produced, underwhelming record recorded by teenagers, and charming mostly for reasons revolving around sentiment and potential", while the band's Quirk described the long out-of-print record as the perfect legend: "a cool title that people could talk about and search for without any real chance of ever actually hearing it". [2] But college radio's attraction to quirky songs like "Drum Machine" paved the way for a wider reception for the band's subsequent recordings.

Son of Sam I Am

The band's next release, on the independent Alias label, was Son of Sam I Am in 1989. This album was Re-released by Giant/Warner Brothers in 1990 with two extra tracks: "If I Was a Mekon" and "Seasons in the Sun" and minus the introduction to Clowns (see above).

This album features the crowd favorite L.L. Cool J cover "That's A Lie" and was always performed with "The Big Lie", which was a lie composed for the show or tour that seemed reasonably plausible (throwing keys into the audience for the after party at the Holiday Inn for example).

Cereal Killers

Too Much Joy's 1991 LP Cereal Killers, released by Warner Bros. Records, met with some popularity on college radio and alternative radio stations rotations all over the U.S., with the song "Good Kill" featuring the rising hip-hop star KRS-ONE. The single "Crush Story" made it to #17 on the U.S. Modern Rock chart in 1991. This album features the epicenter of the "Joy" universe by offering "Theme Song" which is sung drunkenly at the end of Too Much Joy shows by band and fans alike.