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[B. Oliver Sheppard]

Here are the 5 paragraphs that deal with Killing Joke in --

Simon Reynolds' 402 page _Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1979 - 
1984_ (Penguin Books, 2005).

The five paragraphs are in the section on goth near the end of the book:



"If Bauhaus, the Banshees, and the Birthday Party were the crucial 
groups that bridged postpunk and Goth, Killing Joke was the fourth 
cornerstone of the Goth sound and sensibility. Like the other three 
bands, they started out as postpunk experimentalists. In Killing Joke's 
case, that meant following PiL's lead. In 1980, singer/keyboardist Jaz 
Coleman talked of wanting to keep the funk but strip away disco's 
'sugarshit' sheen, replacing it 'with mangled, distorted, searing 
noise.' This element came from guitarist Geordie, who transformed Kieth 
Levene's sound into something sulphuric, inhumane, practically inhuman. 
Coleman added jabs of atonal synth and electronic hums, along with the 
barked menace of his vocals, which sounded like he was choking on his 
own fury. 'Tension music,' the group called it.

"Initially, Killing Joke seemed vaguely political. Their striking 
seven-inch sleeves and micro-ads in the U.K. music press grabbed the eye 
with images of the pope receiving a Nazi salute from German troops or a 
top-hatted Fred Astaire tap dancing over a trench full of World War I 
corpses. The name Killing Joke, explained Coleman, condensed their whole 
worldview into a single phrase, 'the feeling of a guy in the First World 
War who's just about to run out the trenches ... and he knows his life 
is going to be gone in ten minutes and he thinks of that fucker back in 
Westminster who put him in tha position. That's the feeling that we're 
trying to project -- the Killing Joke.'

"Jaz Coleman was an unlikely protest singer, though. A high-caste 
Brahman Indian on his mother's side, Coleman was wealthy, well educated, 
and musically trained (after Killing Joke he became a classical 
composer). In almost pointed contrast to Coleman's accomplishment, 
Killing Joke was conceived as a barbarian entity. Paul Ferguson's beats 
were tribal and turbulent. Starting with their second album, _What's 
THIS For...!_ and reaching fruition on 1982's awesome _Revelations_, 
Killing Joke shook off the PiL influence (all the dub and death disco 
trappings) and emerged as something closer to Black Sabbath: doomy, 
tribalistic rock that exulted in its visions of darkness and the 
apocalypse.

"Coleman saw Killing Joke's music as 'warning sounds for an age of 
self-destruction.' The end was nigh ('I'll give it eighteen months,' he 
said in 1981), but Coleman was glad. The aftermath was 'the period of 
time I'm looking towards at the moment,' he said, when a new, brutally 
instinct-attuned _un_civilization would emerge phoenixlike from the 
smoking ruins. Coleman told NME, 'I see a more savage world ahead, 
right? It's music that inflames the heart.' Fire was Killing Jokes 
favorite of the four elements. They even recruited a fire eater, Dave 
the Wizard, to do his act on stage with the band. 'Fire to me is 
symbolic of the will power,' declared Jaz. 'I think the power of the 
individual is really underestimated.' Yet it seemed more the case that 
Killing Joke's music exalted the power of the mob.

"Goth's appeal to the irrational and primal could sometimes stray into 
troubling territory, something Killing Joke exemplified. Coleman's 
rhetoric -- reveling in male energy, describing war as the natural state 
of the world, jubilantly heralding Armageddon -- veered unnervingly 
close to that dodgy zone between Nietzschean and Nazi. 'The violence 
that is Killing Joke is about is not violence on the immediate level but 
the _mass_ violence, the violence bubbling up underneath your feet, the 
violence of nature throwing up,' Coleman solemnly proclaimed. 'And we 
_become_ that violence.' Even some Goths felt there was a faintly 
fascistic aura to the vibe catalyzed by Killing Joke at their gigs."


[from July 7, 2007 post to list]






B. Oliver Sheppard wrote:

> Actually, 5 paragraphs devoted to Killing Joke in Simon Reynolds bok, 

> near the back, in the section on goth. And they're not very flattering 

> paragraphs, really.

>

> (I posted all 5 paragraphs fromt he book to the list maybe a month 

> ago. Reynolds said the Killing Joke -- and he spoke of them in the 

> past tense, too -- were somewhere between Nietzschean and Nazi. No 

> kidding.)

>

> -Oliver

>

>

>

>

>>>

>>> PS: I had another interview a day earlier with the culture editor of 

>>> a reputable media outlet, and we similarly ended up talking about 

>>> music. Turns out her husband is none other than Simon Reynolds, the 

>>> celebrated music critic who wrote the arguably authoritative 

>>> post-punk tome, "Rip It Up And Start Again" (75 pages devoted to 

>>> Scritti Politti, 9 pages devoted to Killing Joke).

>>>

>>>

>>

>