Category: News

While TMJ never really broke up, it’s become pretty rare for them to perform or record. And the most recent three songs they recorded have been a bit hard to acquire, as they were intended as part of Record Store Day releases and/or have only been available on vinyl.

But it’s almost Christmastime, so as a gift to fans we’re making them all available to stream for free here and now. If you want to give yourself a gift, you can also purchase digital downloads of the tunes. Or, if you’re some kind of Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire, who owns a mansion and a yacht and a turntable, you can buy the Deluxe Package, which includes a 7″ single with two of the songs on colored vinyl (you can still buy the Deluxe Package even if you don’t possess a turntable with which to play it, as the single is a lovely physical object that rewards you just for gazing upon it).

The songs are:

“We Are The Clash,” a cover of what might be the worst Clash song ever, but which the band had to do when they heard Crooked Beat were putting out a tribute to Cut The Crap (which was definitely the Clash’s worst LP ever), because We Are The Clash was one of the titles briefly considered but quickly rejected for what ultimately became Cereal Killers.

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“We Are Not The Clash,” a song TMJ wrote in the studio two years ago while banging out the cover song above.

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“Trash City,” a cover of one of the first (and best) Joe Strummer solo tunes, which TMJ recorded for a follow-up Record Store Day tribute LP released by Crooked Beat.

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If you’d like to own the songs, head on over to Bandcamp.

The most excellent Side One Dummy Records will be releasing a limited edition, colored-vinyl version of Too Much Joy’s 1991 “hit” album, Cereal Killers.

You can purchase it in blue or yellow vinyl plus a T-Shirt, or both blue and yellow if you can’t decide which color is prettiest, or both with the T-Shirt celebrating its vinyl-ness (the album didn’t originally come out on vinyl, unless you lived in Germany, in which case you got a version which bizarrely included “That’s a Lie” from Son of Sam I Am. But even if you were a German TMJ fan with a turntable in 1991, you could not get the album in pretty blue and/or yellow translucent vinyl, sequenced as the band intended. So you still need to buy this).

The album comes with brand-new liner notes about the recording process, and why the album title and cover art are so terrible, written by Tim with surprisingly few band-mandated edits.

We are excited by all this. We think you should be, too.

The other weekend, at an annual gathering called the Pop Conference, I gave a presentation called Budweiser Bought My Baby, which used my own experiences licensing music to sponsors to investigate the way indie bands’ and fans’ attitudes toward commercials have transformed over the last 30 years.

By popular demand (where “popular” = “2 people asked me”), I’m posting that presentation here. What follows is my own personal take — the other band members probably have their own opinions.

Full presentation after the jump: Read more “Budweiser Bought My Baby”

Too Much Joy were saddened by the news this week that the Hartsdale Cheesery has gone out of business. To pay tribute to this hometown institution (technically, it was an institution of the town next to TMJ’s hometown, or, if you were Tommy, who grew up in Eastchester, the town next to the town next to your hometown), we are naming “Pride of Frankenstein” our song of the week, as it is the only commercially released song we’re aware of ever to name check the Cheesery.

Sadly, that may be the most notable fact about the tune. It’s not my proudest moment as a lyricist, and the arrangement is charitably described as busy, which may be why it was played live all of twice before being retired from the set.  Some fans seemed to like it, though — one sent me a letter with an essay he’d written for a high school English class about the song.

The dude the song’s about really existed, and really did used to wander around Scarsdale and Hartsdale writing down the license plate numbers of all the parked cars in a little notebook he carried around just for that purpose. The bit about throwing rocks at him is dramatic license — not that I never did anything cruel to sad figures when I was a kid; I just don’t remember throwing rocks at him, specifically.

In a semi-related bit of trivia, one of the rare arguments I’ve had with my wife happened one night during a Scrabble game, when I scored a bingo playing “cheesery” using a Y that was already on the board. She challenged me. Turns out it’s not in the dictionary.

And now it’s not in Hartsdale, either.

Spinner.com just published a feature on bands with their own theme songs. They include TMJ at the end, so you have to scroll all the way down. Includes a gratuitous knock on the band. Sigh. Anyway, you can read it here: http://www.spinner.com/2009/11/18/band-theme-songs/

Also, NPR has been doing some end-of-decade coverage on their Monitor Mix blog. They surveyed a bunch of musicians and other industry-type folks. Today’s question is “What does “indie” mean to you. I answered that, and several others on earlier days, and theoretically some more to come, if you want to check it out.