Category: News

It took us a while, but we’ve finally created a lyrics section. You can browse lyrics by album, or by track title.

We’ve got just about every song Too Much Joy ever released in there. We left out covers, unless the band added some of their own words to it, or unless it’s “Seasons in the Sun,” because everyone always leaves off the third verse of that, and it’s the best part.

Let us know if you find any bugs in there — it’s got a bazillion links, and while we’re pretty sure they all work, we might not have double-checked every single one.

We didn’t know it at the time, but the shows we did while touring on the re-release of Green Eggs and Crack in 1997 would be the last gigs we played for ten years. And the last of those were two shows in one day in San Diego. The first was an afternoon set at some street fair; the second was a way more inebriated affair at a complete dive called Homer’s.

Tommy dug up this footage recently, which was shot by friends or fans using his camcorder. Here’s a surprisingly tight version of “Poison Your Mind,” which includes shots of a three year-old Abby Quirk dancing (which she does about as well as her dad).

Longtime friend-of-TMJ Bill Wikstrom just launched his own TMJ flotsam-and-jetsam site, Map Like Mine. We’re both flattered and a little weirded out by just how much stuff he’s collected over the years — the site’s crammed with things none of us have, including but not limited to old press kits, T-Shirt order forms, and a skeptical …finally review from Magnet.

Welcome to the completely refurbished Too Much Joy site. We’ve set things up so you can listen to almost everything the band ever recorded, free of charge, in its entirety. You can also buy most of it, if you’re so inclined, as well as T-Shirts and DVDs. In an obsessive-compulsive fit, we’ve scanned 20 years worth of press clippings, so you can marvel at how often words like “sarcastic” and “bratty” were used to describe TMJ, and cheer whenever someone notices a hint of actual feeling or insight in the band’s ongoing attempt to communicate honestly in an insane world.

There are videos to watch, too, and photos with embarassing haircuts and poor clothing choices to laugh at.

Mostly, though, there’s this page you’re on right now, which has been designed to update far more frequently than the old site. Each band member has his own account, and is being encouraged to post here whenever the mood strikes him. To encourage this behavior, we’re creating some recurring features that you can expect to see updated at least monthly, if not more often. One, Song of the Week, will spotlight a tune from the TMJ canon and gather one or more band members’ recollections about the making and/or meaning of same.

We’ll get that one started next week. We’re launching with something a bit meatier: the Rehearsal Tapes Series, which digs unreleased songs out of the vaults and explains precisely why they never saw the light of day, or what they turned into when they did. For the pilot episode below, we’ve pieced together the album TMJ would have released in ’93 or ’94 if they’d stayed with Warner.

So take a listen to that, browse around the rest of the site, and let us know what you think and what’d you’d like to see more or less of. There are free goodies scattered here and there, and most of the player widgets you’ll stumble across can be shared on Facebook, re-posted on your own site, emailed, or whatever.

If this works the way we hope it will, this new site will serve as the type of drunken conversation with fans and friends the band used to have before and after shows.

(That picture, by the way, is TMJ as computer game heroes. The lady in between Sandy and, uh, Jay, is Liz Reay, who created it.)