The early 1990s had an amazing explosion of all kinds of music. Think about it:
  • Industrial and industrial-ish dance bands such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails at the height of their popularity
  • Hip-hop was its most varied with acts like Public Enemy mixing it up with Anthrax to Me Phi Me and PM Dawn experimenting with a mellow tripped-out sound
  • The rise of techno, which would later give birth to electronica (and c'mon, tell me that in your most drunken state, didn't you like dancing to 2 Unlimited's Get Ready For This?
  • Bands like Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Soundgarden/Faith No More showing us what you could do if you stopped writing metal like crap
  • Sonic Youth/Loop/Mudhoney/Dinosaur Jr. exploring the possibilities of noise
  • ...and Britpop
It was a great time to be a DJ, which I was, at the engineering pub at Crazy Go Nuts University. You went to the main campus pub for pitchers of watery beer, girlypop and jock rock; you went to my pub for Crown Royal and cool music.

Britpop in the early 90s, in this humble DJ's opinion, could be split into two major categories:
  • Shoegazer bands -- with guitarists and very earnest singers who sounded and look very sad. I blame British cuisine.
  • Manchester bands, who built danceable rock on top of a patter from the drum solo in james Brown's Funky Drummer.
The Manchester bands could further be subdivided into synthy and non-synthy, each with their holy trinity. On the non-synthy side, you had the holy trinity of the Inspiral Carpets, the Charlatans and Blur while on the synthy side, you had the Soup Dragons, EMF, ...

...and Jesus Jones.

So, after this long preamble, which was meant to take you down memory lane (or history lane, if you're on the young side), I now get to the actual main point of this entry:

What are Jesus Jones up to now?

Thanks to Jen at Circadian Shift for the link!

Recommended Listening

A taste of Jesus Jones' big hit, Right Here, Right Now, in either Windows Media or RealOne format.

A slice of the drum solo from James Brown's Funky Drummer. The funky drummer who came up with the riff is one Clyde Stubblefield, to whom hip-hop, funk, rock and even industrial music owe a great debt.