https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TphNS93ebqU
1992
Notice Jello shaved his sideburns Star Trek style for this. Nice touch.
Lol, very nice work from Jello.
I tried watching it but it froze up about 4 minutes into it. I’ll try again later.
I also got about 4 minutes in…didn’t originally realize it would be a full-on hour and a half of Jello going off.
It’s gotten more and more difficult for me to listen to the man over the years, not because of his politics (in some cases), but because it’s the equivalent of reading a book where half of any given page is covered in footnotes and little parenthetical diversions from the main subject.
Don’t get me wrong, it takes definite intelligence to have one’s mind be a storehouse of facts as Jello’s is, but it gets grating when he bludgeons you over the head with this stuff repeatedly.
Whereas most people might, for example, see that you’re driving towards a red light and remind you to stop, Jello might go
“oh, and by the way, you may want to stop for that red light…which IS, after all, the closest red light to the home where the body of reporter Gary Webb was found dead from a - cough, cough - apparent ‘suicide’ in which he managed to shoot himself in the head multiple times. And conveniently enough, he WAS the same reporter who exposed the CIA’s
financing of the Nicaraguan Contras with profits from the crack cocaine that they introduced to Los Angeles neighborhoods.”
I love Jello. He used to be my number one idol. I had EVERYTHING of the man, including a crap ton of obscure bootlegs, fliers, etc., etc.
And, yes, I bought and soaked up his spoken word albums too. But, holy crap, did that get ever so coma inducing after a while. I think I finally pulled out after "If Evolution Is Outlawed . . . ".
It honestly got to the point where it felt like an absolute CHORE to get through them. I finally woke up and had a moment of clarity. What the fudge? This is what my fandom has dropped to? FORCING myself to spend money on and listen to crap I don’t even like just because I feel some weird legacy obligation to stay on the train?
I get it. Censorship is bad. Republicans are bad. Religious zealots are bad. The War on Drugs is bad. It’s bad. Yeah, I get it. I think that point was made quite clear 30 years ago.
Stop boring me to death and get back on stage and rock my balls off again.
Whereas most people might, for example, see that you’re driving towards a red light and remind you to stop, Jello might go
“oh, and by the way, you may want to stop for that red light…which IS, after all, the closest red light to the home where the body of reporter Gary Webb was found dead from a - cough, cough - apparent ‘suicide’ in which he managed to shoot himself in the head multiple times. And conveniently enough, he WAS the same reporter who exposed the CIA’s
financing of the Nicaraguan Contras with profits from the crack cocaine that they introduced to Los Angeles neighborhoods.”
Noam Chomsky is way worse at doing that, and he’s monotone to boot! at least Jello has a ridiculous amount of inflection to go with his monologues.
I love Jello. He used to be my number one idol. I had EVERYTHING of the man, including a crap ton of obscure bootlegs, fliers, etc., etc.
And, yes, I bought and soaked up his spoken word albums too. But, holy crap, did that get ever so coma inducing after a while. I think I finally pulled out after "If Evolution Is Outlawed . . . ".
it was that way for me with In the grip of official treason. I think the reason I stopped following Jello without fail is because with blogs and the news feed I think he’s behind. The stuff he talks about is old by the time he talks about it. He was cool before because he talked about all the shit no on really knew or talked about. now it’s all out there.
That’s also a good point. Back then it felt like he was actually giving us some urgent information. But, in addition to it having been well-trodden by himself, it’s also, like you said, quite stale and yesterday’s news by the time he’s crowing about it.
it was that way for me with In the grip of official treason. I think the reason I stopped following Jello without fail is because with blogs and the news feed I think he’s behind. The stuff he talks about is old by the time he talks about it. He was cool before because he talked about all the shit no on really knew or talked about. now it’s all out there.
I think the one skill Jello can still put into play, despite all that, is his ability for thinking up Zany Jello Solutions to problems, even if he has the same analysis of the problems as everyone else on his side of the political fence. I will probably remember Jello most not for being that guy who was always able to “zing” me with an uncomfortable truth that nobody else could find, but as the guy who always had an unorthodox solution that nobody else was offering…his idea to force city cops to run for elections, the whole “maximum wage” thing, etc. etc.
It’s also interesting that Jello’s become more irrelevant because of his SUCCESS. He repeatedly urged people to “Become The Media,” and, well, a lot of people did just that and now he’s simply another voice in the alt-media landscape rather then ‘the’ voice within it.
The people from the '80s counter-culture who I do feel sorry for are the mega-low budget “transgressive” Super 8 film crowd like Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch etc…these folks were supposed to be the extremest of the extreme, but their work has been diminished greatly by the fact that anyone with some search engine savvy can have an endless variety of bizarre porn and sadistic true violence at their fingertips. And their material’s almost charming when contrasted with modern professional productions like A Serbian Film or any of the Human Centipedes.
Oops…I got side-tracked, Jello style :-p
So, like, basically, what you’re saying is, umm, censorship . . . it’s bad, right?
So, like, basically, what you’re saying is, umm, censorship . . . it’s bad, right?
I was getting to that! Be patient! We’ve still got another 2 CDs worth of material to go.
“No More Coccoons” was actually really cool when it came out. The whole ‘spoken word’ genre was not impacted at that time and this was something new and different.
“High Priest of Harmful Matter” was cool only for geeks like me who liked getting the tales of the trial directly from the source. Not something that really has any replay value.
“I Blow Minds for a Living” had some great stuff on it, but set the unfortunate precedent of the 3 disc album.
“Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police” — Oh, man, this is getting a bit tired. A lot of the same 'ol, same 'ol.
"If Evolution is Outlawed . . . " — Painfully tedious.
This was where I finally gave up.
Paul Barker’s talked about getting a little annoyed at Jello for the same reasons some of you guys do.
Anyone else remember when he ran for the Green Party nomination for president in 2000? If he’d gotten the nom instead of Nader, maybe Nader wouldn’t have been a spoiler in Florida and W would never have gotten in the White House…
Paul Barker’s talked about getting a little annoyed at Jello for the same reasons some of you guys do.
I wasn’t aware. Was this just chatting “off court” in a group or was it part of a Youtube interview or publication somewhere?
My friend Hide of the Alternative Tentacles band ‘Ultra Bide’ boarded Jello at his house in Kyoto for a while, and also mentioned the same about how he would just not stop talking, ever. Even with a sizable language barrier to discourage him.
[reply]Paul Barker’s talked about getting a little annoyed at Jello for the same reasons some of you guys do.
I wasn’t aware. Was this just chatting “off court” in a group or was it part of a Youtube interview or publication somewhere?[/reply]
It was an interview, probably around the time of DSotS or Animositisomina where someone asked him about Lard and the response was something like “Jello’s great but sometimes you just want to say ‘Enough man, I don’t care about how evil KFC is!’ (laughs)”.
Ultra Bide was a fun band, btw.
I remember the name, but nothing else about Ultra Bide. I used to buy anything on the AT label, though, up through about 1997, so I’ll probably remember them tonight when I hit YouTube. I do remember ZENI GEVA on the label which was a Japanese noise punk band. All the lyrics were also printed in the CD in Japanese for absolutely no help at all if trying to figure out what any of the songs were about. I’m guessing they may have been a little . . . . uhhh . . . extreme maybe. I was dating a Japanese girl in college and asked her if she knew what it said and handed her the CD booklet. She looked at it for a short while, eyes widening, and then handed it back to me and said something like, “This is NOT good.”
I love Zeni Geva…K.K. Null,dude!!!
I remember the name, but nothing else about Ultra Bide. I used to buy anything on the AT label, though, up through about 1997, so I’ll probably remember them tonight when I hit YouTube. I do remember ZENI GEVA on the label which was a Japanese noise punk band. All the lyrics were also printed in the CD in Japanese for absolutely no help at all if trying to figure out what any of the songs were about. I’m guessing they may have been a little . . . . uhhh . . . extreme maybe. I was dating a Japanese girl in college and asked her if she knew what it said and handed her the CD booklet. She looked at it for a short while, eyes widening, and then handed it back to me and said something like, “This is NOT good.”
Zeni Geva FTW!!! DEAD SUN…RI-SING!!!
Hahaha yes, Zeni Geva is not ‘take home to mom and dad’ kind of music in Japan; the band’s name comes from a fairly famous manga but beyond that there’s little mainstream connection, I imagine your ladyfriend’s reaction was parallel to that of my own short-lived date who stumbled across my old Swans records.
As for Ultra Bide - it’s a shame people only know them from their Alternative Tentacles configuration (after Hide moved to the U.S.), before that they were one of the very first punk / wave bands in Kansai (West Japan) and Hide essentially gambled on career suicide by dropping out of high school to focus on his musical efforts. Remember this is in 80s Japan where getting accepted to a top university was a prerequisite for having any kind of a decent job, and he flushed that down the toilet so he could tour around playing hilariously sarcastic, confrontational, ‘zero commercial potential’ music.
Their early incarnations were a kind of jumping off point for folks who would mature into other roles in the underground; original member Jojo Hiroshige went on to form performance terrorists Hijokaidan and to form the Alchemy Records label.
Yes, I remember Dead Sun Rising and WHITE OUT!!!
I just looked it up.
The album I had at the time was “Desire for Agony”. Gee, I can’t believe the lyrics weren’t more upbeat, now that I think of it.
Anyway, I think I picked up one other earlier disc at some time. The 80’s and early 90’s were really great for the Alternative Tentacles label. If you were up for it you could just go along for the ride and you’d be hearing Jello do some honky tonk stompin’ with Mojo Nixon one month and then hear some Hungarian death punk the next, only to be followed by some LARD or God-only-knows what. Heck, even Brujeria was on the label.
It was so diverse, but the quality was quite consistently great. I feel like cranking some Alice Donut and NoMeansNo when I get off work now, haha!