Where Am I? Why Do I Feel This Way?

And this one is for Sterling Gates.

When I was fourteen or so, Jesus Jones seemed like the coolest band in the world. Admitting this now, to be honest, feels more than slightly embarrassing, because looking up their old songs and videos on YouTube reveals that the opposite is actually much more the case:

Oh, this sincerity! The inability to lipsync!

And yet, it was 1989 (And, later, 1990! And 1991!), when the idea that Jesus Jones’ particular brand of indie pop was somehow the future, that it was finding some common ground between the pop that we knew and loved and was safe and familiar and the techno that was alien and more than slightly scary to the me I was then (Oh, how horrified I would’ve been to see myself eight years later, staying up all night to dance to David Holmes DJing way past the official curfew because no-one wanted to leave and we all just wanted to dance and dance and dance). There was such optimism and complete lack of threat to songs like “International Bright Young Thing” and “Real Real Real” that I couldn’t fail but be sucked in and tell myself that, yes, this is what the music of the future would sound like.

It didn’t last, of course; I started listening to other things as soon as the band’s first flush of success ended – even though I had liked them before their hits, starting back when a friend in school let me listen to “Info Freako,” from their first album and still my favorite song of theirs – and realized that there was more to life to Mike Edwards’ brand of electropop (In fact, it was around this time I started listening to REM, and that was a saga all by itself). But occasionally I wonder what happened to them, and what would’ve happened if they’d been as important to music as I once thought they were.