So much joy as Jay and his band break their silence
Jewish Telegraph, February 2021
PUNK band Too Much Joy formed in 1980, but they’ve been pretty silent for the last 25 years.
That will change next month when the New York City-based fivesome release new album Mistakes Were Made.
It was a love of The Clash which brought the band members together.
Guitarist Jay Blumenfield explained: “I had a covers band with our drummer Tommy Vinton.
“I knew (bassist) Sandy Smallens at school and we didn’t really like each other until we discovered a mutual love of The Jam, The Clash and The Ramones. This was rare where we went to high school.
“We were definitely the outcasts.”
He added: “One day, Sandy, Tommy and I decided to start a Clash covers band. Now at the time, Sandy had promised (singer) Tim Quirk that they were going to be in a band, so he was basically cheating on Tim.
“We set up in Sandy’s driveway outside and starting playing Clash songs. Tim who lived a block away, heard s****y versions of Clash songs echoing through the suburban air and went on a quest to find where it was coming from.
“He followed his ears until he found us and Sandy playing in a band without him. He seemed p*****. Instead of fighting we just made him the singer.”
Jay added that they took it “dead seriously” from the start.
“Come on, when you are 17, music is life-saving,” he said.
Too Much Joy, who count magicians Penn and Teller among their fans, started writing original songs from the start.
“Our heroes at the time were the kind of bands who changed our lives by showing that anyone can do this if you feel it in your bones and soul,” Jay told me.
“All the other high school bands we knew were playing Grateful Dead covers. We hated them. Our songs were influenced by The Clash in spirit, sonics and soul.”
Other influences were also British bands, such as Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks and The Specials.
But it was seeing REM supporting The Gang of Four that inspired them to “rush home, pick up our instruments and start trying to be both of those bands”.
Jay added: “But we take our influences from all over and not just bands.
“On this new album, our influences have grown. Mistakes Were Made feels like we took everything going on in our heads . . . social media/Americana/lies from the top/indie rock/ pandemics/the impending or unfolding apocalypse/ The Flaming Lips/ The Who/The Mekons/mortality/financial stress/ Zoom calls/Taylor Swift/John Prine/ AC-DC/ reality TV/our country burning/Christopher Hitchens/Bruce Springsteen/English history/Idles/podcasts/Fontaines DC/Childish Gambino and living in a fading empire to name a few.”
Too Much Joy, which also features William Wittman on bass, were originally called The Rave.
They released their first album, Green Eggs and Crack, in 1987; following it a year later with Son of Sam I Am.
It was third album Cereal Killers in 1991 which gave them their biggest success.
The following year they released Mutiny before taking a hiatus after 1996 album . . . finally.
An album of demos and outtakes, Gods and Sods (1999) and concert album Live at Least (2001) seemed to signal the end of Too Much Joy.
But they resurfaced in the early-2000s for one-off single Ruby Left a Present Underneath the Christmas Tree.
The band performed for the first time in 10 years in 2007 at the Knitting Factory in New York City.
Further activity followed in 2018 with the release of the double A-sided single We Are the Clash and We Are Not the Clash for a Clash tribute album.
According to Jay, the band “never split up. We stopped getting phone calls and drifted”.
Jay also recounted a story about Tim attending a Pesach seder at Sandy’s house.
“They both p****d off all of Sandy’s relatives by laughing uncontrollably when the ‘Rod of Moses’ was mentioned.
“Tim, Sandy and I went to the same high school. Tommy went to the high school in the town next door to ours.
“Bill (William) was a music producer who joined after he produced our album and after Sandy left. Now we are all back.”
Jay describes his upbringing as “culturally Jewish”.
He said: “We went to temple on High Holy Days and I did have a barmitzvah, but I never really bought into the whole God thing. I do feel connected though.
“Like it or not I will always be Jewish.
“But I have started to realise that there is good to this.
“A few years ago I was in Prague alone. I hadn’t heard English in a while and I was feeling kind of lonely and down. I was walking aimlessly and I found myself in the Old Jewish Ghetto.
“I walked into what I think was one of the oldest synagogues to explore and there was a small service going on.
“I heard familiar melodies and words that I had been hearing all my life. I was no longer alone and it felt good, I felt connected.
“That was the most Jewish I have ever felt.
“Then years later I was watching that Seth Rogen movie, An American Pickle, same thing happens to his character. Weird, right?”
The 15-track new album, Mistakes Were Made, to be released on March 19, is a product of the pandemic.
“Sometimes art forces it way up and out of you,” Jay said. “For no reason, we all started writing and even though we were spread out across the country in the middle of the pandemic, we started emailing ideas to each other and recording.
“It kind of snowballed and became this release of everything we all had been feeling and thinking over the last few years. In hindsight it looks inevitable but if you had asked me two years ago if Too Much Joy was going to release a new album anytime soon, I would have laughed and told you to **** off.”
As well as the band, Jay also has a production company, The Jay & Tony Show, creating television shows.
“One of the first things I did as a television producer was direct and produce a TV series with John Lydon called Rotten TV,” he said.
“We tried to take the essence of what he did in music and see what that would look like if he had free reign on his own TV show.
“It was the greatest experience. I learned more about art and life and music and creativity from John than I learned in four years of college and all of life.
“They say never meet your heroes. This time they were way wrong.”
Jay said he feels like the band has more energy now than they did in the early days.
“We are doing it for ourselves,” he told me. “We know who we are. Playing in Too Much Joy is pure and free and imperative.”
Jay’s two children are in the entertainment business too.
Son Leo has followed in his father’s footsteps with a band called Not From England, while daughter Lucy makes music videos and shoots band photos.
“My son’s band is much better than us,” Jay laughed. “He actually engineered a lot of Mistakes Were Made in his room.
“Tim would make the six-hour drive down to my house from Bay Area and my son would record us while we drank wine and hung out.”
Toomuchjoy.bandcamp.com
