Originally published in ‘zine issue #38, 2007
Jesus Of Nazareth is one of those musical, or non-musical, entities that’s hard to put your finger on or nail down. If you tried to list all of the elements that add up to a JON CD, you’d have acoustic drums and programmed drums, movie and record samples, unintelligible vocals, and a large helping of feedback and other miscellaneous electronic noises.
The JON experience isn’t limited to listening to it on your stereo, as J.C., the man behind the mayhem, explains.
“Live, it’s really hard, and I don’t have a band of subhumans at my disposal to perform this. The way it’s gotten now is I would just need more equipment; I’d need to know how to use it.
“We’ve played shows with tapes and CDs and stuff playing, and it kind of came to a crescendo of embarrassment at this one show when everything broke, and when we’re still there on stage. It’s like, ‘Well, our contact mics don’t work, and the vocals aren’t working, the loops and samples aren’t working, and all I have is drums and my throat,’ and you can’t perform in any type of reasonable state if you just have your own mouth and drums to perform. And it was actually one of the most embarrassing moments of my entire life.
“The shows I would want to do I am not pro enough to pull off and, in my mind, do it justice,” he concludes.
“I think JON shows started out as a way for me to just make fun of people and yell at people. It didn’t really have anything to do with the music, ‘cause I would just make a CD of noise and blast on top of it, and then when I wasn’t blasting, I’d just yell at people.”
At one of these gigs, from behind his drums J.C. ordered the person who set up the show to leave.
“Yeah, and he left and came to a window and watched from there, which is really cool, but at the same time I think I’ve sort of cooled out in some way that I’d have to get riled up to do that now, and know people that are young enough––that are dumb enough––to put JON on a show.
“When you crossed the line onto the stage, people would automatically listen to you, and it was just a fun way to gain that control, I guess,” J.C. surmises.
“It was actually one of the most embarrassing moments of my entire life.”
Jesus Of Nazareth has a much wider appeal than from dumb kids.
“A female dominatrix-run radio station that’s strictly fem dom listeners and producers got a hold of JON for playing JON on the radio on the West Coast, so we’ll see what happens with that.”
Additionally, reveals J.C., “There’s this Japanese band that I like a lot called Abisyeikah, and they contacted me and said they really like JON and that they were covering a JON song in Japan live, and I thought that was incredible [because] I can’t cover my own songs live properly. But yeah, I was totally honored because it started out as me goofing off, and then apparently there’s people across the globe that are a) respected enough to do that, and b) enjoy it enough just to listen to it and then actually perform it live for other people that haven’t even heard of it.”
Contact the band at www.myspace.com/jesusofnazarethnoize. ■
Images: from the demockery.org website
