I Was a Killing Joke: A Bird's Eye View

Killing Joke

a bird’s eye view

Jodi.C.King

Copyright © 2012 by Jodi.C.King.

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Contents

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1 Their Music My Life

CHAPTER 2 Who am I?

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4 Get me outta here

CHAPTER 5 The Ritual of the Heads

CHAPTER 6 Shut it!

CHAPTER 7 Words are Wishes

CHAPTER 8 The Obscure Night

CHAPTER 9 Is this another dream?

CHAPTER 10 Knickers

CHAPTER 11 Imagine

CHAPTER 12 I guess I’ll see you next Lifetime

CHAPTER 13 Working Class Hero

CHAPTER 14 Kindred Spirits

CHAPTER 15 It wasn’t you!

CHAPTER 16 An Earthly End

FOR ED

AND HIS BROTHER

AND FOR THOSE

WHO KNOW

THE TRUTH

I thought I’d begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine. Spike Milligan

If you can’t convince them, confuse them. Harry Trueman

FOREWORD

‘And all the guiding lines, kept me down for all those times, that falseness cannot win, so let your spirit in freedom sing’. ( Holmes, Head Ritual, The Star 1986)

Killing Joke throughout the duration of their long winded stance in the dark underlay of marketed music, have never really been given the exposure they truly deserve. As if the forces that lie behind show business were always fully aware of their innate potential and calling to help people awaken; a potential which could easily be seen as a threat to the success of the mind numbing, quick selling sleep aid that is thrust upon society in the main.

As an avid astral traveller and life time apprentice seer, having grown up on brain food from such sorcerous, philosophical abundance as Carlos Casteneda and Rupert Bear, Carl Jung and The Magic Roundabout, I had always been keen to play my own part in assisting those around me to open their eyes to the reality of the illusion in which we live.

An eclectic and widely varied collection of vinyl had always been available for me to listen to, due to a star gazing Mother and her many hip friends. I grew up with an assortment of families and single folk, in a housing co-operative, to which interesting and downright special souls were regularly drawn to connect and converse.

Throughout my teens I became fascinated with Freddie Crouger, using him eventually in my analogy to put the need for us to ‘Wake Up!’ across in my own songs, branching from the fact that when he was around it was just too dangerous to stay asleep. Freddie was to help me to realise my lux.

Having travelled far and mingled wide, sometimes even amongst fellow Jokers it had seemed to me; ‘all but the few ever notice anything at all, O Dear’. J. Coleman

More recently however there has been a massive upsurge of awakened souls, thankfully for me, meaning I am no longer one of the few freaks of society who won’t keep their feet on the ground long enough to run with the herd. People have finally begun to catch up with us in these rapidly changing times as we spiral speedily into the Aquarian age. This means that there is a now a much greater power behind the manifestation of a better way of life and a great new Earth, albeit a difficult and taxing process for us to contend with due to the still enormous amount of wrong doing and thousands of years of bad habit forming.

Acts 2:17 IN THE LAST DAYS I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT ON EVERYONE. YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS WILL PROCLAIM MY MESSAGE. YOUR YOUNG MEN WILL SEE VISIONS AND YOUR OLD MEN WILL HAVE DREAMS, EVEN ON MY SERVANTS, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT IN THOSE DAYS AND THEY WILL PROCLAIM MY MESSAGE.

This book is written simply because it asked me to write it. Rudely interrupting me from the latest bout of mind dead slumber in which my creative better half was being denied, whilst the slave in me worked for an insulting wage in a job which although in some ways rewarding, was draining me to such an extent I had begun to experience on-going, debilitating physical illness. Illness sprung from the imbalance I myself had created, and eventually was saved from, by the glimpse of an Akashic memory which reminded me that I had much more important and soul fulfilling work to do.

Killing Joke are worthy of more than a quiet mention on the back of the socially acceptable bands who rip off their riffs, so who else than a big-mouthed truth speaker to share her views and observations about a post punk/industrial rock band who remain superior to most, unknown to many, an inspiration to more and yet still utterly offensive to some.

Having spent 28 years my life closely watching this fascinating and almost genre-less band of madcap musicians, I suddenly realised that divine purpose and non-linear timing meant I was always going to write this book and that the time to do so was now. As we approach the end of an era as hinted at in the Mayan calendar, the natural bio rhythms of the Mother Earth herself and the apparent alignment of the Sun and Earth with the black hole at the centre of our galaxy 21.12.12, although NASA promise: Enjoy the solstice, by all means, and don’t let the Dark Rift, alignments, solar flares, magnetic field reversals, potential impacts or alleged Maya end-of-the-world predictions get in the way; I am hopefully keen on manifesting, that aside obvious major upheaval already underway, we shall avoid overly destructive cataclysm and move forward into a fresh, bright and consciously loving way of existence. It seems for this to happen, civilization as a whole needs to evolve to a much higher state of awareness, and with gusto.

Whilst delving into soul sharing and past life connections, other reasons as to why I have been so strongly drawn to Killing Joke began to emerge, which I will attempt to share amidst this collection of recorded detail, chancing that I could likely be accused of having delusions of grandeur or simply trying to be cool. I happily accept any critical sneers, jealous jibes or disapproving doubts as part and parcel of my whole life, for indeed it has already been merrily decorated with such since way back in my childhood when God first healed a gerbil by my touch and love.

You could call this an extended review of a unique band with a massive cult following, coupled with the real life soap opera of a jackanapes; the combination of which provide an interesting and unusual story.

I am honoured to share with you the uniqueness of a band that in my opinion has preponderance over the alternative music industry, having survived it for a third of a century without ever selling out to the guiding lines.

Apart from a very small number of tracks, I have managed to listen long enough to grow to love everything Killing Joke ever produced. Maybe it’s down to a unique mixture of extra special personalities that produces a fiery blend of energy and absolute rawness that just hits in the right spot for me and so many others. I’m not quite sure what it is, but alongside the music there is so much about Killing Joke that I admire, stemming from a deep routed cellular connection I have found ultimately impossible to ignore.

Following a recent visit down memory lane to a local punk festival at Manchester pub The Star and Garter, I perceived that punk in the main has barely progressed and sounds pretty much the same as it did back in the 70’s. The youngest band, a trio from Manchester whose singer had not yet mastered the art of projecting his voice over the speeding, hammer head sound, were admittedly tight and well-rehearsed, (which is somewhat easier than normal to achieve in a trio), handsome and very into their art, but also emphatically same old city. Three other bands proved to be much the same, sounding at best like Crass on a bad day. The only band to play that day with a sparkling uniqueness, were Government Death Epidemic, consisting of at least two Joke fans that I know of.

It seems musicians who have been exposed to Killing Joke and taken heed from their inspiration, shine that little bit brighter with an edge of difference over all else.

Killing Joke were ahead of the times in 1979, but it is blatantly apparent after witnessing the poorly attended nowadays punk scene they are still ahead of these times with what they were producing back then.

Revisiting their earlier recordings for research purposes reminded me of just how timeless and way ahead of that timeless time they really are.

I have never seen or heard anything that quite excites me the way Killing Joke do. I have experienced that most of those who have listened to them, I mean really listened to them, can then go on to find it becomes a little difficult to be overly impressed by much else. I have heard some fantastic musicianship in rock over the recent years, with interesting subject matter and deep levelled understanding of the psyche, the likes of ‘The Dream Theatre’ for instance, which I have appreciated greatly after a long wait for anyone to progress further from the greats of the 70s era.

There is obviously some interesting and unique material out there now, and I have friends and acquaintances who revel in trying to impress me with their new finds, which by the third track I most often get bored of, because to me it gets boring, predictable, rarely takes me anywhere I haven’t already been and never takes me to the place of animalistic freedom I am able to visit whilst blasting a KJ track.

I guess this is looking to be a pretty biased review, but love them or hate them, the Joke are definitely worth taking a closer look at.

Every new album seeks out another level, a new dimension for us to unfold, and for the ardent explorer, nothing could be more enticing.

I have a keen interest in quantum mechanics and mysticism, spirituality and its inevitable singular destiny with religion, Deity and dark forces, all of which sit comfortably alongside the tones of this coruscating band. Nobody can please everyone all of the time however, and Killing Joke are not overly suited to the faint hearted, which means then that they are absolutely and incredibly perfect for the brave.

In lieu, my obsessive feelings of needing to do more than just watch and listen to Killing Joke as any normal fan would, have induced a life of extreme intrigue for me which has been omniversally exciting, at times gruesomely awful, more often painfully shameful, but every bit a wish fulfilling treat for a person of such great passion and uniqueness as my good self.

My life was tainted by death and separation from the moment I was born. My Father was in hospital losing his battle against hepatitis B, passed to him by the infected needle of a fellow junkie and jazz musician whilst my non-addict, brave and beautiful Mother was giving birth to me on another ward.

My Father died when I was 12 days old and as he was an orthodox Jew who had left the faith along with an estranged Jewish wife to marry my Mother, she was not allowed to be part of the ceremony to lay him to rest. The whereabouts of his grave were never disclosed to her, and this must have deeply affected her own grieving process.

Living in real, single parent poverty, homeless and without support from family my Mother did a remarkable job of nurturing my sister and me during those first years despite her own unimaginable grief. She passed on her deep thinking and intelligence, love of all things far out and great empathy and compassion for others, not to mention her exceptional literary and creative talents, but still life was to throw an unfair amount of death and difficulties our way which meant we grew up fast, and inescapably a little scarred by experience.

It took a long time for me to shake of the mesh of the early life I had ultimately chosen, (as I feel we as souls come into flesh to learn and choose beforehand how we will do this) and I remained stuck in a cycle of disaster and pain, until finally pulling myself up in 2003 by following a strict diet of Ascension processes, soberness and higher connection through meditation.

I escaped thereafter for a while to the ends of the earth, following the steps of a One Brother Jeremy, drawn there by the promise of peace and simple living, and the idealistic view point I felt I had shared with him for so long.

Jaz Coleman it seemed, had left a well thought out path to a true place of paradise, which assisted my journey to an Island I have come to know and adore.

My love of, and lifetime commitment to the rescue and rehabilitation of animals great and small pulled me back to the grey harsh realities of North Manchester, only to find myself regretting for the eight years following, that I did not remain as Crusoe. It is all too easy to make ties and reasons why we can’t live out our dreams and desires in the full.

Those I had seen as extra special in my life had been dropping like chemically poisoned flies around me from day one, so I lived a lot of my years feeling hurt and abandoned, feelings which once I had completed the Ascension programme had transformed into gifts of strength, wisdom and understanding to help me in my metier.

In autumn of 2009, circumstances led me to two physically and mentally burdening house moves in the space of three months. Just as we were settling into the first house, a true knight in shining armour, one in a million and one of my dearest friends died suddenly, from an adverse reaction to an antidepressant. Dragged down by the weight of maintenance payments larger than his wage, he had succumbed to the tragedy that is a lower class societal disease. Harry lost himself in a barrage of prescription drugs with promise of a cure which became his demise.

Another reminder that I must accept the choice I had made for myself to lean on me and only me, then at least I won’t fall over when a soldier goes down, unless I lose a leg. A month after the second move, my beautiful Aunt, to escape her ingrained fear of the past, hung herself in the bathroom of her rented, suburban, terraced home, plunging our family back into painful memories of my elder’s childhoods, opening old wounds and almost destroying those closely affected. That saddening episode brought the suicide count in my close proximity to four, and all were people I loved and looked up to as the best of the best. Within a month another good friend lost his 19 year old son to motor neuron disease, which had required twenty four hour care from him in his single parent position, two weeks prior to which he had been informed of his own terminal cancer with a maximum of one year left to live. Dave just 49, was a great friend to and fan of the band of musicians I had been writing and performing with collectively known as ‘AzIAm’, since 2008, and the most gentle and caring man I had ever come across. During that time two other souls who had played a starring role in my personal drama providing comfort and assistance also left the earth by horrific circumstance.

I threw myself into work in a more conforming way than I ever had before in a bid to accept the way things were and get on with it. After eighteen months of soul destroying grind and very little play, giving way too much energy to self-sacrificing altruistic tendencies, I crashed headlong into a pit of illness.

As Holistic Hypnotherapist and teacher of Ascension and Natural Healing, it was a massive case of hypocrisy. I had swallowed so much pain and hurt, wrongly thinking that I had mastered the art of detachment in such a grand way that the emotional effects of death and upheaval couldn’t touch me anymore, I was off course and out of balance.

Reconnected to source and back at the ends of the Earth, inspiration streams from a perfectly azure sea in which a huge pod of dolphins play seaweed nose-ball with their young. Oyster catchers shout incessantly about their breakfast each morning whilst little blue herons practice invisibility and I could be in no better place to be given the words that I needed to share the adventure.

‘When all that you can all that you can see, is my former Jester,

Won’t you come up here with me? I’m waiting for a star.

When all that you can see is my silly form, a jester, will you just come up here with me and wait for Esther’ . . . CeC teen

Allow me to take you on her journey with this awesome band, bleating back from her rebellious former stance as a Jester that for some of us, putting in your life in the hands of a Rock n Roll band can be far from throwing it all away.

CHAPTER 1

Their Music My Life

‘This space I’m in is not so big, this place we’re in is huge. It feels so tight, that wrong this right, how can it be excused? This place I’m in feels like a bin, the soil out there is clean. Your beauty is true, but naked in blue, your beauty is obscene’. CeC child

Ed in his punk days

EDDIE WAS BORN in a back street disco, in the early sixties; (cue new born baby crying over a sixties soundtrack). Actually, he was born Kevin Leadbetter in North Manchester General Hospital on 10.3.64 to a beautiful, flaming, red-haired Celtic Mother and E.T Father. Oddly enough this is the very same date that Prince Edward Earl of Essex arrived, and we often joked that somebody swapped the babies because the Queen didn’t want a red head. Indeed Ed does have a very royal look about him. In the early 80s he created inimitably humorous, perfectly timed and excellently thought out stories on audio tape cleverly using voice, music and sound effects. Later he progressed onto the hilarious over dubbing of TV shows and films on video and eventually exceedingly silly home movie making. Ed; a dead ringer for a younger Max Bygraves with a hint of the comedy actor Mel Brooks, should have had his own show. He is far more entertaining than any comedian I have ever seen on TV, and was the funniest phone jacker known to man, although he never went public because I guess he never wanted to. He was happy as he was, (and still is I might add), playing practical jokes on unsuspecting colleagues and friends. One of his specialties is filming those who fall asleep at parties, having adorned them with an assortment of comedy attire, as well as painting and decorating them to achieve the best possible laugh. Eddie is a born listener with impeccable taste in music; which to him is the most important ingredient in the recipe of life. He has always had the best music system money can buy and still thrives in perfecting a flawless aural balance for himself and fellow listeners to enjoy. His favourite band of all time could be no other than Killing Joke.

Once aptly described by reporter Mat Smith as; Wickedly original, boldly irrational, frighteningly irresponsible and a power that the pop business still hasn’t harnessed, Killing Joke are first-rate at provoking passionate portrayal. I was first tuned in to this excellence in 1984, a year which a certain massive name in rock music had been warning me about for quite some time. The band had been persistently inspiring awe and wonder on a slow and steady expanse since 1979 forming after a daringly insane young man who possessed immense will power, following his intuition and visualization of a foreseeable future, travelled to London to seek pavements of gold. Just a day later the boy chanced upon a kindred spirit of similar purpose, with whom he went on to create one of the most extraordinary musical mysteries of all time.

Killing Joke as a band name was chosen because it portrayed the members perception of the music industry which at that time, (not unlike today), was churning out music for the masses by exploiting mainly young people to help the greedy few drive even bigger cars, which by all accounts is a big joke especially as often times this is done on the back of charitable advertisements for starving millions. The madman and his clever kindred spirit wanted to create something different based around energy and feeling, escaping and bettering circumstance whilst entertaining and including those who may dare to ‘take part and learn’. Following an advert in Melody Maker, an amount of auditions and personality checks, the two were blessed by the addition of a self-assured and exceptional guitarist. Geordie, who was born Kevin Walker, 18.12.1958, acquired his now stage name because of the accent he had picked up whilst being raised until his teenage years in County Durham, north east England. He had practiced in his bedroom perfecting his style for many years, and consequently this paid off when he chanced upon the perfect moment to strike, sealing his fate with Killing Joke in London where he had originally moved to study architecture. Four years prior to the creation of the band (which was to become his lifetime career) an Aunt of Geordie’s, God rest her soul as he tells it, paid a visit to a psychic. Amidst the reading the psychic had told the Aunt that she could see a young man performing on a huge stage under flood lights wallowing in bright success, a lucky guess?