Drum Machine
Joys and Monosynths. Buttercup Fairy Jamborees and Candy Cane Carriages.
Old Wives Tales and Children of the Lord. The Robot Beats and Strawberry
Hearts. Melody and Robot Rock. These are sounds from The Electric Joy
Toy Company. This music is brought to you by the Better Music Bureau.
For the last eight years, Ronnie Martin and his synth pop vehicle Joy
Electric have managed to delight and to confound; to satisfy and to frustrate;
to be loved and to be hated.
From the first time I put on my newly purchased copy of Melody, I knew
that Joy Electric was special (I must make a confession, at the time I
was convinced I seriously wasted $15, $15 of good hard earned cash!).
The ultra-minimalist bump-bah, bump-bah, bump-bah, bump-bah drum beats,
the electro buzz-buzz, the uber-Krafwerkesque synth pop kicks in a practically
cartoonish manner with whirs and whizzes flying around the, as some would
call it, cheesy melody line. Then Ronnie Martin sings the hook: “Drum
machine joy, drum machine joy, drum machine joy-hoy, drum machine joy-hoy-hoy.”
The lead off track of Melody is a metaphor of divine relationship. The
drum machine, with its knobs and its buttons and its circuits, gives our
singer joy beyond anything else in this temporal world. Brilliantly absurd.
Beautifully ludicrous. Sadly silly. This is the single best introduction
to Joy Electric. A “band” (in the loosest, yet most appropriate,
sense of the term) that came out of, well Orange County California, to
make, of all things, synth pop (in an age of post-grunge-arena-rock and
pop-punk) that would make girls blush, and boys cringe in skepticism (“Punk
boys make the claim/’This is not my style’ is/What they all
say” from “The Robot Beat (We’re Back)” on 1997’s
Robot Rock).
As alluded to in my introduction of this Tribute of Sorts, I must say
that I didn’t know what to think of this quirky brand of synth pop
emanating from my hi-fi. You see; I, being a discerning music listener,
was in tune with the music of the day. This was post-grunge America with
bands like the Smashing Pumpkins burning up the so-called Modern Rock
charts with their retro-prog-arena rock tinged with pop sensibility. Music
with the crunchy guitars is what captivated me (and no doubt you, discerning
music listeners). I had no interest in pop music, much less pop music
made entirely on synthesizers. Further, Joy Electric was making music
that was, well, Christian rock. My interest in this scene was minimal
at best. I had been a big fan through high school (cutting my God-Rock
teeth on the early 80s Orange County Christian rock explosion), but Christian
rock bands had become increasingly cookie-cutter, lacked much originality,
and seemed to exist for the Junior High youth group. I considered it quite
abysmal. The Lord must have agreed with this assessment and chose to challenge
us and give us Tooth & Nail Records (which had caught my attention
with quality releases such as Wish for Eden, Havalina Rail Co., and Starflyer59).
Tooth and Nail head honcho Brandon Ebel had to sign Ronnie’s Joy
Electric project, he explains, “I was a huge fan of Dance House
Children, Ronnie's first band. Ronnie is very amazing. Besides writing
great songs he is doing something totally original!” I concur. I
had to give Joy Electric a chance.
The sounds are what captured my attention on the first one hundred listens.
I could not believe the music (melodies, rhythms, hooks, choruses) traveling
to my eardrums, then on through the intricate and mysterious workings
of the human aural system to my brain, eagerly ingesting and digesting
each note (putting me on the brink of overload). My focus was the ultra
simple melody lines plunked out on what I perceived (to my untrained rock
n roll ears) as cheap Sears catalog Casios with inferior drum machines.
The whirs and whizzes, the buzzes and blips, the percolating electronic
blissfests under, over, and around the finely crafted melodies (which
I wouldn’t realize were finely crafted until much later) would simultaneously
confuse and blow my mind, frustrate and free my soul. This was music from
another, dare I say, planet. Orange County and the rest of the country
were picking up guitars with heads full of Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins
dreams, this guy was actually writing about green days and pumpkin dreams
(well, more like pastures and fields, bees and bears). This guy has the
nerve to make purely synthesized music that hasn’t been this “weird”
since Kraftwerk took us on the Trans-Europe Express and Gary Numan was
all about cars.
Equally as shocking as the sound of Joy Electric songs are Ronnie Martin’s
vocals. That breathy falsetto, enunciating each and every word, the quick
breaths he would take between lyric lines, the delicate delivery, the
sugar sweetened (but never coated, no never coated) melodies would glide
from his lips to my ears (and yours!). Naturally, these vocals would raise
eyebrows, especially of the high Evangelical brows in the Bible &
Book stores, the Youth Pastor Illuminati, and the Rock Purists (including
myself), just proving that they were missing the point.
Luckily, I was familiar with songwriting. I knew about New Order and The
Smiths, as well as British House Music and the “robot pop”
of Kraftwerk, the closest reference points I could find for Joy Electric’s
brand of synth pop, besides the early 80s new wave of Gary Numan, Flock
of Seagulls, and The Human League. After I shifted my focus from the sounds
of the electronics and Ronnie’s vocalizations, I became enthralled
in the melodies, the hooks, and the choruses; basically, I am talking
about the songs. The songs were not haphazardly created to fit the sounds
or due to the instrumentation chosen (keyboards, drum machines), this
is far from the reality (Ronnie actually composes his songs on piano,
prior to the manually intensive process of programming his synthesizers).
This shift was completely subtle and purely unintentional.
I was driving in my car, late evening after a graduate school night class.
Melody had, for some reason that God only knows, crept into my Heavy Rotation
(along side the latest Smashing Pumpkins, the classic Bad Brains, the
British pop of The Smiths, the aggro-metal of Helmet, and the swirling
noise pop of My Bloody Valentine). Traveling on Shawnee Mission Parkway
in Kansas City to I-35 that would take me into Johnson County, Kansas
(and to my modest apartment) and “The Girl From Rosewood Lane”
was playing, and I was about to have an epiphany. My ears really heard
the song, not just the teeny tiny keyboard riff, the flourish of chords,
and the melancholy tempo, but the complete song. The perfect chorus registered.
I heard his pain, his love, his loneliness, his loss all in the melody,
the vocal delivery and electronic sounds enhanced this to a new level
of realizing this is “new music”. And I was awakened to Ronnie’s
“vision” of finely crafted pop songs.
Joy Electric is not Fashion; it is Style. This is music that refuses to
be a slave to the Trendy, to the Fickle American Consumer. The Style is
bold. Joy Electric knows that ball caps are for boys and sporting men,
and the sophisticated chapeau is for men. My fascination with the crafted
synth-pop became even more intense with each release from the genius of
Ronnie Martin. I would take in live shows (yes, Joy Electric even made
their way to the Midwest to play in tiny Christian themed clubs), buy
the records: Five Stars for Failure, and Old Wives Tales; each record
with glorious pop melodies, sing-along choruses, and sparkling hooks.
Rabidly playing them to death to the point where I put a self-imposed
moratorium on listening to Joy Electric (much to the relief of family
and friends).
On 1996’s We Are the Music Makers, Joy Electric would turn over
a new page in Ronnie’s songbook. Gone are digital synthesizers,
sequencers, samplers, and drum machines, a purely analog sound would emerge
and now comprise his sound palette. While the record was probably the
weirdest of his career, the sound and the songs were other-worldly, but
also more organic due to the analog programming (lyrics got down right
strange with more stories of faires and goblins and crusades and Counts).
This analog means to synth-pop-bliss ends would take Ronnie to the next
level on 1997’s spectacular Robot Rock. Not only a musical statement
(expanding and honing his “no more digital sounds” proviso),
but a definitive musical statement in Ronnie’s songwriting (both
lyrically and musically). With the new noise of Robot Rock, Ronnie added
a new face. The face was Jeff Cloud’s. While new to those no familiar
with the inner workings (and live sets) of Joy E., Cloud had been around
since Melody. His duties included, but were by no means limited to knob
twiddler, synth performer, theremin virtuoso and road manager (he was
added to the photo shoot for the record packaging).
Robot Rock actually garnered some critical acclaim, which is and isn’t
surprising. After years of simply being misunderstood (critics tended-and
to a large extent still do-to focus on the electronics rather than the
songs), the consistency in songwriting, the mastery of the analog programming
process, and the “punk” attitude of the lyrics made the rock-write
community stand up and take notice. Songs such as “The Robot Beat
(We’re Back)”, “(We Are) Taking Over”, and “Joy
Electric Land” were heartfelt statements of musicality and faith.
Robot Rock was a turning point in Joy Electric. Not only did the analog
sounds improve, the lyrics went from the odes to drum machines to punk
rock attitude and philosophical statements. This new attitude would permeate
future releases The Land of Misfits EP and CHRISTIANsongs where Ronnie’s
lyrics would abandon nearly all the Willie Wonka-like talk and be straight-up
decidedly and unabashedly Christian.
Further, on Robot Rock, Ronnie didn’t so much turn his back on the
past of “gumdrops and magical woods” but he built on it and
made it applicable to the audience with words from his heart (not to say
that he never wrote from the heart before), but the listener could hear
what he was saying. The distractions of “lollipop trees” and
“peppermint flowers”, for example, were tamed and reconciled
with the self-consciousness of “I will never be a star” and
“No one will ever care.” The words went from the head to the
heart in a dramatic and meaningful way. Ronnie began to relate to his
listeners more tangibly, which translated to critics and fans not solely
focusing on the electronics, but what he had to say. Songs such as “The
Girl from Rosewood Lane” and “Keep Him in Your Thoughts”
weren’t forgotten in the midst of poetic tomes like “Candy
Cane Carriage” and “Burgundy Years.” Robot Rock found
Ronnie confidently defiant, stating he is not “going away”
by proudly proclaiming, “We’re taking over.” The songs
became music of analog soul, rather than plastiq pop.
In 1999, CHRISTIANsongs became the first synth-pop-punk record that had
Ronnie capturing the spirit of Orange County’s vicariously exuberant
and idealistically simple second wave Christian Rock movement. The songs
were straight up Christian rock with lyrics that were blatantly evangelical.
While on the surface this could be interpreted as a retreat from his “punk”
attitude, this was simply an extension. The scene began being “watered
down” by bands disassociating themselves with the tag “Christian
band” to the point it became fashionable for many bands to say,
“We aren’t a Christian band, we are band comprised of Christians.”
Ronnie decided that he would go the complete opposite direction of this
silly, and borderline ludicrous, trend and make the most overtly Christian
record of his career; a record full of ultra-catchy, super-fast pop songs.
He even covered pop-punkers MxPx’s “I’m OK, You’re
OK” for the “Children of the Lord” single (not that
the MixPix song is a proto-typical Christian rocker, heaven’s no,
but it is the perfect pop-punk song). As a matter of fact, CHRISTIANsongs
contained many more “Jesus references” that would have exceeded
any Nashvegas record company’s “number of Jesuses per song”
requirement. Still he retained such “Joy Electric classicisms”
as “Disco for a Ride” (perfect for any dance club) and the
melancholy beauty of “Singing in Gee.” CHRISTIANsongs placed
Ronnie squarely into the category of “songwriting genius”
as he remained true to his vision of purely analog electronic music, but
this time he made it rock as much as it was inherently pop.
Still, Joy Electric maintains it’s utter uniqueness and incomparability.
Over the last eight years, the music landscape has moved through post-grunge,
pop-punk, ska and swing revivals, the hip-hop juggernaut, frat boy testosterone
rock, rapcore, and banal boy bands and cookie-cutter girl singers. Electronic
music has been equally schizophrenic with sub-genres blowing up out of
the House scene (rave, downtempo, trip-hop, world beat, drum ‘n
bass, jungle, big beat, etc.). Ronnie Martin (and his Joy Electric) has
ignored every single one of these trends, and remained true to songwriting
as a craft and analog synthesizers as the vehicle. Ebel respects this
and this is why Joy Electric is on his label. “No matter what his
sales are he is the best at what he does and we are committed to him.”
And this kind of support will enable Ronnie to continue into the twenty-first
century with his “Legacy” concept and beyond. This retrospective
isn’t an end to an era, but a simple document of stellar songwriting
and proof that a musician doesn’t need to interpret the trends,
but remain true to the Vision regardless of what others think. |