in a life prior to his current status as producer to the worlds premier league, jacknife lee was a guitar toting monster known as garret lee, in the punked up riff heavy, but tune strong compulsion.
the band that were amazingly lumped into the short lived new wave of new wave scene, which was basically a much needed burst of adrenaline speeed fuelled guitar music that exploded in a mass of media attention and commercial failure. of course this all happened a mere few months before people realised that they preferred nice pop songs and cheeky chappy lyrics that exploded with the arrival of britpop.
but for a few months my ears and feet were thrilled by the rush of love for skinny drugged up leather jacket wearing freaks (hello s*m*a*s*h, hello these animal men), but nothing hit me quite as hard as my first compulsion live experience.
the band were total dynamite whenever they hit a beer stained stage.
fusing american underground noise, hard hitting lyrics, and a deft use of memorable chord and riffs, the basic live in the studio approach worked well for the debut mini-lp, safety, fared relatively well over the course of the full length debut, comforter, but it was when they started to introduce electronic extras, and production tweaks to their sonic palette for their follow up, the future is medium, that everything came together perfectly.
i loved them.
they gave a certain jaded mid 20 year old a welcome kick up the arse, and set said bloke off on a re-energised voyage of new musical discovery.
of course the band ran its course, no-one realised that the bands final album was a pop punk masterpiece, and so the dream of world conquering sales never happened, and then the subsequent rebranding of garret as big beat and samples loving jacknife lee proved that it really could have been a case of the classic cliche of musical differences.
however, to give some indication as to the bands brilliance, i have dug into the archive and dusted down a track that was never released officially.
in fact, eating, was made available on limited 7″, to a select few who happened to catch the band live, and happened to have signed up to the bands mailing list. it was evidence as to the bands way with a tune and noise, that such a great track was literally given away, as they had so many slices of 3 minute perfection in their catalogue.
fast forward a few months, and on a trip to new york, during a cd digging mission, i came across a promo cd that consisted of nme journo, john harris, interviewing the band alongside several well selected classics, some in slightly different versions to the released versions, and a cd copy of eating.
so, it’s from that promo, (domestikon a promo that was pressed up by interscope records as the band were supposedly going to storm the usa and become a big name i seem to recall), that i have lifted this track from, hence the snippets of vocal dropped on the end.
still, its a cracking track.
mp3 – compulsion – eating
jacknife lee : official site