[kj] Few things here and there...

[Luca Signorelli]

Hi guys, here's Luca from Italy. Not sure if it's the right thing to do, 
but still I've few thing to take off my chest about some of the 
discussions I've read recently on the list.

1) There was never, as in "never ever ever" such a thing as "deliberate 
commercial Killing Joke". Forget it - things in the band have never 
worked that way, and that's especially true for the period from, let's 
say, late '83 (when "Eighties" was released) to BTATS rehearsal sessions 
in 1986. I'm not saying that everything the band has written is a 
masterpiece (never particularly liked "Love Like Blood" myself) or that 
when they were filling 5000-seater they weren't happy. But that was not 
the priority, and has never been since. I want to mention this because 
the world is filled with successful bands/artists (and God knows how 
many I've met) who keep repeating that they're not in for the money - 
and 99.9% of them are in just exactly for that: there's no amount of 
compromise and ass kissing they wouldn't do to maintain a certain level 
of popularity. Killing Joke is one very, very rare exception: they have 
actually a sort of penchant for irritating/abusing people who could be 
helpful to their career, just because they wouldn't compromise their 
integrity.

2) As it was rehearsed before recording sessions, BTATS was the most 
fucking intensely gorgeous thing they had done since WTF, basically 
obliterating "Nightime" into oblivion - "Wintergardens", "Chessboard" 
and "Twilight of the Mortals" were things of absolute beauty (and still 
are in the final record, limp mix notwithstanding). What happened later 
wasn't exactly all their fault, and I really hope they will release the 
Chris Kimsey mix one of these days.

3) There's a lot of "fun" element in Killing Joke, even if it's rarely 
"good, ole, clean, wholesome fun", but more the wicked variety. And 
thus, songs like "Me or You" or "Birds of a Feather" are very much 
Killing Joke as the rest their catalogue, and must be related with 
accordingly.

Cheers everybody

Luca S.