International Bright Young Thing – Jesus Jones

Speaking of the future changing on you. This is SteveForTheDeaf’s come to Jesus moment. Jesus Jones were part of a UK indie scene that featured other bands like Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, Pop Will Eat Itself, Chumba Wumba, The World According To Garp, The Wonder Stuff, Futpuckit & the Nantucket Sleigh Ride and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. And I only made one of those bands up.

This one’s the anomaly in the BOBALOBIBBLE666POOP sequence in as much as they didn’t change their sound to fit in with a new scene. Jesus Jones sounded like this from Liquidizer right through to their massive in the USA single Right Here Right Now. Which everyone still knows from excessive use in Sports montages on TV.

Parallel to the big break in the US, over here in the UK their bigger hit was this track. International Bright Young Thing was a young rock band playing with dance music technology to great pop crossover success.

That opening drum roll sampled from some old timey jazz record sent arms and drinks flailing in the Greebo clubs and pubs when it burst fourth. The song had a brief moment of notoriety when the ‘Massive with Students’ UK cult comedian Vic Reeves swung on to the stage hanging from a rope singing a ‘Sinatra-ized version of the song on his must see TV Show Vic Reeves Big Night Out. This was pre- Chairman of the Board using a similar trick on MTV in the states with Pearl Jam and Nirvana songs.

That most current and recognisable opening line had them thrashing about.  

“Ple-e-e-e-ease introduce yourself and shock the world with what we learn”

The thing was. At the time this really did sound like the future of rock music. Computers were creeping into every aspect of modern life. Electronic dance music was almost 20 years old and it seemed like an irresistible tide of technology was infringing on everything. Subsequently whenever any big existing band tried to modernise their sound. They came off sounding like they were copying Jesus Jones or Pop Will Eat Itself… Or Futpucit & The Nantucket… Nah you got me. That’s the one I made up.

“International bright young thing, you know for sure that you’ll make the world sing”

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