How You Discover Joy Electric?.

[elisamuelf]

I don't know if anyone has posted this before but anyway.

Possible Points:

- Reaction of first time heard it.
- First Song Ever.
- First Album or Song Buy.
- Memories Brought To You.
- First Show or Meet Ronnie experience.

[elisamuelf]

The first song i heard ever Was "Lollipop Parade (On Christmas Morn)" and it was a instant like and then love i heard this song all year long knowing is a Christmas song but didn't care at all.

Then i brought The White Songbook, and on TV i saw the video of Children of the lord and my reaction was like what is that!!!.

So thanks to Happy Christmas Vol. 1 and 2 i become a fan of JE since then.

That song bring me good memories of my late childhood and still today.

[tkrantilles]

My liking of Joy Electric was a bit more tenuous at first. We were on a mission trip in Ensenada back in high school (spring of '99), and every night in our room when we were going to bed, the seniors would set up the ghetto blaster to play the Children of the Lord single on repeat until the wee hours of the morning. Fifteen minutes, four songs, for maybe four hours. So if you couldn't sleep, you heard every song maybe sixteen times. It took a few nights to overcome the weirdness of it all, but that was that, as they say.
The best part, perhaps, was the bus ride back home - they played "I'm OK, You're OK", and nobody knew the words of the chorus, but some wanted to sing along anyway, so it sounded something like this:

"...uh nuh nuh muh nuh muh nuh nuh uh nuh nuh nuh nuh OKAY!...uh nuh nuh muh nuh muh nuh nuh uh nuh nuh nuh nuh OKAY!"

[jjmini]

My reaction to the first time I heard Joy Electric was a very "what is this?" experience. The reason it was such a weird experience for me was because Sugar Rush was the first song I heard from Joy E at the time. It was a bit too sweet for my brooding self at the time so I kinda passed them up for a few years. Then around the time Tick Tock Treasury came out I was captivated by the song "such as it was" and didnt make the connection that it was the same band that did Sugar Rush at the time. My early experiences with Joy E are very fond. Many things change in life as time goes on but those Ronnie Martin CDs will always be there and for that I'm grateful. My first experience with ronnie was a terrible one. I think I sent him a personal email specifically asking him, and I quote "if you play the brass stopped before the second mooring there seems to be subtle satanic influences, was this your doing or the record labels". I still feel bad about that but Youtube warped my mind, and I swear if you play The Brass Stopped Before the Second Mooring backwards you hear some pretty weird stuff.

My only regret is not instantly loving Sugar Rush because then I could have jumped on the Joy Electric wagon a few years earlier than I did.

[Penny Dreadful]

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose I am a relatively new JE fan, as I jumped on board around the time of Hello, Mannequin. I was really into Tooth and Nail Records during highschool, and I heard "Made From the Wires" on a tooth and nail sampler. Although I was not a huge fan of electronic music at the time, I found myself oddly attracted to the song, especially to the vocals, which simultaneously delighted me and spooked me (and although I am ashamed to admit it, I thought that the singer was a woman!). To this day, Made From the Wires holds a special place in my heart, and it remains one of my favorite JE songs of all time.

[WhiteSongBoy]

I remember my uncle (who is like, 2 years older than me) had the Art and Craft CD in his van, and it was relatively new to him. (He got it from his brother, who is like, 20 years older than me.) Anyhow, I saw it and asked if we could listen to it. We listened to the side with Drum Machine Joy I think. That is beside the point. I remember that I liked it and asked my mom to get me some of his CDs. She said she'd look into it. I then forgot about them and so did my mother. A few years later, he had MOA, and I was like, "Hey, I think I've heard these guys before..." He had a cd player/walkman thing, so I put in the CD and instantly fell in love with it.

Boom! Now here I am in the future with almost every CD.

[Jono]

I think I first stumbled across the name Joy Electric in CCM Magazine. I know the first time I got to hear anything was samples of Robot Rock from the Christian subset of BMG Direct, Sound and Spirit. I believe I enjoyed it at the time but for one reason or another never got it. Then late '03 I somehow stumbled across them again, and enjoyed the tracks MP3.com was serving up at the time. "Made from the Wires" and "Holly Jolly Christmas" were on there I remember, at least. So I actually went back to Sound and Spirit and they had The White Songbook and The Tick Tock Treasury and I did get those. Until they came, because deliveries usually took such a long time, I illegally downloaded a few tracks to tide me over... I think I had "Shepherds from the Northern Pasture," "And Without Help We Perish," "The Tick Tock Treasury," and "The Chronometers of Switzerland" (because yes, I actually was intrigued by a track made up of random bleeps and whooshes). Ooh, a real pirate I was!

(My family actually got tons of free CD coupons from Sound and Spirit back in the day; it really wasn't a bad deal. That's how I got those JE albums. The only real catch is the shipping on the free items was ludicrous, but it was still better than paying the typical full price for one new CD.)

[xoxos]

recommended in some thread for bands like erasure ("i say! i say! i say!" is a winner)

at the time i'd just taken out a loan to put some good synths in my hands after a decade of using crap, and the unanticipated effect was to divert me towards my 80's new wave 'roots' instead of the skinny puppy/acid thing i was doing, so 'songs' were good again.

i liked the whole innocence thing, at the same time i found it absurd and twee, but it was done so well, and i had yet to discover ronnie's more subtle and thoughtful side, which is why i check in here all the time.

i knew a guy through dancetech.. some underworld cokehead (an unfortunate, subsiding fellow with an endearing occasional honest streak like many conmen have) who made electro with a large collection of analog synths.. he called me after he heard the first few mp3s and was laughing and laughing. blollopblollopblollop pwiiiiw. i've always had the picture that his head exploded and landed miles away. music was generally so pretentious that anything unexpected could really shake up someone's world.

[IantheBlueMan]

Someone on TastyFresh mentioned JE after I asked if there was any Christian electro or synthpop out there; this was right around the time TMOA came out.

[velocity boy]

first song i ever hear was "lilypad the forest our home" and instantly fell in love. then got melody and loved every song on it. after listening to the rest of his material (including dancehouse and ronald of orange) I can honestly say that Ronnie is one of the greatest songwriters out there, and he's one of the only songwriters that actually gets better with age. can't wait for DMA, I've already heard a live cut of one of the tracks and its perfect.

[velocity boy]

oh, and this was after i was listening to tons of new order. i can't remember who, but someone recommended JE to me. many thanks to whoever that was.

[Rogue]

I think it was back in 1997 or 1998, a friend of mine had the cassette to We Are the Music Makers. He got really into it, and played a song or two for me. I don't know why, but it didn't do anything for me... but not long after that, I was trying to find / buy up Christian electronic music. (My friend and I were really into The Echoing Green, so that sort of introduced us to so many of these bands.) Anyways I figured I'd start with the beginning, and ordered "Melody" from A Different Drum. I put the CD into my stereo, and... laughed myself silly listening to that album. But it quickly grew on me. It was just so out there, so wacky. I still love introducing people to Joy Electric by using "Candy cane Carriage," "Lily pad the Forest Our Home," or some other early song.

I think my second album was Robot Rock, since it was the newest and my friend already had WATMM. I distinctly recall buying the WATMM vinyl before getting the CD. In fact I recorded the vinyl to cassette so I could take the music with me, LOL! I had to use a cassette walkman plugged into my car CD player's aux input to listen to it!

[benjamin]

I can't remember where I first heard of JE, I just remeber years ago at university hearing "I am Made from the Wires" on purevolume, and "Monosynth" and listening to them over and over and over and over and over and you get the idea. I love JE!

[sweetsweetcharity]

I downloaded Melody in December of 2011, the cover art and album title had me interested for months and I finally downloaded it, I didn't know what to think of it when I first heard it, I remember really liking EBAGFIL and CCC, and TDA. But I didn't buy the album until like two months ago, off Discogs, for like three dollars. Three dollars well spent, I also bought Robot Rock, so listening to Robot Rock on my Technics tape deck was the first time I heard a JE record in physical format. The first minute of Robot Rock, I was like "woah."

I do enjoy Tooth And Nail records,I bought a CD in 2010 and it was on the Tooth And Nail label, this album was called Ninety Pound Wuss, it's basically Christian punkish hardcore stuff.