“What we ’ve done, ” Morris told Musician ’s Leland of the new players, “is incorporate a couple of guys that have never played this type of music before. The Circle Jerks ’ first album with this lineup was called Wonderful. Both bassist Schloss and drummer Clark joined the group following the making of Repo Man, their addition marking roughly the tenth lineup change for the band. The Jerks just happened to be one of Cox ’s favorite bands, so they were awarded the role of a bad lounge act in the film. They did gain notice by a larger audience, however, when they made a cameo appearance in Alex Cox ’s film Repo Man. The Circle Jerks ’ first six albums were released on independent labels they were a cult band with very little media presence. ” Still, one Melody Maker reviewer found the band “erudite, articulate, keen to examine the shock of obliterated noise they make, the leaps of energy they find live. Melody Maker ’s Dave Thompson described it as “a cacaphonic blitzkrieg which demands your attention but offers nothing more than a splitting headache in return. Whether called punk or hardcore, the Circle Jerks ’ music is unquestionably aggressive. Thus the Circle Jerks … all spit and nerves … a rock band whose glow nears the pristine rush of Anthrax, awake to power and texture, a metal chilled out. 1980 appeared in cult film Repo Man, 1983 disbanded, 1990 reformed and signed with Mercury Records, 1994 released Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities, 1995.Īddresses: Record company -Mercury Records, 825 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10019.īy the speed and volume of rock guitar, lose yourself in abrasive noise …. Debut album, Group Sex, released on Frontier Records, c. Former members include drummers Keith “Lucky ” Leherer and Chuck Biscuits and bassists Roger Roger-son, Earl Liberty, and Jay Bentley.īand formed in Hermosa Beach, CA, 1979. 1955, in Los Angeles, CA), vocals and Zander Schloss (born c. 1957, in Brooklyn, NY), guitar Keith Morris (born c. “It becomes once again au fait to be swept away For the Record … “Hardcore could be heavy metal rehabilitated, ” Melody Maker explained. The term “hardcore ” is perhaps a better way to describe the Circle Jerks ’ sound. A lot of the lyrics I write are direct influences from my dad and his friends. When he was in high school, he and a couple of his friends would tie the principal to a chair and make him -at knife point -say certain things on the PA system. That would be one of the last descriptions that I would want to use. ” Punk?Īs late as a 1986 interview with Musician ’s John Leland, in fact, Morris insisted, “We ’re not a punk band. Then, once we did start playing … they finally came to the realization that we were a force to be reckoned with. So we embraced them more than they embraced us. We were just fed up with the music that was going on around us, except for what was happening in Hollywood. It wasn ’t like we wore spiked hair and leather or painted our faces …. “We were all the guys and girls next door. That was the whole thing, ” Morris told Brian S. Together he and Morris started their own outfit, finding then group ’s name in a friend ’s copy of the American Slang Dictionary - its meaning refers to a group sex act generally performed by adolescent boys. Hetson ’s band, Redd Kross, used the same rehearsal space. Black Flag rehearsed in a church where Morris also lived. When the Circle Jerks first formed in late 1979, Keith Morris was already one of the preeminent frontmen on the punk scene, having been the original singer for the legendary band Black Flag. ” So, in the summer of 1994, Keith Morris reunited with original Circle Jerks guitarist Greg Hetson and longtime members Zander Schloss and Keith Clark, on bass and drums, respectively, and the reconstituted group signed their first major label deal. “I was seeing bands that weren ’t that talented gaining a lot of attention, ” Circle Jerks singer Keith Morris told Entertainment Weekly ’s Nisid Hajari, “and a lot of things we had done being done again. But in the mid-1990s two young punk outfits, Green Day and the Offspring, and their radio-friendly melody-intensive sound suddenly made punk rock an extremely lucrative commodity. Considered pioneers of a furious style called hardcore, they slogged it out in the punk underground for ten years before giving up the ghost in 1990.

The Circle Jerks were one of the original Southern California punk bands of the 1980s.

Circle jerks