Music Spotlight: Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid Jammers

Bringing old school punk rock to the island with a fair share of satire and nods to pop culture, Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid Jammers break down their Instant Cult Classic

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Specializing in down and dirty, rattle your bones punk rock loaded down with healthy helpings of satire and enough sci-fi and horror trimmings to fill San Diego Comic Con, Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid Jammers – Dwayne Churchill (Vocals), Jon Dunphy (Guitar), Nick Tuck (Bass/Vocals) and Lucas Ellsworth (Drums/Vocals) – invade the senses in their latest album, the aptly titled Instant Cult Classic. 

It’s an album that cracked our very own Newfoundland Herald ‘best albums’ of 2019 list, and one that lives up to its namesake with earworm cuts Soy Boys From Mars and Ed Gein’s Quest for Fame. It’s as bizarre and glorious as it sounds.

Drummer, vocalist and songwriter Lucas Ellsworth caught up with The Herald to break down Instant Cult Classic in our latest album deep dive!

Narco Polo

We wrote Narco Polo about our frustrations with the local punk scene. Some bands refused to play with us because of our name and the content of our music as well as banning moshing from their shows. 

It’s one of the few songs where lyrically I wrote about something real that was bothering me. I don’t get to do that a whole lot with Jim Jones. 

Most of our songs are just satirical nonsense about aliens and serial killers.

Neighbourhood Watch

Neighbourhood Watch is about a mentally unhinged individual who dreams of a perfect society and perfect people. 

Of course no such place like that exists so he feels the needs to take the law into his own hands and purge the world of all crime, misdemeanors and childhood rebellion whether it be through making threats or committing murder. 

It’s a classic tale of becoming the thing that you hate. We tried to keep some of the surfy vibes from our debut album in this one.

Soy Boys From Mars

Soy Boys is an homage to classic scifi/alien movies.

It’s obvious to most people that most of our music is inspired by movies, pop-culture and low brow art so that’s where the lyrics and the name for this one came from. 

The line at the end of the song, “They mostly come at night … mostly,” is from the movie Aliens.

This was one of the first songs written for Instant Cult Classic that made me want to move our style into a more old school hardcore direction.

National Lampoon’s Manson Family Vacation

N.L.M.F.V. continues our trend of trying to think of the most ridiculous names for songs. 

Musically it’s very Dead Kennedy’s inspired but the drums in the intro are literally the same as the intro to Down with the Sickness by Disturbed because why not? Nick even does a terrible version of the “Oh ah ah ah ah” that song is famous for.

Lyrically the song is about the hypocrisy of mainstream music culture and pokes fun at far left ideologies.

Necro Tango

The lyrics to Necro Tango were actually written mostly by Jon. I think Dwayne just wrote a few lines for the bridge. The song is about digging up a corpse to take to a dance and how it’s just easier to love dead
people. It kind of continues the theme of Cemetary Bum from the first album. This song almost got cut from the album but we put a lot into it effects wise and figuring out the midi keyboard.

For more on the band visit their official social medias, bandcamp and pick up Instant Cult Classic wherever local music is sold!

2 thoughts on “Music Spotlight: Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid Jammers

  1. Anonymous
    April 5, 2020
    Reply

    These guys are idiots. Nobody “bans” moshing, and people don’t want to play with them because they don’t write interesting music and are jerks. Read the lyrics if you want proof. Weird persecution complex and strange of the herald to give a platform to what is effectively the most regressive, shitty band in St. John’s. Someone’s editor should have looked up who this band was before going to print.

    • Anonymous
      June 16, 2020
      Reply

      Sounds like someone is a sooky baby because their band sucks and no one wants to hear about it

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