Green Party Jedis
From The Secret History of the Cedar Valley
Contents |
History
Green Party Jedis were a CF punk band in 2000-2002. Their name stems from Ralph Nader's 2000 candidacy for president with the Green Party and the Jedi Knights, a chivalrous benign peacekeeping force from the Star Wars saga.
NEWS FLASH!!!
The Green Party Jedis are reforming now that we have settled down into 40 hour post collegde jobs and miss our crazy youth and want to reconnect to it in a hip, new exciting way. Jay plays regular guitar, jim plays bassist, and blake plays the drums.
The First single of their new hit album will be "Rachel Knock Lives." The band is excited, but still has not decided on whether or not to play live again. Averill and Badker have also been making songs with Hip Hop Ejay. These are weird things that harken back to their extensive drug use history and love of weird tv and movies and weirdness. Jim would probably say something about GWAR. Jay Johnson is a real town cop now. But still likes to rock and play guitar hero and real guitar. This is news and history. I have a history degree so can say so.
Band Members
- Jim Averill: Singer, Bass, Vocals
- Blake Badker: Drums, Guitar Solos, Vocals
- Jay Johnson: Bass-Guitar, Guitar, Vocals
Discography
 Self Released CD 2001 |
Self Released CD Coming Soon |
Memories, Anecdotes
- Blake Badker (Dec.30 2006):
The Green Party Jedis lived by one rule and one rule only: "It wouldn't have happened if Ralph Nader was The President." That's all it was about. and five o'clock vodka we'd get derek devries to buy us. Our songs sounded wrong on purpose. above all we hated melodic metal because what was it but those deftones/glassjaw chords, hitting the snare drum 3 times, and that shitty scream followed by not-so-melodic-whine-ing. This led us into the proto punk ramones, pistols, clash blah and us making The Police Cops.
Exit Drills was asked to be on the bill for The Bonnie Situation's first gig, at The Boat House, a show that Josh Forbes had set up -- probably because we were sharing Josh Schneiderman on drums and Josh Forbes probably figured we'd draw some people. I'd talked to Steve Wilson a few days before and he was telling me about this Blake kid -- Blake Badker, as it turns out -- who was coming around to Bob's Guitars (where Steve worked at the time) and talking up this band he was in, Green Party Jedis. I'm not sure if No Consensus was supposed to be playing that night or not, but Steve was at the show, and had apparently gave Blake the idea that they could just show up at the show and play.
So long about what felt like two hours into The Bonnie Situation's set (they were dreadfully boring, I'm sorry to say), some kids show up and start loading equipment in through the front door. Bonnie finishes a song and someone shoults out to them, "who the hell are you guys?" The blonde one (Blake) shouts back, "We're the Green Party Jedis, we're here to save the day!"
So the consensus among atendees came to be, we might as well let these kids play, they look interesting. One of them (Jim Averill) had a green mohawk, and they had cut-out bits of a Star Wars blanket taped to the drums. They didn't even have a guitar, just a bass with a distortion pedal (played by Jay Johnson), drums (played by Blake Badker) and vocals (Jim Averill.
Bonnie finishes up and the Jedis get set up. The party finally gets going when they launch into their first song, "Power Wheels Demolition Derby," a blast of frenetic neander-noisecore and screeching vocals. Jim stalked about the stage area making the strangest noises come out of his mouth. Their songs had coherent riffs, but they were either obscured by the distortion or barely held to any kind of steady beat whatsoever. Blake didn't have the top wingnuts on his cymbal stands and his cymbals would often fly off them and crash to the floor. They returned heckling-in-fun comments from the audience in kind. They had a song called "Fuck You Zoloft." They were totally primal, totally amateurish, and totally spirited, everything punk rock was supposed to have been, and I thought they were geniuses. They actually did save the day -- the smallish crowd's enthusiasm picked up big time and Exit Drills's set benefited from it.
I got some contact info from them afterwards, and ended up booking them for a couple Boat House gigs I had coming up, including the kickoff for the No Consensus mini-tour with Circle Of Willis. At that show they upped the ante with a hilarious anti-guitar-solo and a keyboard. At one point I was trying to start up another zine and did an interview with them in which I fabricated rumors about them, such as that they refused to accept money for playing. Unfortunately, I never got the zine out, and the interview tape got lost.
- noel isley (3/1/2007):
so eric tells me after a gig that this kid came up to him & said he loved our band & wanted to open for us sometime in the near future. he says that they're called the green party jedi's. i figured that we sucked bad & that any band that would wanna open for us must suck even more, so having them open would make us look better. i cant remember if that show ever happened, but that was basically my introduction to jay, jim, blake & casey. i dont regret knowing them.
Lyics Section
NEW SINGLE LYRICS!!!:FOR "RACHEL KNOCK LIVES":
rachel knock lives
i saw her the other day
rachel knock lives
how can we ever be cool enough? if all we did was drool and were too dumb
and three dumb and plus too tough enough?
[insert gibberish here]
why we have to learn to-how play enuf? if in future we already forgot
and werent not platinum artist good enough?
we werent not already ta-dumb
duh-nuh. nuh-nuh nuh-nuh.
rachel knock lives
earyn neer neer-neer
rachel knock gives
i saw her the other day
and we were wrong
rachel knock lives.
we want to say the "n" word precisely because jenna fox a smart liberal girl enough
from school told us enough we couldn't.
she said it's "racism" but we're not racist enough. we're not racist. at all.
and its a dumb taboo and sociology and marxist theory. enough.
but jenna you're still racist in your head-saying-it-exists-and-trying-to-end-it-enough.
when the dog outside is the only not-racist. cause he can't get what you said.
rachel knock lives
rachel knock lives
rachel knock gives
rachel knock.
rachel knock.
rachel knock.
was not what we thought- i saw her the other day
and
rachel knock lives.
Live Shows
we played The Hearst Center in our underwear. 1st show. It was the high school GIGS thing and Blake and Jay were in college. Featured short-term guitarist Nick Biersner. Who just played slide guitar randomly.
2. Boathouse - a few times
3. Reverb.
4. Blake's gone parents house parties
5. Awesome House Party at John and Chip and Joel the Vikings place. Where some guy was wearing a Depend diaper and the cops came in mid-set. We played three of our best songs that are real gems that arent' appreciated enough like the No Consensus songs. "Power Strangers," "Hipsters of the Cedar Falls and Waterloo Area," and the controversial "Jew and Germans Could Be Friends." Which is about in the 9/11 world where Jewish people kick the shit out of poor muslims in Israel almost like the Nazis kicked the shit out of people in the early 1940s. This is not activism or art, but if you want to believe that it will only add to the laughing about it all later. John from power plant said it was the coolest show he'd ever seen. Blake Badker really like Joel Viking's drum set cowbell and sublime hip-hop effect parts and insead of regular snare fills he used them and it got some laughs. This was the last show as GPJs then we thought up Police Cops later that fall 2002 at the stein where we drank underage. Which was good because how else could we drink at bars and hit on girls with dutch courage?
