Little Jack Melody adopted his current nom de guerre from a Beat Generation minor player, and fashioned LJM and his Young Turks as a protest group on two fronts: first, with its anachronistic instrumentation of harmonium (pump organ), tuba, tenor banjo, sax/clarinet, and Roaring 20's style trap kit, the band was a Luddite response to the age of digital synths and "the mandate of creating every sound under the sun plus a bunch of new ones that we don't even have names for yet"; secondly, many of his original songs shared the tradition of protest and commentary that characterized the spirit of the cabaret movement in Europe.
Little Jack Melody and his Young Turks became a melting pot of its leader's enthusiasms. Jack found inspiration in the confessionals of Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski and Tom Waits; he was intrigued by the subtleties of Raymond Carver, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill; he was moved by the sheer power and humanity of Hubert Selby Jr., Henry Miller and Carla Bley; he found metaphors in circuses, Salvation Army bands and Melville.
"On the Blank Generation" was released in 1991 and met with conspicuous critical acclaim. Effusive reviews rolled in from "Musician," "Rolling Stone," Kurt Loder in "Esquire," "Keyboard," "Texas Monthly," and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" did a feature spot on the band and the CD, raising LJM's national profile.
1994 saw the release of "World of Fireworks," which managed to elude critical notice almost entirely. "my charmed life" was unleashed in 1997 and marked a turning point in the band's evolution, a transitional period that saw the departure of tuba, its replacement with upright bass, and a more open-ended approach to instrumentation. "I decided to let the songs call the shots on that CD," LJM suggests. "If it said, 'gimme some field bells,' then we found it some. If the song said, 'I really need a couple of suspended Chinese tam-tam googongs and an analog synth,' then we brought 'em in."
A live album, "Noise and Smoke" was recorded at a club in Denton and released in 1999. Harnessing the live energy of the band, complete with between-song banter and various spontaneous serendipities, the CD comes close to representing the genuine article.
The band's personnel has been in a near-continual state of flux, with Young Turks coming and going with maddening regularity. By latest count, there have been at least 28 full time members of the band, and a full reckoning of occasional subs might yield a head count of another 25.
At present, Little Jack is experimenting with a scaled-down approach to his music. "Right now I'm playing bass, Brad Williams is on all sorts of keyboards, and Don Cento has joined on guitar," Melody reports. "First time I've had a guitarist in the band, and it's really pretty cool. Maybe that's why every other band in the world has one. Man, if I'd only known…"
Here's a couple of videos by the great Suzie Kidnap. First, "My Charmed Life," a day in the life of Little Jack Melody and his Young Turks-- playing, driving, breaking down, playing, driving, getting lost. Repeat. Followed by Kidnap's poignant take on "On the Blank Generation (The Cake Song)," the title cut from the first LJM CD.
