“Susquehanna Hat Company”, Too Much Joy

This way: Susquehanna Hat Company

Too Much Joy is an American alternative rock music group, that formed in the early 1980s in Scarsdale, New York. The original members were Tim Quirk (vocals), Jay Blumenfield (guitar, vocals), Sandy Smallens (bass, vocals) and Tommy Vinton (drums). During 1982-1983 Tommy LaRussa temporarily replaced Vinton as drummer. Smallens departed on amicable terms in 1994; producer William Wittman joined on bass guitar and vocals after Smallens's departure. Blumenfield was also in Fields Laughing (which released an EP in 1985 on Stonegarden Records) and Smallens was also in Beauty Constant (whose Like the Enemy LP was issued in 1987). Wittman continues to play with Cyndi Lauper. 

The band, originally called the Rave, took the name Too Much Joy after a phrase that Quirk had seen after his first mushroom trip.

After the success of their third album Cereal Killers, TMJ released several other studio albums, but none achieved the same popular success. In 1997, TMJ announced a hiatus, saying that the commercialism of the music business had taken the "joy" out of performing. Too Much Joy emptied its vaults in 1999 and 2001 to produce the album Gods and Sods, composed of studio outtakes and demos from the period between Mutiny and ...Finally and the live album Live at Least. The later incarnation of the band briefly reunited in the early 2000s to record the one-off holiday single "Ruby Left a Present Underneath the Christmas Tree." Its members have also formed the sometimes-overlapping subprojects the ITS, Surface Wound and Wonderlick. In 2021, the band self-released the album, "Mistakes Were Made."

[Spotify] Susquehanna Hat Company

Title comes from this sketch, Abbot and Costello

[Sketch} Susquehanna Hat Company