“My Past Lives” Too Much Joy

This way: My Past Lives

Too Much Joy is an American alternative rock music group, that formed in the early 1980s in Scarsdale, New York.

Tim Quirk (2008)

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, after which producer William Wittman joined on bass guitar and vocals. 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."

Penn and Teller are fans of the band. Teller directed the video for "Donna Everywhere," and Penn Jillette would often jam with the band in studio.

While never officially broken up, the entire band performed for the first time in 10 years on May 4, 2007, at the Knitting Factory in New York City. The opening band, the Final Stand, included Tommy Vinton's son Tommy on drums and Sandy Smallens' son Ziya on bass, followed by New Jersey's the Impulse. Both TMJ bassists, Smallens and William Wittman, took part in the performance, trading between second guitar and bass. The concert was a celebration of drummer Tommy Vinton's retirement from the NYPD.[citation needed]

The band later recorded "We Are the Clash" for Recutting the Crap, Volume One, an album paying tribute to the Clash released by Crooked Beat Records.

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