Interview Joe Avella on jock jams

Fire up the lasers and plug in the smoke machine. Jock jams are back.

Or they’re back to the Chicago comedy scene, at least. Local sketch duo Teenager Of The Year have put together a record full of tracks inspired by 2 Unlimited and Tag Team. It’s available for free download today and features tracks like “Bootie 2 Hott” and “Street Fighter 2 Theme” that should get listeners plenty pumped up. After stretching, The A.V. Club talked to Teenager Of The Year member and sometimes songwriter Joe Avella about “Everybody Dance Now,” high school cheerleaders, and what makes jock jams inherently funny.

The A.V. Club: Why did you decide to make a jock jams record? And moreover, why a comedic jock jams record?

Joe Avella: We felt that the style of music is inherently funny. A lot of songs on those albums are made by people who were very sincere, but they come off comical as a result of the ridiculous nature of the way the music is played. The synth is very formulaic; the lyrics are always about dancing, having sex, or working out.

The music for me, and for Tim [Racine, also of Teenager Of The Year], is joyous and funny, though. We’d been talking about making music together, and we always went back to that style of music. It’s ridiculous, but it’s sincere.

So, it was kind of fun to write those songs. It’s not mean-spirited or a parody of something that’s serious. We’re just making that type of music, and that gesture is very funny and interesting to us.

Bootie 2 Hott (ft. Steinomite and Make It So #1) by Teenager Of The Year

AVC: How do you go about making a jock jam?

JA: If you listen to “Everybody Dance Now,” “Pump Up The Jam,” or “Whoomp (There It Is),” and notice elements of the song, there’s a very obvious formula they all have. We made our songs in Garage Band, and we’d pass them back and forth. One of us would make a 10-second instrumental and say, “Hey, this is like ‘Whoomp,’” and then the other one would add something and say, “What do you think?” Sometimes it would start with a weird title, like “Bootie 2 Hott.” You’d say it over and over and start singing it, and then it would organically grow from there.

One thing about the process every time was that the song had to be very danceable and painfully catchy. Jock jams are legit like that.

Actually, there’s this thing that’s been online for several years called “The Manual” by this group KLF. They tell you how to write a number one hit. “The Manual” dissects these here-today-gone-tomorrow pop songs. I made a point to look into it, and you see how they do what they do. There’s drums, beats, and bass. There’s always a sentence sung by a beefy sounding guy or throaty woman. I just used that as a template for writing the songs.

Dancefloor Or Bedroom ONLY by Teenager Of The Year

AVC: Is the comedy in the lyrics or the music?

JA: The comedy isn’t the lyrics. For us, we just think that style of music is inherently hilarious. We tried to keep it as true to the style as we could, and that would make it funny.

AVC: What’s your all-time favorite jock jam?

JA: I have two. One is worth parody, and that’s “Y’all Ready For This.” That song, as much as people want to make fun of it if that song plays—I don’t care who you are, you perk up and bob your head, even if it’s sarcastically. Another one that’s in the mix but not necessarily a jock jam—though it is on one of the records—is Naughty By Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray.” I tried to make a song like that, but I couldn’t.

AVC: So you’ve been listening to the Jock Jams records?

JA: The list of the songs is on Wikipedia, and I would look the videos up online. I listened to a lot of them over and over. “Whoomp” is another song that people want to rag on and laugh at because it’s a novelty record, but it’s still a damn catchy song.

AVC: How did “Street Fighter 2 Theme” come along?

JA: There’s a Mortal Kombat theme song on one of the Jock Jams records. I thought everyone knew that, but apparently not. I thought, why not make one about another fighting game, especially one I liked growing up. I listened to Mortal Kombat over and over and identified the elements, and then we created our own version. That’s the whole song, really—someone yelling out “Mortal Kombat!” and then saying the characters in the games.

Street Fighter 2 Theme by Teenager Of The Year

AVC: That’s clever.

JA: One thing we want to try and avoid, though, is people having to be familiar with the originals. We want to try and make them stylistically what jock jams are, but we want them to be funny and charming on their own. Jock jams are looked down on because they’re dumb songs you play at sporting events, and that’s technically true, but they’re still good songs. They’re still fun.

AVC: Have you been pursuing any jocks to get them to listen to your jams?

JA: I’d love to somehow get ahold of someone who picks the music at the United Center. I’d e-mail them an mp3 to play or slip them some money to play a track and see if anyone noticed.

I do have a lot of girl cousins in high school who do cheerleading and poms, and I’m like, “Throw this in your routine.” I think it would be a hit in Crystal Lake High School.

AVC: Are you going to perform these songs live anywhere?

JA: Unfortunately, probably not. We wanted to have an album release party, but Tim just moved to New York, and we’re not going to be in the same room for a while. I’d love to do one, though. I’d love to get a band and a couple of guys on drum machines and just pump up the crowd.

AVC: What else do you two have coming up?

JA: We’re waiting to hear back from some festivals. We did San Francisco Sketchfest, and because of that, we’re hoping that we can get into Just For Laughs and the New York Sketchfest. Both of those are this summer. We might just be a festival act before I move to New York or he moves back, or we might do more audio stuff like this. We have a few other sketch and song ideas. We’re like the comedy Postal Service.

Stream Jock Jams Vol. 1 in its entirety here.