Johnny Temple (bassist)

Last updated

Johnny Temple
Johnny Temple playing live with Girls Against Boys, 1994.jpg
Temple in 1993
Background information
BornWashington D.C.
Genres Post-hardcore
Occupation(s)Musician
Instrumentsbass guitar
Years active1985–present
Labels Dischord, Touch and Go
Associated acts Girls Against Boys, New Wet Kojak, Soulside

Johnny Temple is an American bassist, known best for his work in the post-hardcore bands Soulside and Girls Against Boys. [1] Temple also formed a side project with fellow Girls Against Boys member Scott McCloud called New Wet Kojak. [2] In 1996 he founded Akashic Books out of Brooklyn with the intent of publishing works by independent artists. [3]

Post-hardcore is a punk rock music genre that maintains the aggression and intensity of hardcore punk but emphasizes a greater degree of creative expression initially inspired by post-punk and noise rock. Like post-punk, the term has been applied to a broad constellation of groups. Post-hardcore began in the 1980s with bands like Hüsker Dü, Black Flag, and Minutemen. The genre expanded in the 1980s and 1990s with releases by bands from cities that had established hardcore scenes, such as Fugazi from Washington, D.C. as well as groups such as Big Black and Jawbox that stuck closer to post-hardcore's noise rock roots. In the 2000s, post-hardcore achieved mainstream success with the popularity of bands like My Chemical Romance, AFI, Hawthorne Heights, The Used, At the Drive-In and Senses Fail. In the 2010s, post-hardcore bands like Sleeping With Sirens and Pierce the Veil achieved success and bands like Title Fight and La Dispute experienced underground popularity.

Soulside, also spelled Soul Side, was a post-hardcore band from the greater Washington, D.C. area. The original name of the band was Lunchmeat, formed in 1985. The name was changed to Soulside in spring 1986 and they disbanded in summer of 1989, after an extensive European tour and recording the definitive Hot Bodi-Gram. The group's sound could be described as clean, heavy, and warm, with lyrics focused on politics.

Girls Against Boys American Band

Girls Against Boys is an American indie rock/post-hardcore band, formed in Washington, D.C. in 1988 and currently based in New York City.

Contents

Biography

Johnny Temple grew up on 16th Street Northwest in Washington D.C. In high school, he worked at a reggae record store where his interest in music peaked. In college he studied the history, culture, and politics of Black Americans at Wesleyan University, [4] eventually earning a master's degree in social work at Columbia University in New York City.

Reggae Music genre from Jamaica

Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s.The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the word "reggae," effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as American jazz and rhythm and blues, especially the New Orleans R&B practiced by Fats Domino and Allen Toussaint, and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually relates news, social gossip, and political comment. Reggae spread into a commercialized jazz field, being known first as ‘Rudie Blues’, then ‘Ska’, later ‘Blue Beat’, and ‘Rock Steady’. It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat, and the offbeat rhythm section. The immediate origins of reggae were in ska and rocksteady; from the latter, reggae took over the use of the bass as a percussion instrument.

Wesleyan University private liberal arts college in Middletown, Connecticut

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831, Wesleyan is a baccalaureate college that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and sciences, grants research master's degrees in many academic disciplines, and grants PhD degrees in biology, chemistry, mathematics and computer science, molecular biology and biochemistry, music, and physics. Along with Amherst College and Williams College, Wesleyan is a member of the Little Three colleges. In the 2016 Forbes ranking of American colleges, which combines national research universities, liberal arts colleges and military academies in a single survey, Wesleyan University is ranked 9th overall.

Social work academic discipline and profession

Social work is an academic discipline and profession that concerns itself with individuals, families, groups and communities in an effort to enhance social functioning and overall well-being. Social functioning refers to the way in which people perform their social roles, and the structural institutions that are provided to sustain them. Social work applies social sciences, such as sociology, psychology, political science, public health, community development, law, and economics, to engage with client systems, conduct assessments, and develop interventions to solve social and personal problems; and create social change. Social work practice is often divided into micro-work, which involves working directly with individuals or small groups; and macro-work, which involves working with communities, and within social policy, to create change on a larger scale.

It was during his second year that Temple began playing bass guitar, with much of his influence being drawn from the punk rock and reggae scene in D.C. [5]

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed in the mid-1970s in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Rooted in 1960s garage rock and other forms of what is now known as "proto-punk" music, punk rock bands rejected perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. They typically produced short, fast-paced songs with hard-edged melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY ethic; many bands self-produce recordings and distribute them through independent record labels and other informal channels.

Personal life

Johnny Temple married in 2002 and has two sons. [4] He has lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn since 1990 and told The New York Times that one of his "goals in life is to leave Fort Greene as little as possible". [6]

Fort Greene, Brooklyn Neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City

Fort Greene is a neighborhood in the northwestern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Flushing Avenue and the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the north, Flatbush Avenue Extension and Downtown Brooklyn to the west, Atlantic Avenue and Prospect Heights to the south, and Vanderbilt Avenue and Clinton Hill to the east. Fort Greene is listed on the New York State Registry and on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a New York City–designated Historic District.

<i>The New York Times</i> Daily broadsheet newspaper based in New York City

The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 125 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U.S.

Discography

Soulside

YearTitle
1988Trigger
1989Hot Bodi-Gram

Girls Against Boys

YearTitle
1992 Tropic of Scorpio
1993 Venus Luxure No.1 Baby
1994 Cruise Yourself
1996 House of GVSB
1998 Freak*on*ica
2002 You Can't Fight What You Can't See

New Wet Kojak

YearTitle
1995New Wet Kojak
1997 Nasty International
2000Do Things
2003This Is the Glamorous

Related Research Articles

Keith Richards British songwriter, guitarist of The Rolling Stones

Keith Richards is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the co-founder, guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-principal songwriter of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine called Richards the creator of "rock's greatest single body of riffs" on guitar and ranked him fourth on its list of 100 best guitarists in 2011, and the magazine lists fourteen songs that Richards wrote with the Rolling Stones' lead vocalist Mick Jagger on its "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list.

The Troggs band

The Troggs are an English garage rock band formed in Andover, Hampshire in May 1964. They had a number of hits in the United Kingdom and the United States. Their most famous songs include the US chart-toppers "Wild Thing", "With a Girl Like You" and "Love Is All Around", all of which sold over 1 million copies and were awarded gold discs. "Wild Thing" is ranked #257 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and was an influence on garage rock and punk rock.

Brooklyn Academy of Music theater and concert hall in Brooklyn, New York City, United States

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in 1908.

André Schiffrin was a French-born American author, publisher and socialist.

Brooklyn Heights Neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City

Brooklyn Heights is an affluent residential neighborhood within the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Old Fulton Street near the Brooklyn Bridge on the north, Cadman Plaza West on the east, Atlantic Avenue on the south, and the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway or the East River on the west. Adjacent neighborhoods are Dumbo to the north, Downtown Brooklyn to the east, and Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill to the south.

Bunny Lee Jamaican record producer

Edward O'Sullivan Lee OD, better known by the name Bunny "Striker" Lee, is a Jamaican record producer and one of the major forces in the Jamaican music industry.

<i>Flex-Able</i> 1984 studio album by Steve Vai

Flex-Able is an album by Steve Vai. This was his first as a solo artist, and was created in Stucco Blue, a shed converted into a studio in Vai's old back garden. It is very different from many of his other albums, and is largely influenced by Frank Zappa. Flex-Able does not rely as much on massive guitar arrangements and shred moments as the rest of his output from the 1990s onwards, with the exception of Leftovers which is a compilation of bonus tracks and remasters from his sessions at 'Stucco Blue'.

Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge

Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge is an American musical group, best known for their million-selling rendition of Jimmy Webb's "Worst That Could Happen" (1968).

Peter Rowan American singer

Peter Rowan is an American bluegrass musician and composer. Rowan plays guitar and mandolin, yodels and sings.

"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is a song recorded by American country music singer-songwriter Hank Williams in 1949.

"Let Him Run Wild" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love for the American rock band the Beach Boys. It was released on their 1965 album Summer Days and as the B-side to "California Girls". Sibling bandmates Carl and Dennis Wilson later praised the song, calling it the point where they began to take notice of Brian's abilities. It was one of the first songs that Brian wrote while under the influence of marijuana.

Theodore Hamm American writer and magazine editor

Theodore Hamm is an American author, writer and the founding editor of the New York City-based literary and culture tabloid The Brooklyn Rail. Hamm currently serves as the director of the Journalism and New Media Studies program at St. Joseph's College, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Colin Channer is a Jamaican writer, often referred to as "Bob Marley with a pen," due to the spiritual, sensual, social themes presented from a literary Jamaican perspective. Indeed, his first two full-length novels, Waiting in Vain and Satisfy My Soul, bear the titles of well known Marley songs. He has also written the short story collection Passing Through, and the novellas I'm Still Waiting and The Girl with the Golden Shoes. Some of his short stories have been anthologized.

Akashic Books is a Brooklyn-based independent publisher. Akashic Books' collection began with Arthur Nersesian's The Fuck Up in 1997, and has since expanded to include Dennis Cooper's "Little House on the Bowery" series, Chris Abani's Black Goat poetry series, and the internationally successful "Noir" series, originating with Brooklyn Noir, since expanding to international titles such as "Delhi Noir" and "Havana Noir."

New Wet Kojak was an American indie rock band from New York City.

James Greer (writer) American novelist and screenwriter

James Greer is an American novelist, screenwriter, musician, and critic. As a screenwriter, he is known for writing the children's comedies Max Keeble's Big Move, Just My Luck and The Spy Next Door, as well as the 2018 thriller Unsane. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

<i>Hall of Fame: A Tribute to Bob Marleys 50th Anniversary</i> 1995 studio album by Bunny Wailer

Hall of Fame: A Tribute to Bob Marley's 50th Anniversary is an album by Bunny Wailer, released through RAS Records in November 1995. In 1997, the album won Wailer the Grammy Award for Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album.

Reed Farrel Coleman American crime fiction writer and poet

Reed Farrel Coleman is an American writer of crime fiction and a poet.

References

  1. ↑ Larkin, Colin (2006). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. 10. Oxford University Press . Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  2. ↑ Kot, Greg (2007). "New Wet Kojak". Trouser Press . Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  3. ↑ "Johnny Temple '88, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Akashic Books, On Publishing". Wesleying. February 10, 2012. Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  4. 1 2 "Little Big Man: Johnny Temple of Akashic Books". Stop Smiling (37). October 31, 2008. Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  5. ↑ Cole, Williams; Hamm, Theodore (April 2003). "Johnny Temple with Williams Cole and Theodore Hamm". brooklynrail.org. Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  6. ↑ Cotto, Andrew. "How Johnny Temple, Book Publisher and Rocker, Spends His Sundays", The New York Times , May 11, 2018. Accessed October 5, 2018. "Johnny Temple is the publisher and editor in chief of Akashic Books and also plays bass guitar in three bands. He lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with his wife, Kara Gilmour, 48, a senior director at Gibney Dance, a nonprofit, their two sons, Arthur, 12, and Abraham (Abie), 10, and a Basenji/cattle dog mix named Cuppy. 'One of my goals in life is to leave Fort Greene as little as possible,' said Mr. Temple, 51, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1990."
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.