King Missile don’t seem to take themselves, or anything else, particularly seriously.
A lot of the music they make is essentially rock based, but they are just deeply different.
The lyrics tend to be more in the vein of beat poetry, with a spoken word monologue delivered in a flat tone.
“Jesus Was Way Cool” says that Jesus’ unlimited power was “cool” and that he would of been the greatest at anything he’d ever tried his hand at. Real Jesus would probably not turn “sugar into cocaine” but he could if he wanted, and this is the sort of thing the song riffs off.
The backing is a simple piano part, which is actually a wonderful piece of music on its own. The latter third of the song is the piano by itself, and it’s clear how much impact the piano adds.
The song is very sarcastic, with John Hall’s words practically dripping with a certain laconic humour. He’d had a break with religion as he grew up.
“Jesus Was Way Cool” was released in 1990 on Mystical Shit, and was one of the factors for this avant garde group getting a major label record deal.
One of the music world’s weird little gems!