Jawbreaker broke up in 1996. I was 11 at the time, and though I am sure there were a number of 11 year olds who listened to Jawbreaker and who may have even been aware of the band’s significance in the formation of pop punk -- before that term implied something negative -- I was not one of them. Those kids were and are, much, much cooler than I. What I did witness firsthand, being introduced to the band by a man who to this day bares a JAWBREAKER tattoo in the one and only typeset used on their album covers, was the evolution of the band’s mythos from also-rans who unequivocally sold out, to veritable gods to fourth generation pop punksters.
All that being said, it’s still hard to qualify Blake Schwarzenbach’s place in music in a broader context. On one hand, the man is revered so intensely in a certain scene, largely emanating from the Gilman Street project and the bay area in general, that few musicians from any scene have earned a similar collateral of banked credibility. His second band, Jets to Brazil, released one album which sounded suspiciously like Jawbreaker, and a latter two which didn’t and were almost universally panned, and what’s impressive is that this did nothing to taint the man’s latent, but rising underground appreciation.
During a time in which Schwarzenbach was active and touring with a band few really liked, he actually got more street cred. That’s a hard feat to pull off.
On the other hand, Blake’s influence is so restricted not just to one genre of music, but one sub-genre of music, that if you don’t idolize him than you likely don’t know who he is at all, nor have heard either of his bands. In many ways, Schwarzenbach’s career has served as a tribute to esotericism and all the paradoxes that come with it, a fact further illustrated by the notoriously snarky web comic Nothing Nice to Say character named after and drawn in his image. But hey, at least we know paradoxes are something he himself can comprehend, considering that he has spent most of his time post Jets teaching English at New York’s Hunter College.
These were the sorts of things I was thinking about as I was walking the block from my house up to the Crepe Place, a small bar and restaurant in Santa Cruz, California where Thorns of Life, Blake Schwarzenbach’s newly formed band, were to play the last of a run of three shows on the west coast. And while I have devoted all my words thus far to him alone, it needs to be noted that Thorns is not carried by him alone, and is, essentially, a supergroup filled out by two other well known members of the Gilman Street Project: drummer Aaron Cometbus, best known from Pinhead Gunpowder and the Cometbus zine; and bassist Daniela Sea, who portrays the character Max Sweeney on the Showtime Series The ‘L” Word, and is a former member of the queercore band Cypher in the Snow.
As I approached the front door of the Crepe, I asked one of the girls at the front what time Thorns of Life was due to go on, to which she replied that she thought they were on already, but “the headliner goes on at 11,” which was clearly misinformed after peeking a glance through the front windows. I waited outside for a few moments until the opener finished their set, choosing to avoid the steamy interior of the bar until I had to. And it was then that Blake walked by me, carrying some gear. In my younger days I would have felt compelled to say something to him, but after having met one too many punk rock ‘celebrities’ at Warped Tour and other shows over the years, I figured that this moment was akin to a part in City Slickers where Curly explains the meaning of life to Billy Crystal; between the man’s near mythical stature among bands I grew up with and his soulfully poetic lyrics, there is absolutely no conversation I could see engaging in that would live up to my expectations of who this person is supposed to be. But seeing Blake Schwarzenbach lugging his guitar around outside of a cramped bar on a crisp night as he likely did on Gilman Street in 1989? Now that was perfect.
Between bands I made my move, for the first time in my twenties shoving myself into a small but dense mass of people surrounding the area of the floor of the bar that served as the house show-style stage. Purely by accident I ended up on the audience’s left, near the front, a mere ten feet or so from Blake. While Santa Cruz has a reputation as a city with a thriving music scene, most of the crowd looked to be far younger than I, making me wonder how many people there really understood the significance of and context behind what they were about to see. The previous evening the band had actually played at 924 Gilman Street, and despite their promise that since this was the last in their run of shows they would, according to Blake, “leave it all on the floor,” I couldn’t help but wonder whether I should have made the drive up to Berkeley the night prior.
However, after attaching his set list to an overhead fan, Thorns of Life started out their set hot, and as soon as the first riff of the first song was played, everything else was lost in the moment. Whoever the crowd was, and whatever their familiarity with Blake’s career, there was not a soul in it who was not bobbing their head, slapping their thigh, or tapping their toe. The songs themselves were certainly more Jawbreaker than Jets, which, considering the lineup would be expected, but they rang with a kind of urgency not derived from youthful angst, but from the kind of road weariness of having been there, seen it all, taken a break, and now excited to be starting over again. Many of the songs started out with Blake and accompanying downstroked guitar similar to “You’re the One I want” from Jets’ final album, but sans the cheap pop appeal or overly emotive interlude. If you want to think in terms of Jawbreaker, more “Kiss the Bottle” than “Boxcar”.
In my entire life of going to shows, I’ve never seen a noteworthy band at an actual house show, but it was very fitting that the band chose the Crepe Place as their venue, mimicking one: something they actually did for their very first show a couple months ago. With the band playing on the floor, the entire set, which Thorns motored through with incredible energy and focus, took on the feel of not a performance, a ‘we play you listen’ experience, but a commutative one. It’s the closest most of us will ever come to seeing Jawbreaker in someone’s basement. And by the last song the crowd came alive with some old time good-natured pushing and shoving among the masses, the band bobbing along in rhythm, and everyone, well, in the moment. Cometbus provided the most energy from the trio on stage, smacking the skins with an effusive and unbridled joy, and though I couldn’t actually see Daniela, her bass lines were more than competent. Hey, that’s a house show, right?
By the end of the set, I wasn’t exactly sure what I had seen. I didn’t know any of these songs, and the enigma of Jawbreaker was never something I had experienced firsthand, anyway. However, as I was walking the block back to my place, I realized that the last hour had passed in the blink of an eye, and, like a man who claims to have just had a profound religious experience, I couldn’t help but shake the sensation that I had just been a part of something very special. While I may have missed the days of bands like Jawbreaker playing backyards and basements, for a brief few moments I was transported back into that time; I didn’t know the songs and this wasn’t exactly the kind of music I really listen to nowadays, but it didn’t matter. For that set, I was a part of something which, while probably not big enough to live past me, is still bigger than me, and I will be one of the very few who can say “I was there.”
Jawbreaker
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