I don't think that a day has gone by since the first time I heard him on a record where I haven't had a snippet of lyrics or a chunklet of melody that came from him in my head. Yes, I am aware that this makes me sound like some nerdtastic fanboy. I assure you, I am not -- I'm just a guy who fucking loves music and appreciates well-crafted songs, which Blake surely excels at if you look at his entire body of work. I know there are people out there who feel as though he reached the pinnacle of his abilities with Jawbreaker, but for my money Jets To Brazil’s Orange Rhyming Dictionary [released by Jade Tree Records in 1998] is as close to perfect as can be.
Maybe it was the period of time in my life. Maybe it was the lyrics. Maybe it was J Robbins’ stellar production. Maybe it was just the right record at the right time. All I know is that Blake was on point -- melodies crashing into guitar parts crashing into my broken head, colliding and leaving a mark that causes me to break out this album all the time for repeated listening.
"...in a stolen car I rocket west, out past that Jersey line."
Almost everyone I know was disappointed in Jawbreaker’s last album, Dear You. I wasn’t. I felt like that record, as over-produced and as slick as it sounded in places, was still a viable document for what Blake was all about. ORD kind of took all of that, slowed it down and then cleared away some of the murk to show you the bottom of the [B]lake. Adding fresh blood [Jeremy Chatelain from Handsome and Chris Daly from Texas Is The Reason] certainly allowed Blake some room to play with melodies and structure. The atypical Jawbreaker formula of four-chord guitar patterns, steady drums and melodic but plodding basslines was opened up a little wider with this new band. Jets To Brazil were able to play with tempo and meter much more, as songs like "Starry Configurations" and "Chinatown" were able to stretch out and show you their scars before hitting you over the head with the distorted choruses. Using the dual guitar interplay to their advantage, cuts like "Resistance Is Futile" sound almost New Wave-ish, with over-driven and processed guitars acting like synthesizers.
Jets To Brazil were certainly not going to be Jawbreaker v2.0.
In the moments that are Jawbreaker-esque, JTB still reaches beyond that band’s template -- as if Blake is saying, “look, man -- I can fly this way, too.” Opening the album with three massive sounding numbers in a row certainly didn’t hurt, and when you add the fact that Blake's lyrics easily stand alone from the rest of his peers, it’s hard to deny that when this album came out he was converting plenty of people to “his way of thinking.”
Yes, the lyrics. Just take this small piece from the album-closing anti-heroin anthem "King Medicine" for example:
you're such a willing stick to beckon that wanting knife and you've been looking for it the right blade all your life saying "who's gonna cut me down to a size that suits me? is there a worthy sculptor among all you fine young knives?"
I suppose part of the reason why I feel so attuned to Blake's work is our shared love of Kerouac. I can feel some of Jack's madness hidden in these songs, eeking its way out between breaths, between notes. Hell, "I Typed For Miles" is all about Kerouac writing On The Road, if the information I've found out there is to be believed -- so, there is that.
Blake is now an adjunct English Professor at Hunter College here in NYC. He has a new band, forgetters, playing sporadic house parties and the occasional venue around Brooklyn.
I'm just glad he made this record. It has been a good friend to me.
I used to think that Massive Attack’s Mezzanine was the greatest Waterbed Album of all time. When I say Waterbed Album, I’m talking about one of those albums that you would use to seduce someone -- an album full of rich and sensual sounds, so much so that whenever you hear it, your mind tumbles into the darkened corners of your sexual self, and you start to get your imaginary freak on with all of the fantasy people you dream about. Throughout my life, there have been many Waterbed Albums -- The Cure’s Disintegration, Morphine’s Good, Prick’s self-titled album, and the aforementioned heavyweight champion Mezzanine.
Former heavyweight champion, though.
The title belt has been wrestled away -- no, more like choked-the-fuck-out and dragged lifelessly from the ring -- by the otherworldy monstrosity known as Oxbow, and their disturbing and quite beautiful platter fittingly titled An Evil Heat.
Now -- please trust me when I tell you the following about this beast of an album:
An Evil Heat will suffocate you, but in that good kind of way. Kind of like when you want your lover to reach out and wrench their hands around your throat, just to see what it feels like to have a little taste of that type of darkness. From the moment the album starts, it becomes quite clear that this is an act of love. You will be beaten. You will be scarred. But you will love every moment of this beating. You will pick up your head, and stare off into the nothingness -- and you will want more.
Something important to know about Oxbow, is that vocalist Eugene S. Robinson is a monster -- and I mean that with the utmost respect(read the linked article, and see for yourself). He is unlike the rest of the kids on the playground. He is relentless, and his swagger will envelope you from the moment he opens his mouth on the opening track, "The Snake & The Stick," whispering right into your ear -- "One Sunday morning, the preacher went a-trawling/ To the House of Fuck, he come a-calling."
If that doesn't get you going, well, I have no idea what to tell you, my friends.
When I listen to An Evil Heat, it feels like a dirty gospel record. Not dirty in a pornographic sense, but dirty in a grimey and to-the-bone sense. Yes, there are tracks that stand on their own, but ultimately this is a swallow-it-all type of album. Something to put on late at night when the rest of the world is fast asleep, so that the feral and visceral parts of you can get the fuck on down. This record is all swagger and sweat. From the opening track right to the very end of the thirty-two minute(!) closer, "Shine(Glimmer)." This album will roll you. This album will take you into parts of yourself you never knew existed.
Don't believe me? Throw this fucker on the next time you want to let the animal out of the cage. See what happens. Write it all down. You can come on back and tell me I was right.
Summertime is when I get all sorts of nostalgic, and break out all of my 80s Hardcore shit. Why? Because those records - every last one of them - hold some memories that are buried underneath all this "Adult Responsibility" crap I have to deal with now. And most of those memories are of the "Get Your Grin On" variety, the kind of memories that cause a chain reaction inside of a cat like me that makes me want to start another band and rock the shit out of some skulls.
Thanks to the Magic & Glory of The Interwebs, all of those out-of-print records CAN be found - you just have to know how and where to look. I've found stuff I never in my life thought I would hear again. A lot of the bands I grew up on in those hazy 80s summers have reunited, touring the country much like they did back in the day, although the crowds now are much older, balder, and not as apt to go off into a slam-dancing feeding frenzy (which, when you really think about it, was part of the appeal of those shows back in the day - Total Release).
Fuck it, enough talk.
This is precisely what I'm riffing on right here:
Seriously, now - what band can top the Bad Brains? The intensity. The tenacity. The feral and visceral reaction. The chaos. You cannot resist them. The fury with which they attack their instruments has never been surpassed or even replicated. Masters of The Craft.
I'm pretty sure the only band that has ever come close to what The Bad Brains were capable of were The Cro-Mags, who I was blessed enough to see live when they toured with Motorhead and Megadeth(although, Megadeth played a very abbreviated and angst-ridden set, and were kicked off the tour that night) at an indoor soccer arena on the west side of Phoenix. They fucking leveled my punk ass. Hell, it's been over twenty years, and I still haven't seen a band that created as much energy and movement as these motherfuckers did. They did more than push air - they vaporized it.
Another band that knocks the wind out of me every time I throw on their album, is Swiz. They were a monster of a crew - Shawn Brown is probably the most underappreciated and unheralded vocalists/lyricists from this era of hardcore. Swiz was a DC/Arlington area band, made up of kids who used to skate and go to shows together. They wrote terse, staccato jams that blast right into your mind, with melodies you'd never think would stick, but they certainly do. Brown was the original vocalist for Dag Nasty - another band that stirs the Memory Pot.
And, seeing as how I've already touched on the DC area...
Minor Threat brings about a flood of halcyon memories for me - driving around on a Friday night in the middle a carload of Xavier girls(Phoenix's Catholic Prep Academy for girls, and my main source of teen action in the 80s), singing along to these massive anthems of Youthful Rebellion of The Highest Order. What could truly be more rebellious than a group of kids who disavowed alcohol, drugs, and casual sex? Obviously, I wasn't grabbing hold of that Straight Edge lifestyle/ethos* - but the band surely did kick out the jams, as evidenced by the clip below.
One of my funniest/oddest/warmest memories from that time period involves Minor Threat coupled with the use of "drugs." I was in a band called Grave Mistake, and we used to rehearse at my house, because my mother was awesome and supported me in whatever I wanted to do. We were a bunch of goofballs who wanted to be as punk as we possibly could, even though not one of us ever went hungry or wanted for much back in that era - hell, our drummer's father was the President of a growing national airline at the time.
We were rehearsing for some warehouse show that we somehow got on the bill for. It was like our third or fourth show, with our first being opening up for Social Distortion at a VFW Hall. We had a habit of picking a cover song and destroying it as our intro - even at house parties. We thought it was funny, and sometimes we would pick a song from one of the bands we were playing with/opening for - just to spite them. I had been huffing ether all day off of the bandana I kept in my back pocket(White Trash!), and our singer, Iraj, decided he wanted us to play "Straight Edge."
Let's just say that it ended up morphing into something totally different and retarded, with me falling all over myself and knocking over some amps. Iraj realized that we weren't going to be covering any Minor Threat anytime soon, and all was well with the world of Grave Mistake. Good times.
ANYWAYS...
One of the bands we really loved a lot was R.K.L.(Rich Kids on LSD) - these fuckers were retardedly adept on their given instruments. Their album, Rock And Roll Nightmare is still one of my favorite records of all time. We would always try and emulate what they were doing, but we were such fledglings that we couldn't pull off all of the nuances and intricacies of the shit they were playing. I never got a chance to see them live, which still bums me out to this day.
A band that I did get to see live was SNFU. These Canadian madmen came barreling through Phoenix in the summer before my senior year of high school, touring behind their If You Swear, You'll Catch No Fish album(if you don't have it, you should get it - trust me). I had only heard a couple of their songs before seeing them, and they completely blew me away. I'm not sure if there is any way to explain what makes them so special without explaining that their frontman, Mr. Chi Pig, has to easily be one of the most charismatic and dynamic cats to hit a stage. This dude was all over the place, making faces, jumping around, and looking like he was having the time of his fucking life.
And really?
Any band that can pull off a song about losing one's memory in the fashion shown below should be in heavy rotation on everyone's portable Jam Device.
I'll probably be posting more of this "Memory Lane" type of shit this summer, as every time my iPod lands on something that causes my heart to jump back in time, I feel an urge to spew about it.
I'm not going to lie - as much as I am a product of the ethos and community aspects of the punk/hardcore scene, I motherfucking love me some metal.
For real.
When talking about metal, it is important to know the source, right? Like, Conan knew Thulsa Doom had stolen his father's sword - hence, why he was determined to destroy Doom, and reclaim the sword that Crom had helped his father forge. Conan WAS metal.
This is why my initial post about metal shall be about Black Sabbath, arguably THE SOURCE for all kinds of different types of metal. Gods of The Almighty Riff, you can trace almost every memorable "heavy" riff of metal right back to them, if you've paid enough attention.
I remember the first time I heard them - my father had an old worn-out 8 Track tape of Paranoid, and I accidentally slapped it into my little portable player I had, thinking it was my Beach Boys' tape. I think the first song I ever heard was "Hand Of Doom" - which is still probably one of my favorite songs of all fucking time. Such an eerie intro, all slow and spooky, with Geezer Butler's loping and teetering-on-the-verge-of-madness bass line, coupled with Bill Ward's clicky little drum thing he did so well. Imagine being all of 10 years old, sitting in the garage and hearing every ounce of what your future sounds like when the rest of the song comes crashing in around you - Tony Iommi's monolith of a riff, and Ozzy Osbourne screeching his incantation about the evils of heroin abuse...which I knew fuck all about at the time - I just thought to myself "ohmygodthisisnotthebeachboyssssssss!!!"
I've been a fan ever since.
Instant Karma:
BLACK SABBATH - HAND OF DOOM (LIVE 1970)
ANYWAYS...
When trying to decide on the Black Sabbath album to expound upon, it took me nary a nanosecond. I am very fond of every Black Sabbath album during the Ozzy Era - the band was just fucking monstrous and the tension within their ranks comes out beautifully in the recorded output. But one record stands the fuck on out for me -
Sabotage (released in 1975) is a fucking masterpiece.
The album kicks off with the loping and spacey drone of "Hole In The Sky" - a song with some of the most biting and gorgeously doubled Iommi guitars on it, so much so that you can hear the strings being ground into the frets by his plastic-covered fingertips(Iommi lost two fingertips in an industrial accident at the age of 17). Ozzy sounds like he's ready to rumble, kicking out lyrics with an acerbic twist like this couplet- "I'm living in a room without any view, I'm living free because the rent's never due," setting us all up for the record's overall theme - the group's terrible struggle with the pressures of their own fame and the deterioration of their musical union.
Then this glorious album does a quick shift into a pretty little Iommi Spanish-styled guitar-type thing, "Don't Start(Too Late)," for all of forty-nine seconds before the roaring multi-tracked guitars of "Symptom Of the Universe" come blasting out, probably birthing the chugging madness of thrash/speed metal in its wake (we can argue that one until I die - for me this riff is Patient Zero for the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal, Speed Metal, Power Metal, Stoner Metal, and whatever else fucking type of metal you want to conjure up to talk about). The song just fucking pushes air, a tornado of calliope riffs, pounding drums and Ozzy, whipping up a frenzy until yet another beautiful little half-time acoustic interlude comes easing into the middle of the maelstrom. And as soon as you find yourself nodding your head along with this tiny oasis within a sandstorm, Ozzy starts sweetly begging you to "find happiness together, in the summer skies of love" - Goddamn these motherfuckers were at the top of their game.
Up next, is the slow-burning madness of "Megalomania" - a song that lyrically indicts the entire fiasco of fame. The song starts off all dark and moody, and by the time Ozzy spits out "I sold my soul to be the human obscene," it's pretty evident that he's over all of us, and he just wants everyone to back the fuck off and let him be a freak on his own terms. As soon as the song shifts, Iommi's guitar pulls an auditory shapeshift and starts to sound like a fucking hissing snake - riffs swirling and building to a crescendo as Ozzy continues to beg for his solitude and sanity, singing lines like - "Why doesn't everybody leave me alone now?"
"The Thrill Of It All" comes rolling on in afterward, opening with a chiming and madly-distorted Iommi intro before it's main rhythm kicks in - a chugging piece of metal with plenty of room to breathe between Bill Ward's kick drum. Almost bordering on being a rap-metal song (1975, bitches!), Ozzy starts singing about feeling like Jesus himself needs to come correct and call off his dogs (Black Sabbath was a band that was obviously hounded by religious nutcases, which, when coupled with maniacal fans - you'd write songs like this too, my friends). Hell, he even calls The Man out himself with "So come alive, you know you're magic to me." Yet another in a canon of songs following the band's theme of wanting to know why, as English lads forging everlasting metal, they still had to suffer from Catholic Guilt.
Tying things back to Conan The Cummerian, the instrumental "Supertzar," can easily be synched up to any scene in Conan The Barbarian in which Conan is either crushing his enemies, seeing them driven before him, or hearing the lamentation of their women. This is a great song to roll another joint to while grooving, or even a nice slow jam to make sweet love to. Trust me, as I have been digging this album for many moons now, and I know what I am talking about.
"Am I Going Insane? (Radio)" (The title of which caused some confusion due to the "(Radio)" part, which lead people to believe the song was a radio cut or radio version. However this is the only version of the song. It should be noted that the term 'radio-rental' is rhyming slang for 'mental' - lifted right off Wikipedia, suckers) starts off with a little bit of a synthesizer riff, and then goes on galloping off into the loony sunset of Ozzy's simmering sanity (or lack thereof). There are buried guitars in the mix, snaky little leads that are almost mocking the cadence and timbre of Ozzy's crying out ("If I don't sound very cheerful, I think that I'm a schizo brain"). When the song starts to peter out near the end, crazed laughter starts to come to the front of the mix, reiterating the fact that Ozzy has indeed lost what was left of his mind.
That crazed laughter leads us right into the album's closing track, the scathing and angry "The Writ," a song that I sometimes hear in my head when trying to navigate my way through The Great Unwashed Masses here in The City on any given day. As the laughter fades, we get a brief little bass line from Geezer before we get our faces melted off when the rest of the band kicks in. You can taste the disdain in the riff; another snaking and distorted beast that feeds back and hisses during the rests. Iommi must have had a ball in the studio cutting this record (Ozzy reportedly tried to quit during the recording of Sabotage, citing Iommi's dicking around in the studio as a waste of time that drove him insane), because there are guitars all over the place on this song, doubled and tripled in places where you would never think to do such a thing - AND IT WORKS. And again - the band pulls yet another sneaky little interlude out of their hat, with this one sounding as innocent as some lost piece of soundtrack to some weird 1940s film with a girl singing about how she's lost her way in the world, only to kick back in with the heavy riffing and a rideout that beats any other rideout on any album, ever.
So there you have it. My favorite Black Sabbath album, blow by blow. I'll cop to the fact that in my youth I smoked a fuck-ton of reefer and listened to Sabotage - not that there's anything wrong with that. This album certainly played a huge part in my understanding of music in general, and if you've read this far - you might as well go out and pick the fucker up.
I'm about to make a statement that might shock/disturb/freak out anyone who grew up on a healthy diet of punk rock/hardcore. Some might even consider what I am about to say to be sacrilegious, but I urge you to put down your torches and allow me this much, okay?
There are bands within the construct of punk rock/hardcore that are completely untouchable. Bands that, no matter what anyone says, will always - make up part of some punk's Musical Mount Rushmore, a foundation upon the likes of which all other bands will be judged. This is a natural occurrence, really. We're all guilty of doing this, especially when it comes to our own feelings about artistic things - subjectivity be damned, we all have our Sacred Cows.
It took me a while to get into Black Flag.
As much as I love and appreciate Black Flag now, another band altogether helped me to understand them more back in the day. Black Flag really fucked up my perception of music, most notably Greg Ginn's often grinding and off-kilter guitar murdering and rhythmic beatdowns - the shit was just off-time and caused my internal metronome problems. Lyrically - I was down from the get-go. I grokked what they were on to. But it took a little nudge from some other cats from California to turn the lights on in my head...
The Power Of Expression, released by the mighty BL'AST! in 1986(originally released on Wishingwell Records - SST Records reissued it in 1987 ), might possibly be the most complete and definitive California hardcore album, from the opening note/intro to the closing silence.
The first time I ever heard The Power Of Expression, not only was my mind fucking blown clean, but I finally understood Black Flag. Unfairly tagged as nothing more than "Black Flag Jr.*" - this band just fucking lays waste to everything. I had read about them in Thrasher(partly to blame for the label), and I'm pretty sure my friend Brian Engel had told me he had heard them, and that they were right up my alley.
Sure as shit - he wasn't lying. BL'AST! sounded like a violent car crash - all twisting metal and heaving chunks of machinery. BL'AST! connected the dots immediately, as if they were a hybrid form of early Corrosion of Conformity, Black Flag, & Black Sabbath. The guitar sound was murderous - Mike Neider(great interview with him over at Double Cross Webzine) was using a similar set-up to Greg Ginn's, but instead of single line-style riffs, he was pumping out huge-sounding overdriven chords, which totally spoke to me as a fledgling guitar player.
The guys in my band at the time(Grave Mistake) were bugging out on me, because I totally started aping BL'AST! when we would try and jam on new material. We were just kids, so thinking they would be able to follow along in that vicious, herky-jerky manner ended up being really disappointing for me. The Power Of Expression was totally one of those badass albums that flipped a gang of switches in my musical brain. Even now - 20 years later - when I throw the fucker on, it just juices me up.
STIMULI
BL'AST! - 1987-2001(from a documentary that I have yet to track down or see...)
Look Into Myself - Live @ Fender's, CA 1987
*A claim even Henry Rollins made in his book about his years on the road with Black Flag, Get In The Van.
When I think of bands as a vehicle for something more than just the music, the first band that pops into my head is really the one that matters the most - The MC5.
I wasn't even born yet, but Norman Mailer pretty much encapsulates exactly what hearing The MC5 for the first time felt like for me -
"For one of the next acts it hardly mattered~a young white singer with a cherubic face, perhaps eighteen, maybe twenty-eight, his hair in one huge puff ball teased out six to nine inches from his head, was taking off on an interplanetary , then galactic, flight of song, halfway between the space music of Sun Ra and "The Flight of the Bumblebee," the singer's head shaking at the climb like the blur of a buzzing fly, his sound an electric caterwauling of power corne out of the wall ( or the line in the grass, or the wet plates in the batteries) and the singer not bending it, but whirling it, burning it, flashing it down some arc of consciousness, the sound screaming up to a climax of vibrations like one rocket blasting out of itself, the force of the noise a vertigo in the cauldrons of inner space - it was the roar of the beast in all nihilism, electric bass and drum driving behind out of their own non-stop to the end of mind."
The 5 were not even on the same planet with the other bands of their era. I mean, for sheer visceral magnificence, The Stooges(who also cut their teeth in Detroit, Rock City - playing shows with The 5) were around to help them push the envelope a little. But The 5 had fucking chops, whereas The Stooges would just pummel you over and over again with a riff until your heartbeat synched up with it.
I remember the first time I heard them - I was wearing the shit out of The Damned's Machine Gun Etiquette, which has a smoking cover of "Looking At You" on it. My friend Chris Karch(who was deaf, but knew way more about punk rock than anyone I knew back in 1985 - he would blast his stereo so loud your balls would shake. I finally adjusted all his EQ levels for him once, since he had everything set all throaty and mid-range. Once that bass was set right, he just laid on his floor soaking everything in with a huge fucking grin on his face. It was the least I could do for the guy who introduced me to the glory of so many bands I'll be writing about on this here site.) pulled out this record(Kick Out The Jams) and handed it to me. All he said was "you gotta go to the source, Sean."
I took that record home with me, put it on my turntable, plugged my headphones in, and was immediately and utterly destroyed.
The now-famous opening invocation/testimonial, asking the assembled peoples if they were "gonna be a part of the problem, or a part of the solution" was a sneaky set up for what was about to blast right into the core of my brain. This was the most glorious shot across my musical bow - a band as a musical unit, unified as one being, all limbs flailing, soaring distortion, crazed soul-like harmonies and rhythmic beauty. This record kicked my ass all over the place. I had never heard a live recording where it sounded as if the amps were about to burst into flame before. I had never heard a band pushing through chord changes like they were going to drown. I had never heard anything like The MC5 before.
Obviously, I immediately sought out everything they had every recorded. This was long before the interweb, so I invested a lot of time hitting up every record store, asking stoned clerks in Ramones shirts if they knew where I could get my fix of The 5.
I tried to find books and whatnot, but there was nothing really out there. In 1986, it was as if they were a ghostly thing that nobody wanted to discuss. I was starting to think it was some kind of conspiracy, where all the cool kids were keeping me locked out of the clubhouse until I learned the secret handshake or some shit like that.
Eventually, I found a really warped and fucked-up copy of Back In The USA at a garage sale. The woman was shocked at how elated I was, and gave me the fucker for free. It would barely play on my turntable because it was so fucked-up, but I took in each note like communion.
At this point, I was able to find some shit out about The 5 - they had their own political agenda, The White Panther Party, started by their manager(John Sinclair), which was billed as "a total assault on the culture by any means necessary." These fucking guys were the real deal. Under surveillance by the FBI, harassed and beaten by local police - it didn't matter to The MC5.
They were going to bring the music to the people no matter the cost.
I'm not going to go too much further into their history and their inevitable downfall. There is plenty out there to read up on all that shit. To me, The MC5 were the initial spark, that first flickering of a band on a mission - torchbearers for others to follow, like At The Drive-In, The Nation Of Ulysses, and to an extent Refused. These bands learned the blueprint of what they became from The MC5, even if they were unaware of it - no doubt about it.
My suggestion to you, is that you seek them out for yourselves. If they don't move you, you ain't movable.
Everything you ever wanted to know about The MC5 is over at The Gateway.
STIMULI:
Friar's Club Aylesbury, U.K 2-11-72
Clip from Sonic Revolution(A documentary about The MC5)
The first time I heard Jawbox, was when Maximum Rock 'n' Roll put out the "They Don't Get Paid, They Don't Get Laid, But Boy Do They Work Hard!" compilation(which was chock-full of amazing goodness that I'm sure I'll riff about at some point). Bullet Park was a great introduction to the sound of a band that would end up being one of the most under-rated and under-appreciated groups of the 1990s.
Immediately following their appearance on that compilation, Dischord Records released their full length debut, Grippe - an amazingly melodic record, full of lyrical self-flagellation and introspection.
I was an instant fan. This shit was right up my alley - smart, discordant yet melodic, challenging guitar parts, a rhythm section that pushed air - way beyond the rest of the post-hardcore stuff I was hearing at the time.
Fast forward to 1993, and the major labels were sniffing the blood on the floor in their post-Nirvana feeding frenzy. Jawbox had been touring nonstop, playing every nook and cranny of North America spreading their angular gospel. They ended up signing with Atlantic Records, to the dismay of the punk rock community - along with label(and tour) mates Shudder To Think.
Figuring they could do with an influx of cash, it seemed at the time to be the right move for Jawbox. The resulting album, For Your Own Special Sweetheart is their masterpiece.
Everything about this album just fucking smokes. The guitar sounds are wiry and clean, with just enough distortion tagged onto them to make every song abrasive. J Robbins' literature-laden lyrics still need a decoder ring(as others have often stated), but it's not too hard to realize the theme of the record is salvation - something that seems so fucking emo, but really is integral to all of us who love music with heart.
The album starts off with the roaring FF=66, and doesn't have a single track that will make you want to stop. They made videos for the singles Savory & Cooling Card, toured nonstop as usual, and probably inspired thousands of kids with guitars to read JG Ballard & William Carlos Williams. They went on to record one more album, and then disbanded. J Robbins is now a producer who has worked with a myriad of your favorite bands, and also played in Burning Airlines & Channels. I suggest you dig in to everything he's ever done - you'll thank me for it.
My favorite cuts: Chicago Piano, Breathe, Jackpot Plus!, Cruel Swing.
