For Jawbreaker fans only...

aw, good find. also noticed recently that bivouac is available on spotify. that's quite new, isn't it?

It was just brought to my attention that there is a band calling itself JAWBREAKER REUNION which is just this side of FREE BEER as a dishonest means of getting people to accidentally see your lousy band.

tbf jawbreaker reunion is actually p good

hmm should I tell the Jawbreaker drummer about this

Adam laughed when i asked him about this, he'd already heard about it

Haha

lol

the katydid will be torn apart, and its dismembered body carried back to the bivouac
by the end of the day, raiding parties return along the main trail, carrying

Part of me wants to defend the group calling itself JAWBREAKER REUNION on fool-&-his-money grounds--at the same time, I totally expect bad things to happen to the people behind it.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2017/04/19/riot-fest-pulls-off-another-coup-jawbreakers-first-public-performance-since-1996

I... honestly can't believe that's possible...

The 3rd result if you Google Blake's name is a mysterious and vague thread on some punk message board about him being arrested last year and having some vaguely erratic behavior. I wonder what the deal was.

Did you know...

Adam's sister is Kembra (lead singer of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black)?

there's keys in their eyes but they lock from the inside

this is my condition

This Julian Baker cover is pretty great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uxT0z-TDEk

...like I know how she could have done something less faithful in the second half of the song but she chose to stick to the original arrangement.

so how were the reunion shows? trying to work out whether to hit the London one

Great! Setlist for the one I went to:

Chesterfield King
West Bay Invitational
Sea Foam Green
Chemistry
The Boat Dreams From the Hill
Ache
Shield Your Eyes
Save Your Generation
Condition Oakland
Jet Black
Accident Prone
Parabola
Kiss the Bottle

Encore:
Boxcar
Basilica

Blake's voice was great, sounded not far off from the early 90s despite his recent tailspin of personal tragedy/crisis. "Shield Your Eyes" was kind of weird, like slow and dirgy, unlike the record. They played every song I wanted them to so I can't complain.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dxxlo7RUcAAsUb9.jpg

wonderful

Watched the documentary, I've never actually heard this band before and I mixed them up with Jawbox (as Albini does here) who I also haven't heard yet. I'm quite taken aback by how extreme the backlash was for them signing to a major label. I feel like I should know this already but what was the objection beyond bands often not getting a desirable level of control? What was supposed to be objectively evil about major labels?

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music

I mean, it was also the context of the time. "Selling out" was a huge thing in 1994 and so many indie/punk fans took it very, very seriously. I wasn't that into them, but I had some big time punk friends that were furious about it. To them, it was unimaginable, almost as if Fugazi suddenly signed to DGC or something.

It's kind of funny how I always liked about half the songs of their early records and I was among the angry fans pissed about Dear You. Looking back now, I probably like the same % of songs on it as its predecessors.

i got into jawbreaker in the mid-'00s and the talk about dear you seemed so silly from that vantage point

it is, on a certain kind of day, their best record

24 Hour Revenge Therapy and the B-sides comp are the only ones I have. Just never fully got into them, but I absolutely love Jets to Brazil.

Did these punk fans not own any major label releases or was there just something genre specific that rubbed them wrong?

Is it always clear which labels are major? Was a pretty-big-but-not-quite-major okay? I didn't think 4AD was a major but apparently it is.

I had heard about all that A&R and debt stuff for numerous bands but is a bad deal the absolute rule for major labels?

jawbox also got some shit for leaving dischord, but not nearly as much iirc

possibly because their atlantic debut is also their best record

RAG - I'm not sure there is a one size fits all answer, everyone seemed to take slightly different positions on what constituted "selling out"m but for quite a few years it was overused to the point of meaninglessness.

But to answer some of your questions - I had some friends that were strictly local and verifiably indie label fans where like Touch & Go and Dischord were probably the "biggest" labels for them, but other friends who bought major label stuff too, they just didn't like their indie faves to jump ship.

I think up until the early 90's it was easier (although there were some exceptions) to tell a major from an indie, but it got murky after Nirvana blew up and the alt rock explosion happened - majors would set up barely concealed (or not at all) "indie" imprints or set up distribution deals with indies (it was a huge deal when Capitol bought 49% of Matador).

A lot punks I knew then would turn their noses up stuff like Discord and Touch & Go as "mini majors," or shit on small labels that used big distributors.

The group saying stuff like this probably didn't help...
https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/w7w6cepjeye.png

bad scene, their fault

heh

that song is about puck from real world sf i think

Redfin.com:

4302 West St Unit A Oakland, CA 94608
$1,583,574

lol

Some inside baseball: My friend lived in the apartment next door to Blake & Adam off 20th St & Mission in SF before Blake moved to Oakland. My friend's 2BR/1BA apartment was $300/month. My friend also moved to Oakland (downtown tho) around the same time and rented a floor in an old rundown victorian for $125/month. The bay area was in a recession and the earthquake recovery was still pretty slow.

It was featured in the documentary that Blake stated he would never go major just 4 weeks before actually signing to one and I did get that they shot themselves in the foot that way, but the fact that some former friends outright refused to talk to them still surprised me.

Is Mute counted as a major?

One of the issues I've seen coming up with indies is that they can't always keep up the supply when something sells extremely well and that a big enough success could destroy a small label. But how often does that happen?

It seems like bad decision-making destroys small labels, but massive sales allows them to make bad decisions on a larger scale.
Lookout apparently went nuts with all the Green Day back catalog money coming in, but there was also an ownership change.
Dischord managed Fugazi selling a million records though...

Isn't Dear You making more money for Jawbreaker under their own label than it did on Geffen?

Speaking of Fugazi, I guess Ian Mackaye is a fan of Jawbreaker. There's a photo circulating of Ian watching these guys play at the Fillmore Silver Spring, near Washington DC last night (standing by himself in a side of stage area reserved for special guests)

there was a sun once

24 hour revenge therapy came out 30 years ago today

Classic record. Not my fave because I'm a weirdo who loves Bivouac more, but still a great one.