This is the website of Joey Arak.

The white whale has been captured. For six or seven years, I’ve had a saved eBay search for “cap’n jazz shirt.” And while it may be weird to dedicate a portion of one’s life to acquiring a T-shirt from a short-lived and obscure ’90s emo band from the Midwest, it’s even more weird that in all that time, not one Cap’n Jazz shirt has been listed on eBay. But last week, I got the eBay e-mail alert, and of course I expected it to be another Promise Ring shirt with “Cap’n Jazz” added in the subject line to lure in suckers like me, kind of like this one being auctioned right now. It wasn’t. First, shock, then disbelief. I immediately e-mailed the seller, explaining I had been searching for a Cap’n Jazz shirt for years and I had come to believe that they didn’t exist. He said the shirt is legit, and he got it while he and the band were in high school together. He was from Chicago and he had a good eBay rating, so I bit. A few days and about $16 later (w/ shipping), the elusive Cap’n Jazz T-shirt is mine. Sure, the shirt is kind of ugly, and there may or may not be sweat stains in the pits, but I had to have it. Even if it doesn’t fit and smells like asparagus pee, it will sit in the museum that is my T-shirt drawer forever and ever and ever and ever.

Which leads me to this. Immediately aboard the nostalgia train, I started dialing up old live emo performances on YouTube. All the favorites that turned me from a 15-year-old Ben Folds Five/They Might Be Giants fanatic to a 16-year-old post-hardcore obsessive who believed that girls would do nothing but break your heart and make you write weepy (but awesome) songs were immortalized forever, it turns out, via the power of VHS. And some blessed angels have taken those performances and put them on the Internet, free to be dialed up whenever you buy a T-shirt on eBay and are reminded about a specific time in your life when you actually “felt” the music. Now that “emo” is a dirty word and weekday bands (Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, etc.) have entire armies of teenage female fans, it’s especially weird to look back on some of this stuff and remember the days when indie sub-genres were so underground that when the Get-Up Kids sold out Axis on Lansdowne Street my first semester of my freshman year at BU, I thought the world was ending.

All that being said, I thought I’d share some of those video finds this week, along with my own personal anecdotes and thoughts regarding each band/song. So put on your sweatervest, tack on some 1″ buttons, and join me. Don’t deny your Jadetree past. (Warning: Those who don’t know what that means may get bored real quick.)

Artist: Rites of Spring
Song: “For Want Of”

It would have been too obvious to kick off this week-long cry fest with Cap’n Jazz, so I’ll hold off on that (until tomorrow). Rites of Spring were most likely not the first emo band, but many consider them to be, including me. I believe the originator tag came about because lead singer/guitarist Guy Picciotto was asked to describe the band’s sound in one of those awesome ’80s punk/hardcore zines, and he said “emo” for emotional hardcore. None of this is probably true, but I’m trying to relive my glory days here, so I’ll revise history any darn way I choose! Anyhowsers, after RoS broke up, Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty want on to join a little band called … hmmm, what was the band called? Oh yeah, motherfucking FUGAZI. “In Silence/Words Away” was always my favorite Rites of Spring song, but the only live video of the band playing it floating around is this sped-up version I’m not really digging. The video above was recorded in the old 9:30 space in the band’s hometown of Washington D.C. in 1985 (they broke up in ‘86), and it’s pretty remarkable quality for 1985. Even if Rites of Spring weren’t really the first emo band, Guy Picciotto nearly breaks down in tears about three or four separate times during this one song, so that would at least make them the first EAF* band.

*Emo As Fuck