I remember sending away $10 to Crank! Records for a Mineral T-shirt in 1999. It was navy blue, with an illustration of a little boy’s and little girl’s faces and “mineral” (all lower case, ‘natch) on the bottom. I’m pretty sure my buddy Robyn only befriended me because the first time she met me I walked into the cafeteria of Warren Towers at BU wearing that shirt. Man, that shirt was awesome. I think I can admit that having that shirt actually made me like Mineral more than I probably actually should have. I wore it until about 2004, and now I have no clue where it is. Lost during the chaos of a T-shirt purge, most likely.
Ah yes, the band. Mineral was different than a lot of the other emo bands I was listening to, because they weren’t from the the Midwest or Gainesville. They were from Texas, making them forefathers to the Teemo scene. I just made Teemo up, but it sounds legit, right? Mineral were masters of the loud-quiet-loud songwriting scheme, and Chris Simpson’s voice definitely tailored to the whole emo thing. It was like pure mope translated to soundwaves. And those lyrics! There are only a couple of live Mineral videos floating around YouTube, both shot at Emo’s (har!) in Austin in 1998, which would put the timing of the show just before the band broke up. The quality looks like something smuggled out of Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, but for some reason, I feel like Mineral wouldn’t have it any other way. Also, please note that—once again, in typical emo fashion—the bassist again does not face the crowd during the performance.
In 1998 I was at an all-ages hardcore show at Club Q in Davie, Florida, the redneck pool hall that doubled as ground zero for the South Florida hardcore scene. The shows also served as punk rock swap meets, with various vendors selling records and patches and the like. I don’t remember what bands were playing that night (probably Hot Water Music, whom I saw four or five times at Club Q in some of the rowdiest shows ever), but I remember walking up to a guy with a huge beard selling CDs out of milk crates. I had just really started getting into indie music, and I was looking for something to take home to expand my education. He recommended Analphabetapolothology by Cap’n Jazz, mostly because it was a double-disc for $10. A value buy! I had heard about Cap’n Jazz from a friend, so I bought the CD and listened to it on the way home. And on the way to school the next day. And pretty much every day for two years straight. The CDs were the complete collected discography of the band, a bunch of Chicago-area high schoolers who released only one proper album before breaking up in 1995. The Delaware-based emo powerlabel Jade Tree compiled that album and all the band’s 7″ and compilation tracks on Analphabetapolothology, which was released in 1998 and is probably the best-reviewed emo album in Pitchfork history.
I could go on and on about my favorite band of all time (sorry, Modest Mouse)—about birthdays spent wishing for a reunion over cake candles (I’m a loser), the album-art poster that was on my wall in college, the letter I gave to lead singer Tim Kinsella (a story for another day)—but meh. In hindsight, the band’s breakup was the most obvious band breakup in band breakup history. High school bands never stick together. Tim Kinsella was a singer who couldn’t really sing, whose primary focus was cramming puns and wordplay into heart-wrenching lyrics (just check out the lyrics to Que Suerte). One guitarist had a more pop sensibility and harbored his own frontman desires. The other was way more experimental and didn’t really mesh. The drummer was Tim’s little brother. Etc., etc. The family tree of bands that sprung from Cap’n Jazz is a good enough expression of all this conflict.
As far as this particular video is concerned, I have a history with it. In college, I bought a copy of a live Cap’n Jazz show on eBay. It was a show filmed at the Daily Grind in Kansas City in 1995, and at the time it was constantly popping up on eBay, the only known live video document of Cap’n Jazz. Until last week. On February 7, someone uploaded a couple of live Cap’n Jazz videos from an undated show “allegedly in the Chicago area” to YouTube, including another performance of this same song. I still like the one above more, though. They look so young, and Tim Kinsella is at his awkward and spazzy best. His Reese’s T-shirt is burned into my brain after years of repeat watching. I remember the first time I popped it into my TV/VCR, wondering how these scrawny little kids could write music that would eventually change my life forever. Such is the power of emo, friends! The whole Kansas City show is up on YouTube in bits and pieces, so nary a tear need be shed over my long lost VHS copy. Perhaps you’d also like to take check out “Yes, I am Talking to You,” featuring the most emo lyrics of all time (”I’M DYING TO TELL YOU I’M DYING!”)? Every now and again I still hope for a Cap’n Jazz reunion, but it would probably be a little depressing to see dudes in their 30’s singing these types of songs, like a more embarrassing Blink 182. And imagine what the crowd would be like. Yeesh.
Bringing it all back to the broader topic of the emo genre, the stereotypical emo trait to watch for here is an easy one to spot if you ever attended to these kinds of shows: the bassist never looks at the crowd.
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.
“Everybody’s a Giants fan tonight,” said John Johnson, 55, a native Floridian who ran out of the Millennium Hotel in Midtown with a double Crown Royal, neat, still in hand.
And…
Up the block, two 17-year-olds, Lucky Rosa of North Bergen and Jonathan Trapp of Guttenberg happily celebrated outside by repeatedly head-butting each other.
I respect the hell out of the craft of the sandwich artist. Even so, I have been scared to death to try the Subway pizza. After all, is pizza preparation even an elective at Sandwich U? But despite my fear and concerns, I have also been obsessed with the notion of the Subway pizza ever since finding out a couple months ago that the Tribeca Subway—the anchor of the Beach Street sandwich district—was serving up personal pies in 90 seconds. I flirted with ordering it once, before chickening out at the last second and opting for a Veggie Max at the counter. Today, finally, Curbed’s resident spectacled stud Kyle Crafton and I decided to man up and give those cheesy discs a whirl. This is our story.
PLUSES
· Cheap! You’re looking at $4 for a filling lunch.
· You get your run of the toppings bar, allowing you to opt for sandwich regulars you wouldn’t really ever consider on a pizza. Pickles, perhaps? Sure!
· The pizzas come to Subway frozen, so they are pretty much impossible to screw up.
· It basically tastes like pizza you would get at a concession stand at a Little League game.
MINUSES
· It basically tastes like pizza you would get at a concession stand at a Little League game.
· The pizzas come to Subway frozen, so they are pretty much impossible to improve upon.
· Kyle and I asked for toppings after the pizzas were stuck in the oven, so we just got some cold toppings sitting on top of a cooked pizza.
· Dudes, can we get some sauce on these motherfuckers, or what?
And now, a Subway pizza multimedia presentation:
My cheese-onion-tomato-peppers pie. Note how Subway has created branded boxes for the pizzas, proving the company’s commitment.
Kyle’s meatball pie. The subway employee (half-heartedly?) mashed the meatballs into the pizza with that big metal meatball scooper they use. I have circled some meatball chunks for emphasis.
A close-up of a slice. Note how the toppings are just sitting on top of the pie, stubbornly unwilling to integrate.
Kyle’s pizza bones.
A video of the unboxing, as well as Kyle’s first taste. For some reason, iMovie exported the clip in a very crappy file quality, but it adds a certain charm. All in all, the Subway pizza experience rates a 5.5/10, with a follow-up sampling inevitable.
So I finally decided to crack open that Flip Video Camera that has been collecting dust on the desk for about four months. Surprisingly, it’s pretty cool! I say “surprisingly” only because my stint as a tech editor left me with only snobby taste and a passionate hatred of all things digital. But the Flip works on Double-A batteries, so I guess it’s low-tech enough to not instantly despise. Anyhowzers, the test go-round of trying to film one of Frank’s legendary freakouts worked like a charm. Am I turning into one of those people whose life revolves around their pet? Yes. Am I one CafePress order away from turning into one of those people whose wardrobe revolves around their pet? No. Not yet, anyway. Oh God, help me.
