BOOK REVIEW + WHAT HAPPENED TO BLAKE SCHWARZENBACH?

O'Grady's Notes: I just finished reading Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo by Andy Greenwald. And I liked it. Much. Greenwald writes in Part I, Chapter I, "The one fact no one seems to debate--or at least debate that loudly--is that emo emerged from hardcore." What took me so long to read this book? It came out in 2003. The author gives a pretty competent overview of emotional hardcore music, tracing it from its D.C. roots (Dischord Records) through Dashboard Confessional. From D.C. to D.C....and everything in between.

Mostly everything in between. Its most glaring omission, in my opinion, is the lack of Cursive coverage. Indeed, Bright Eyes is mentioned only once--page 263--bringing to mind various Beat Generation anthologies that failed to include Richard Brautigan. But then again, Brautigan wasn't really a Beat, and some would say that Tim Kasher of Cursive/The Good Life and Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes/Desaparecidos aren't really emo. (Kasher and Oberst were in a band together called Commander Venus when they were teenagers. See The Uneventful Vacation, 1997.)
I always thought Tim Kasher's lyrics to the "Art Is Hard" Cursive single contained oblique references to Chris Carrabba/Dashboard Confessional, but Kasher could just as easily have been singing about himself (trademark trait of his work): Cut it out--your self-inflicted pain / is getting too routine / the crowds are catching on / to the self-inflicted song" and "Oh, a second verse! / well, color me fatigued / I'm hiding in the leaves / in the CD jacket sleeves... (Note: Carrabba has "full-sleeve" tattoos; "CD" could be understood as "seedy".)

What is emo? [GOOD QUESTION...]

"At the end of the teenage years, it becomes clear that there is no such thing as an emo artist--only emo songs, albums, or moments," Greenwald says in the closing chapter. Very neatly said. I hereby look forward to the January 2006 release of A.G.'s debut novel, Miss Misery: A Novel.

JAWBREAKER (1989-1996)
Nothing Feels Good (particularly the chapter "Kissing Bottles and Talking to Angels") got me to crack open the old Jawbreaker CDs again. Here's a taste of Greenwald's spot-on band analysis: "Too smart for slackerdom, too heartsick to get out of bed, Jawbreaker and their fans were like their namesake: rock-hard on the outside with endless layers of sickeningly sweet complexity buried within."

I count[ed] myself among them. Here is one of my favorite submitted rock journalism stories, "It's Friendly, It's Tragic...It's Jets to Brazil!" which appeared in the August 30 - September 5, 2000, edition of North Carolina's Spectator arts and entertainment weekly. The music section was then edited by my pal Greg Barbera. Greg currently plays bass and sings for The Chest Pains.

It's Friendly, It's Tragic...It's Jets to Brazil!
by Mike Daily [8/30/2000]

"It was always my goal to write affecting pop songs. That's what I enjoy in music."--Blake Schwarzenbach

Fans. Danger. Angels. Music. Dostoevsky. Family. Blake Schwarzenbach touches on such topics upon the release of Four Cornered Night, Jets to Brazil's artfully devastating second record following 1998's acclaimed Orange Rhyming Dictionary. "We spent awhile writing this record so I think they're tighter songs all around," Schwarzenbach says. "Better composed maybe. I'm glad you had that reaction. I think some people are finding it very difficult to understand this record."

"Some people" found Dear You, the final record by Schwarzenbach's former band Jawbreaker (1989-1996) , "difficult to understand" because he had made the shift from Angry Young Man to more of a Smooth Love Song Kind of Guy--on a major label, no less: David Geffen Company. (Ironically, Dear You is out of print and a collector's item today.) Factions of the band's more "hardcore" fanbase felt alienated by the new sound. But Jawbreaker is not a topic that Schwarzenbach addresses during our talk--and why should he? Jets to Brazil is where he is right now.

"Geeks more than anything else," is how Schwarzenbach describes the members of JTB, himself included: Jeremy Chatelain (bass), Chris Daly (drums) and Bryan Maryansky (guitar). "I think we're all comfortable with that. No one's terrifically good looking or no one thinks they're that cool. It's very comfortable. I think they immediately understand what I'm trying to do. There's sort of a real strong relationship that way. I really trust those guys."

What is Schwarzenbach trying to do with music?

"I guess I would hope that people relate to this record as I relate to records that I really hold dear; records that I go to because I find it like a comfortable place or that have a good all around feel for me. That would be the highest accolade I could receive--if this became someone's record that they spent a year with or whatever. For me, that was like either of the Neutral Milk Hotel records. I always felt alright when I had those records playing. Or Wilco, another band that's just like...it's friendly and it's tragic at the same time. I don't feel like they're trying to lay a trip on me."

"One Summer Last Fall," the second song on Four Cornered Night, is written from the standpoint of a singer-lyricist confessing that he's a mess and that the songs he has recorded are not him. Lines like, "If you keep believin' / I'll keep on bein' / a ghost in his prison bed / short-sheeted and shook dead" carry on the Blakean tradition of self-deprecating, arresting poetry. Is any of it autobiographical?

Schwarzenbach laughs. "Of course. Yeah. I think I wanted to address the bizarre state of fandom right now and how singers can get involved in that too, to pretty dangerous effect."

"You were wrong," the narrator of the song says, "that wasn't me in that song / you write the lie you like to be / when your life looks like a book / you wouldn't read..."

"That was my shout-out to the singers everywhere, like when you see someone in a band and they're kind of removed from their elevated context. And it becomes much more of a human relationship. I've seen singers from bands that I really like, looking really haggard out on the street. You get to feel a deeper respect for them."

Does he ever have trouble remembering his lyrics? Each song is like a book in itself.

"Yeah, I do. I have a lot of trouble. There's a thing that I think singers are probably all aware of--I think it happens to anybody who sings in a band--if you think actively, search actively for what the next line is, you're almost bound to block it out when the time comes to sing it. Having an internal dialogue going while you're playing the song is really dangerous and I'll do that sometimes, like I'll be looking ahead six lines, thinking, 'Shit, what is the next line?' Memorizing a poem, I think, you usually just need the first word of the line to kind of trigger it that way. But I have psyched myself out before."

And the situations do occur.

"I ad-lib sometimes. Sometimes I don't say anything. There's been some divine inspiration. When things are going well, it can be actually pretty fun. If things are not going well, it gets kind of hairy."

I say that it seems like angels pop up a lot in the songs.

"They do. They have been for years," he says.

Anything he cares to say about that?

"I'm not a practicing 'anything,' but I believe that they're there. And I think that can be metaphoric, you know, like when you're bottoming out and having a sense that there is something there watching over you. A very sympathetic spirit in the world that is there for you. And actually in a weird circular way, a lot of times for me that's a song--writing a song, at that moment, the song in a way is the angel because it's the thing that lifts you out of it and makes sense of that situation or that bottom. Music has been that way for me for a number of years--the one thing that can get me out of the hole. It gives me a sense of purpose...of a contribution I guess, and worth, which is dangerous." He laughs. "It's a bad habit to get into. That you're only as good as your last song."

Inspirations? Schwarzenbach read Dostoevsky all winter and says The Brothers Karamazov was the greatest reading experience of his life. "Just the tenderness between the brothers was really inspiring to me. And getting in touch with my family again and showing that kind of solidarity--that centeredness that you can only get from people that know you really well, and won't hold it against you."

I've seen Schwarzenbach perform many times and I'm always impressed that while the material and music may be incredibly emotional and all-out, in between songs he cracks jokes to the audience and band members. When did he learn how to balance the angst or raw emotion with that kind of personable humor?

"I think it's more of a defensive act on my part because I like to keep some levity in the whole situation, you know? The songs are fairly heavy for us, and for me, but it doesn't mean that it has to be this really grievous process to do a show. We're actually a pretty light-hearted band when we're together. I think it should be fun."

Jets to Brazil appear[ed] Sunday, Sept. 3, [2000], 8:30 p.m., at Cat's Cradle, 300 E. Main St., Carrboro[, North Carolina]. $9.
Photo: Christina Burke

"I think [Blake Schwarzenbach]'s just an insane lyricist. I love Jets to Brazil. I think he's an incredibly talented guy. Probably my favorite contemporary musician. As far as, like, I will get his record the day it comes out. To see what he's up to."
--Craig Finn (in an interview, 2000)