11:44 a.m. - 01.13.2004
\"Dear You\"
Blackball Records is reissuing Jawbreaker's last record, Dear You. There goes my opportunity to sell one of my unopened vinyl copies on Ebay. Oh well, I could never bring myself to do it anyway, even when I was completely broke. I can't be that soul-less.
It is, of course, one of my favorite records ever. Here is part of the new liner notes, written by my number one husband, Blake:
DEAR YOU LINER NOTES - PART I: BLAKE SCHWARZENBACH
While putting together Dear You these past several months, I solicited liner notes from the people who were there. What follows is Blake's blow-by-blow rundown of the songs as they appeared on the original release. — Adam
Generation - Written in Oakland on my couch, New Year's Eve, 1993. Oakland is so wild with gunshots on New Year's. My housemate and I spent from 11:30 to 1:00 on the floor in the living room. There were so many stray bullets flying around. I guess that doesn't tell you much about the song, but it gives you an idea of my state of mind. It existed as a kind of acoustic oath for months before becoming a full-on electric Jawbreaker song.
I Love You - This was unfinished when we went in to record. I couldn't get a bridge to work and was obsessed with the notion that all real songs have bridges. The "If you can't be the life of the party..." part came together in the studio. I like that part for its economy and for being a kind of 11th hour resolution.
Fireman - Much more affectionate than it might appear to be. I think it took about 20 takes to get the little guitar phrase right (in time and correct notes) which made no sense at the time because it seemed like such a simple little thing. A study in extended metaphor. For the video my cousin appeared as a fireman along with a genuine firefighter who seemed a little confounded by the whole project. He actually smoked whenever not in front of the camera and this seemed appropriate to both the song and the day.
Accident Prone - Our band has traditionally been beset by hospitalization and accidents. We're not particularly reckless; it just happens. This began as a tender little song — very sparse, which in turn went gargantuan in the studio. It grew on us. We drove around listening to it in the car. Rob would say, "It's working. It communicates." I think the sheer force of the kick drum and the gratuitous layering of guitars make it happen.
Chemistry - I have seven words for that song: Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences. It's a private school in Santa Monica. It was an alternative school; now I think it's more of a celebrity boutique. I hated it by the time I left. Actually, I hated it when I was there, it was High School. In the song, the girl is the only good thing; she ended up being my girlfriend.
Oyster - This dilemma of being divided. It's about being withdrawn and encased, about something of beauty being surrounded by this foul fishy odor, this fleshy membrane that people find repulsive. I tried to incorporate the pearl at one point, but it was just too tacky. I remember tracking the little two-note guitar siren -- the hook, I guess — and we just kept adding octaves. We'd finish one and I'd say to Rob, "Should we do another one, even higher?" and he would he would give me the conspiratorial nod. We just added them until you couldn't hear them anymore, it was really fun and took on this sonic celestial kind of magnanimity.
Million - At the time that I wrote this song we were being courted by labels, but I couldn't get a date — for like a year and a half. It really stung, but it was comic too. I wrote Million in our practice space, just playing around. I did it on a 4-track at about half the speed of the album version, really just the verse parts and chorus. Then we put it together as a band and added the big riff at the front and it seemed to gel a lot better.
Lurker - This is mostly about a troubled friend — mad art and some chemical dependence. Hanging out with him and looking at his life. Seeing someone withdraw to the absolute rear of their house and just stay there. I was kind of doing that myself - not the drugs, but the behavior to be sure. I sensed these similarities between us: the withdrawal and the ticky nervousness. The word "lurker" was a bond this friend and I had; we would always talk about lurking.
Jet Black - Another night song. I was having an ill-fitting relationship with my environment, with everyone around me. I didn't like my friends at the time. But it was really fun when this song started to happen. I was in my room, pissed off, freaked out, and I didn't have anyone to hang out with. I literally set out to write a death rock song, a really capital "G" Gothic song. I said, yeah, death rock. That's where I'm at right now. The heat was on and the room was so hot. I was sitting on the floor scrawling all this hateful stuff. And then I had to go into the studio, to 4-track the skeleton. It came out really trance-like.
Bad Scene - There was this poem in the New Yorker, from the '30s, an extended sonnet. Maybe it was Herbert Ross. It's about a speakeasy, a flapper bash in New York. Apparently, it's almost the exact story as this song. But I'd never read it. This writer I was talking to told me about it because he thought I might have been working with that. I guess the final line in the poem is "and then the cops kicked in the door."
Sluttering - A true story, ugly and forever. The word "sluttering" means a kind of drunk muttering. I actually defined it once as "pontification under duress." There was an angry love triangle and then an elaborate revenge plot designed to incur maximum humiliation. It succeeded horribly and I wound up in the hospital in Concord.
Basilica - It felt like the end, the end-all. It's kind of an extension of Lurker, a rum conclusion. I was spending a lot of time at Mission Dolores, either attending services or just sitting quietly in the pews. I would put on a black suit and walk down there, like an undertaker. I had a lot of heavy shit going on, a lot of worry. The verses come from that church meditation — especially the small graveyard in the back of the Mission. It's such a lovely, sunlit place. Birds, brilliant San Francisco sky, figures at rest. Basilica was fun to record because we used these different amps. We tracked the guitars on this really surreal night. We turned out all the lights; it was ghostly. The instrumental portion adds a lot to the song. When we do it live, it's great to open it up, make it loose and smear things around. When it works live it feels like purging; it becomes really physical in the end. I just used my upper arm and beat the shit out of my guitar. It's pretty satisfying — definitely the rock instinct. A total power trip.
Unlisted - Pretty direct and literal, basically just me singing and playing acoustic. It's a general observation of the post college scene. This notion of people not being committed to anything or anyone. I'd never written an acoustic song before, but I'd love to do it more. I wrote this on the floor of my room as well — it's funny how many of these songs began that way.
