So... Alright - Jawbreaker: Three Ways

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

This week Geoff explores three very different Jawbreakers. Sponsored by Shady Rays Go to http://shadyrays.com and use code SOALRIGHT for 35% off polarized sunglasses and snow goggles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, you know how words can mean different things, or names can be for radically different products? Alright, let me give you an example. I was trying to think of an example of one of these yesterday morning, and the first thing that popped into my head was the word jawbreaker. So today, we're going to talk about jawbreakers, three ways. Way back in 1999, a movie came out called Jawbreaker. It's listed as a comedy. I think it's definitely a dark comedy. I never saw it when it came out.

It starred Rose McGowan and who I mean, everybody knows who Rose McGowan is. Judy Greer, who has gone on to become pretty successful in her own right. It had cameos from Marilyn Manson oh it had Julie Benz if you don't know who Julie Benz is she was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer she played Darla she was great in that it had Pam Greer as well as Judy Greer no relation that I'm aware of uh I believe Carol Kane was in it it had a had a lot actually Jeff Conway Conway was in it. It had a lot, actually. Jeff Conway was in it. It actually had a lot of cameos. As a matter of fact, you know who I noticed in there?

Who, I may be the, well, you might have noticed it too. But there's a nurse in there who looked so familiar. I looked it up. It's the, the lady is Sandy Martin. And she's the lady who plays Mac's mom on Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And I think that might be the first time I've ever noticed her in anything else. Anyway, so this movie comes out. It's a dark comedy about teenagers in high school. I did not see it when it came out. I was 24 years old. I had just gotten out of the army. And I remember I remember this era of teen movies hitting like Can't Hardly Wait. This one, How to Lose a Guy in 12 Days, I think it was right around there. She's All That, Varsity Blues, 10 Things I Hate About You. Anyway, there were all these movies, you know, we have them now too, but it was that generation's movie of like teens separating and going off to college or their adult life or whatever.

separating and going off to college or their adult life or whatever. And I just remember at that time being 24. And after having, you know, just come off, sir, I was exhausted after serving five years in the military. I just remember how fucking just worn out I felt all the time right after I got out of the army and how I just needed to, God, I just I needed some time to just to recover, because it was such an intense five years, you know. and i just remember seeing all those movies come out and having no interest in any of them my friends all wanted to go watch them i think i actually got drugged to see can't hardly wait at the theater and i fucking hated it i've never seen it since i saw in the theater when it came out and i just i just remember feeling really far away from those stories and those problems and that age.

You know what I mean? And so I have kind of a blind spot in my movie knowledge around that time frame. So I sat down and I watched the movie Jawbreaker this morning. And I don't want to spoil it for you. So if you've never seen it and you plan on seeing it, maybe fast forward a little bit. But if you i'll try to talk around it as much as possible without giving too many spoilers but uh you know the movie came out 100 fucking years ago so cut me some slack the premise is basically heathers i don't know

if you've seen heathers that was my that movie came out like 1988 or 89 i want to say yeah in 1988 i think so i was like 13 years old when it came out. And it is about a clique of mean popular girls who kind of torture people and get away with it. This movie is, by the way, phenomenal film. If you ever get a chance to go back and see it, it was well, I say it's phenomenal. I haven't seen it in many, many, many years, but I loved it. I was definitely the right age for it at that right time. And I think I was just a little too old for Jawbreaker, which was directly influenced by Heathers. It's not a retelling of the story, but there are very similar themes. And it's I think they said they were inspired by Heathers. It's also 11 years before Mean Girls, which is the much more successful version of this trilogy of films, which is also a lot safer and more family friendly.

Jawbreaker starts with this group of popular mean girls. They kidnap one of their friends on their birthday. It's a thing they do. They say in the movie, it's a thing that girls do. They kidnap their friends on their birthday. I'm not a girl. I don't know if that's true. To my knowledge, nobody's ever kidnapped a girl around me on their birthday. Maybe it's just a thing from the movie, but or maybe it was a thing from the 90s that I missed. Or maybe it's incredibly common. I don't know. And I'm just an idiot.

So if you make a practice of kidnapping your friends on their birthday, let me know. It might just be something I'm ignorant of. But they kidnap their friend. Rose McGowan has the idea to shove a jawbreaker in her mouth so she can't talk when they duct tape her up. And it happens in the first five minutes, so it's not a huge spoiler. The friend dies. And then they have to figure out what to do with their dead friend that they've unintentionally killed. And this is Rebecca Gayhart and Julie Benz and Rose McGowan.

So now they've got this dead friend. And the whole movie is them trying to navigate, hiding the disappearance of their friend and not look guilty and deal with the guilt of it. But also somehow in it, Rebecca Gayheart becomes the protagonist and Rose McGowan becomes the antagonist. And there's a boyfriend who's in the theater. And then Pam Greer comes in. She's a cop to investigate and she's trying to get to the bottom of it. And then Pam Greer comes in. She's a cop to investigate, and she's trying to get to the bottom of it. And then Judy Greer catches them, finds out what they did. She's like this nerdy, mousy girl.

And they do the transformation and turn her into the hot, pretty girl. And then she becomes a monster, even bigger than Rose McGowan. And then there becomes this power struggle. And then there's like, it all ends at the prom, of course. And so there's a Carrie moment and it all unravels. It's honestly not very good. I don't remember people thinking it was good when it came out.

It might have influenced my desire not to see it. It's interesting to see 1999 again. I'll say that I got hit with a lot of interesting and fun nostalgia because everything in that movie, the soundtrack, all the actors and actresses, you know, I'm I think I think Rebecca Gayhart is like two or three years older than me. Rose McGowan might be a year or two older than me. Julie Benz, we're all about the same age. I think they were all like one or two years older than me. So it's like seeing old friends almost in a way, you know, in a way that I'd never seen them. I mean, I've seen all these people before. I've seen them in a million movies, but I'd never seen them in this configuration before. And it's fun to get to go back in time to a very familiar point in time

and in your past and see stuff that's very familiar, but stuff that you're seeing for the first time. If you have an opportunity to do that, if you're a little bit older and there's a movie you never saw that was kind of steeped in the pop culture of the time, maybe go ahead and check it out just for the just for the fun little peer through the past. It's just kind of cool to see the world in 1999 again in a way that I haven't seen a thousand times in some movie that I've watched over and over again, if that makes sense. I definitely don't recommend it. It's a very stylish movie. There's some interesting cinematography. there's uh there's some interesting cinematography rose mcgowan gives uh some decent performance uh at different points rebecca gayheart is a better actress than i remember her being i don't

know if you remember rebecca gayheart but she uh she was famous because she's interesting i don't it doesn't really happen this way anymore but she was famous because she was the noxzema girl like she got a contract she was a model she got a contract to be the face of Noxzema. And she became like overnight famous because of that. Everybody, everybody was kind of charmed with her. I know everybody I knew had a crush on her. And through that, she ended up becoming an actress and kind of had a lot of success. I actually looked her up because she was working pretty regularly. She was doing like a string of like five or six movies in a row and then just kind of stopped. And I never knew why. Or maybe I did and I just forgot it because apparently it was big news. But I guess she hit a pedestrian driving her car in the early 2000s and they died. And I don't know if she was at

fault. I didn't read too far into it. I just think it that put a stop to her career for a while. It's crazy. I mean, Caitlyn Jenner is going strong, right? What are you gonna do? Anyway, that's a piece of early 2000s trivia that I did either did not know or did not remember. Film didn't do well. I think it made like $3 million in the box office. I guess it's become kind of a cult classic. Like it's clearly garnered some level of cult following and status but i really mediocre really forgettable film not not to be rude uh didn't didn't miss out on anything by not seeing it at the time actually kind of glad i never saw it at the time because it's cool to go back and

see it so many years later and and like i said just be like a warm blanket of familiarity it was really nice so that is the movie Jawbreaker. Oh, one other thing before I move on to the next Jawbreaker. I mentioned those actors and actresses in that film. They were all a little bit, my age or a little bit older. I was 24. I think Rebecca Gayhart was 28 or 29 at the time of filming. These people were all supposed to be 16 and 17 year old high school students. It is so jarring to see damn near 30 year olds playing high school students. There's a dude in that movie, like a hunky dude in that movie who is looks older than some of the teachers. It's crazy to me that we're supposed to believe that he is like 17 years old, even though he's

clearly been working out in a gym for 15 years to get the body he has. It's ridiculous. Oh, and one other one other cameo that I forgot to mention at the prom, the prom band, because there's always a prom band. Right. And that prom band is always somehow famous. It's always it never makes sense to me, but it's always like and now playing for your high school prom passion pit you're like how the fuck did they get that whatever the band is the donnas who i guess were the right band for that time they were i don't know if you know them or if you're familiar with them so i apologize if i'm uh explaining something that you're very familiar with but

they were kind of like an all-girl ramones kind of meets like ramones Ramones meets the Runaways is how I would describe them, maybe. And they were potentially, like, the new It band. Like, they were, I remember, I felt like, I felt like media was really pushing them hard to be the next big thing. And then it just never, they always got close, right? But I don't think they ever, I don't think they ever, like, got over that hump. And then I believe they broke up somewhere in the mid-2000s. Let's see if I can find that 2012. There you go. Anyway, fun band. If you ever get a chance, give them a listen. Just real poppy

and dancey and a little buzzy. Jawbreaker. Second way, the candy. Boy, have I learned a lot about the candy jawbreakers in the last 24 hours. I guess off the bat in the uk they're called gobstoppers in the us and canada they're called jawbreakers no idea what they're called around the rest of the world obviously they reached like massive popularity in the around the world but uh from the uk from from the willie wonka movie in the 1960s and i think that's where they kind of like hit the cultural zeitgeist, but they've existed for a very long time before that. They were actually invented, I learned, in America, of all places.

I would have picked the UK, hands down. The UK invented everything that Americans enjoy, it seems like. But yeah, they were invented in, well, it depends on how far you want to go back, right? They were making candy in Italy where they would put a, it's called confetti, right? And they would put almond at the center and then build a candy kind of shell around it, usually like a Jordan almond. And they would do this process called panning, which is how they make jawbreakers as well. And I can explain that

in a minute. But they would just kind of build the candy up around a Jordan almond. It was actually an Italian born confectioner who moved to the States. I guess his name is Ferrera Pan. He moved to the States in 1908 and created created the first one in the States using the name jawbreaker in like 1919. in the States using the name Jawbreaker in like 1919. So the official Jawbreaker as its name, Candy, was invented in 1919 by this Ferrera Pan dude, who, by the way, that company, Ferrera Pan, is still around. And they still make Jawbreakers. They make what's called the original Jawbusters, is what they call them now. I don't know why they call them Jawbusters. I don't know that it's important. But if you see the box, they look like the cheap Jawbreakers you get in the discount Halloween candy bags. They're pretty good. I like them.

You'll recognize them immediately. So I guess that they've been making... Those are the originals, and they've been being made since 1919, which is kind of fucking wild. I also really thought that they were invented in England and probably originally called Gobstoppers because of, I guess, just because of the influence of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but that's not correct. Although Gobstoppers did go into production, obviously, after the popularity of the movie, I think like five or six years after the movie, they decided to start making those. And, you know, obviously those are still going strong. The term jawbreaker is interesting because that actually dates back to, I think, 1839, where it was entered into the dictionaries as a hard to

pronounce word, which is also really weird because jawbreaker is not a hard to pronounce word. But nobody seems to know why. Like it know why. Nobody understands, to my knowledge, the etymology of how the term jawbreaker was created, just that it ended up in dictionaries in 1839 as a hard-to-pronounce word, and then 80-something years later was attached to a very popular candy by Salvatore Ferraro. I said it was Ferrara Pan was his name. That's the name of the candy company. My apologies to Salvatore Ferrara.

I didn't mean to miscredit him. He was the one who founded the Ferrara Pan candy company, which is still, as I said earlier, still in existence to this day. So I was telling you, I learned how they make them. And I think it's a, I think it's actually kind of fascinating. They start with a single grain of sugar, they say, and they use this process called panning, where they put it in like large copper pots that are spherical. And then they're just constantly rotated over gas flames, so that the grains of sugar tumble around and they keep adding them in and then with constant

rotation. And then they eventually they start adding liquid sugar i think it takes like two weeks eventually they are formed into this uh you know hard delicious shell and as it grows i guess they put on food coloring and and artificial flavors as well until you get this giant you know gorgeous candy bowling ball that uh oh man, this is getting me excited about Jawbreakers. You ever get one of the giant, like, big-ass Jawbreakers that's like the size of a baseball or a softball and just see how long it takes you to eat it? I bought one one time when I was in my 30s, and I just kept it in the fridge, and I would lick it a little bit and keep it in the fridge, and I think I got maybe a third of the way down

on that thing before I gave up and just threw it away, and I was weeks into it, and I think what finally wore me off was just at some point, it's like sandpaper on your tongue. If you lick a jawbreaker for too much, it just like rips your fucking tongue up.

I wonder what the largest jawbreaker ever is. Let's see. Nick Calderaro from Scarborough, Canada in 2003. He is an employee of the Oak Leaf Confections Company, or at least he was at that time in Ontario. He created a 27.8 pound jawbreaker that is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest jawbreaker of all time. 27.8 pounds. I wonder what happened to that because that was 20 years ago now. Is a job? Can it sit? Does a job have a shelf life? Does it have a half life? Can it sit for 20 years and then be eaten because it's just crystallized or cooked sugar, 20 years and then be eaten because it's just crystallized or cooked sugar, hardened sugar,

right? And artificial flavorings. Or I wonder if they already ate it. I wonder how long it takes to how long does it take to eat a regular jawbreaker? Let's see. Oh, OK. It says there have been some scientific studies and it takes approximately 1000 licks to completely devour a jawbreaker. I guess that's just like a normal small-sized jawbreaker, like a gumball-sized jawbreaker. Oh, I missed a little fact about this thing. The world's... Sorry, Nick. Let me give you full credit here, Nick Calderero. When he made this...

Sorry, talking about Nick, the guy that made the world's largest jawbreaker. Again, not the guy that edits this podcast. When he created that 27 pound jawbreaker, it took him 476 hours to make it. Jesus Christ. I wonder if it's worth it. Okay, last thing about the candy jawbreaker. I don't know if you remember this, but there were at least when I was growing up, there were all these myths that jawbreakers could explode if you heated them up like in a microwave. I guess Mythbusters did an episode where they tried to confirm or bust whether jawbreakers could explode, and they confirmed it. I'll read the results right here. Microwave heating of a jawbreaker can cause different layers inside to heat at different rates

yielding an explosive spray of very hot candy when compressed during one test the jawbreaker did indeed explode catching Christine on part of her face and neck and Adam on part of an arm as the jaw rig that they had set up didn't have safety screens both suffered light burns

and here's one I do remember reading a young girl in Florida suffered severe burns. And here's one I do remember reading. A young girl in Florida suffered severe burns to her face when one exploded. I think it was like left out in the sun and then put in the freezer and then left out in the sun again. And I think she had to have like plastic surgery. It burned her so bad. Okay, well, there you go. Enjoy Jawbreakers. Know that if you're going to try to tackle a normal sized one, it's going to take you about a thousand tongue licks and keep them away from extreme heat or they may explode and cause incredible damage to you. Also, they are not good for you. It is pure.

It is a big, hard ball of sugar. But damn, is it a fun ball of sugar to eat? OK, Jawbreaker third way, the band Jawbreaker. And this is going to be a little, this part will be a little different for me. Jawbreaker is one of my all-time favorite bands. They have meant a tremendous amount to me throughout my life. Anybody who is my age and was in a similar scene, probably feels similarly to Jawbreaker. It was one of the greatest rises and then saddest falls I've seen, and quickest falls I've seen of a talented band in my lifetime. And I wanted to do them justice for this third part.

And I remembered reading that there was a documentary about them a while back. So in preparation for this, right after I watched the Jawbreaker comedy movie with Rose McGowan, I immediately watched the Jawbreaker documentary, Jawbreaker Don't Break Down, which was, I think, created by the same team that made We Jam Ocano,

which is the Minutemen documentary, which I have to say, if you get a chance to see, you absolutely should. It's a phenomenal documentary. Also, you should see this documentary. Even if you don't know who the band Jawbreaker is,

if you do, it's going to provide an insane amount of insight into what happened in that band and how they fell apart. And it's going to break your heart, really, because it is a really beautiful and sad and very naked and honest story that they tell, I think,

throughout the course of this documentary. If you've never heard of them, I think you should probably watch it because it is a great hour and 17-minute explanation of how something truly special can be born and then die in the span of time, in a span of time, just because of how difficult it was to manage and control. I just, I thought it was fascinating.

But if you're not familiar with the band Jawbreaker, they were a punk rock band from the late 80s. I think they probably formed in like 87, 88. And they went until maybe they formed in like 89. And they went to like 99. They were only around for 10 years. In that 10 years, they released four studio albums that were all very different from each other. I don't even really know where to start. There's so much I want to talk about with this band. I don't really know how to navigate this in a common sense fashion, but I'll do my best. They start, these two kids are best friends in high school, off in Santa Monica. They decide to start playing

in bands together. They're punk rock kids. They end up going to NYU together. This is Blake Schwarzenbach and Adam Faller. They go to NYU together. While they're there going to school, they answer a flyer for someone who wants to start a band, a guy named Chris Bauermeister. And the three of them end up starting Jawbreaker together. It's interesting because there's some clear tension between Blake and Chris even early on. I don't think that they're necessarily creatively aligned. They talk a little bit about how they had to spend hours and hours

in a practice space together just trying to understand each other and get to know each other and just playing back and forth. I think there was like a real tug, creative tug. Maybe not a tug, but I think that they just they had, they were different people. Clearly very different people. And so this band was born

out of two friends and then one person whose ad they answered you know and that created and i think a tension between them that persisted it's what drove the band apart part of what drove the band apart obviously a big part of what drove the band apart but i think it's also what made them kind of special is because they weren't necessarily even from the start always aligned and they even talk about this and i think you can really feel it in the early albums their first album unfun is this right kind of just like punk hardcore album very very of its time and a really good solid album but there's like this i don't know you you can almost feel this tension between the music and i think it's what elevates it a little bit the next album bivouac that they released which is a very different album from the last one and and it's

starting to show their their musical ability a little bit more it is definitely like whereas Like, whereas Unfun was kind of like straight, punky, hardcore, this is sort of hardcore-inspired emo. Reminds me very much of like early Sunny Day real estate, but different. I think you'll understand what I mean if you know both bands. Anyway, and I think that this tension between the band members kind of helped elevate and create and create this like i don't know you'd have this quality to the music that you can feel in it and i and i think it really helped i mean don't get me wrong blake is an amazing singer he's got a really unique voice uh adam is a phenomenal drummer uh i think he's actually a lot better than he gets credit for they were all really talented in their own way,

but something about the way they came together, but couldn't quite come together or ever see eye to eye, I think made the music better. So they, they formed this band in New York city. I'm getting all, I'm jumping all over the place. They formed this band in New York city.

They realized they have something a little special. They decided to drop out of school for a while or put it on hold they move to la which is like i said where we're uh so it's like it's one east coast dude and two west coast dudes which is also kind of interesting they move to la uh back to where you know blake and adam are from to try to gain some traction there and la is not happening for them there really isn't much of a scene in la at this time in the late 80s. And so they're doing a lot of like up and down the coast road, small tours, road gigs.

They end up playing at Gilman Street in Berkeley, which I've never been to. It is where Op Ivy and Green Day and Jawbreaker and I don't know, A Con of Christ and like a million bands got their start or got their foothold in the punk community it's this punk collective to me growing up a kid who was in bumfuck middle of nowhere alabama and at times louisiana reading about the punk world through zines in the late 80s, early 90s, Gilman Street seemed like the center of the universe. It really did. It was where all of

the best music was happening. It was, you would read about it, it was this amazing punk collective, and it just, it sounded, it sounded like this mecca of everything that i was involved with or wanted to be involved with rather that i was tangentially involved with by being a fan of and ah man i would have killed to go there back in the time i found out recently my friend burndog when he lived up there he would go there all the time and he uh man i need to ask him maybe i'll bring him on an interview about that sometime i'd love to know more about his time at gilman anyway this like it was like the center of the punk universe at for a time and they they felt really welcome there and so they ended up deciding you know fuck la let's move the band up to san francisco that's that's a much livelier scene a lot more going on up there and so they move up to san

francisco i think that uh they move into an apartment complex and across the hall. I think Adam and Blake end up in one apartment and Chris moves across the hall with a roommate. The roommate's Lance Hahn, the lead singer of J Church, who is another similarly important band from that time, but one of my favorite bands of all time. And Lance Hahn is was a bit of a hero to me. I'll probably talk about that at some point. I'll talk about how embarrassed I made myself every time I had the pleasure of meeting him. He ended up living in Austin for the last, I don't know, 10 years of his life or whatever.

He died a while back. Anyway, so they start to find success. Gilman loves them. They're really good. They're really different. You can tell pretty early on that they're special. They have something. This three-piece Blake is incredibly charismatic as a lead singer, and he's got this raspy,

this unique raspy voice, like unlike anything you've ever heard. And they, they, they're just really good. you've ever heard. And they, they, they're just really good around this time. I'm going to get the timelines fucked up a little bit. So I apologize around this time. They they're, they're creating their next album. It was called 24 hour revenge therapy. If you are a jawbreaker fan, you know, this album, because it is considered one of the best albums, one of the best punk albums ever made, and definitely their best album. Although as I've grown older, I've learned to appreciate Dear You,

which is something we'll get into. Anyway, so at this point, they're living in San Francisco. I'm jumping around a little bit, but at one point they broke up because they were just having a tough time, and they weren't seeing eye to eye, and it's

working at this time in punk rock. This is before Green Day broke big. This is before there was Blink-182 and money everywhere. It was such a labor of love to be a part of this. I talked about the, you know, the my love and obsession with the DIY movement and what pulled me into punk rock. And they were in the middle of that. And it's such a romantic and wonderful thing when you're 19 and 20 and 21. But when you're starting to approach your, you know, you're starting to get a little bit older and a little bit longer in the tooth and you start to think about your future and you've been, you know, driving a van across the country for four or five or six years, two or three, you know, 250 days a year, whatever it may be.

And you're kind of living hand to mouth and sleeping on in squats and at on people's floors and in college universities, which is something that Catch-22 used to do when I was with them. And just eek and buy, you know, it's awesome because you're living for your art and it's amazing, but it's also exhausting and it's hard and it wears you down and it strains relationships. And I think that they're going through that through the entirety of this band. If I had one overall impression over their 10 years from watching the documentary, it's that that band was largely painful for all of them the entire time, even through the good moments. And that makes me really sad for them, because they found something special, and they just didn't know how to keep it together. And the more people liked it, the more it hurt them. And so it was really, it's very complicated. And I'm here,

I am just a fan who watched the documentary and heard some interviews and is extrapolating all this meaning. It may have more to do with me than them. Who knows? But at some point they break up and Blake goes back and he finishes his college degree. I think, I think actually,

I think Adam stays in California and in San Francisco and Blake and Chris go back to New York independently of each other, not friends. Then they've, I think they both finished their degrees maybe. And at some point reconcile, Blake becomes a librarian. They move back to San Francisco. They kick the band back up again. This is around the time they start making 24 hour revenge therapy. I mentioned that because in the documentary, Blake, Blake mentions that he, at this time, is a librarian. And at the library that he works at, he's found these tapes of Jack Kerouac doing these spoken words from, I don't know, the 60s or the 70s. And he takes them and he starts listening to them every morning when he's making his coffee and getting his breakfast together and getting ready for work.

And it just becomes this routine. And he kind of gets like lulled into the world of Jack Kerouac and the beat scene in general, I think. And it makes so much sense because if you now listen to 25 Revenge Therapy, you can, I mean, the references to Kerouac are overt in the album, but you can also feel how different this album is from the previous two because it is really, the dude is a poet. He doesn't acknowledge it, but he really is. And his poetry is becoming refined and the music is becoming refined

and he's gotten to be much better at conveying a point lyrically. And so really 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, whereas the first album was just like hardcore punk album, the first album was this hardcore punk album, the second album was this hardcore emo album. This album is like beat punk, would be the only way I could describe it. It feels like Allen Ginsberg.

It feels like William S. Burroughs. It feels like Jack Kerouac all rolled up into one, writing songs about disenfranchisement and disillusion and fear. And there's a song called Outpatient that talks about this crazy time. So this is an ad to help support this podcast from Shady Rays.

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and snow goggles. All right. code so all right for 35 off polarized sunglasses and snow goggles all right they were on tour in europe i think that they they talk about this in the documentary they wanted to go to europe they didn't have the money they did a tour from california all the way to new york to collect enough money along the way to basically buy their flights to go on this European tour. So they do this, and then they're really relying on their friends in this European tour. A lot of people put up money and support to help them go across Europe to play these shows, and so they're really indebted to a lot of people over there, they feel. Blake starts having this pain in his throat, and he starts having this

difficulty singing, and he's losing his voice a lot, and it's a crapshoot of whether he'll be able to sing. They actually play some clips from some of the shows where he's like, I can't sing this song, but if somebody from the audience wants to come up and sing it, I'll play guitar, and you can see it. He eventually starts coughing up blood, and so he eventually has to go see a doctor, I think in Irelandland or somewhere and they discover he's got these polyps on his throat and they have to perform emergency surgery to remove them and this is in the middle of the tour which they then have to cancel an entire leg of which they feel terrible about because it's going to screw over a lot of friends uh who you know invested some

money and effort and time into getting this tour off the ground. There's a period of time where Blake doesn't know if he'll ever be able to sing again or what he will even sound like. And it's like this crazy period where he's convalescing in Europe somewhere, not knowing if he'll have the strength to even sing, if he'll be able to. And then, you know, because he's got this very unique, raspy voice. And I think his voice is a little different post-surgery. I think he can hear it. And he even has the song Outpatient on 24-Hour Revenge Therapy

that is, I talk about how like, how, what a poet he'd become. I'll read some of these lyrics. The song starts out, a little voice that's not quite your own. Count backwards from 10. He's recounting when they're putting him under. Yellow jelly shot, hard in vain.

I want to talk to you again this is jennings your anesthetist we think we'll go through the mouth when the lights go from head to toe doped up and coasting down the hall it's just him talking about this experience the chorus is like now i'm talking through my pen because he doesn't have a voice anymore do you read me am i bleeding am i bleeding again and it's, he's like, the song goes on, but he's just, he's talking about the fear of being so far from home and going through surgery and not knowing what's going to happen. Because the only way this dude has to express himself or make a living is his voice, right? And so not knowing what's going to be on the other side of the surgery. And it's, it's, it's fascinating. And, uh, there's a lot of really intensely personal songs on that album.

As a matter of fact, there's a song called box car on that album that I think is one of the best songs ever written. And, uh, if Millie had been, Millie is very lucky. She was born a girl.

Cause if Millie was born a boy, her mother and I were going to name him box car after that song. It was a very important song to us. And I'm really, really glad I didn't birth a boxcar into the world because I, my, uh, my idea of a cool name in my late twenties would have been some poor kid's miserable existence. And I would have done, I would have Jeffrey G I would have G Jeffrey that kid. And that's not, I shouldn't have done. I can't imagine what it i would have g jeffrey that kid and that's not i shouldn't have done i can't imagine what it would be like to be a poor kid going through public school as a boxcar so uh in retrospect probably good good that that didn't happen so going through this

documentary they break up in 98 99 the documentary i think starts filming in no maybe they break up in 97 98 because the document it the documentary starts filming in, no, maybe they break up in 97, 98, because the documentary, the documentary starts filming, I'm kidding, the dates don't matter, all right? They start filming the documentary in 2007, which is, I think, 11 years after the band broke up, and 11 years after they'd all seen each other. And that's wild. They literally put them in a recording studio together, and they haven't seen each other in 11 years. I think Blake and Adam probably have, because they're, you know, they were childhood friends. But certainly the three of them haven't been together in that much time. see so much pain and so many hurt feelings and such a love. You can really tell there is an

intense amount of love between the three of them, but they're all so different. And you've got this one guy who just feels like a third wheel and feels like an outsider who brought so much to the band and just wants to feel acknowledged and appreciated. And he just wants the others to say, hey, you mattered. And you are just as much a part of this band as we are. And then you've got this creative genius who is a lead singer in every sense of the way. He is immensely talented and unique and too talented for the, I think in some ways as part of his problem and who is so emotionally closed off, he can't even acknowledge the problem exists. You can just, he's just a stone wall and that's so sad. And then you've got this other entity

in between them, this guy who I think understood from day one that they had something truly unique and special between the three of them and was doing everything in his power just to keep the train on the tracks and to keep it going. And when they eventually break up, and we'll get into that, you can tell that he was desperate to keep the band together and knew what they were losing, right? And I think it must have been so sad to be him and to see it all fall apart around them and to be powerless to really do anything to stop it. And I realized that I am injecting a lot of my own opinions into this. This is what I'm choosing to glean from these conversations that they're having in this recording studio. And it's entirely possible, as a lot of these themes are hit pretty close to home to me and are very familiar, and it's probably through that lens that I'm seeing this. And so I may be reading more into some of this than than i should but i'm just repeating what

i'm personally seeing understanding that some of that may be colored by my own experiences and uh you know for what it's worth it's really interesting throughout this documentary too because they're in this recording studio and i think the goal is to get them to play together and uh they are so one of them clearly wants to one of them clearly does not want to, one of them clearly wants to. One of them clearly does not want to. And one of them doesn't, is just kind of, once again, in between. You can't really figure out how to navigate it. And it's really, you can tell how, it's really sad because you can tell how painful it is for all of them and how unresolved the issues are for all of them.

And there's such an, there's just such an intense amount of hurt. issues are for all of them and there's such an there's just such an intense amount of hurt and it's you can it's just like the tension is so thick the sadness is so thick you can you can almost see it you know and as the story unfolds and they're talking about their successes and what eventually happened to them i mentioned that they're well, well, let me just, let me just tell their story. So, you know, they're, they have now three albums out. They're becoming, uh, the darlings of that world. Like everybody loves them. Green Day has now broken big and they're a major label band and bands are starting to follow bands like face to face. Every time you turn around, Jawbox, Sam, I am all these bands are threatening to blow up or in the process of signing to majors and blowing up. And Jawbreaker is this band that is now has a lot of eyes on them because everybody knows they're better than everyone else.

Like everybody knows they are the special band. We can all feel it. We can all hear it. The music is amazing and they have this quality. And so everybody's paranoid that they're gonna become, that they're to sign to a major label and sell out, which was this huge deal in the 80s and the 90s in my scene in the punk world selling out, which was seen as, you know, you, the whole point of this punk movement at the time was to create this counter culture structure that we could all build our businesses in and live in and create our creative outlets and endeavors via bands or magazines

or independent novels or whatever spoken words. We can all do it through this punk rock ecosystem and we don't need the major labels. We don't need the corporations which kind of come in and inject money and suck the soul out of everything and kind of leave it an empty shell of what it was. This is very much what my friends and the people around me felt at this time and what

the, you know, you read Maximum Rock and Roll and Punk Planet and all these zines and there would just be article after article. It was such a, it was the major focal point of all this because for the first time, really, money was coming in and it was coming in hard and it was really shaking things up. The Green Day Green Day signing to a major label and becoming huge really flipped everything around at that time for a lot of the a lot of the fans. And we got obsessed with this idea of bands staying true to their roots and not selling out which looking back on it now is i get the sentiment and as somebody who's lived on both sides of it now and has the perspective of both sides it's it was such it's such a silly so it was such a silly time in a lot of ways but and i feel bad for a lot of the hot takes i had when i was 19 years old and i i really

wish i could go back and explain explain a lot of the complexity takes I had when I was 19 years old and I really wish I could go back and explain a lot of the complexity. I wish I could go back to my 19 year old self and show them this documentary and show them the pain and the heartbreak and the effort and the work and how fucking hard every day it was to be a member of Jawbreaker and to make a living in that band and how difficult it was to

keep that thing going and the amount of pressure that they were under now that they are this like the band in the independent punk scene because everybody else is fleeing to major labels then this crazy thing happens to them they get invited to go on tour with nirvana of all bands like the true big major label like that's the fear right the fear is the bands will turn into green day and nirvana right and so nirvana invites them to go out on this this short tour and they did that because i guess kurt and courtney had a nanny this dude who would watch francis bean who was like he said like he's in

the he's in the documentary he's like five or six years younger than kurt and he said that kurt would always ask him what music he was listening to because kurt was trying to like you know keep abreast of what the the young kids are are into And so he let him borrow it. I think 24 hour revenge therapy, let him borrow the jawbreaker tape. And Kurt really, really liked it and got super into it. It resonated with him. And so he invited them out on like a short six day tour. They jumped at the chance to play, you know, they're playing in front of 75 to 100 people on a beer and puke stained hall in some fucking basement college show in South Carolina or wherever have you you know and now they have this opportunity to to play in front of thousands of people so they jump at the chance it gets out that they're going on tour

with Nirvana and they that's when the backlash starts Gilman Street, I guess, tells them, the collective, they're no longer welcome to play at Gilman. So this venue that they essentially all but moved up to San Francisco to make it their home base because they felt so welcome there in Berkeley, now tells them essentially, they've turned their backs on them and says, like, we're not interested in you anymore. You're betraying our ideals or whatever. So they've kind of like, now there are these rumblings that they're going to sell out. There are these rumblings that like here, they've now been, you know, basically shunned by Gilman and those people. Rumors start to fly around that they're going to sign to a major label. And what's really happening is they're miserable. They've been going, hitting it hard and strong for many years. They don't particularly like each other at this point. It's very difficult for them

to coexist. And they're not making a ton of money at all. So they're all still working their day jobs. They're still struggling. It was this point in time, I have no idea what the scene is like today. And it might be exactly like this. It might always be exactly like this but it could also be incredibly different and i just i'm just trying to acknowledge that i have no purview into the way things work today i only know my little window in time when this shit was important to me uh it was really fucking hard to be a band and make a living and you could be famous you could be a famous independent punk band that hundreds of thousands of kids around the country loved and would look up to and idolize and still be broke as a fucking joke and working at a toy store when you're not on tour or working at a haagen-dazs

because there just isn't any money in it they're're doing it for the love. They're doing it for the, I don't know, the desire to create and to connect with an audience in some way. And that is hard on the best of times. You know, I watched, I had the fortune of being a roadie for a pretty successful ska punk band in the 90s. I got to go on tour with them. I got to see what it tour with them i got to see

what it was like i got to see kids come to town and and treat them like the beatles because to those kids they were the beatles in the same way that bands were in the same way that a band like jawbreaker was the beatles to me uh and then i got to see these guys like scrounging around on the fucking in the van trying to put enough money together to buy an extra value meal because they were so fucking broke. And I got to watch these. And it's something to do that in your early 20s. When you start getting older and you start to realize how much life you have ahead of you and how much you've invested into this thing and the return on it might be emotionally great, but it's a very difficult way, I think, to continue at the best of times,

but especially if there is dysfunction within the band members. And as a three-piece, it's even worse. The nice thing about Catch-22, when I was with those guys, there was like fucking seven of them. So there's seven people to drive. There's seven people to, you know, you rotate through. There's seven people to do this. You take breaks. You have it easier. If you're pissed off at one of the band members, there's five other people between you that help you soften the fight or keep you guys apart. There's, you know, there's room to breathe and move away from each other when there are more people in a band.

When there are three people in the band, it is pretty intense. And the way these things tend to work when you're a threesome is that two people tend to be on one side and one person tends to be on the other. And sometimes that triangle flips around and it's a different two people for a different situation. But it always ends up with one person feeling left out, right? In a larger band, five, six, seven people, no matter what your view is, there's probably one other person, at least on your side, so you don't feel completely and totally alone in certain situations. And I think that just the dysfunction

was really taking a toll on them and the years and years of just grinding and suffering. And there's all these songs about these squats in San Francisco that they're living in with lice on the floors and sharpened screwdrivers in the hallways. And just like, I think that they were just at the end of being able to live that way, right?

And so what's really happening when all these rumors are swirling around about them signing to a major label is they're really close to breaking up. And Blake is one of these guys, he's very idealistic, you can tell. He says in the documentary in 2007, there will never be ever, there will never be a jawbreaker reunion. And then in 2017,

that said spoiler documentary ends in 2017, they have a reunion. I saw them play in 2018 or 2019 with, uh, with Emily. It was a bit of a weird show. I'd love to see them again. It was, uh, it was like a weird outdoor show. The vibe was strange, but it was really exciting to get to see them. I saw them a few times when I was younger. I'll actually talk about that in a little bit. So they are back together.

And so you have to learn to take some of the things that Blake says with a grain of salt because he starts getting up on stage. This is like, I don't know, 94, 95. He starts getting up on stage or on a tour and addressing these rumors of them signing to a major label to the audience. And he's doing it night after night and saying, Jawbreaker will never sign to a major label.

It is never going to happen. We are never. Meanwhile, by the way, they've they've done another full tour with Nirvana at this point. And I think that the fear is that like some major label exec is going to see them when they're on tour with Nirvana and sign them. And which they even joke about is exactly what happened. But so he's going up every night and just saying it over and hammering. He's doing interviews with punk scenes and saying like Jawbreaker will never be on a major label. It's never going to happen.

And then six weeks after all he said all that shit, they signed to a major label. So what happened is and I think why Blake is getting up there and he's addressing these rumors and talking about it, he's so angry about it, is because they're about to break up. And I think that they're all feeling it. And then they're faced with a point where they're like, we could break up. Or, because what really does happen after going on tour with Nirvana is labels start to court them. Everybody knows they're the special band and so uh people are throwing money at them and they're getting all these offers and they're and from major labels and they're at this point where they're like we're gonna break up and i guess figure out what the fuck to do with our lives uh you know the only thing we know how

to do is play music and here we all are now like in our 30s trying to figure out you know who we are and who we're going to be once this band is over or we could take a million dollars and make one more album and just fucking see what happens you know and i think at this point they already feel kind of bitter towards their audience they don't say this they don't convey this at all maybe this is me uh putting my own shit in there but you know they do mention that you know that they've now been in a lot of ways ostracized by the same audience that supported them and helped them grow and i think that they're kind of pissed off about that because really all they've done at this point is go on tour with a big band and make a little

bit of money and so they say fuck it instead breaking up, let's sign to a major label. What happens is they get a ton of money, they go in and they make an album. They make an album called Dear You. It is very different from anything else they've ever made. It's kind of like an indie rock album. I won't even really call it punk. There's a lot of dysfunction in the band at this point.

I think Blake has a very different idea about what he wants out of the band than the other members. It's a very different recording process than they've previously done. I think Adam and Chris come in and record the drum and bass parts in like a week, and then Blake and the producer spend three months doing guitar and vocals and finishing up the album. It's way more guitar and vocal heavy than any of the other albums, I think, to the dismay a little bit of

the of the other two members who feel kind of shoved to the back. Once again, that's me. That's my conjecture, although it's pretty clear. I think watching the documentary, that's the case. And this album comes out there there I think it's Geffen they have a lot of expectations this is supposed to they're calling them the thinking man's green day this is supposed to be the next big thing it's hitting at the right time

the punk community is kind of holding its breath I remember very clearly at this point being waiting for Dear You to come out to see what it's going to be like, and to find out if they did, in fact, quote unquote, sell out. The album comes out. They're expecting it to sell a million copies in the first week. It bombs hard. It's such a different sound. The punk rock community hates it, and it's not catchy enough to appeal to a mass audience, I guess. And so it's

in this weird no man's land where their audience doesn't want it. And it's not appealing enough in whatever way, because I think it's a very accessible album now, to a mass audience. It sells 40,000 copies when they were expecting a million. The label, I think a week after the album comes out, the label is done with them. That's how this industry works, unfortunately. Suddenly they can't, nobody's returning their phone calls. The label lets the album go out of print immediately.

And so 40,000 copies are sold and then it goes out of print. They go, they tour in support of it. They go on tour at the Foo Fighters, I think. And what happens is, and I went to a show in Houston on this tour, on the Dear You tour, and I didn't see this personally, but it's documented and apparently it happens a bunch. They play songs from Dear You like Fireman or Bad Scene, Everybody's Fault or whatever. The audience literally sits down and faces away from them and just shows their backs to them, which is the most childish and obnoxious thing I can think of to do.

And I'm so embarrassed that people did that to them. I can't imagine being in this band where the only thing you have is each other, and that is hanging on by a thread and you have dramatically changed your sound from album to album you've evolved from album to album and the audience has come along with you every way and they've liked each iteration better than the last and then they take this other this this next big step and it is a big step and nobody even gives it a chance and they don't give it a chance because it costs money and because they got paid to make it at the end of the day it's so fucking seems so unfair and ridiculous this puts such a tremendous amount of pressure on the band

that at some point they're on a tour and uh blake and chris get into a fist fight they call a band meeting and they in the fucking band and jawbreaker is done 10 years after uh they launch four phenomenal albums although one that nobody likes and they're just done and it uh it's really interesting because you're you're you're learning this through them they're telling these stories in this in this this recording space in 2007. And then there'll be breakaway interviews, uh, of them individually at, I guess, in wherever they live, adding a little bit more context. And you can just feel, you can feel how painful it was even at the best of times for them to be in this band and to know that they made something so special and so good and it was hurting them they couldn't figure out how to enjoy it i don't think you know i don't think they could get out

of each other's way and they could just never let each other really truly breathe and love and enjoy this thing that they were making that they were all obsessed with you know except for maybe adam i i do get the impression that the entire time that the drummer, Adam really understood what was going on and, and, and really would have kept jawbreaker going forever. If he could, you know, he's the one that like in the interview, he goes down to his basement and he shows all the mail he had. He still has all of the mail that people mailed them over the many, many years. This dude is clearly sentimental.

He's clearly a collector. These are clearly special times to him. He's definitely like, I don't know if you ever remember, if you ever read the book It, but in the book It, the Stephen King book It, or you saw the movie maybe, they kill it or they think they kill it and then they all move on and all forget about it as they become adults except for that one dude ben who stays in town and dairy and is is like the historian i guess for lack of a better word he's the one who remembers it all and keeps it all straight and pays attention and i definitely get the idea that adam kind of fills that role in jawbreaker he was the one who it meant the most to who understood understood it at the time, who had the least amount of issues and just really appreciated it and has definitely held on to it the longest. He is the one that actually started a record label after Jawbreaker broke up and started

re-releasing better versions of all the albums. It took him many years, but he at some point gets a hold of the masters, is able to re-license the masters of that dear you album that that did so poorly and re-releases it but before he does that here's something that happens about five years after jawbreaker calls it quits the world discovers dear you is a phenomenal album it was just a little ahead of its time however there's only 40 000 copies of it and so it becomes a collector's item like the audience literally forces this band to break up because they hate this fucking album so much because they don't give it a chance. Five years later, it becomes so sought after. People are buying copies of this CD for 150 bucks online.

It's worth it's going for like 10 times what it what its retail cost was because it's so sought after. Eventually, I think it's called black ball records like i was saying adam uh re-releases all the albums but he gets the the masters of dear you and he re-releases that so it's it's readily and fully available now and it has become very popular post band and i think a lot of people understand and appreciate what they did they i should mention continue to go on and do other bands as well. Adam was in J Church, actually, for a little bit. One of my favorite bands. Blake went on to do a band that was really, really good called Jets to Brazil. I really liked

Jets to Brazil. I think it was very similar to Dear You. It was definitely an evolution of what he was doing there. It was kind of routinely panned for not being Jawbreaker. And I think unfairly panned throughout the course of the history of that band. And I feel really bad about that because I don't think it was fair. Because it was something completely and totally different, but it was constantly being compared to Jawbreaker. Actually, I think Chris was in another band. They all had different bands here and there. They talk about that a little bit in the documentary, but what really happens is Adam opens up a video lending library,

like a video store in San Francisco, and Blake, I don't know what Blake does. He moves to New York and is a librarian or something, and Chris becomes, I think, a stay-at-home dad up in Washington. And they just kind of put it all behind him. At the end of this documentary in 2007, they finally get them... Independently, they're all saying no throughout to play music together. They finally get them into the studio together. They all pick up their instruments. And then they start to jam a little bit. You see it. And then it cuts off. I guess that the band

does play three songs that day. They agree to play three songs that day, but they don't want it to be recorded. And they think it's... I don't know. They want to be respectful to the memory of the band, and they don't want to be a worse version of what they were,

and so they just don't want there to be a record of it. I think it's just a really personal, private moment between the three people that haven't spoken in 11 years and they want to keep it between themselves and I think that that's completely and totally fair. However, that must have healed something because 10 years later, they reform. And that's kind of how the documentary ends.

It ends with them saying like, they're going to do this reunion tour. They are still together. They did a tour last fall. I'm hoping that they'll do another tour in 2024. And if they do, I'm definitely going to go see them. And I, I recommend you see them if you ever get a chance and they play in your area. I'm hopeful that they will record a new album at some point. They have talked about it for years and they, uh, there you go. That's Jawbreaker the third way. Oh my God. One thing I got to say though, is in that documentary, I was not, I was not expecting

this at all. Maybe five or six minutes into the documentary, they play footage. They play footage throughout the documentary of Austin. They played at Emo's. It was a big punk club here many times. And I saw them play at Emo's twice, I think, maybe once or twice. I wasn't expecting it. And they played footage from a show I was at in like maybe 94, 93, 94. I don't know.

I didn't see me in it or anything. I just recognized them in the clothes they're in, in the setting at Emo's and realized I was there in the crowd that night. And it just like, I'll be honest, I burst out into tears and I was so overcome with like nostalgia and melancholy. And it just like it hit me so hard. I wasn't expecting to be emotionally invested in the documentary at all. I just was expecting to fill in some some gaps in their knowledge so I could talk about it here.

And that set a tone. I literally had to stop the movie and just kind of sob for a minute and didn't understand why I was. And it was just something about seeing that space again. It doesn't exist there anymore. It's moved and it's been gone for years. And even in the new place it is, it's a different place. It's a different vibe. It's not... And even in the new place it is, it's a different place. It's a different vibe. It's not...

That spot, Emo's in Austin, Texas, in the late 80s and the early 90s was similar, I think, to a lot of people to what I thought Gilman Street was. It was this little mecca. It was my punk rock mecca. It was the closest I was ever going to get to Gilman Street. It was a really special place and a really special place in time for me. And getting to see it again after 20 years, I guess, it just hit me in the gut so hard. Anyway, and then I cried. I cried every time I saw Emo's in that documentary. But I also cried pretty much throughout the rest of the documentary because you could just, that primed me, that opened me up, as Frank says in Always Sunny, it unzipped me. And then I was kind of raw.

And then you're watching this, then you're watching this group of really talented people who caught lightning in a bottle try to hold onto it as the lightning in the bottle destroys them while they're also destroying themselves.

And let's just say there were a lot of parallels and a lot of familiar moments and themes that I guess just got me. And so I was kind of a puddly mess of tears throughout the entire documentary. And maybe it means a little, maybe it means something different to me because I read so much into it from my own personal life, but then you will. But I really do recommend it. I really do recommend that band. I recommend the Candy Jawbreaker.

I recommend, I don't recommend the movie Jawbreaker, but if you're going to do the other two, you might as well throw that one in just so you have the full triangle. Listen to Jawbreaker, eat a Jawbreaker, maybe watch Jawbreaker,

the movie. But you can't go wrong with two of those three. I promise you that. Alright.