The density of life

I've been thinking a lot about Mitch Clem lately. It's strange how much a webcomic can influence your life.

I have been a Blake Schwarzenbach fan for five or six years now, finding out about Jawbreaker and Jets to Brazil simultaneously. Ever since then, he's become this mythological figure, a Jeff Mangum type who doesn't really make music anymore, when everyone around him knows that he really wants to, but might never eclipse the glory that he once had. There will never be another In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, but Mangum will continue to tour with the traveling Elephant Six gypsies, only showing up at certain dates in cities like Milwaukee and the fourth tier stop in Texas. I used to put Kevin Shields on this list, but God knows that he wants to be big again (or for the first time, really).

Schwarzenbach had the chance to be big, getting signed to Geffen in the mid 90s by Rob Cavallo, who was the young producer/A&R guy that discovered the pop potential of the East Bay 924 Gilman scene, specifically Green Day. Jawbreaker was to be the seriously literary college kid foil to Green Day's stoner high school rebellion. Blake wrote about some seriously fucked up moments at the age of 24. In 1995, Jawbreaker released Dear You on Geffen Records (ed: What a year for Geffen... not getting Songs From the Black Hole and Dear You?!) and it flopped massively, despite being one of the era's best punk albums (it was like this and Hello Bastards). After this, Blake started the even more unfriendly Jets to Brazil and wrote simple songs about the harsh reality of being alone and unsuccessful. Of course, being a Morrissey fan, this had some appeal for me, but for most Jawbreaker fans, this did not really resonate and many had written Schwarzenbach off as washed up.

Fast forward to late October 2008. The news from the Jawbreaker camp has been minimal up to this point, but a bulletin from the Jawbreaker myspace account pops up, announcing progress on the forthcoming Jawbreaker documentary. Adam Pfahler, drummer for Jawbreaker, sends out the occasional news and wrote previously that Jawbreaker got back together one night to play some music, just for fun. Many fans got excited, thinking they'd get to see Jawbreaker play some sort of show, but the rest of us knew Blake better than that. Those of us who really listen to his albums know that he wouldn't put himself in that position again. The October 2008 bulletin contains a short message from the man himself with a short note about a new band that he's playing in. The next thing you know, there are pictures on Brooklyn based punk blogs of Blake playing house shows in a new band with Aaron Cometbus from Crimpshrine, opening up for The Underground Railroad to Candyland. The world stops turning. Everyone seems to be asking the same question... "Is it as good as it seems?" and the next thing you know, videos start popping up on the Youtube, and of course, we come to find out that we have something else to be excited about.

I hope that I will get the chance to see Blake's new band, not only because I've never seen him live, but simply because I must.