Alexander Blake Schwarzenbach (born May 21, 1967) is an American musician. He was the singer and guitarist of Jawbreaker (1988ñ1996), Jets to Brazil (1997ñ2003), The Thorns of Life (2008ñ2009), and Forgetters (2009ñ present). Although experiencing little mainstream success himself, Schwarzenbach and groups he has been a member of have influenced a variety of musical groups which have found success such as Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.
-from wikipedia.
the music video for 'fireman,' by jawbreaker. the lead single from their much-maligned final LP, dear you.
jawbreaker began as a band called rise, formed by three NYU students in 1986. the original lineup consisted of blake schwarzenbach on guitar, his childhood friend adam pfahler on drums and newcomer chris bauermeister on bass. they went through several lead singers, and then in 1987, moved to LA with bauermeister's childhood friend jon liu on lead vocals.
'It wasn't just this Xeroxed thing. It was something he had drawn, like a poster. It was all colored and it named all the right bands.'
-pfahler on the flyer that drew him and schwarzenbach to recruit bauermeister as a member of the band.
'shield yr eyes.'
schwarzenbach wrote and sang 'shield yr eyes' on the band's first demo. this quickly led to the dismissal of liu on vocals and a change of band name, to jawbreaker. 'shield yr eyes' was released on indie comp the world's in shreds vol. two for shredder records, which also released jawbreaker's first full length LP, unfun, in 1990. between these two releases, jawbreaker wrote and released nearly 20 songs on various comps and singles. during this time, they also played their first shows. their first ever show under the jawbreaker name occured on 16 mar, 1989, at club 88 in LA.
whack and blite, one of the band's early EPs.
in 1990, jawbreaker joined san francisco group econochrist on the 'fuck 90' tour. it was a grueling summer trek that led to the band briefly splitting up. when they reformed, the group relocated to san francisco, and, in 1991, recorded their second album, bivouac.
chesterfield king.
big.
while touring bivouac, schwarzenbach developed a polyp on his throat and had to undergo surgery in ireland to have it removed.
a live version of 'chesterfield king' from the 1992 tour in which you can hear schwarzenbach's difficulty singing.
in 1993, jawbreaker recorded the album 24 hour revenge therapy with steve albini. following the release of the album, they were asked to open for nirvana on six dates of their in utero tour. this move was greeted with everything from trepidation to outright derision within the punk scene, as it was felt more exposure would compromise jawbreaker's sound, or that a larger audience would make the band forget their punk ideals.
boxcar.
do you still hate me?
condition oakland.
following the nirvana dates, jawbreaker signed to DGC records for a one million dollar advance. they used this money to record their major label debut/swan song, dear you, at fantasy studios in berkeley, CA, with producer rob cavallo, who had produced green day's major label breakout dookie the previous year. members of the punk scene were outspoken in their belief that major label success would spell the end of jawbreaker, and feared that being on a major label would 'ruin' the band. comically enough, dear you doesn't stray far from the jawbreaker sound, though the recordings are much more clear sounding and precise.
where their previous recording sessions had been typically brief (they recorded unfun in two days), the sessions for dear you lasted two months, and found schwarzenbach and bauermeister becoming increasingly alienated from each other. it got worse when they went to tour the album. audiences reactions ranged from silence to hostility when the new material was played, and in 1996, jawbreaker broke up, another casualty of the early-90's major label feeding frenzy for successful 'alternative' bands.
jet black.
sluttering.
million.
bad scene, everyone's fault.
following the split, schwarzenbach moved back to new york, where he DJed and wrote freelance video game reviews. in 1997, he formed the group jets to brazil, with chris daly, former bass player of the group handsome. they recorded some songs to 4-track with a drum machine before recruiting chris daly, formerly of texas is the reason, to sit behind the kit. the band name comes from a poster visible in the film breakfast at tiffany's.
in october, 1998, the band released orange rhyming dictionary, which they had recorded at easley mccain studios in nashville tennessee with J robbins, formerly of the group jawbox, and stuart sikes engineering. they shared an album release show with chicago pop punk group (and devoted jawbreaker fans) alkaline trio, who releasd their debut full length goddamnit! on the same day.
king medicine.
chinatown.
alkaline trio - snake oil tanker.
the above three videos are all from the bill both bands shared at the empty bottle in chicago, IL, on 14 nov 1998.
conrad.
morning new disease.
jets to brazil found a following with indie kids, but the punks didn't like them. many longtime jawbreaker fans found schwarzennbach's musical exploration and growth as a songwriter heretical, even though they'd all basically disavowed him after dear you anyway. in 2000, they released four cornered night, on jade tree records, who also released orange rhyming dictionary. while touring their first album, JTB added a second guitarist, bryan maryansky, formerly of NYC indie group the van pelt. this allowed blake to move over to keys on some songs, and four cornered night is stuffed with inventive, piano-driven pop that tends more towards early 70's AM radio sounds than the punk that jawbreaker were known for. the album received mixed reviews (but it was the first album by any of blake schwarzenbach's projects that i owned, and was obviously good enough to inspire me to check out the rest of his stuff).
pale new dawn.
one summer last fall.
empty picture frame.
orange rhyming dictionary (yes, it's the title of the first album).
in 2002, the band teamed up with J robbins (as they had done on both previous releases) to record their final album, perfecting loneliness. they broke up in 2003, with schwarzenbach reportedly moving to canada or back in with his parents.
cat heaven.
perfecting loneliness.
wishlist.
further north.
for five years, schwarzenbach was musically inactive, working as a professor of literature at hunter college. in 2008, he started a band called the thorns of life with aaron cometbus (formerly of 90's punks crimpshrine) on drums and bassist daniela sea (the gr'ups), though they disbanded before releasing any material.
i hate new york.
in 2009, schwarzenbach announced the formation of a new group, called forgetters, with ex-against me! drummer kevin mahon and caroline paquita on bass. their superlative self-titled EP was released in sept 2010 on their own 'too small to fail' record label.
here's the entire EP.
paquita left the band in 2011 and the band continued as a two-piece. in 2012, they recorded and released their self-titled full length with J robbins, who also played bass on the record. from may 2013 to may 2014, the band remained inactive, though they are supposedly playing a show tomorrow night (which by the time you read this will probably be more like a week or two ago, since i'm writing this on the 29th of may).
i'm not immune.
o deadly death.
les arrivistes.
ephemera, etc.
blackball records, adam pfahler's label. he's released a bunch of posthumous jawbreaker stuff as well as securing the rights and re-releasing dear you.
forgetters on blogspot.
jets to brazil on jadetree.com, where one can obtain their records and other things.
*
p.s. Hey. Today, generous blog savior and writer/musician Rewritedept lends a deserving glow to Blake Schwarzenbach, key member of the very wonderful, sadly defunct band Jawbreaker among others, and I second his entreaty to get with Schwarzenbach's output post-haste. Read, watch, listen, and get back to your guest-host comments-wise, if you don't mind. Thanks, Rwd! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Ha ha, since the gifs wouldn't load for you, I guess they do qualify as tiffs. Coover's very interesting, as a writer and also as an experimental writer of a quite older generation who's actually thinking about what the internet is doing to and with fiction in a sharp, inquisitive way. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Agreed, yes. ** Will C., Hi, Will! Terrific to see you! Glad to know you're a Coover guy. What, your job went down? Shit, I'm really sorry to hear that, man. May the job scrambling be a quickie. Plowing away, yeah, same story here. Great plowing, but so much prep to do. I'm really, really busy and really, really good. Best of luck with everything, and I hope time and circumstances let you back in here soon. ** Keaton, Hey. I don't have a head for math at all. Which is kind of weird since I'm good with complicated structuring maybe, and that's all math, I guess, in some weird, fundamental way, but yeah. That 'Gay Europe Map' is funny, but stereotyping makes my skin crawl, so it's a black humor, which is, you know, of course, an A-okay manifest. Whoa, your Meme Generator is cool. Is that easy to do? Where can I learn to do that? The bottom meme in your stack made me crack up heavily. Everyone, Keaton's newest invention is the Keaton2007 Meme Generator, with which he has generated a pile of sweet, funnier than shit stuff, and has, in the process, not that it matters to anyone but me, fulfilled my recent lifelong dream of being immortalized in a meme, so yeah. Check this. ** Steevee, Is that true about the 25%? I wonder what percentage of that percentage reads fiction books? It would be an interesting challenge to try to successfully fake conservatism in a short story. I bet you could do it. I bet they would be too conservative to notice the difference. ** Kier, Hi, K! Yeah, I'm into confusion. It's weird though because once you realize confusion is the truth, you can't go back to thinking otherwise. It's serious mixed bag. It can totally stress you out and fuck you up emotionally not to have the certainty that comes with the set goals that come with being not confused, but I feel like the happiness and peace of mind it can generate are better, but I don't know. Tricky is the word, yeah. I'm glad you're much better, and I'm glad that Thursday is tomorrow. I feel like I'm always confused, but I think for most of the time it works in a really good way because it gets rid of so many expectations somehow. Confusion is inherently hard to talk about, which I kind of like too But, yeah, I can get fucked up by it, for sure. Speaking of things that fucked me up but in a glorious way, I love those new drawings you put on Facebook yesterday. They're so great! I keep wanting them on t-shirts as well as on walls. My day was good. Zac and I cast another role in our film, 'the skateboarder', with this awesome young artist/art student named Paul, who's really great. That was good. And I wrote a bit, which was good. And hung out with Zac, which is the best. And connected up with an old friend, which was nice. What did you today, my pal? ** Torn porter, Hey, Torn! How's it? Did you see 'Situation Rooms'? Our film is going gangbusters so far, so, yeah, it's great. Thanks about the help, man. You're only here until June 20th? Shit, I was going to see if you wanted to be in the club scene of our film, but that doesn't shoot until August. Ratty's almost back, cool. I think this weekend might be really good to meet up unless some disaster with our film happens or something. We're back to scrambling to find the location for our next scene, but hopefully that'll get sorted out before the weekend. So, yeah, it would be great to see you guys. I'll do my best. ** Sypha, Hi, James. I read a couple of Graham Greene novels a really long time ago. I can't remember which ones. I thought they were really well done, yeah. ** Chris Goode, Chris! Hey, man! I know, weird about not doing Coover before. Oh, man it's totally okay if you get me the post today or whenever very soon. No problem at all. I'm really excited! You turned 41! Congrats! Seriously, the 40s are nice. I liked mine. They were cool. I think tardy is still un-blacklisted. I mean, Jesus, language fascism is so on the rise these days, you never know, I guess. Maybe the 'tard' part of 'tardy' might vaguely bring to mind the word 'retard' and offend those who have a stake in the protection of the differently minded? Hope you got all the zzzz's you needed, and I love you too, man. ** Misanthrope, Georgey! You're back! You're alive! What a nice sounding trip. What a nicely written report. Colorful and economical and sans waste of any stripe. You sent me your story. I think I might have seen it in my mailbox while coffee was doing its initial number on me. Cool! Welcome back! ** Jared, Hi, J! I know, it's strange. Really, there are times all the time where I go, okay, there's not a single thing left that I can make a post about, shit. And, then, bang or flood or something, somebody like Coover pops up. Oh, that's very cool about your return to art criticism! And for the flashy magazine, which I think is the most widely read English language art magazine in France. It's everywhere here, whereas you practically have to special order Artforum and Frieze if you want to buy them. That curating thing sounds great too! Wow, you're doing excellently, I must say! I would, yes, have majorly enjoyed that 'immersive 6.1-channel Tim Hecker performance'. To say the least. I do know Julie Tolentino's work a bit, and I like it very much. I should do a blog post on her, actually. That's all really exciting, man! No, Zac isn't Zac German. Another Zac. Anyway, very cool, J! I would love to hear more about the curating and criticism whenever you feel like gifting my pair of eyes. ** Chris Cochrane, Chris, my old buddy and genius collaborator! Hi! Yeah, I'm keeping up long distance on Collapsible Shoulder's doings, and I'm digging it heavily. That Coney Island gig looks really good. Oh, I met Oren Ambarchi finally a few weeks ago, and he was saying that he met you and how awesome you are. Conversations would be sweet, here, there, or even by Skype? Would love to! Speaking of love, take some, buddy. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi! Thank you about the squares, No, no MRI, ha ha, what a scary idea, and yet an intriguing one too, but I think the scariness part wins. Mike Kitchell's review was great, and I'm thrilled by it. I'm good, and the film goes really well, and I'm very happy, and thank you a lot, and I hope all is very well with you too! ** Okay. Back you go into Rewritedept's post, I hope. Enjoy. See you tomorrow.